McGill Cognitive Computing Laboratory

People​
My research focuses primarily on studying semantic compositionality, idiomatic language and multiword expressions from both a computational and a psycholinguistic perspective. On the computational side, I mostly resort to distributional semantic models to assess the semantic compositionality, formal flexibility and emotional valence of idiomatic and literal expressions in corpora. On the psycholinguistic side, I’m interested in collecting and comparing eye-tracking and offline data on the processing of idioms and their formal variants. Another topic that fascinates me is analyzing diachronic semantic change in corpora with computational models of semantics. Generally speaking, I aim at extracting computational data that are cognitively plausible and can successfully predict and complement psycholinguistic evidence. Recently, my research has broadened to include bilingualism and contextual diversity. [CV]

Post-Doctoral Fellow
Marco Senaldi, Ph.D.
I am a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Psychology at McGill University, under the supervision of Dr. Brendan Johns. Previously, I completed my Ph.D. in the Department of Psychology at Cornell University under the supervision of Dr. Charles Brainerd. My research revolves around three connected topics: episodic memory, metamemory, and cognitive aging. I am particularly interested in using behavioral experiments, mathematical modeling, and computational modeling to understand the semantic factors that affect memory processes, the metacognitive processes that regulate learning, and developmental and disease trajectories in cognition during late adulthood. [website]

Post-Doctoral Fellow
Minyu Chang, Ph.D.
I am an Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychology at McGill University since January 2020, where I run the McGill Cognitive Computing Laboratory. I am also an Associate Editor of Behavior Research Methods. Previously I was an Assistant Professor in the Department of Communicative Disorders and Sciences at the University at Buffalo. Before becoming a faculty member, I was an NSERC post-doctoral fellow in the Department of Psychology at Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario, under the supervision of Dr. Douglas J. K. Mewhort. In August 2012 I received my Ph.D. at IU under the supervision of Dr. Michael N. Jones in the Cognitive Computing Lab. I received my Bachelor of Computing (with a major in Cognitive Science) from Queen's University in 2007. My research interests lie in big data and machine learning approaches to cognitive science. This research has received early career awards from the Psychonomic Society, the Canadian Society for Brain, Behavior, and Cognitive Science, and the Federation of Associations in Brain & Behavioral Sciences [CV]​

Brendan T. Johns, Ph.D.
Lab Director
Mengyang Qiu, MA, MS
Ph.D. Student
University at Buffalo
My current research focuses on obtaining a better understanding of how the amount and content of linguistic experience influences language representation and processing in healthy cognitive aging using computational modeling and behavioral experiments. I am also interested in using natural language processing techniques and cognitive modeling to develop automated assessment procedures for detecting language and memory disorders (e.g., Specific Language Impairment, Mild Cognitive Impairment, and Alzheimer’s disease). [CV]
My broad interests are in cognitive science. Specifically, I am interested in understanding how conceptual knowledge is represented in the brain. I have approached this issue by investigating the representation of verb knowledge (and their role during sentence comprehension), the interface between concepts and visual object recognition, and the comprehension of so-called indeterminate sentences. I’ve been investigating these issues in various populations (namely, healthy individuals, individuals with Alzheimer’s disease, and people with Aphasia), and through various techniques (e.g., eye-tracking, psychophysics, theoretical work, and computational modeling), all with the goal of understanding how the brain represents and organizes conceptual knowledge. [website]

Ph.D. Student
Caitlyn Antal

Collaborators

I am a  Ph.D. student, supervised by Dr. Debra Titone and Dr. Brendan Johns. I earned my B.A. in Linguistics from McGill University.
 
I am interested in understanding the influence of sociolinguistic features, social identities, and diverse language experience on cognition; specifically, how these influence speakers' language usage. To explore this, I use big data and machine learning approaches to build computational representations of word meanings


Ph.D. Student
Michelle Yang