Dr Chiara Gambi
Lecturer
- gambic@cardiff.ac.uk
- +44 (0)29 2068 8950
- 3.30, Tower Building, 70 Park Place, Cardiff, CF10 3AT
Overview
Research summary
Research themes: Cognitive Science and Developmental Psychology
Language is essential to most human activities (e.g., making friends, attending school, managing a team), and the reason it is so important is that language is the most powerful and flexible way we have to communicate with other people. I am interested in understanding how language works (i.e., what are the underlying cognitive mechanisms), how it is used in conversations between people, and how children become expert language users through learning from the conversations they have with their caregivers. I am particulalry interested in how our ability to anticipate what others will say (linguistic prediction) supports language processing and learning.
Teaching summary
I teach on the Language and Memory course (Year 1, PS2020) and on the Psychology of Language and Speech course (Year 3, PS3318). I also run Year 2 practicals in Thinking and Reasoning.
Previously, I have taught statistics (R) at both undergraduate and postgraduate level.
Biography
Undergraduate education
2005-2008: BA in Humanities (Linguistics), Bologna University and Collegio Superiore Almae Matris Studiorum, Bologna, Italy
Postgraduate education
2009-2010: MA in Linguistics, Bologna University, Bologna, Italy
2010-2013: PhD in Psychology, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, U.K. Thesis title: Imagining and anticipating another speaker’s utterances in joint language tasks. (supervisors: Martin Pickering and Robert Hartsuiker)
Employment
2013-2014: Post-doc, Saarland University, Psycholinguistics Group, Department of Computational Linguistics and Phonetics (with Matt Crocker)
2014-2017: Post-doc, University of Edinburgh, Department of Psychology (with Hugh Rabagliati and Martin Pickering)
Publications
We are currently unable to retrieve the list of publications. Visit our institutional repository.Overview
Language is essential to most human activities (e.g., making friends, attending school, managing a team), and the reason it is so important is that language is the most powerful and flexible way we have to communicate with other people. I am interested in understanding how language works (i.e., what are the underlying cognitive mechanisms), how it is used in conversations between people, and how children become expert language users through learning from the conversations they have with their caregivers.
To find out, I use a range of behavioural and eye-tracking methods. Behaviourally, I have developed a series of joint language tasks, in which people speak at the same time, or finish each other’s sentences. These tasks allow us to study how our speech is influenced by the presence of other people and what they say. In other behavioural work, I study turn-taking, the smooth system by which we normally avoid speaking at the same time, or leaving long silent gaps in conversations.
Eye-tracking (both of speakers and listeners) provides a window into the cognitive mechanisms underlying language, as we can infer a lot about how quickly people understand and what they are about to say by measuring where they are looking. Using eye-tracking, I study how prediction helps children and adults understand others more efficiently, speak more fluently, and take turns more smoothly.
Linguistic prediction is the ability to guess what somebody will say, how they will say it, or when they will stop speaking. Linguistic prediction is a skill that both adult and children appear to possess, although to different degrees. I want to understand how this skill relates to our ability to express thoughts into words (i.e. language production). Moreover, what other functions does prediction serve? Does it help children learn language in the first place? If you can predict, then you can also compare your guesses to what you actually hear, and this process of comparison may help you learn without explicit instruction. If this process underpins language learning, then does it explain all kinds of learning (e.g., both acquiring your first language as a child and adapting to a new accent when you move to a different town?).
Finally, I am also interested in how linguistic prediction relates to prediction in other domains (action and perception), mind-reading, and imitation.
Research topics and related papers
Joint language tasks. Gambi, C., & Pickering, M.J. (2015). Predicting and imagining language. Language, Cognition, and Neuroscience, 31(1), 60-72.
Gambi, C. & Pickering, M.J. (2011). A cognitive architecture for the coordination of utterances. Frontiers in Psychology, 2:275.
Turn-taking in conversation. Corps, R.E., Gambi, C., & Pickering, M.J. (2017). Coordinating utterances during turn-taking: The role of prediction, response preparation, and articulation. Discourse Processes, 55(2), 230-240.
Corps, R. E., Crossley, A., Gambi, C., & Pickering, M. J. (2018). Early preparation during turn-taking: Listeners use content predictions to determine what to say but not when to say it. Cognition, 175, 77-95.
Prediction: theory. Rabagliati, H., Gambi, C., & Pickering, M. (2015). Learning to predict or predicting to learn?. Language, Cognition and Neuroscience, 31(1), 94-105.
Pickering, M. J., & Gambi, C. (2018). Predicting while comprehending language: a theory and review. Psychological Bulletin, 144(10), 1002-1044.
Prediction: findings. Gambi, C., Pickering, M.J., & Rabagliati, H. (2016). Beyond associations: Sensitivity to structure in pre-schoolers’ linguistic predictions. Cognition, 157, 340-351.
Lindsay, L., Gambi, C., & Rabagliati, H. (2019). Preschoolers optimize the timing of their conversational turns through flexible coordination of language comprehension and production. Psychological science, 30(4), 504-515.
Ito, A., Gambi, C., Pickering, M. J., Fuellenbach, K., & Husband, E. M. (2020). Prediction of phonological and gender information: An event-related potential study in Italian. Neuropsychologia, 136, 107291.
Prediction and imitation. Lelonkiewicz, J., & Gambi, C. (2016) Spontaneous adaptation explains why people act faster when being imitated. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 24(3), 842-848.
External funding
Welsh Crucible Grant: Engineering conversation: A roadmap to the application of control theory to the problem of language generation. (2019-2020; PI, with Fan Zhang, University of South Wales, Co-I); value: £5822
British Academy Small Project Grant (SRG1920/100600): The role of incorrect predictions in children's comprehension of structural alternations (2020-2021; PI; with Katherine Messenger, Warwick, Co-I); value: £9992.
Research group
Cognitive Science
Development and Health Psychology
Research collaborators
Martin Pickering (Edinburgh)
Hugh Rabagliati (Edinburgh)
Jaroslaw Lelonkiewicz (SISSA)
Roland Pfister (Würzburg)
Kate Messenger (Warwick)
Joost Rommers (Aberdeen)
Supervision
Postgraduate research interests
If you are interested in applying for a PhD, or for further information regarding my postgraduate research, please contact me directly (contact details available on the 'Overview' page), or submit a formal application.
Current students
Francesco Cabiddu (Lead): The role of statistical learning In the early acquisition of syntactic structure.
Kelsey Frewin (co-Supervisor): Development of verb vocabulary.
Current supervision
Past projects
Ruth Corps (co-Supervisor), University of Edinburgh: The role of timing and content predictions in turn-taking.