Former University of Rochester students Catie Hilliard ’10  and Katrina Furth ’10 recently saw two research papers written during their undergraduate studies published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition and Frontiers in Psychology. Working with Florian Jaeger, Wilmot Assistant Professor in the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, Furth and Hilliard examined how word choice is affected by phonological overlap, or how the sounds of words affect how we choose them in everyday conversation.

Furth became interested in the field of brain and cognitive sciences because she wanted to research psychiatric disorders and how the brain creates perceptions and thoughts. “I was inspired by a family member who dealt with episodes of mental illness to understand how normal brains work and develop in the hopes that we may be able to prevent serious mental illness someday,” she explained.  

As an undergraduate student working part time at Tim Horton’s, Furth sought out undergraduate research opportunities in the hopes of doing something with her summer that was more meaningful and relevant to her studies. She was referred to Michael Tanenhaus, who hired her to create videos that would be used in psycholinguistics experiments.

For one of her projects, Furth worked with Susan Cook to study people’s gestures as they described videos to their friends. “As we were making the videos, I noticed that people were using the verbs ‘hand’ and ’give’ at different frequencies to describe videos in which one character passes a gift or a hat to another character.”

This is where the idea for their project was born. “Dr. Jaeger had just joined the University and I started discussing my idea with him. He offered to continue paying me to figure out what was going on,” she said. “I was particularly curious to know if people avoided repeating the same initial syllables if they had the choice. No one knew whether people naturally avoided tongue twisters, though.”

The initial goal of the project was to examine if people avoid phonological overlaps (“hand hammer,” for example) when planning sentences. The project quickly expanded to include word order, speech rate, and fluency to see if people “strategically” avoid sentence constructions that may make them less fluent. “One idea that always really excited me was that we could make these choices without consciously thinking them through – people speak at about 3 syllables per second and so we certainly were not stopping to choose the best words,” she explains. “I was also really excited by the idea that information about how words will be produced can affect things that we think of as getting planned early – you choose your words and the sentence structure before you retrieve all of the sounds, right? Well, the whole premise of this work was that the sounds of words are getting accessed so early that they are affecting which words even get chosen, and in which order you produce those words.”

VIDEO: See a video clip used in the research study

Furth was tasked with designing the experiment, creating the videos that would be used to test the subjects, recruiting and testing subjects, and instructing other undergraduates on how to annotate the collected utterances. Once the data was collected, Furth sought Jaeger’s help to calculate statistics on word frequency. “I learned a great deal about experiment design and data analysis by working on this project. Since I had never designed an experiment before, I made a lot of mistakes at the beginning, but the biggest piece that I learned about experiments is that one extra hour of planning before you start can save 40 hours of careful analysis at the end of the experiment.” Jaeger, Furth, and Hilliard found that speakers are less likely to choose words that result in phonological overlap, and that this tendency is based on early effects on lexical selection rather than later corrective processes.

About a year and a half into the project, Hilliard joined the team as they began to design more experiments looking at word order and fluency when the words shared similar endings instead of similar onsets. “That was the most fun/weird part of it — having an idea in your head and trying to come up with a way to test it,” Hilliard said.

Hilliard had been on track to complete a major in linguistics, but after a family member experienced a stroke which resulted in a loss of nearly all language abilities, she became increasingly interested in brain and cognitive sciences. “Suddenly, all of these cognitive processes that I had taken for granted seemed so complex and laborious. I wanted to learn more about cognition, how it develops, and the neural structure underlying these abilities.”

Hilliard combined her interests to pursue a concentration in psycholinguistics within the BCS department. After taking a psycholinguistics class with Jaeger, she worked as an assistant in his lab for the summer. This experience with the research process led her to join Furth and Jaeger’s project for the following year.

