November 2023
Next Director of Centre for Neuroscience
Dr. Dwivedi was recently appointed as the next Director of the Centre for Neuroscience here at Brock University, starting July 1, 2024 (to 2027). She is honoured and looking forward to taking on this new role.
October 2023
Society for Neurobiology of Language
Dr. Dwivedi presented at the 15th Annual Meeting of the Society for Neurobiology of Language at the Palais du Pharo, in Marseille, France. She presented work entitled “The eyes don’t really have it” (co-authored by previous and current Hons. students Hi Leung and Haorong Ding). The presentation focused on recent experiments in our lab investigating how referential interpretation is affected by the social cue of eye-gaze.
September 2023
Congratulations Hi Leung!
Congratulations to 2022-23 Honours student, Hi Leung, who received the Canadian Psychological Association 2023 Certificate of Academic Excellence award! This national achievement is awarded each year to exceptional thesis students in Psychology. Hi’s thesis was entitled: The Kid Climbed which Tree? Investigating how Eye Gaze affects Language Processing.
Other than his excellent work, here’s what Dr. Dwivedi had to say about him: “Hi was an absolute pleasure to work with the entire time he was in our lab. A selfless student, always willing to learn and help others, while producing high quality work. It was a pleasure to watch him grow throughout his time in our lab.”
September 2023
Welcoming Our New Members
The Dwivedi Brain and Language Lab is pleased to welcome Molly Stamp (Neuroscience) and Emma Martin (Psychology) to the lab this year. Read more about Molly and Emma here: DLab_People
August 2023
Thank You 2022-2023 Team
Congratulations to our former lab members: Pratik Nath (pictured bottom left) completed his MA in Psychology, Hi Leung graduated with an Honours Bachelor of Computer Science and Psychology (pictured top right), Orlin Chowdhury completed her Mentorship project (pictured top left) and Kaitlyn Damaso completed her summer co-op in our lab (bottom right). We wish them all the best moving forward! Read more about our excellent Alumni here: DLab_Alumni
August 2023
Letter to the Editor in Globe and Mail
Dr. Dwivedi wrote a letter to the editor in the Globe and Mail clarifying that social attitudes towards dialects affects both understanding and speaking.
Check it out here: The Globe and Mail
July 2023
Emotional Context and Communication Symposium at CSBBCS
Dr Dwivedi organized a symposium on “Emotional Context and Communication” and presented her talk on “ERPs, affective context and sentence processing” at the Canadian Society for Brain, Behaviour and Cognitive Science at the University of Guelph. She is shown here with other symposium members Marc Pell of McGill University and Roxane Itier of University of Waterloo, and other colleagues. Missing is Penny Pexman from University of Calgary/Western University.
June 2023
MA Defense
Congratulations to our Master’s Thesis Student, Pratik Nath, for successfully defending his thesis on Noisy Channel Sentences, where he presented work analyzing previously collected EEG responses.
June 2023
DLab Graduation Celebration!
RAs Kaitlyn Damaso and Haorong Ding, and Dr Dwivedi (and the Brock Badger 😊) joined Hi Leung (Bachelor of Science in Psychology and Computer Science) on graduation day
April 2023
DLab Birthday Celebration
DLab members celebrated Hi Leung and Haorong Ding’s birthday, along with co-op officer Simone Lammers and Neuropsychology TA, Racheal Herlehy.
April 2023
Dr. Dwivedi shared an opinion piece “The futile fight against franglais” with the Global and Mail in response to a recent social media post by the Quebec minister responsible for promoting and protecting French.
April 2023
Congratulations to Hi Leung, Psychology honours student for the successful completion of his thesis defense on “The Kid Climbed Which Tree? Investigating How Eye Gaze Affects Language Processing”. Hi presented his findings to lab members about eye gaze, grammaticality ratings and individual differences. He is pictured here with other lab members (from left to right) Haorong Ding, Dawn Kakiroko, Orlin Chowdhury, and Dr. Dwivedi. Great job Hi!
March 2023
Congratulations to Orlin Chowdhury, our Brock Mentorship student for presenting “A preliminary investigation of eye-gaze and sentence interpretation” at the Niagara Regional Science and Engineering Fair. Orlin won the “Martha Abra Best Use of Computer Technology Award” for her project! She is pictured here with Dr. Dwivedi. Well done, Orlin!
