Cory Shain | Prediction and Memory in Naturalistic Language Processing

What are the moment-by-moment computations that allow us to rapidly comprehend what others say to us? Evidence has been accumulating for decades that we incrementally build up meaning representations by (1) storing and retrieving representations in working memory and (2) predicting future words and meanings. However, we still don’t have a good handle on how these computations work, how prediction and working memory relate to each other, or whether the responses we see to decontextualized, constructed laboratory sentences still happen during everyday language use.

One of my core lines of research is to study the algorithmic structure and degree of dissociability of prediction and memory effects during naturalistic sentence comprehension. To do so, I analyze large-scale naturalistic eye-tracking, self-paced reading, and fMRI data using tools from natural language processing, linguistic theory, and machine learning.

Related publications

Cur Dir Psych Sci

Similarity of computations across domains does not imply shared implementation: The case of language comprehension

Fedorenko, Evelina, and Shain, Cory

Current Directions in Psychological Science 2021

Bib PDF

@article{fedorenkoshain21,
  author = {Fedorenko, Evelina and Shain, Cory},
  title = {Similarity of computations across domains does not imply shared implementation: The case of language comprehension},
  year = {2021},
  journal = {Current Directions in Psychological Science},
  pages = {526--534},
  volume = {30},
  issue = {6},
  doi = {https://doi.org/10.1177%2F09637214211046955},
  pdf = {fedorenko_shain_21.pdf},
  abbr = {Cur Dir Psych Sci},
  section = {articles},
  project = {mempred},
  bibtex_show = {true}
}

Npsy

fMRI reveals language-specific predictive coding during naturalistic sentence comprehension

Shain, Cory, Blank, Idan, van Schijndel, Marten, Schuler, William, and Fedorenko, Evelina

Neuropsychologia 2020

Bib PDF Code Data

@article{shainetal20,
  title = {fMRI reveals language-specific predictive coding during naturalistic sentence comprehension},
  author = {Shain, Cory and Blank, Idan and {van Schijndel}, Marten and Schuler, William and Fedorenko, Evelina},
  year = {2020},
  journal = {Neuropsychologia},
  volume = {138},
  pages = {107307},
  doi = {10.1101/717512},
  pdf = {shain_blank_et_al_20.pdf},
  section = {articles},
  code = {https://github.com/coryshain/cdr},
  data = {https://osf.io/eyp8q/},
  abbr = {Npsy},
  selected = {true},
  project = {cdrnn,mempred},
  bibtex_show = {true}
}

COLING

Coreference information guides human expectations during natural reading

Jaffe, Evan, Shain, Cory, and Schuler, William

In Proceedings of the 28th International Conference on Computational Linguistics 2020

Bib PDF

@inproceedings{jaffeetal20,
  author = {Jaffe, Evan and Shain, Cory and Schuler, William},
  title = {Coreference information guides human expectations during natural reading},
  booktitle = {Proceedings of the 28th International Conference on Computational Linguistics},
  year = {2020},
  pages = {195--214},
  doi = {10.18653/v1/2020.coling-main.404},
  pdf = {jaffe_et_al_20.pdf},
  abbr = {COLING},
  section = {papers},
  project = {mempred},
  bibtex_show = {true}
}

NAACL

A large-scale study of the effects of word frequency and predictability in naturalistic reading

Shain, Cory

In Proceedings of the 2019 Conference of the North American Chapter of the Association for Computational Linguistics: Human Language Technologies, Volume 1 (Long and Short Papers) 2019

Bib PDF Code Slides recording

@inproceedings{shain19,
  author = {Shain, Cory},
  title = {A large-scale study of the effects of word frequency and predictability in naturalistic reading},
  booktitle = {Proceedings of the 2019 Conference of the North American Chapter of the Association for Computational Linguistics: Human Language Technologies, Volume 1 (Long and Short Papers)},
  year = {2019},
  pages = {4086--4094},
  doi = {10.18653/v1/N19-1413},
  pdf = {shain_19.pdf},
  slides = {shain_19_slides.pdf},
  code = {https://github.com/coryshain/cdr},
  recording = {https://vimeo.com/359727110},
  abbr = {NAACL},
  section = {papers},
  project = {cdrnn,mempred},
  bibtex_show = {true}
}

LREC

Deep Syntactic Annotations for Broad-Coverage Psycholinguistic Modeling

Shain, Cory, van Schijndel, Marten, and Schuler, William

In Proceedings of the Eleventh International Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation 2018

Bib PDF Data

@inproceedings{shainetal18,
  title = {Deep Syntactic Annotations for Broad-Coverage Psycholinguistic Modeling},
  author = {Shain, Cory and {van Schijndel}, Marten and Schuler, William},
  booktitle = {Proceedings of the Eleventh International Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation },
  year = {2018},
  pdf = {shain_et_al_18.pdf},
  data = {https://github.com/modelblocks/modelblocks-release},
  abbr = {LREC},
  section = {papers},
  project = {mempred},
  bibtex_show = {true}
}

CMCL
Coreference and focus in reading times

Jaffe, Evan, Shain, Cory, and Schuler, William

In Proceedings of the 8th Workshop on Cognitive Modeling and Computational Linguistics 2018

Bib PDF
@inproceedings{jaffeetal18, title = {Coreference and focus in reading times}, author = {Jaffe, Evan and Shain, Cory and Schuler, William}, booktitle = {Proceedings of the 8th Workshop on Cognitive Modeling and Computational Linguistics}, year = {2018}, pdf = {jaffe_et_al_18.pdf}, abbr = {CMCL}, section = {papers}, project = {mempred}, bibtex_show = {true} }
CL4LC
Memory access during incremental sentence processing causes reading time latency

Shain, Cory, van Schijndel, Marten, Futrell, Richard, Gibson, Edward, and Schuler, William

In Proceedings of the Workshop on Computational Linguistics for Linguistic Complexity 2016

Bib PDF
@inproceedings{shainetal16:cl4lc, title = {Memory access during incremental sentence processing causes reading time latency}, author = {Shain, Cory and {van Schijndel}, Marten and Futrell, Richard and Gibson, Edward and Schuler, William}, booktitle = {Proceedings of the Workshop on Computational Linguistics for Linguistic Complexity}, year = {2016}, pdf = {shain_et_al_16_cl4lc.pdf}, abbr = {CL4LC}, section = {papers}, project = {mempred}, bibtex_show = {true} }