People | CPLS Lab @ UCSB

Principal Investigator

Simon Todd

(he/him)

I am a computational psycholinguist with a focus on speech perception. A central theme in my work is the way that small-scale cognitive processes associated with in-the-moment listening can have large-scale, long-term implications for linguistic knowledge and behavior. To investigate this theme, my work combines computational modeling, psycholinguistic experiments, and large-scale corpus analysis.

Graduate Students

Cooper Bedin

(they/them)

Website |

I study queer and trans language, mostly amongst English-using trans folks in the United States. I currently have projects looking at: the pronouns you guys and y'all, listener perception(s) of queer/gay voice, and trans-affirming statistical methods.

René Boye

(he/him)

I am interested in linguistic accessibility and reading comprehension. I use eyetracking, corpus linguistics and computational methods to better understand what makes legal language, in particular health insurance, challenging for lay readers.

Cedar Brown

(they/them)

My research takes a computational sociocultural linguistic approach to the intersection of gender and technology, asking how the development of digital tools by tech corporations is in uneven conversation with critical community discourses from gender-oppressed people. I use computational and discourse analytic methods to examine language use by and about those with marginalized gender positionalities within a global system of racial capitalism.

Ashvini Varatharaj

(she/her)

My primary research interests include taking an interdisciplinary approach to understanding language acquisition with the help of computational modeling, linguistics, and cognitive science. I am also interested in how information-theoretic methods can be used to analyze language change over time.

Yanlu Zhong

(she/her)

LinkedIn |

My research interests lie in psycholinguistics, corpus linguistics, and computational linguistics. Specifically, I am interested in using psycholinguistic experiments, computational modeling, and corpus-based methods to uncover underlying mechanisms of first and second language acquisition and processing. I am currently working on multiword sequences and how emotions predict language processing.