Both Furth and Hilliard refer to their research with Jaeger as one of the most valuable experiences of their undergraduate career. “I was particularly blessed to have an opportunity to pursue my own research idea as an undergraduate, present the work at international conferences, and be an author on multiple manuscripts,” Furth says. “My mentor, Florian, also sent me to the Yucatan peninsula to help collect data working with native Mayan speakers. These were once-in-a-lifetime experiences as I navigated the world in Spanish and attempted to do basic research in rare languages.”

Furth said the research experiences were pivotal in the graduate school admission process. “I believe that these experiences, and the letters of recommendations that came from them, were the major reason that I was accepted by 12 of 14 graduate schools to which I applied.”

Hilliard has similarly positive things to say about her experience. “Before I had even realized I wanted to continue doing research in graduate school, working in a lab gave me a sense of responsibility and independence that I didn’t always feel for my classwork,” she said. “I became really invested in the projects I was working on. I thought about them a lot, and learned how to communicate my research ideas to other people.”

Like Furth, Hilliard said that conducting research as an undergraduate prepared her for graduate school. “I felt confident in my abilities, and continued to feel supported by Florian, Katrina, and other members of the lab. When I applied for admission, several lab members shared their own experiences and advice, and I ended up in the best program for my research interests.”

Jaeger also emphasized the importance of having Furth and Hilliard in his lab. “Katrina was the first RA I hired six years ago. It was wonderful having Caitie and Katrina in the lab, I got lucky,” he says. “I hope that the University will continue to expand their support for undergraduate research and that we can strike a balance between providing research opportunities for undergraduates and all the other responsibilities of faculty. I think it’s one of the most appealing properties of a place like Rochester that you can actually get your feet wet and get involved in research.”

Katrina Furth (Pictured top right with Professor Florian Jaeger) is now enrolled in the Graduate Program for Neuroscience at Boston University, and is working at the National Institutes of Health with Dr. Andres Buonanno. She is examining the role of the dopamine D4 receptor in modulating cognitive ability and neural network oscillations called gamma rhythms. “Children with an allelic variant of the D4 receptor are more likely to have ADHD and many antipsychotic medications target this receptor as well as others. I am recording from individual neurons using patch-clamp electrophysiology.”

Caitie Hilliard (pictured bottom left) received the NSF Graduate Research Fellowship for her work with Dr. Susan Cook, a full scholarship for three years of graduate study in the University of Iowa Psychology department under Dr. Cook, a former Post-Doc at the University of Rochester. Hilliard is studying the role of hand gesture in communication, focusing on how speakers modulate their gestures based on the shared information they have with their listeners. She has run two studies examining how speakers’ gestures change when they know that their listener lacks task-relevant information, and is currently investigating how the listeners’ perception of these gestures affects their own cognition.

Article written by Blake Silberberg, an intern with University Communications and a member of the Piggies. He is a senior majoring in political science.

When and how did you choose your major?

I actually chose my major before entering college—I believe I was a junior in high school. The way I chose linguistics originally was from watching an episode of Law and Order in which a psycho-linguist was brought in to analyze interrogations. While this was a misguided representation of linguistics, it sparked me to do further research on the science and find my niche.

What did you do immediately after graduation? How did you decide to take that path?

Two weeks after graduation I started with Verilogue Inc (a pharma market research company) as a Linguistic Analyst. I had originally planned to do grad school at Georgetown, but was unexpectedly offered this “perfect” job, so I decided to defer my acceptance to Georgetown and work for a year. I chose this path to ensure that when I went to grad school, it would be in an area I could maintain a long-term career.

What do you do now and why did you choose this career?

Right now I still work at Verilogue Inc. I decided not to go back to Georgetown yet because I absolutely love my job and receive a lot of empowerment to create new analyses and take on management roles. I still plan to go back for an advanced degree eventually, but I have a job I love and I make a very good living, so right now I am completely satisfied.

What skills, tools, or knowledge from your major have been most useful to you since graduation?

I am one of the fortunate few who have found a job using their degree. I use a lot of skills and knowledge from my years at UR and from my linguistics major. Most specifically, I use concepts from psycholinguistics, pragmatics, and corpus analysis (on which my honors thesis was based).

