Kayla Keyue Chen | 陈珂月

Hello! My name is Kayla, or Keyue Chen (陈珂月). I am currently pursuing my fourth year as a PhD student in the Department of Linguistics, within the Division of Psychology and Language Sciences at University College London. I work with Dr. Wing-Yee Chow and Dr. Andrea Santi on psycholinguistics and sentence processing.

Currently, my research focuses on (1) how comprehenders generate and update predictions about upcoming language in real-time, and (2) the potential costs of prediction violations. I have used various methods, such as reaction time measurements, visual-world eye tracking, mouse tracking, pupillometry, and event-related potentials, to study these questions.

Before starting my PhD, I worked briefly as a research assistant at Beijing Normal University under the mentorship of Dr. Taomei Guo. I completed my undergraduate studies at Nankai University, where I was supervised by Dr. Quansheng Xia.

You can find my publications, conference presentations, teaching, and CV here. I also share my recent publications and tutorials in posts. Don’t hesitate to reach out to me through the contact methods you’ll find at the bottom of this page. I’m always happy to talk about research. Looking forward to hearing from you!

news

Sep 7, 2024	Our poster “Co-registration of mouse cursor and eye movements reveals comparable sensitivity of mouse and eye-tracking to prediction during language comprehension” won the *Best Student Poster Prize* at AMLaP 2024! Check it out here.
Sep 1, 2024	I’m excited to see you at AMLaP 2024 in Edinburgh! I’ll be kicking things off with the first 15-minute talk, titled “Comprehenders use consecutive cues to update prediction incrementally: Evidence from eye-tracking and ERPs” (abstract). Additionally, I’ll be presenting two posters — one used pupillometry and the other explored co-registered mouse cursor and eye tracking data.
Jun 16, 2024	At Oxford Postgraduate Conference in Linguistics (LingO 2024), I’ll present a talk titled “Incremental Prediction Updating through Consecutive Cues: Evidence from ERPs” on June 19th at 2 PM.

selected publications

2024

(in press) Revising noun predictions based on English measure phrases: Evidence from visual-world eye-tracking

Kayla Keyue Chen, Ingrid M. Johansen, and Wing-Yee Chow

Language, Cognition and Neuroscience, 2024

Abstract APA HTML Stimuli Data Code

Can comprehenders use unexpected incoming information to revise their existing predictions on the fly? A recent study in Mandarin Chinese found that, upon hearing a prediction-inconsistent nominal classifier, listeners were able to rapidly revise their predictions and redirect their eye gaze towards a previously unexpected object. In the present study, we extended this finding to English using measure phrases (e.g., “a pile of”). Unlike Mandarin classifiers, measure phrases are not obligatory for nouns in English, which allows us to test whether comprehenders can quickly revise their predictions even when the relevant cue is not routinely present in the language. We found that, upon encountering a measure phrase that contradicts their initial prediction, listeners quickly redirected their eye gaze from the originally expected object to an unexpected object that was compatible with the new information. We propose that comprehenders can rapidly revise predictions in response to unexpected bottom-up input across languages.

Chen, K. K., Johansen, I.M., & Chow, W.-Y. (2024). Revising noun predictions based on English measure phrases: Evidence from visual-world eye-tracking. Language, Cognition and Neuroscience, 1–16. https://doi.org/10.1080/23273798.2024.2399111