Mark S. Seidenberg

 

 

Normal and Disordered Language; Reading and Dyslexia

E-mail: seidenberg@wisc.edu

Research Strengths: Behavior: Cognition and Emotion

Dr. Seidenberg's research addresses questions about the nature of language and how it is acquired, used, and represented in the brain. Much of his work has been concerned with reading: the mechanisms underlying skilled reading, how children acquire this skill, and the bases of dyslexia (reading impairments that occur developmentally or following brain injury). The research involves both behavioral studies and the development of large-scale computational ("neural network") models of normal and disordered language. The theoretical framework that was originally developed in connection with reading is being applied to many other aspects of language, including phonology, morphology and lexical semantics, and its implications concerning the neurophysiological bases of language are beginning to be studied using neuroimaging. The goal of the research is to understand the use of language and its brain bases using computational models as the theoretical interface between the two.

Selected Publications:

• Harm, M. and M.S. Seidenberg. 1999. Reading acquisition, phonology, and dyslexia: Insights from a connectionist model. Psychol. Rev. 106: 491-528. [PDF]
• Joanisse, M. and M.S. Seidenberg. 1999. Impairments in verb morphology following brain injury: A connectionist model. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. 96: 7592-7597. [PDF]
• Seidenberg, M.S. 1997. Language acquisition and use: Learning and applying probabilistic constraints. Science 275: 1599-1604. [PDF]