How do you balance your work and professional life?

That is certainly an area of constant struggle. I used to think I was busy in college, but that was nothing compared to the work I put in now. I love my job, and I am fascinated with the analyses and projects I have, but I certainly put an exceptional amount of time in. The most important thing for me is to put a cut-off time every night and stick to it. 7pm the laptop has to close and I go to the gym to unwind.

Where would you like to be in five years?

This is an interesting question. While I am still evaluating aspects of my life, from a career standpoint I would like to continue in the field of medical linguistics, progressing in the pharmaceutical industry for a while.  I can see making my way into forensic linguistics and governmental work, but that may be more than five years down the line.

What advice do you have for current students?

You don’t have to know what you want out of life when you’re 20 years old and it is counterproductive to stress about it throughout your college experience. Understanding yourself, and understanding what you don’t want is just as important as figuring out what you do want. Take a deep breath, enjoy your time, and learn as much as you can—I can genuinely say I miss learning in a classroom (never thought I’d say that).

What did you do immediately after graduation? How did you decide to take that path?

For about six months after graduation I was waiting tables.  Wait, I know what you’re thinking: Why do I need to go to college to be a waitress?  You don’t.  But you do need money while you’re figuring out your career path.  When I put down my tray and apron, I was able to find a paralegal job within a week.  Within the span of eighteen months I’d gone from waitress, to paralegal, to law student

When and how did you choose your major?

When I was a freshman at UR I really wanted to go straight to law school.  I was pretty disappointed there was no prelaw major.  When I saw “Linguistics and Law,” in the course catalog, I signed up as quickly as I could.  Professor Christine Gunlogson was at the helm of the class and I was sucked right in: linguistics is really interesting!  I thought, “this will be great for my law career!”.  I took another linguistics class, and then another, and then I was totally hooked.  I declared my major shortly after the start of sophomore year and I never regretted it.

What activities were you involved in as a student and what did you gain from them?

When I came to University Rochester I signed up for almost every group at the activities fair.  I ended up being involved with none of these organizations.  By the end of freshman year I had my heart set on the Drama House.  From sophomore to senior year I lived there happily:  I don’t remember exactly how I got involved with TODD Theatre, but before I knew it I was an intern for the costumes department.  To this day I make excellent costumes, and I can credit my time at good ol’ UR for that.

How do you balance your work and personal life?

I am just starting my career now, so it is difficult for me to assess my work-life balance.  The main goal, however, is to make sure I can tell the two apart.  I work to live, not the other way around.  To the extent possible I will work hard during the day, and then take back my life at night to work on what’s really important: my friends and family

Where would you like to be in five years?

Five and a half years after my graduation from University of Rochester I am exactly where I want to be.  I’ve graduated from law school and I just landed my first attorney position at a small firm in Midtown Manhattan.  I’m hoping I’ll get to put some of my linguistic insight to work as I assist with our clients’ trademarks and other intellectual property concerns.  This is where I’ve always wanted to be!

What advice do you have for current students?

My advice to current University of Rochester students is to concentrate on learning as much as possible.  I mean this as opposed to trying to get the highest possible grades.  While there is a certain extent to which your GPA is important in determining the course of your life; this is somewhat limited.  I am by no means suggesting you slack off, but what employers and schools really want to see is that you make the best of your opportunities; and that you stretch your knowledge and experience.  When it comes to interview time, it is your personality and conversation skills that will win you the job: not a digit on a paper.

What activities were you involved in as a student and what did you gain from them?

I was a part of InterVarsity Christian fellowship, fencing and Grassroots. I also worked at the post office and as a TA in Lingusitics, and I studied abroad in Ghana. Study abroad had the biggest impact on me, and gave me the chance to interact with people I probably couldn’t have met otherwise. On campus activities also developed a great sense of community and led to great friendships.

Who were your mentors while you were on campus? Have you continued those relationships?

Joyce McDonough and Jeff Runner. Over the years we’ve kept in touch and it’s been great to get together when that’s possible.

