Duane Watson

Duane Girard Watson (born 1976) is an American neuroscientist and Professor of Psychology and Human Development at Vanderbilt University. He holds the Frank W. Mayborn Chair in Cognitive Science and leads the Vanderbilt University Communication and Language Laboratory.

Duane G Watson
Born1976 (age 44–45)
Alma materMassachusetts Institute of Technology
Princeton University
Scientific career
InstitutionsVanderbilt University
University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign
ThesisIntonational phrasing in language production and comprehension (2002)
WebsiteDuane Watson

Early life and education

Watson is from Las Vegas.[1] Watson studied psychology at Princeton University. He originally intended to be a physician, but a class on linguistics made him change course.[2] He graduated in 1998 and moved to Cambridge, Massachusetts. Here he joined the laboratory of Ted Gibson in the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.[3] In 2002 Watson earned his doctoral degree. His research considered intonational phrasing (that is, sections of spoken text with a particular intonation patterns) in language comprehension.[4] Watson was a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Rochester, where he worked with Michael Tanenhaus.[5][6]

Research and career

He joined the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign in 2005, where he established a laboratory that investigates the cognitive processes that underpin language and nonverbal communication.[7][8] He has studied how gesture and emphasis influence long-term communication.[9] This includes analysing how disfluencies impact listener's interpretation of speakers' intentions.[9] As part of this effort, Watson designed an experiment where participants listened to Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. Half of the listeners heard the true version of the story and the other half heard a version with disfluencies (such as ums and uhs), and they were asked to retell the chapters after hearing them. Watson showed the people who had heard the stories with disfluencies were better at remembering the story.[9] To ensure that the only reason people recalled the story better was because they were given more time to hear it, he compared the difference between disfluencies (the ums and uhs) and similarly timed coughs.[9] He showed that disfluencies did not only provide more time for processing, but also helped people interpret what they were hearing. They often serve to provide structure to a story, occurring at a major plot junction.[9]

In 2016 Watson joined Vanderbilt University, where he leads the Communication and Language Laboratory (CaLL).[2] CaLL investigate prosody, the patterns and rhythm of spoken word, individual differences in language processing and how language is produced.[10]

Academic service

Watson was appointed Director of the Governing Board of the Psychonomic Society in 2019.[11] He serves as Associate Editor of the Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition.[11] Watson founded the SPARK society, an organisation that looks to support scientists of colour to become innovators in cognitive science.[12][13] He was promoted to Frank W. Mayborn Chair in 2020.[14][1]

Select publications

Watson, Duane G. (2012). Experimental and Theoretical Advances in Prosody : a Special Issue of Language and Cognitive Processes. Taylor and Francis. ISBN 978-1-135-84880-4. OCLC 821176237.

Watson, Duane; Gibson, Edward (2004). "The relationship between intonational phrasing and syntactic structure in language production". Language and Cognitive Processes. 19 (6): 713–755. doi:10.1080/01690960444000070. ISSN 0169-0965. S2CID 18358170.

Watson, Duane; Tanenhaus, Michael; Gunlogson, Christine (2008-10-11). "Interpreting Pitch Accents in Online Comprehension: H* vs. L+H*". Cognitive Science: A Multidisciplinary Journal. 32 (7): 1232–1244. doi:10.1080/03640210802138755. ISSN 0364-0213. PMID 21585451.

Personal life

Watson is married with four children.[2]

References
  1. "Two Black Scholars Appointed to Endowed Chairs at Vanderbilt University in Nashville". The Journal of Blacks in Higher Education. 2020-03-06. Retrieved 2020-07-27.
  2. Furlong, Kara. "New faculty: Duane Watson studies the cognitive processes of communication". Vanderbilt University. Retrieved 2020-07-27.
  3. "People". tedlab.mit.edu. Retrieved 2020-07-27.
  4. Watson, Duane G (2002). Intonational phrasing in language production and comprehension (Thesis). OCLC 52076544.
  5. "Duane G. Watson - Psychonomic Society". www.psychonomic.org. Retrieved 2020-07-27.
  6. "Brain & Cognitive Sciences : University of Rochester". www.sas.rochester.edu. Retrieved 2020-07-27.
  7. "CaLL -- University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign". labs.psychology.illinois.edu. Retrieved 2020-07-27.
  8. "CaLL -- Lab Members -- UIUC". labs.psychology.illinois.edu. Retrieved 2020-07-27.
  9. "More than words: Disfluencies, emphasis and gesture aid in communication". APA. Retrieved 2020-07-27.
  10. "Research". Vanderbilt University. Retrieved 2020-07-27.
  11. "Duane G. Watson - Psychonomic Society". www.psychonomic.org. Retrieved 2020-07-27.
  12. "SPARK Society". SPARK Society. Retrieved 2020-07-27.
  13. "Duane Watson, PhD". Black in Neuro. Retrieved 2020-07-27.
  14. Owens, Ann Marie Deer. "Celebration honors nine new endowed chair holders". Vanderbilt University. Retrieved 2020-07-27.
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