March 2023
Dr. Dwivedi presented “Distinct neurocognitive effects” at the 30th Anniversary Meeting of the Cognitive Neuroscience Society 44th Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society in San Francisco, United States.
September 2022
Welcome Orlin Chowdhury, a Brock Mentorship student. Here she is shown presenting the questions about her experiment in our lab (influence of eye-gaze on sentence interpretation) at the Faculty of Math and Science Mentorship Reception at Pond Inlet here at Brock.
August 2022
Dr Dwivedi was pleased to speak with Dominique Gené (Haitian-born journalist based in Ottawa) for the publication “New Canadian Media” on the topic of Mental health and mother tongue: The struggle to express emotions https://newcanadianmedia.ca/mental-health-and-mother-tongue-the-struggle-to-express-emotions/
July 2022
Dr. Dwivedi (pictured here with Dr. Iris Berent of Northeastern University) presented “Affect and grammatical anomaly in discourse” and graduate student Pratik Nath presented “A neurophysiological investigation of noisy channel sentence”, at the 44th Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society in Toronto, Canada.
June, 2022
Lab honours student Meher Damathia gave a poster presentation on “Emotional perception of Indian popular music: A cross-cultural study” at the 52nd Annual Ontario Psychology Undergraduate Thesis Conference (AOPUTC) which was held online by the Brock University. Well done, Meher!
June 2022
Our lab alumna and (and previous super PSYC 3P65 Brain and Language TA, Avery Keith, was featured in Brock News to celebrate her success as a recent MA in Applied Disability Studies. She shared how her research experience as part of our lab contributed to her success. Congratulations, Avery!
May 2022
Dr. Dwivedi gave an invited lecture “Affect and linguistic anomaly in sentences: An ERP investigation” for the Faculty of Linguistics, Philology and Phonetics “General Linguistics Seminar, Trinity Term 2022” at Oxford University.
April 2022
Congratulations to lab honours student Meher Damathia for her excellent thesis defense on “Emotional perception of Indian popular music: A cross-cultural study”. She presented her investigation to lab members (and her parents participated virtually, from India!) on affective perception of Bollywood music with Indian and Canadian participants.
(left to right): Veena Dwivedi, Meher Damathia, Pratik Nath
April 2022
Dr. Dwivedi’s previous PSYC 3P59 (Human Neuropsychology) students (Madi Maguire and Paige Vaccarella) hosted an open mic event at Mahtay Café to fundraise for the Music and Memory program. We have so much talent in our community!
December 2021
Language, brain and.. emotion! Please find a summary of our latest findings “Our emotions and identity can affect how we use grammar” in this brief article published in The Conversation
December 2021
MA/PhD funded positions are available for academically strong students interested in language and neuroscience beginning Fall 2022. Deadline: December 15.The Department of Psychology at Brock University also guarantees a minimal support package (from research grants, TA-ships, awards, etc.) to all students during normal residency (usually 2 years for the MA and 4 for the PhD). Applicants are also highly encouraged to apply for external funding (in Canada, from agencies such as SSHRC and NSERC). See more details in the Department of Psychology graduate program (Behavioural and Cognitive Neuroscience) page. The application link is https://brocku.ca/…/psycho…/graduate-program/admissions/
October 2021
Dr Dwivedi had an opinion piece “Don’t be (even a little) sympathetic to this PPC virus” published in The Hamilton Spectator about how she believes bullying and racism in Canadian politics can be dealt with.
July 2021
Dr Dwivedi appeared on the podcast The Artists to help answer questions such as: Does language change perception? How does language change the brain?
Please find the link here: https://eplog.media/episode/ep-83-language-brain-thinking-process-feat-veena-d-e8a75
(also available on Spotify, Apple for download on your phone)
June 2021
Dr. Dwivedi was inspired by some of her third year PSYC NEUR 3P59 Human Neuropsychology students, who participated in the Music and Memory Program run by Niagara Health. During COVID, the students met long-term care residents virtually and prepared playlists with the elders’ favourite music. Learn more about it here: https://brocku.ca/brock-news/2021/06/neuropsychology-students-learn-from-music-and-memory-program/
Top (left to right): Paige Vaccarella, Liz Kirk. Bottom (left to right): Veena Dwivedi, Madi Maguire, Kinley Wilson.
