Overview


My research focuses on understanding language processing (and more generally cognitive issues). For this, I rely specially on Information Theory, as it presents a natural framework from which language comprehension - and cognition in general - can be contemplated, with the advantages of having a tradition of mathematically well-defined tools and methods. My approach embraces the complex system perspective that, stemming from physics, is currently becoming prominent in many areas, recently reaching the social and human sciences.

I currently pursue five inter-related lines of of research:
  1. How can the complexity of linguistic structures be quantified?
  2. How can information processing in the mind/brain be quantified?
  3. What are the dynamic properties of cognitive information processing?
  4. How are words and their inter-relations processed in the mental lexicon?
  5. How do the answers to these questions constrain models of language processing?
In addition, I maintain a general interest in the development and implementation of statistical techniques for data analysis.

Two aspects of my research are distinctive: The first is my interdisciplinary approach; I combine techniques from linguistics, experimental psychology, cognitive neuroscience, artificial intelligence, and physics. The second is the markedly quantitative perspective with which I regard these problems, using predominantly analytical techniques.  This contrasts with the simulation-centered approach that has until recently dominated the cognitive sciences.