Dr. Yuki Kamide

Lecturer

Contact Details:
Telephone: (+44)(1382) 384614
Email: Yuki Kamide

Postal Address:
School of Psychology
The University of Dundee
Dundee
DD1 4HN
Scotland, UK

Biography

I was born and brought up in the Kansai area in Japan. I graduated from Kobe University in Japan with a BA (in 1992) and an MA (in 1994) in Psychology. I came to the UK to study at the University of Exeter in 1994. I completed my PhD in Psychology in 1998 under supervision of Prof. Don Mitchell. Then, I took up a Post-doctoral Research Fellowship on MRC-funded research grants awarded to Prof. Gerry Altmann at the University of York. In Sept 2002, I started my first lectureship in Psychology at the University of Manchester. I joined the School here in Dundee in 2005 as a Lecturer. (and I am still here!)

Lab Website

Cæt (Communication And Eye-Tracking) Lab

Research Grouping

Language, Cognition and Perception

Research Centres

LaRC (Language Research Centre)
CORE (Centre for Oculomotor Research)

Research Interests

Psycholinguistics - Language processing (especially, sentence comprehension)
Eye-movements in the processing of linguistic and visual information
Situated language processing and embodiment
Cross-linguistic comparisons
Second language processing and acquisition
Language use in social contexts

My research interests predominantly concern the area of psycholinguistics, especially sentence processing, including the following areas (more details can be found on my lab page):

Prediction in sentence processing - anticipatory eye-movements in the visual-world paradigm: In my on-going collaboration with Gerry Altmann, I have explored whether people 'predict' certain properties of a forthcoming lexical item even before the referring expression arrives in the sentence. To investigate the prediction issue, we use a relatively new eye-tracking technique, the 'visual-world paradigm' where people hear a sentence whilst looking at a visual scene containing objects referred to in that sentence. Our first study (Altmann & Kamide, 1999) showed that people look towards certain objects that are about to be mentioned without actually waiting for them to be mentioned (e.g., after hearing 'The boy will eat...', they looked at whatever is edible in the scene, without waiting to hear what is actually going to be mentioned next). Our subsequent research (previous and current research) aims to further clarify properties of the predictors (information to be used in prediction) and the predictees (properties of subsequent items to be predicted). On the whole, our research has indicated that the human sentence processing mechanism is capable of integrating different information sources rapidly in order to anticipate what will be referred to next, which is presumably the major characteristic of an incremental sentence processor that attempts to establish the fullest possible interpretation at each moment in time. Since the first line of studies, our research has progressed into wider issues, including those surrounding world-situated language use (e.g., Kamide et al., 2003; Altmann & Kamide, 2004; Altmann & Kamide, 2009).

Mental simulation in language processing: I am also interested in the so-called 'mental simulation' in language processing. In particular, I study the way in which listeners may represent sentences or texts that express movements. Motions have several aspects (e.g., trajectory, speed), and my research investigates whether such properties of language can modulate listeners' overt (eye movements) and covert attention shifts. More information about this line of work can be found on my lab page.

Resolution of structural ambiguity in parsing: This line of research is more traditional in the research field of sentence processing. During my PhD with Don Mitchell, I carried out numerous experiments that looked at the competition processes between different classes of constraints in the initial stage of parsing. In particular, I focused on the competition between verbs' argument structure information (grammar-based) and recency constraints (memory-based). In those experiments, I used structurally ambiguous sentences to see which attachment decision would be initially opted for (and how the initial structural analysis would be revised when it turned out wrong later in the sentence).

Cross-linguistic approach: My previous research in both lines above has taken advantage of the fact that looking at different languages can provide us a wider opportunity to investigate how adult native speakers of a given language handle unfolding sentence inputs incrementally. Since one of my central research interests is the role of verb information during sentence processing, my research has used languages with different verb (or 'head', more generally) positions. I have compared English (a head-initial language), Japanese (a head-final language), and German (verb-initial in main clauses, and verb-final in some subordinate clauses.

Eye-movements in language processing and scene perception: I mainly use eye-tracking techniques for my research. My general interests include constraints that determine the timing of a saccadic eye-movement and the duration of the subsequent fixation in the processing of both visual/auditory language, and visual scenes.