April 2021
Congratulations to Brent Dryczewycz for being accepted to the MClSc program in speech-language pathology at Western University!
March 2021
“Effects of Dispositional Affect on the N400: Language Processing and Socially Situated Context”, by Veena Dwivedi and Janahan Selvanayagam, is published in Frontiers in Psychology: Language Sciences.
November 2020
Dr. Dwivedi gave an invited talk, “ERPs, context, and sentence processing,” at the seminar series for Texas A&M’s Institute for Neurosciences (TAMIN).
September 2020
Dr. Dwivedi was featured on Faculty Focus by Brock News: “Veena Dwivedi combines the art and science of connection”.
August 2020
The Globe and Mail publishes an article by Dr. Dwivedi: “Reflecting on my recent success, and what I can do with this new part of my identity“.
May 2020
“Individual differences in processing of negative operators: implications for bilinguals”, by Veena Dwivedi, is published in The Oxford Handbook of Negation.
February 2020
Dr. Dwivedi was invited to give a talk at the first Women in Science event at Brock University on the UN’s International Day of Women and Girls in Science. She talked about her career in science as a way of inspiring younger women to continue pursuing academic studies in STEM fields.
December 2019
Lab Holiday Party 🙂 From left to right, Akif Eltahir (stats TA), Azaan Adnan, “Dr. D”, Anushka Lalwani, Brent Dryczewycz (missing Avery Keith, PSYC 3P65 TA and current DLab member)
November 2019
At end of term, PSYC 3P65 Brain and Language students participated in a poster session. The poster session was the culmination of one of the course’s experiential learning components, requiring students to connect lecture concepts with published research in brain and language. Furthermore, they learned how to use Microsoft Publisher to create a conference quality scientific poster. Students were also required to learn how to succinctly discuss scientific concepts in an elevator style pitch.
Bottom left: see Avery Keith (TA) and Brent Dryczewycz with Matthew Mullins present a paper on Event Related Potentials (ERPs) and sentences.
July 2019
Good news! We have been awarded a 5 year federal grant from Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council Insight Grant, on “The role of individual differences in motivation and emotion in language comprehension.” Strong and motivated graduate students are encouraged to apply.
June 2019
Congratulations to Brent Dryczewycz on his selection to attend the Leadership Academy by Institute for Healthcare Improvement in Boston, Massachusetts. The conference (July 31-August 2) brings together IHI chapter leaders from universities across North America.
A new paper is in press in Brain Research:
Selvanayagam, J., Witte, V., Schmidt, L.A., Dwivedi, V.D. (in press). A preliminary investigation of dispositional affect, the P300 and sentence processing. Brain Research.
Dr. Dwivedi spoke at a rally against Bill C21 in Montreal, Quebec on June 21 (right in front of McGill’s Roddick gates). Take a listen.
You can learn more about Bill C21 here:
https://www.cbc.ca/amp/1.5180353…
In response to an article in The Conversation (see link below): Dr Dwivedi was interviewed by Wei Chen on CBC’s Ontario Morning, on Monday June 10. Listen here at 10 minute mark for the interview.
On Friday June 7, Dr Dwivedi was interviewed by Rick Gibbons for his show on 1310 News Radio in Ottawa.
See article published June 5, in the academic magazine The Conversation, regarding our brain’s structure regarding in-group vs. out-group members.
May 2019
Congratulations to Sean Chisholm completing his Bachelor of Arts degree in Psychology. We wish him well in his MSc studies at Waterloo University in Industrial and Organizational Psychology.
Congratulations to Joana Frieske completing her Bachelor of Arts degree at Maastricht University (via her Honours thesis here at Brock University). We wish her well in her MA studies at Maastricht University in Neuropsychology.
Veena D. Dwivedi is Visiting Professor at the School of Communication Sciences and Disorders, Faculty of Medicine, at McGill University until June 30.
A new paper is in press:
Dwivedi, V.D. (in press). Individual differences in processing of negative quantifiers: implications for bilinguals. In V. Deprez & M.T. Espinal (Eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Negation. Oxford University Press.
