Eiling Yee

Associate Professor

Psychological Sciences

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Education

Ph.D., 2005, Brown University

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Research Interests

• Semantic memory and the neural representation of concepts
• Spoken word recognition and language processing
• The neural basis of language

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Research Synopsis

The goal of much of the research in my lab is to understand how meaning is represented (how do you know what a lemon, or joy is?) particularly the cognitive and neural representations of concepts. An area of particular interest is the relationship between context (e.g., perceptual information and experiences) and language and/or conceptual processing. I also have interests in spoken word recognition and language processing more broadly.

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Publications

Representative

Davis, C. P., & Yee, E. (2021). Building semantic memory from embodied and distributional language experience. Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews. Cognitive Science, 12(5), e1555–n/a.

Davis, C. P., Joergensen, G. H., Boddy, P., Dowling, C., & Yee, E. (2020, online access). Making it harder to ‘see’ meaning: The more you see something, the more its conceptual representation is shaped by visual experience. Psychological Science, 31(5), 505-517.

Yee, E. (2019). Abstraction and Concepts: when, how, where, what and why? Language, Cognition and Neuroscience, 34(10), 1257-1265.

Davis, C. P. & Yee, E. (2019). Features, labels, space, and time: Factors supporting taxonomic relationships in the anterior temporal lobe and thematic relationships in the angular gyrus. Language, Cognition and Neuroscience, 34(10), 1347-1357.

Yee, E., & Thompson-Schill, S.L. (2016). Putting concepts into context. Psychonomic Bulletin and Review, 23, 1015-1027.

Yee, E., Chrysikou, E., Hoffman, E., & Thompson-Schill, S.L. (2013). Manual Experience Shapes Object Representation. Psychological Science, 24 (6), 909-919.

Yee, E., Ahmed, S., & Thompson-Schill, S.L. (2012). Colorless green ideas (can) prime furiously. Psychological Science, 23(4), 364-369.

Yee, E., Huffstetler, S., & Thompson-Schill, S.L. (2011). Function follows form: Activation of shape and function features during object identification. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 140 (3), 348-363.

Yee, E., Drucker, D.M., & Thompson-Schill, S.L. (2010). fMRI-adaptation evidence of overlapping neural representations for objects related in function or manipulation. NeuroImage, 50, 753-763.

Yee, E., Blumstein, S.E., & Sedivy, J.C. (2008). Lexical-semantic activation in Broca’s and Wernicke’s aphasia: Evidence from eye movements. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 20, 592-612.

Yee, E., & Sedivy, J. (2006). Eye movements to pictures reveal transient semantic activation during spoken word recognition. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory and Cognition, 32 (1), 1-14.