  
Associate Chair of Psychology, Professor of Psychology
Cognition
& Perception, Social
My research focuses on the cognitive structures and processes that
enable language comprehension, as well as more general issues concerning
basic mechanisms in human memory, particularly Working Memory, and
visual attention.
Click here for a current
list of publications.
Psycholinguistics.
Language comprehension requires the retrieval and processing of conceptually
distinct types of linguistic knowledge. My research seeks to identify
the lexical, syntactic, and semantic information that mediate sentence
comprehension, and to model the cognitive processes that use this information
to map form to meaning. Two curent projects are described below.
Semantic interpretation. Language comprehension
consists of several operations ranging from the identification of
individual words to the construction of a suitable interpretation
for a complete text or utterance. Although much progress has been
made in understanding different facets of this system, little is
known about semantic composition, that is, how a contextually suitable
interpretation for a sentential expression is derived from the products
of lexical and syntactic analyses. Compositional processes provide
the crucial interface between lexical and syntactic processing on
one hand and discourse and text comprehension on the other. We are
attemtpting to advance our understanding of this critical interface
by identifying the essential processes and knowledge structures used
in composition.
Traditional views of composition holds that the lexical representations
of sentential constituents are simply combined in a manner that is
informed by syntactic structure. However, recent formal analyses
of common and seemingly simple expressions suggest that a substantially
more complex mechanism is needed to compute contextually appropriate
interpretations. Compositional processes appear to enrich the meaning
of expressions by modifying default interpretations of individual
constituents (sense extension). Often, this is accomplished by generating
semantic structure not explicitly represented in the sentence or
discourse. Our recent work has provided behavioral evidence in support
of this position, demonstrating that expressions argued to require
an enriched form of composition are costly to process.
An overview of this work can be found in Pylkkänen,
L.& McElree, B. (2006). The syntax-semantics interface: On-line
composition of sentence meaning. In M. Traxler & M.A. Gernsbacher
(eds.), Handbook of Psycholinguistics (2nd Ed). NY: Elsevier. An
NSF abstract provides a short abstract of the project.
Some findings on expressions requiring coercion, a type of enriched
composition:
1)
Semantic coercion engenders a processing cost in reading, as
evidenced by eye-movement data during reading (from Pickering,
McElree, & Traxler, 2005).
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2) Semantic coercion
slows the time course of interpretation (from McElree, Pylkkänen,
Pickering, & Traxler, 2006).
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3) Semantic coercion modulates
a ventromedial prefrontal source in a 350-500ms time-window,
generating more activity in this source than either the anomalous
or simpler control sentences (from Pylkkänen, Llinas, &
McElree, 2004).
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Some relevant papers
- Pickering, M. J., McElree, B., Frisson,
S., Chin, L., & Traxler, M. (submitted). Aspectual coercion
and underspecification. [pdf]
- Pylkkänen, L. & McElree, B. (in press). The syntax-semantics
interface: On-line composition of sentence meaning. In M. Traxler & M.A.
Gernsbacher (eds.), Handbook of Psycholinguistics (2nd Ed).
NY: Elsevier. [pdf]
- McElree, B., Pylkkänen, L., Pickering, M.J., & Traxler,
M. (in press). The time course of enriched composition. Psychonomic
Bulletin & Review. [pdf]
- McElree, B., Frisson, S., & Pickering,
M.J. (2006). Deferrred interpretations: Why starting Dickens
is taxing but reading Dickens isn't. Cogntive
Science, 30, 113-124. [pdf]
- Traxler, M., McElree, B., Williams, R. S. & Pickering,
M.J. (2005). Context effects in coercion: Evidence from eye-movements. Journal
of Memory and Language, 53, 1-25. [pdf]
- Pickering, M. J., McElree, B., & Traxler,
M. (2005). The difficulty of coercion: A response to de Almeida. Brain & Language,
93, 1-9. [pdf]
- Pickering, M.J., Frisson, S., McElree, B., & Traxler, M.,
(2004). Eye movements and semantic composition. In M. Carreiras
and C. Clifton, Jr. (Eds.), The on-line study of sentence comprehension:
Eyetracking, ERPs, and beyond. Hove: Psychology Press. [pdf]
- Traxler, M., Pickering, M.J., & McElree,
B. (2002). Coercion in sentence processing: Evidence from eye-movements
and self-paced reading. Journal of Memory and Language, 4,
530-547. [pdf]
- McElree, B., Traxler, M., Pickering, M.J.,
Seely, R, & Jackendoff, R. (2001). Reading time evidence
for enriched composition. Cognition, 78, B17-B25. [pdf]
Complete list of current
papers
Working Memory (WM) in langauge comprehension. Successful
language comprehension often requires the comprehender to access
to memory representations to resolve dependencies between nonadjacent
constituents (e.g., filler-gap dependencies, anaphoric relations).