April 2019
Congratulations to lab alumnus Janahan Selvanayagam on his NSERC graduate award, “Investigating the prefrontal microcircuitry underlying cognitive control of saccadic eye movements in the common marmoset”, as well as the Ontario Graduate Scholarship award (declined due to NSERC success).
Veena D. Dwivedi recently wrote an article regarding the neuroscience of tribalism, emphasizing that we can overcome it using our neocortical substrate… we are not chimps. The full article found here, was published in the Hamilton Spectator, The St. Catharines Standard and the Peterborough Examiner..
Veena D. Dwivedi’s commentary in response to the front page article from the April 24 issue of the Globe and Mail was published in the paper’s letters to the editor section in their April 25 issue. The article, titled PMO Vets Potential Judges With Liberal Database, can be found here. Dr. Dwivedi commented on error in the statistical analysis used in the article, bringing it to their attention:
“The display text on your front-page article, PMO Vets Potential Judges With Liberal Database (April 24), states: ‘Globe review of Elections Canada data finds one-quarter of appointments since 2016 were party donors.’ From this alone, it is clear that three-quarters were not party donors.
You examined Elections Canada donation data sets, and found 1,187 contributions were matched to 83 of the 289 judges appointed since 2016 – or less than one-third (28.7 per cent). In other words, more than 70 per cent of judges appointed since 2016 did not donate to the Liberal Party.
Clearly, the facts overwhelmingly support the statement by Justice Minister David Lametti’s office that political leanings were not taken into consideration for judicial appointments. Your article’s tone and presentation, however, paints a different picture.
Does The Globe and Mail have a grasp of what is taught in even a basic statistics class, and/or are you relying on Canadians not to have one?”
The complete letter to the editor section can be found here.
March 2019
Veena D. Dwivedi presented the 26th annual meeting of the Cognitive Neuroscience Society, which took place in San Francisco, California, USA.
Dr. Dwivedi (pictured far right with fellow CNS colleagues, Drs. Janet van Hell and Sarah Grey) presented a poster entitled N400, dispositional affect and sentence processing (co-authored by Janahan Selvanayagam).
February 2019
Veena D. Dwivedi gave a series of invited lectures in Europe and North and South India.
At Maastricht University (pictured left with Dr. Sonja Kotz), her talk was entitled: Affect and sentence processing: a different kind of context. She also attended the thesis defenses of Brocku exchange students, Joana Frieske and Amelie Backes, in the Neuropsychology dept.
In North India, she gave an invited lecture ‘Issues in Cognitive Neuroscience of Language: what is a 21st century researcher to do?’ at the Indian Institute of Technology -Ropar (Punjab) for the Dept. of Humanities and Social Sciences.
In South India, her final invited talk, ‘The case for heuristic vs. algorithmic processing in Cognitive Neuroscience of Language’ was presented at the National Institute of Mental Health and Neurosciences in Bangalore, Karnataka.
December 2018
Our fall term Psychology students from Maastricht University were featured in Brock News. Amelie Backes (Right) and Joana Frieske (Left) were recognized for their successful EEG research experience in the Dwivedi Brain and Language lab, as well as their enjoying Brock Psychology classes, and the Canadian experience in general. Click here to view the full article.
August 2018
In September 2018, we will be welcoming international exchange students, Amelie Backes (left) and Joana Frieske (right) from the Psychology department in Maastricht University, the Netherlands. Amelie and Joana are participating in a selective honours program called Marble, (Maastricht Research-Based Learning Excellence program). During the fall term, they will conduct ERP language research in Dr. Dwivedi’s continuing collaboration with Brain and Cognitive Science at MIT (with Dr. Ted Gibson)
June 2018
Congratulations to Alanna Kozak (above, with Dr. Dwivedi) for receiving the Dean’s Medal for the Faculty of Social Sciences. She completed her Bachelor of Arts degree in Speech and Language Sciences. We wish her well in med school at the University of Western Ontario.
Congratulations to Janahan Selvanayagam (below, with his family, fellow classmate and Dr. Dwivedi) for being awarded Distinguished Graduating Student in the Nuerosciences. He completed his Bachelor of Science degree in Neuroscience (Neurobiology Stream). We wish him well in his PhD studies in Neuroscience at the University of Western Ontario.