What did you do immediately after graduation? How did you decide to take that path?

I started working for the University of Maryland Linguistics Department in the fall after graduating. I really wanted to work in linguistics and use my degree, and I was lucky enough to get a position working in a language acquisition research lab. Before moving to Maryland, I spent the summer in Rochester and worked on research projects with Joyce McDonough.

What do you do now and why did you choose this career?

I chose to go back to school for electrical engineering. I like math and looked for ways I could combine my language and math interests – and EE is where they do speech technology. Since I was working at the university I could take classes part time for a while before I decided to go for it full time. I’ll graduate in a year so I’m going though the process again of deciding where I’d like to work next.

How do you balance your work and personal life?

I limit the extracurricular commitments I make in order to keep stress low while I’m working and taking classes. I look forward to graduating and having more free time to jump back into activities, but for now I’ve learned my lesson that I’m happier keeping life simple. I like having free time to socialize, cook, bike, make pottery…or just stay in and watch a movie if it’s been a busy week.

Where would you like to be in five years?

I hope to have found a good niche for myself as an engineer by then, and maybe I’ll be pursuing a grad degree. I’m taking things one step at a time though since I have a lot of decisions to make about focusing my degree and getting internships to see what I like to do.

How are you still connected with the University?

I have great friends from Rochester, now living all over the country. I also have family in Rochester and I enjoy visiting the University when I’m in the area. Of course I get alumni mail and emails, too that keep me in the loop.

Name:

Why did you choose to attend the University of Rochester?

I loved the idea that I could study whatever I wanted without having to take core classes.  It allowed me to really take advantage of all of the classes I wanted to take and I pushed myself in my classes more because I was so interested in the material.

When and how did you choose your major?

When I discovered that there was a field dedicated to understanding language I was hooked!  I quickly changed my major from pre-med/psychology/japanese to linguistics and I loved every minute of it.

What activities were you involved in as a student and what did you gain from them?

As a student, I was most involved in juggling and swing dancing.  I gained lasting friendships, a sense of community and physical activity that never felt forced.

Who were your mentors while you were on campus? Have you continued those relationships?

My two primary mentors in the Linguistics department were Joyce McDonough and Scott Paauw.  The two of them were always there for me when I had any questions and were very open about helping me to network, even overseas.  I have continued both relationships, and hope to keep them well into the future.

What did you do immediately after graduation? How did you decide to take that path?

I had a whirlwind year after graduating from the University of Rochester.  I presented a paper with Scott Paauw in Indonesia, then I attended the LSA Summer Institute in Berkeley, CA and finally I began my MA program at SOAS in London.  With the help of my mentors I was able to choose programs and activities which are taking me far in my linguistics career.

What skills, tools, or knowledge from your major have been most useful to you since graduation?

I continue to use the skills I gained in two consecutive Field Methods courses in all of the research I have done with native speakers since graduating.  Additionally, the analytic skills I gained from my theoretical classes continue to influence my perceptions.

Where would you like to be in five years?

If all of my wishes come true, then in five years, I would like to have graduated from the Australian National University with a PhD in Linguistics and be nearly finished with a post-doctoral position working with the Max Planck Institute.  Then I would like to either become a full time researcher or a professor.

Name:

When and how did you choose your major?

I took “People and their Language” on a whim during my freshmen year at UR after the President of the College gave us a speech about the flexibility of the Rochester Curriculum.  I ended up loving the class, the professor and the topic of linguistics in general and subsequently made it my major.

What activities were you involved in as a student and what did you gain from them?

I was involved in the Equestrian Club at UR, so I was able to train weekly and attend horse shows throughout the region.  This experience provided a great non-academic outlet that I think was an invaluable counterpart to learning.  Both meeting new friends and spending time with the horses made my four years at UR much more manageable.

What resources did you use on campus that you recommend current students use?

The Career Center and the Fellowships Office were of great help to me.  The Career Center was fantastic for getting applications together and making sure my CV was well organized.  Also, with the dedication of many people from the Fellowship Office, I was able to prepare and submit a Fulbright application that I later received to spend a year in Spain.

