About

Professor Zenzi M. Griffin directs the Cognition and Communication Lab at the University of Texas at Austin, where research focuses on language production, specifically the cognitive processes that result in speech. The lab's past and current research investigates the timing of planning spoken language, the generation and learning of proper names for people, and individual differences related to experience with different languages. Under Professor Griffin's leadership, the lab includes graduate and undergraduate students from the Departments of Psychology, Communication Sciences and Disorders, and Linguistics, reflecting an interdisciplinary approach to studying language production.

Research topics

• Computer Science
• Cognitive psychology
• Psychology
• Natural Language Processing
• Artificial Intelligence
• Linguistics
• Social psychology
• Physical medicine and rehabilitation
• Audiology
• Medicine
• Developmental psychology
• Neuroscience
• Mathematics education

Selected publications

• Grammatical gender in spoken word recognition in school-age Spanish monolingual and Spanish–English bilingual children

  Frontiers in Psychology · 2024-07-24 · 1 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  This study examined grammatical gender processing in school-aged children with varying levels of cumulative English exposure. Children participated in a visual world paradigm with a four-picture display where they heard a gendered article followed by a target noun and were in the context where all images were the same gender (same gender), where all of the distractor images were the opposite gender than the target noun (different gender), and where all of the distractor images were the opposite gender, but there was a mismatch in the gendered article and target noun pair. We investigated 51 children (aged 5;0–10;0) who were exposed to Spanish since infancy but varied in their amount of cumulative English exposure. In addition to the visual word paradigm, all children completed an article–noun naming task, a grammaticality judgment task, and standardized vocabulary tests. Parents reported on their child’s cumulative English language exposure and current English language use. To investigate the time course of lexical facilitation effects, looks to the target were analyzed with a cluster-based permutation test. The results revealed that all children used gender in a facilitatory way (during the noun region), and comprehension was significantly inhibited when the article–noun pairing was ungrammatical rather than grammatical. Compared to children with less cumulative English exposure, children with more cumulative English exposure looked at the target noun significantly less often overall, and compared to younger children, older children looked at the target noun significantly more often overall. Additionally, children with lower cumulative English exposure looked at target nouns more in the different-gender condition than the same-gender condition for masculine items more than feminine items.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Language Production

  MIT Press eBooks · 2024-12-04

  book-chapterOpen access1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Grammatical Gender in Spoken Word Recognition in School-Age Spanish-English Bilingual Children

  Frontiers in Psychology · 2022-02-17 · 4 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  This study investigated grammatical gender processing in school-age Spanish-English bilingual children using a visual world paradigm with a 4-picture display where the target noun was heard with a gendered article that was either in a context where all distractor images were the same gender as the target noun (same gender; uninformative) or in a context where all distractor images were the opposite gender than the target noun (different gender; informative). We investigated 32 bilingual children (ages 5;6-8;6) who were exposed to Spanish since infancy and began learning English by school entry. Along with the eye-tracking experiment, all children participated in a standardized language assessment and told narratives in English and Spanish, and parents reported on their child's current Spanish language use. The differential proportion fixations to target (target - averaged distractor fixations) were analyzed in two time regions with linear mixed-effects models (LME). Results show that prior to the target word being spoken, these bilingual children did not use the gendered articles to actively anticipate upcoming nouns. In the subsequent time region (during the noun), it was shown that there are differences in the way they use feminine and masculine articles, with a lack of use of the masculine article and a potential facilitatory use of the feminine article for children who currently use more Spanish than English. This asymmetry in the use of gendered articles in processing is modulated by current Spanish language use and trends with results found for bilingual and second-language learning adults.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Can speakers of different languages be saying the same thing? Influences of non-native language exposure and explicit comparison on children’s language awareness