Congratulations to Harmonie Chan completing her Bachelor of Science degree in Medical Sciences. We wish her well in her MSc studies in Speech Pathology at McMaster University.
May 2018
Alanna Kozak (top left) presented a poster entitled P600 and dispositional affect; Harmonie Chan (top right) presented a poster entitled The neural correlates of error perception in sentences and Janahan Selvanayagam (bottom right) presented a poster entitled N400 and dispositional affect for the 38th annual meeting of the Southern Ontario Neuroscience Association in Guelph, Ontario.
April 2018
The Dwivedi Brain and Language Lab was featured in Brock News, recognizing our transdisciplinary approach to research, as well as our current and past student success stories. Click here to view the full article.
March 2018
Veena Dwivedi (left) and Janahan Selvanayagam (right) presented at the 25th annual meeting of the Cognitive Neuroscience Society in Boston, USA.
Veena Dwivedi presented a poster entitled An electrophysiological investigation of noisy channel sentences (co-authored by Victoria Witte, Janahan Selvanayagam, Harmonie Chan and Ted Gibson).
Janahan Selvanayagam presented a poster entitled P300, dispositional affect and sentence processing (co-authored by Victoria Witte, Louis A. Schmidt and Veena Dwivedi) to Mark E. Pflieger, a colleague and senior scientist at Cortech Solutions, Inc.
February 2018
Dr Dwivedi highlighted in Globe and Mail’s Amplify newsletter, as a Canadian woman inspiring others
“Her advice? Never fit in. Make yourself visible to you. Find other people who see you. And hang on.”
Inspiring us:
Recently, Veena Dwivedi was reading a book about cognitive neuroscience of language while getting a coffee at the Fairmont hotel in Toronto. She was heading to visit her son in Montreal for his 20th birthday and preparing material for her brain and language lecture at Brock University, where she teaches in the Psychology department.
“That’s a big book,” the barista said to her as she ordered her coffee. Dwivedi went on to explain that she teaches classes on the subject.
With a shocked, disbelieving look on her face, the barista replied. “Oh really?”
But this is nothing new. “People consistently underestimate my intellectual ability, that I am a scientist and I have a doctorate,” she says. “But you just keep getting in there.”
As an Indo-Canadian woman, Dwivedi has experienced her fair share of racism and sexism growing up and moving through the STEM field. She was warned by her father when she was going into kindergarten that the teacher would never call on her because she looked different. When she was at McGill University for her undergraduate program, she was dating (and is now married to) a boy outside of her culture and tradition, and they were one of the only mixed race couples around. It caused stress with her parents and people around her. When she lived in Westmount, a suburb of Montreal, her doorman asked if she was a kindergarten teacher when told him she taught for a living. And when she ran into her former academic adviser at McGill University while completing a visiting assistant professorship, and told him she was married and just had a baby, he responded saying, “the best job in the world is being a mother,” disregarding her pursuit of being a tenured professor.
But none of it stopped her. Now, Dwivedi runs her own lab on the brain and language, where she studies how the human mind understands and creates sentences. She loves her job, especially when she can help students pursue their own career paths. And she’s a support person for young women in STEM. A student of hers recently got early acceptance in the same field as her, and her response, “you go girl,” was a contrast to those who didn’t believe in her.
“I might not be in a war zone, but I’ve fought a few battles, and I wanted to help be a voice for people like me,” she says.”I want to be the person I needed back then. Because that person wasn’t here yet.”
Her advice? Never fit in. Make yourself visible to you. Find other people who see you. And hang on.
The complete newsletter is available here.
June 2017
As of July 1, Dr Dwivedi is a new member of the Psychology Dept (and continuing in Neuroscience) here at Brock.
See her interview on p. 2 of Psychology dept. newsletter — and learn about the dept, too!
May 2017
Victoria Witte presented a poster entitled Evidence from ERPs that positive individuals are sensitive to referential cues and Janahan Selvanayagam presented a poster entitled Dispositional affect and sentence processing for the 37th annual meeting of the Southern Ontario Neuroscience Association in St Catharines, Canada.
