Research
Running a psycholinguistic experiment in the Zaidel EEG Lab at UCLA, where behavioral and neurophysiological measures of linguistic empathy were developed and tested.
My research sits at the intersection of linguistics, social psychology, and cognitive neuroscience, with a particular focus on how empathy operates in and through language. Secondary interests include prosody, language evolution, humor, pragmatics, and language and gender.
Publications
- Kann T, Berman S, Cohen MS, Goldknopf E, Gülser M, Erlikhman G, Trinh K, Yokoyama OT, Zaidel E (2023). “Linguistic Empathy: Behavioral measures, neurophysiological correlates, and correlation with Psychological Empathy.” Neuropsychologia. 15;191:108650.
Dissertation & Theses
- PhD Dissertation (UCLA) — Measuring Linguistic Empathy: An Experimental Approach to Connecting Linguistic and Social Psychological Notions of Empathy
- C.Phil Qualifying Paper (UCLA) — Seeking Natural Interaction: A Comparison of Emergent Language within Developmental Therapies for Children with Autism
- MA Thesis (UCLA) — The Prosodical Son: Music's Influence on the Evolution of Language
Presentations & Talks
- 2023–2024 — Multiple keynote speeches and English teaching seminars, US Department of State / University of São Paulo.
- 2019 — “Humor as Defensive and Offensive: Manipulating linguistic perspective in political and social media exchanges.” Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies Conference, UCLA.
- 2015 — “Exploring Empathy and Language Acceptability through Electrophysiology.” UCLA AppLing 10W.
- 2014 — “EEG Methods in Pragmatics Research.” Co-presenter with Olga Yokoyama. AMPRA.
- 2014 — “Neurology, Language, and Empathy.” UCLA AppLing 10W.
- 2012 — Multiple presentations on prosody, language evolution, and conversational analysis.
- 2010 — “Intonation Incorporated: Prosodic Patterns in Speech.”