  Applied Psycholinguistics · 2022-09-01 · 2 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  Abstract Language awareness (LA)—an understanding of the communicative functions and conventions of language—could benefit monolingual children as they navigate their increasingly multilingual world. To evaluate how non-native language exposure influences English-speaking children’s understanding that different languages can convey equivalent information, 63 5–7-year-olds compared utterances in English and Lithuanian (unfamiliar to all participants). Half of the children also compared English utterances to Spanish (a widely spoken language in their community—94% of children had some past exposure), whereas the other half compared English utterances to Tagalog (unfamiliar to all participants). Children in the Spanish condition were significantly more likely than those in the Tagalog condition to agree that a Lithuanian and an English speaker could be saying the same thing. We argue that children’s experience with Spanish as a community language, coupled with explicit questioning about commonalities between languages, served to scaffold an understanding of LA.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• The influence of PTSD symptoms on selective visual attention while reading

  Cognition & Emotion · 2021-12-19 · 1 citations

  articleOpen access

  A large body of research has provided evidence that Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) symptoms are associated with broad changes in attentional processes which are in turn implicated in core facets of emotion regulation. However, prior research has primarily focused on specific task-based evaluations of attention. In the current study, we evaluated eye movement behaviour among adults that endorsed a traumatic event meeting Criterion A and were experiencing a range of PTSD symptoms (N = 55) while they read short trauma-related or neutral passages. We found evidence that PTSD symptoms were associated with a small difference in attentional processes between the two types of passages, with longer first fixations to words in trauma-related passages b = 1.92, 95% CI [0.31, 3.56]. Moreover, within the trauma-related texts we found that greater PTSD symptoms were associated with longer total fixation times b = 9.53, 95% CI [2.20, 16.83] and a greater number of regressions b = 0.07, 95% CI [0.01,0.13] to trauma-related words. Inclusion of an additional 25 participants not endorsing a trauma that met Criterion A did not influence the results in any meaningful way. For the first time, we provide evidence that PTSD symptoms are linked to bias for trauma-related information during a naturalistic, everyday activity – reading.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Performance Differences Between Native and Non-Native Speakers on a New Happy–Sad Executive Function Measure

  Archives of Clinical Neuropsychology · 2020-12-02 · 2 citations

  article

  Abstract Objective The happy–sad task adapts the classic day–night task by incorporating two early acquired emotional concepts (“happy” and “sad”) and demonstrates elevated inhibitory demands for native speakers. The task holds promise as a new executive function measure for assessing inhibitory control across the lifespan, but no studies have examined the influence of language of test administration on performance. Method Seventy adult native English speakers and 50 non-native speakers completed the computerized day–night and the new happy–sad tasks administered in English. In two conditions, participants were categorized pictorial stimuli either in a congruent manner (“happy” for a happy face) or in a more challenging, incongruent manner (“sad” for a happy face). Lexical decision performance was obtained to estimate levels of English language proficiency. Results Native speakers and non-native speakers performed comparably except for the critical incongruent condition of the happy–sad task, where native speakers responded more slowly. A greater congruency effect for the happy–sad task was found for native than for non-native speakers. Lexical decision performance was associated with performance on the challenging incongruent conditions. Conclusion This study reinforced the usefulness of the happy–sad task as a new measure in evaluating inhibitory control in adult native-speakers. However, the language of test administration needs to be considered in assessment because it may lead to performance differences between native and non-native speakers.

  PublisherDOI

• “Did I Say <i>Cherry</i> ?” Error Patterns on a Blocked Cyclic Naming Task for Bilingual Children With and Without Developmental Language Disorder

  Journal of Speech Language and Hearing Research · 2020 · 7 citations

  • Computer Science
  • Natural Language Processing
  • Psychology

  Purpose Using a blocked cyclic picture-naming task, we compared accuracy and error patterns across languages for Spanish-English bilingual children with and without developmental language disorder (DLD). Method Pictured stimuli were manipulated for semantic similarity across two (Same and Mixed) category contexts. Children's productions were scored off-line for accuracy, error frequency, and error type. Results Typically developing children were more accurate and produced fewer errors than their peers with DLD; however, this was moderated by task language and semantic context. Children were generally more accurate when naming pictures in English compared to Spanish and in the Mixed-category context compared to the Same-category context. Analyses of error types further showed that children with less English language exposure specifically produced more nonresponses in English than in Spanish. Children with DLD produced more of each error type than their typically developing peers, particularly in Spanish. Conclusions Regardless of language ability, bilingual children demonstrated greater difficulty with lexical retrieval for pictured items in the semantically related context than in the unrelated context. However, bilingual children with DLD produced more errors of all types than is typical for children developing more than one language. Their greater error rates are not secondary to limited second language exposure but instead reflect deficits inherent to the nature of language impairment. Results from this study are discussed using a framework of semantic constraint, where we propose that because bilingual children with DLD have impoverished semantic networks, and this knowledge insufficiently constrains activation for lexical selection, thereby increasing error production.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Longitudinal Evidence for Simultaneous Bilingual Language Development With Shifting Language Dominance, and How to Explain It