March 2017
Veena Dwivedi presented a poster entitled An electrophysiological investigation of noisy channel sentences (co-authored by current lab members, Victoria Witte and Janahan Selvanayagam, as well as current MIT collaborator, Ted Gibson) for the 24th annual meeting of the Cognitive Neuroscience Society in San Francisco, USA.
February 2017
Dr. Dwivedi, Victoria and Janahan at the 46th annual Lake Ontario Visionary Establishment conference where Victoria and Janahan presented.
November 2016
Congratulations to current collaborator Dr.Ted Gibson (Brain and Cognitive Sciences, MIT), for giving an excellent TEDx talk How efficiency shapes human language at Harvard College.
November 2016
Congratulations to Leslie Rowland!
After completing her Hons. thesis here in the Dwivedi Brain and Language lab, and successfullly completing an MSc in Communication Disorders and Sciences at McGilll, she is currently working as a registered Speech Language Pathologist for the outpatient stroke program at Hotel Dieu Shaver Health and Rehabilitation Centre in St. Catharines.
She also works as a Speech Language Pathologist for Niagara Health at the St. Catharines site. We wish her continued success in current and future endeavours.
October 2016
Veena Dwivedi presented a poster entitled An ERP investigation of noisy channel sentence interpretation (co-authored by current lab members, Victoria Witte and Janahan Selvanayagam, as well as current MIT collaborator, Ted Gibson) for the 10th International conference on the Mental Lexicon in Ottawa, Canada.
May 2016
Veena Dwivedi’s interview about the cultural experiences of Indo-Canadians with host Rita Celli is broadcast on CBC radio Ontario Today. Listen to the podcast here.
April 2016
Veena Dwivedi’s article entitled Sex-selective abortions: Strive for cultural understanding over outrage (article on heterogeneity of culture in interpreting statistical finding for Indo-Canadian community) is published in The Globe and Mail.
April 2016
Veena Dwivedi presented a poster entitled Understanding hypothetical events in discourse for the 23rd annual meeting of the Cognitive Neuroscience Society in New York City, USA.
February 2016
Veena Dwivedi presented a poster entitled An ERP investigation of sentence processing: Evidence for number in events (co-authored by current lab member, Kaitlin Curtiss, and lab alumna now at Western pursuing PhD in Neuroscience, Raechelle Gibson) for the presentation for Lake Ontario Visionary Establishment in Niagara Falls, Canada.
October 2015
Veena Dwivedi gave an invited lecture at the ABLE Workshop: Vision and Language in the Context of Brain, Evolution and Computation in Chicago, USA, entitled: Can we use grammar to probe the language-vision interface.
October 2015
Veena Dwivedi presented a poster entitled ERP effects of sentential context in semantic number interpretation (co-authored by current lab member, Kaitlin Curtiss, and lab alumna now at Western pursuing PhD in Neuroscience, Raechelle Gibson) for the Society of Neurobiology and Language in Chicago, USA.
August 2015
Champagne & dinner at Pier 61 celebrating Kaitlin Curtiss’ (far left) upcoming wedding.
From left to right: Kaitlin Curtiss, Dr D, Valerie Plante-Brisebois (former lab member); Victoria Witte, and Jesse Colasanzio (former directed studies student Psych/Ling).
June 2015
Veena Dwivedi presented a poster entitled Heuristic mechanisms in sentence processing (with co-author and current lab member, Kaitlin Curtiss and co-author and lab alumna now pursuing MSc at McGill in Speech Pathology, Leslie Rowland) for the 25th annual meeting of the Canadian Society for Brain, Behaviour and Cognitive Science at Carleton University in Ottawa, Canada.
May 2015
Veena Dwivedi delivered an invited presentation entitled Individual differences in sentence interpretation for the TESL Niagara Spring Conference in May.
May 2015
Veena Dwivedi presented a poster entitled Heuristic and semantic context in processing quantifier scope sentences (with co-author and current lab member, Kaitlin Curtiss and co-author and former lab member, Leslie Rowland) at the Annual meeting of the Southern Ontario Neuroscience Association at McMaster University in Hamilton, Canada.
April 2015
Veena Dwivedi presented a poster entitled Effects of semantic context on heuristic vs. algorithmic processing (with co-author and current lab member, Kaitlin Curtiss and co-author and former lab member, Leslie Rowland) at the 22nd annual meeting of the Cognitive Neuroscience Society in San Francisco.