We are investigating how comprehenders access previously processed
constituents during on-line comprehension as a means of exploring
the nature of the WM representations that subserve language processing.
Our apporach is informed by techniques and findings from basic research
on memory. Our findings suggest that comprehension is supported by
memory representations that are content addressable: syntactic and
semantic constraints provide direct access to relevant representations
without the need to search through potentially irrelevant information.
Some relevant papers
- Van Dyke, J. A., & McElree, B. (submitted). Retrieval interference
in sentence omprehension. [pdf]
- McElree, B., Foraker, S. & Dyer, L.
(2003). Memory structures that subserve sentence comprehension. Journal
of Memory and Language, 48, 67-91. [pdf]
- McElree, B. (2000). Sentence comprehension
is mediated by content-addressable memory structures. Journal
of Psycholinguistic Research, 29, 111-123. [pdf]
Complete list of current
papers
Human Memory. Working Memory (WM) structures subserve
most complex cognitive abilities, including language production and
comprehension, reasoning, and problem solving. I am currently studying
how different types of visual, auditory, and linguistic information
are stored in and retrieved from WM.
Working Memory and Attention. The relationship
between attention and WM has been an issue since William James (1890)
equated the two. In recent theorizing, however, a distinction is
often drawn between WM structures that are the focus of active processing
and those that have residual activation as a consequence of recent
processing. The former are viewed as those structures that are the
current object(s) of attention or awareness. The latter are structures
that are outside the scope of attention, yet, as a consequence of
recent processing, have a privileged status over less recently processed
long-term memory structures, either by having a temporary representation
in a specialized store or by having residual activation in a long-term
representation.
If one posits a distinct WM system, as illustrated in Figure
1a, information can be represented in three possible states,
either in LTM, in WM, or in the current focus of attention.
Different forms of evidence have been used to motivate this
type of tripartite architecture (e.g., Cowan, 1995, 2001).
However, the evidence is indirect and can be challenged on
several grounds. We have argued that measures of retrieval
speed provide the most direct evidence for distinct representational
states (e.g., McElree & Dosher, 1989; McElree, 1996, 1998,
2001, 2006) . Although by happenstance different representational
states may be equally accessible, a natural prediction of tripartite
architecture is that 3 distinct retrieval speeds should be
observed. Information in focal attention should exhibit privileged
access. Less recent representations-those that are beyond the
capacity of focal attention but still within the span of WM-should
be accessed slower than items within the focus of attention,
but faster than LTM representations in a passive state.
Studies of retrieval of recent events have demonstrated that
retrieval is exceptionally fast when information can be maintained
in focal attention (for a review, see McElree,
B., 2006). Crucially, however, we do note find evidence
for a qualitative or quantitative "break-point" between
what a tripartite architecture posits as the divide between
WM and LTM. Collectively, the temporal dynamics of retrieval
are indicative of two rather than three representational states.
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In current research, we are exploring the capacity of focal attentional
and whether what is traditionally viewed as working memory might
be more properly viewed as the rapid shunting of information between
attended states and passive states. An overview of this work can
be found in.McElree,
B. (2006). Accessing recent events. In B. H. Ross (Ed.), The
psychology of learning and motivation, Vol. 46. San Diego: Academic
Press.
Some relevant papers
- McElree, B. (2001). Working memory and focal
attention. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory & Cognition, 27,
817-835. [pdf]
- McElree, B. & Dosher, B. A. (2001).
The focus of attention across space and time. Behavioral and
Brain Sciences, 24, 129-130.