  Language Learning · 2020 · 34 citations

  • Psychology
  • Linguistics
  • Cognitive psychology

  Theories of how language works have shifted from rule-like competence accounts to more skill-like incremental learning accounts. Under these, people acquire language incrementally, through practice, and may even lose it incrementally as they acquire competing mappings. Incremental learning implies that (1) a bilingual's abilities in their languages should depend on how much they practice each (not merely age of acquisition), and (2) using an L2 more could cause a bilingual to gradually 'unlearn' their L1. Using timed picture naming and vocabulary measures, we tracked 139 children for several years as they transitioned from mostly-Spanish homes to mostly-English schools. Following their increased English use, many became more proficient in English than Spanish around the third grade, demonstrating continual learning. But their Spanish also improved, showing that L1-attrition is not inevitable. Incremental learning explains both co-improvement and L1-attrition as consequences of experience-driven learning: improvement from continuing L1 use can offset competitive unlearning.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Executive Control in Adults Who Stutter: The Antisaccade Task

  Journal of Speech Language and Hearing Research · 2020 · 11 citations

  Senior authorCorresponding
  • Computer Science
  • Artificial Intelligence
  • Psychology

  = long distance). Data for accuracy and reaction time of the first accurate saccade were collected and analyzed. Results No difference was found between AWS and AWNS in accuracy or in reaction time. Both groups were more accurate in the prosaccade than the antisaccade trials and in the long compared to the short distance trials. Furthermore, both groups demonstrated longer saccade latencies for long compared to short distances and for antisaccade compared to prosaccade trials. Conclusions Preliminary results do not support deficits in inhibition in AWS during a motorically simple, non-speech-related oculomotor task, but additional research is warranted.

  PublisherDOI

• The effect of additional characters on choice of referring expression: Everyone counts☆

  UNC Libraries · 2020-11-04

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  Two story-telling experiments examine the process of choosing between pronouns and proper names in speaking. Such choices are traditionally attributed to speakers striving to make referring expressions maximally interpretable to addressees. The experiments revealed a novel effect: even when a pronoun would not be ambiguous, the presence of another character in the discourse decreased pronoun use and increased latencies to refer to the most prominent character in the discourse. In other words, speakers were more likely to call Minnie Minnie than shewhen Donald was also present. Even when the referent character appeared alone in the stimulus picture, the presence of another character in the preceding discourse reduced pronouns. Furthermore, pronoun use varied with features associated with the speaker’s degree of focus on the preceding discourse (e.g., narrative style and disfluency). We attribute this effect to competition for attentional resources in the speaker’s representation of the discourse.

  PublisherDOI

Recent grants

• NIH Grant R03MH061318

  NIH · $36k · 2001

• The time course for structuring spoken utterances

  NSF · $211k · 2003–2008

Frequent coauthors

• W. M. Schlingman

  8 shared

• Kathryn Bock

  University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

  6 shared

• Daniel H. Spieler

  Georgia Institute of Technology

  6 shared

• Lisa M. Bedore

  Temple University

  6 shared

• Gary M. Oppenheim

  Bangor University

  5 shared

• Lindsey Wiser

  Arizona State University

  5 shared

• S. Pirkl

  5 shared

• Aliza G. Beverage

  5 shared

Education

• PhD, Psychology

  University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

  1998

• AM, Psychology

  University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

  1996

• BA, Psychology

  Michigan State University

  1993