October 2014
Veena Dwivedi and current Brain and Language Lab member, Kaitlin Curtiss, presented their poster entitled Number and the activation of event knowledge at the 9th International Conference on the Mental Lexicon held from September 30 to October 2, 2014 in Niagara-on-the-Lake, Canada.
September 2014
Congratulations to a former member of the Brain and Language Lab, Lynsey Endicott, who graduated from the Master of Health Science Speech-Language Pathology program at the University of Toronto.
September 2014
Congratulations to former Brain and Language Lab member, Raechelle Gibson, currently pursuing a PhD in Neuroscience at Western.
Rae was recently named among 166 nationwide recipients of the Vanier Canada Graduate Scholarship for her current work in sensory systems and perception.
August 2014
Veena Dwivedi delivered an invited presentation entitled Event structure in discourse processing for the Department of Psychology at Wilfrid Laurier University in August.
June 2014
Congratulations to former Brain and Language Lab members, Leslie Rowland and Hope Magnus, who graduated with from Bachelor of Arts programs in the Brock University Department of Applied Linguistics in June.
Both are accepted in graduate programs at McGill–Leslie in Communication Sciences and Disorders, and Hope in Second Language Teaching.
Good luck with graduate school!
May 2014
The Curiosity Shop was onsite at Congress 2014. They asked Dr. Dwivedi what motivates her to conduct her research program. See her answer here.
May 2014
In May, Veena Dwivedi served as the local organizer for the annual conference of the Canadian Linguistics Association, which was held at Brock University in St. Catharines, ON, as part of the 2014 Congress of the Humanities and Social Sciences.
At this conference, Veena Dwivedi and Kaitlin Curtiss presented a poster entitled The role of event knowledge in semantic interpretation.
Veena Dwivedi also presented a poster entitled The cost of attention in semantic processing (with co-authors Leslie Rowland, Hope Magnus, and Kaitlin Curtiss) at that same conference.
April 2014
In April, Veena Dwivedi co-ordinated the annual Department of Applied Linguistics Research Day, where she also presented a poster entitled “Quantification, attention, and the P300 effect” (with co-author and current lab member, Kaitlin Curtiss, and co-author and former lab member, Rae Gibson).
Former lab members Leslie Rowland and Hope Magnus also presented their respective thesis projects at Research Day.
April 2014
Veena Dwivedi presented a poster entitled Quantification, attention and the P300 effect (with co-author and current lab member, Kaitlin Curtiss and co-author and former lab member, Rae Gibson) at the 21st Anniversary Meeting of the Cognitive Neuroscience Society in Boston, Massachusetts.
April 2014
Veena Dwivedi delivered an invited lecture for the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
The presentation was entitled Ecological rationality of heuristics in sentence processing.
March 2014
As part of the Department of Applied Linguistics Speaker Series, Dr. James A. Walker, from the Department of Linguistics at York University, presented his talk, Ethnolects, identity and phonetic variation in Toronto English.
February 2014
Veena Dwivedi delivered an invited lecture for the Department of Linguistics and Applied Linguistics Lecture Series at York University in Toronto, entitled Efficiency in language processing.
November 2013
Veena Dwivedi’s paper entitled Interpreting quantifier scope ambiguity: Evidence of heuristic first, algorithmic second processing, is published in PloS One.
November 2013
As a part of the Department of Applied Linguistics Speaker Series, Dr. Ted Gibson, from the from the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences at the Massachusets Institute of Technology (MIT), presented his talk, Language for communication: Language as rational inference.
October 2013
As part of the Department of Applied Linguistics Speaker Series, Dr. Todd Ferretti, from the Department of Psychology and Centre for Cognitive Neuroscience at Wilfrid Laurier University, presented his talk, The influence of temporal information associated with verbs on understanding, imagining and remembering.
September 2013
Veena Dwivedi’s article entitled Hollywood puts a thin mask on racial stereotyping (article on the use of Indian accents in the media), is published in The Toronto Star.
June 2013
Congratulations to a member of the Brain and Language Lab, Kaitlin Curtiss, who graduated in June with an Honours Bachelor of Science Degree in Neuroscience (Psychology Stream).