- McElree, B. (1998). Attended and non-attended
states in working memory: Accessing categorized structures. Journal
of Memory & Language, 38, 225-252. [pdf]
- McElree, B. (1996). Accessing short-term
memory with semantic and phonological information: A time-course
analysis. Memory & Cognition, 24, 173-187.[pdf]
- McElree, B. & Dosher, B.A. (1993). Serial
retrieval processes in the recovery of order information. Journal
of Experimental Psychology: General, 122, 291-315. [pdf]
- McElree, B. & Dosher, B.A. (1989). Serial
position and set size in short-term memory: Time course of recognition. Journal
of Experimental Psychology: General, 18, 346-373. [pdf]
Other memory research
- Öztekin, I., & McElree, B. (submitted). Retrieval dynamics
of proactive interference: PI slows retrieval by eliminating fast
assessments of familiarity. [pdf]
- McElree, B., Dolan, P. O., & Jacoby,
L. L., (1999). Isolating the contributions of familiarity and
source information in item recognition: A time-course analysis. Journal
of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory & Cognition, 25,
563-582. [pdf]
- Jacoby, L. J., McElree, B., & Trainham, T. N. (1999). Automatic
influences as accessibility bias in memory and Stroop-like tasks:
Toward a formal model. In A. Koriat & D. Gopher (Eds.) Attention
& Performance XVII:Cognitive Regulation of Performance: Interaction
of Theory and Application. Cambridge: MIT Press.
- Dosher, B. A., McElree, B., Hood, R. M., & Rosedale,
G. R. (1989). Retrieval dynamics of priming in recognition memory:Bias
and discrimination analysis. Journal of Experimental Psychology:
Learning, Memory & Cognition, 15, 868-886. [pdf]
Complete list of current
papers
Visual Attention. Covert attention allows us to select
visual information at a spatial location, without eye movements, and
to grant this information priority in processing. Covert attention
improves discriminability in a wide variety of visual tasks. In collaborative
projects with Marisa Carrasco's lab, we
have demonstrated that covert attention not only improves discriminability
but also accelerates the rate of information processing. We are also
using measures of the dynamics of visual processing to test models
of visual attention and to examine how different visual factors (e.g.,
eccentricity) affect the speed of visual information processing
Some relevant papers
- Carrasco, M., Giordano, A. M., & McElree,
B. (in press). Attention speeds processing across eccentricity:
Feature and conjunction searches. Vision
Research.[pdf]
- Carrasco, M., Giordano, A. M., & McElree,
B. (2004). Temporal perfromance fields: Visual and attentional
factors. Vision Research, 44(12), 1351-1365.[pdf]
- Carrasco, M., McElree, B., Denisova, K., & Giordano,
A. M. (2003). The speed of visual information processing increases
with eccentricity. Nature Neuroscience, 6(7): 669-670.[pdf] [supplemental
materials]
- Carrasco, M. & McElree, B. (2001). Covert
attention speeds the accrual of visual information. Proceedings
of the National Academy of Sciences, 98, 5341-5436. [pdf]
- McElree, B., & Carrasco, M., (1999).
The temporal dynamics of visual search: Speed-accuracy tradeoff
analysis of feature and conjunctive searches. Journal of Experimental
Psychology: Human Perception & Performance, 25, 1517-1539. [pdf]
- McElree, B., & Carrasco, M., (1998).
Speed-accuracy tradeoff analysis of the temporal dynamics of
visual search. Investigative Ophthalmology & Visual Sciences
Abstracts, 39(4), s224.
Complete list of current
papers
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Brian McElree received his Ph.D. in experimental psychology in 1990
from Columbia University. While at Columbia, he studied psycholinguistics
with Tom Bever and human memory with Barbara Dosher. After his graduate
studies, he worked for two years as an Associate Research Scientist
with George Sperling in the Human Information Processing (HIP) Lab
here at NYU. He joined the Cognitive Sciences faculty at the University
of California, Irvine in 1991 as an assistant professor, where taught
and conducted research for four years before returning to NYU in
1995.
Education
B.Sc. Experimental Psychology, University
of Toronto, 1982
M.A. Experimental Psychology, University
of Western Ontario, 1984
M. Phil. Experimental Psychology, Columbia
University, 1989
Ph.D. Experimental Psychology, Columbia
University, 1990
Post Doctoral Research, New
York University, (HIPLab,
George Sperling), 1990-92
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Brian McElree
Professor of Psychology
Department of Psychology
New York University
6 Washington Place, Room 860
New York, NY 10003
Phone: (212) 998-8336
Fax: (212) 995-4349
Email: brian.mcelree@nyu.edu
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