I am engaged in on-going research with the following psycholinguists:

Professor Gerry T.M. Altmann, Department of Psychology, University of York, UK
Dr Christoph Scheepers, Department of Psychology, University of Glasgow, Scotland, UK

Funding

ESRC Research Grant	2011-2014	£452,449 FEC + PhD studentship jointly with Glasgow (approximately £344,000 for Dundee)	"Dynamic representations of motion events in sentence processing"	Kamide, Y. (PI) & Scheepers, C.
ESRC Research Grant	2011-2014	£730,113 FEC jointly with York (approximately half for Dundee)	"Language-induced event-representation: Competition and multiple object instantiation"	Altmann, G.T.M. (PI), & Kamide, Y.
Carnegie Trust Undergraduate Vacation Scholarship	2007	£7,440		for student RA
Nuffied Foundation Social Science Small Research Grant	2007-2009	£7,500	"Incremental auditory language processing: Effects of the language proficiency of listeners and speakers on anticipation"	Kamide, Y.
British Academy Small Research Grant	2003-2005	£5,000	"Prediction in incremental human sentence processing: Evidence from anticipatory eye movements"	Kamide, Y.
Royal Society Small Research Grant	2003	£10,000	"Eye-tracking in language processing"	Kamide, Y.
University of Manchester Research Support Fund	2003	£10,000	"Monitoring eye movements during the integration of linguistic and visual information in language processing"	Kamide, Y.
ORS (Overseas Research Studentship) Award	1995-1997			Kamide, Y.

Publications


Links	Publications
	Kamide, Y. (2012). Learning individual talkers' structural preferences, Cognition. 124, 66-71.
	Altmann, G.T.M., & Kamide, Y. (2009). Discourse-mediation of the mapping between language and the visual world: Eye movements and mental representation. Cognition, 111, 55-71.
	Kamide, Y. (2008). Anticipatory processes in sentence processing. Language and Linguistics Compass, 2/4, 647-670.
	Altmann, G.M.T., & Kamide, Y. (2007). The real-time mediation of visual attention by language and world knowledge: Linking anticipatory (and other) eye movements to linguistic processing. Journal of Memory and Language, 57, 502-518.
	Kamide, Y. (2006). Incrementality in Japanese sentence processing. In M. Nakayama, R. Mazuka & Y. Shirai (Eds.), Handbook of Japanese psycholinguistics; Cambridge University Press.
	Kamide, Y., Altmann, G.T.M., & Haywood, S.L. (2004). The time-course of constraint-application during sentence processing in visual contexts: Anticipatory eye-movements in English and Japanese. M. Tanenhaus & J. Trueswell (Eds.), World-situated language use: Psycholinguistic, linguistic and computational perspectives on bridging the product and action traditions; MIT Press.
	Altmann, G.T.M., & Kamide, Y. (2004). Now you see it, now you don't: Mediating the mapping between language and visual world. In J.Henderson & F. Ferreira (Eds.) The interface of language, vision, and action: Eye movements and the visual world; New York: Psychology Press
	Kamide, Y., Altmann, G.T.M., & Haywood, S.L. (2003). Prediction and thematic information in incremental sentence processing: Evidence from anticipatory eye movements. Journal of Memory and Language, 49, 133-156.
	Kamide, Y., & Scheepers, C., & Altmann, G.T.M. (2003). Integration of syntactic and semantic information in predictive processing: Cross-linguistic evidence from German and English. Journal of Psycholinguistic Research, 32, 37-55.
	Kamide, Y.,& Mitchell, D.C. (1999). Incremental pre-head attachment in Japanese parsing. Language and Cognitive Processes, 14(5/6), 631-662.
	Altmann, G.T.M., & Kamide, Y. (1999). Incremental interpretation at verbs: Restricting the domain of subsequent reference. Cognition, 73, 247-264.
	Kamide, Y., & Mitchell, D.C. (1997). Relative clause attachment: Non-determinism in Japanese parsing. Journal of Psycholinguistic Research, 26, 247-254.