April 2013
Brain and Language Lab member Kaitlin Curtiss participated in the Department of Applied Linguistics Research Day event, where she presented her poster (see above) to faculty and students in the Brock community. See picture with Neuroscience professor Dr Joffre Mercier(also Associate VP for Math and Science).
April 2013
Veena Dwivedi presented a poster entitled The computation of meaning via event knowledge and number (with co-author and current lab member, Kaitlin Curtiss) at the 20th Anniversary Meeting of the Cognitive Neuroscience Society in San Francisco, USA.
March 2013
Veena Dwivedi presented a poster entitled “Evidence of competition for resources in number interpretation” (co-authors were former lab member Rae Gibson now at Western pursuing MSc. in Neuroscience, and James Desjardins) at the 11th International Symposium of Psycholinguistics in Tenerife, Spain.
March 2013
Veena Dwivedi visiting Max Planck Institute of Psycholinguistics, Nijmegen (with Paul Broca and Carl Wernicke).
March 2013
Veena Dwivedi’s article entitled The difficult conversation (article on status of women in India), is published in The Times of India.
March 2013
Veena Dwivedi delivered an invited lecture at the Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition and Behaviour (centre includes Max Planck Institute of Psycholinguistics and Radboud University) in Nijmegen, The Netherlands.
Her talk was entitled, Investigations in neurocognitive mechanisms underlying semantic ambiguity.
November 2012
As part of the Department of Applied Linguistics Speaker Series, Dr. John Connolly, who is Senator William McMaster Chair in Cognitive Neuroscience of Language at McMaster University, presented his talk, Applied neurolinguistics: The nexus of speech processing, linguistics, and applied linguistics.
June 2012
Congratulations to two members of the Brain and Language Lab, Lynsey Endicott and Rae Gibson, who graduated in June.
May 2012
Kaitlin Curtiss gave her first national conference presentatation at Wilfried Laurier University, in Waterloo, Ontario at the 2012 Congress of the Humanities and Social Sciences.
She presented a poster at the annual meeting of the Canadian Linguistics Associationentitled Interpreting quantifier scope ambiguity (co-authors were lab members Lynsey Endicott, Rae Gibson and Veena Dwivedi).
Veena Dwivedi gave a talk entitled Concepts before composition: semantic processing, earlier that day at the conference.
March 2012
Veena Dwivedi was in New York City presenting at the 25th annual meeting of the CUNY Sentence Processing Conference.
The title of her poster was Quantifier scope ambiguity and the timing of algorithmic processing.
Later that month, at the the annual meeting of the Cognitive Neuroscience Society in Chicago, she presented a poster entitled Doubly quantified sentences: Shallow vs. deep processing (co-authors were lab member Rae Gibson and lab alumna, Leanne Angus).
January 2012
As Speaker Series Co-ordinator for the Dept of Applied Linguistics at Brock, Dr. Dwivedi was interviewed for Dr. Sali Tagliamonte’s talk by Brock News and TV Cogeco.
May 2011
Veena Dwivedi gave a talk entitled Semantic ambiguity in language processing (co-authors are Leanne Angus, now a SUNY-Buffalo graduate and is now practicing Speech-Language Pathologist, Raechelle Gibson, now a Ph.D. candidate at Western University and Chi Ho Alex Cheung), on May 29, 2011 at the Canadian Linguistic Association which held its 2011 conference as part of the Congress of the Social Sciences and Humanities, at the University of New Brunswick, Fredericton.
Veena Dwivedi gave an invited lecture entitled Shallow processing of scope for the Cognitive Science of Language Lecture Series at McMaster University on Jan. 26, 2011.
April 2010
The 2010 Department of Applied Linguistics Research Day was highlighted in an article by the Brock News.
November 2008
Dr. Dwivedi was MC and helped launch the Niagara Original brand at the Fallsview Casino in Niagara Falls, ON.
October 2008
The Brock Brain and Language Lab was highlighted in an article published by the Ministry of Research and Innovation:
2007
The Brock Brain and Language Lab obtained a grant from the Canadian Foundation for Innovation!
St. Catharines Standard
St Catharines Member of Parliament Rick Dykstra paid a visit to campus to announce federal funding from the Canadian Foundation for Innovation for Dr. Dwivedi’s lab equipment.