Lars Konieczny

Welcome

As a professor of Cognitive Science, I currently teach both undergraduate and graduate students and conduct research mainly on psycholinguistic phenomena (language processing, complexity, variation & change, cross-linguistic comparisons), focusing on two main research approaches:

1. Empirical psycholinguistic research uses techniques like eye-tracking to investigate the ongoing process of language comprehension and production. The word-by-word processing effort is indicative of how and what kind of information is processed by the brain at any given time, and how linguistic strata and cognitive modules interact. Research topics cover syntactic complexity, structural, semantic, and pragmatic ambiguity resolution, rhythm in poetic language, and the processing of figurative language like metaphors, irony, and humor.
2. Cognitive modeling aims at building and running computer models as generative theories of how the mind processes information. We consider a variety of approaches focusing on different levels of abstraction to identify the nature of the underlying information and cognitive architecture. This includes theories of memory and adaptation, as well as Artificial Neural Networks and Large Language Models as models of predictive processing.

Short Curriculum Vitae

For a full list of my publications, see my FreiDok+ profile or my Google Scholar profile.

Selected Publications

Israel, L., Konieczny, L., & Ferstl, E. C. (2022). Cognitive and Affective Aspects of Verbal Humor: A Visual-World Eye-Tracking Study. Frontiers in Communication, 6. https://doi.org/10.3389/fcomm.2021.758173

Beck, J., & Konieczny, L. (2021). Rhythmic subvocalization: An eye-tracking study on silent poetry reading. Journal of Eye Movement Research, 13(3). https://doi.org/10.16910/jemr.13.3.5

Hemforth B., Konieczny L. (2019) When All Linguists Did not Go to the Workshop, None of the Germans but Some of the French Did: The Role of Alternative Constructions for Quantifier Scope. In: Carlson K., Clifton, Jr. C., Fodor J. (eds) Grammatical Approaches to Language Processing. Studies in Theoretical Psycholinguistics, vol 48. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-01563-3_9

Levy, H., Konieczny, L., & Hanulíková, A. (2019). Processing of unfamiliar accents in monolingual and bilingual children: effects of type and amount of accent experience. Journal of Child Language (2019), 46, 368–392 https://doi:10.1017/S030500091800051X 

Gibson E, Tan C, Futrell R, Mahowald, K., Konieczny, L., Hemforth, B., & Fedorenko, E. (2017). Don’t Underestimate the Benefits of Being Misunderstood. Psychological Science. 2017;28(6):703-712. https://doi:10.1177/0956797617690277 

Schwarzkopf, S., Büchner, S. J., Hölscher, C., & Konieczny, L. (2017). Perspective tracking in the real world: Gaze angle analysis in a collaborative wayfinding task. Spatial Cognition and Computation, 17(1-2), 143–162. https://doi.org/10.1080/13875868.2016.1226841

Bormann, T., Wolfer, S., Hachmann, W., Neubauer, C., & Konieczny, L. (2015). Fast word reading in pure alexia: “Fast, yet serial.” Neurocase, 21(2). https://doi.org/10.1080/13554794.2014.890732

Hemforth, B., Fernandez, S., Clifton, C., Frazier, L., Konieczny, L., & Walter, M. (2015). Relative clause attachment in German, English, Spanish and French: Effects of position and length. Lingua, 166.https://doi.org/10.1016/j.lingua.2015.08.010

Konieczny, L., & Müller, D. (2010). Das sprachliche Arbeitsgedächtnis: Kapazität oder Erfahrung? Psychologische Rundschau, 61(1), 43–50. https://doi.org/10.1026/0033-3042/a000009

Konieczny, L. (2000). Locality and parsing complexity. Journal of Psycholinguistic Research, 29(6). https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1026528912821

Konieczny, L., Hemforth, B., Scheepers, C., & Strube, G. (1997). The Role of Lexical Heads in Parsing: Evidence from German. Language and Cognitive Processes, 12(2–3).https://doi.org/10.1080/016909697386871

Konieczny, L., Hemforth, B., & Strube, G. (1991). Psychologisch fundierte Prinzipien der Satzverarbeitung jenseits von Minimal Attachment. Kognitionswissenschaft, 1, 58–70.

I teach courses regularly, such as:

Ich bin Studienberater und Studiengangskoordinator des Fachs Kognitionswissenschaft.

Wenn Sie Fragen rund ums Studium der Kognitionswissenschaft oder des Masters Linguistics: Language, Communication and Cognition haben, können Sie mir mit Ihrem Anliegen schreiben, oder in meine Sprechstunde kommen.

Meine Sprechstunde findet im Semester Dienstags, 11-12 Uhr, statt, außerhalb des Semesters nach Vereinbarung.