Who were your mentors while you were on campus? Have you continued those relationships?

My mentor at UR was Prof. Joyce McDonough in Linguistics.  She was the professor of my first Linguistics class and went on to be both my undergraduate and masters adviser.  We are still in great contact today and I now consider her both a colleague and friend.

What did you do immediately after graduation? How did you decide to take that path?

After graduation I stayed at UR to do a Masters degree in Linguistics and then went on to do a Fulbright Research Fellowship in Barcelona, Spain.  I took this time to really figure out exactly what it was that I enjoyed studying before entering into a PhD program.

Where would you like to be in five years?

In five years I hope to be teaching and doing research in lingusitics and cognitive science.  Ideally I would love to find a job in the New England area.

The following graduating seniors received fellowships:

• Emilia Sola-Gracia ’12, bachelor of science in ecology and evolutionary biology
• David Kaphan ’12, bachelor of science in chemistry
• Sharese King ’12, bachelor of arts in linguistics, minor in American Sign Language
• Mark D. Levin ’12, bachelor of science in chemistry, minor in mathematics
• Susan Pratt ’12, bachelor of arts in mathematics and bachelor of science in physics

The following graduating seniors received honorable mentions:

• Chad Hunter ’12, bachelor of science in chemical engineering, minor in mathematics
• Matej Penciak ’12, bachelor of science in physics and bachelor of arts in mathematics
• Benjamin E.R. Snyder ’12, bachelor of science in chemistry and bachelor of arts in mathematics

The following graduate students received fellowships:

• Michael Baranello, doctoral degree candidate in chemical engineering
• Ellie Carrell, doctoral degree candidate in pharmacology and physiology
• Jason Inzana, doctoral degree candidate in biomedical engineering
• Vijay Jain, doctoral degree candidate in physics

The following graduate students received honorable mentions:

• Esteban Buz, doctoral degree candidate in brain and cognitive sciences
• Dev Crasta, doctoral degree candidate in clinical and social sciences in psychology
• Adam B. Johnson, doctoral degree candidate in ecology and evolutionary biology
• Patrick S. Murphy, doctoral degree candidate in microbiology & immunology
• Ian Perera, doctoral degree candidate in computer science

The following recent alumni, who are currently pursing advanced degrees elsewhere, received fellowships:

• Molly Boutin ’11, bachelor of science in biomedical engineering
• Caitlin Hilliard ’10, bachelor of arts in brain and cognitive sciences and American Sign Language
• Patrick Sheehan ’11, bachelor of science in physics & astronomy and bachelor of arts in mathematics
• Raisa Trubko ’10, bachelor of arts in physics and bachelor of science in optics
• David J. Weinberg ’11, bachelor of science in chemistry
• Hannah (Geswein) Williamson ’08, bachelor of arts in psychology

The following recent alumni, many of whom are currently pursing advanced degrees elsewhere, received honorable mentions:

• Samuel Anderson ’11, bachelor of science in chemistry
• Isthier Chaudhury ’11, bachelor of science in chemical engineering and bachelor of arts in interdepartmental programs
• Emily (Grzybowski) Dennis ’11, bachelor of science in molecular genetics and bachelor of arts in studio arts
• Aaron Gorenstein ’11, bachelor of science in computer science
• Seth Kallman ’09, bachelor of science in brain & cognitive sciences
• Kathleen Mulvaney ’10, bachelor of science in molecular genetics
• Alison Ossip-Klein ’10, bachelor of science in ecology and evolutionary biology
• Camillia Redding ’10, bachelor of arts in political science
• Maria Strangas ’10, bachelor of science in ecology & evolutionary biology
• Adam Williamson’08, bachelor of science in electrical & computer engineering and bachelor of arts in physics

Article written by Melissa Greco Lopes, editor of The Buzz and student life publicist in University Communications. Photo courtesy of  the NSF website.