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Dr Markus Damian

Professor

telephone: +44 (0)117 33 10543 email: M.Damian@bris.ac.uk

Room 5D10

Biographical details

After studying psychology at the Johann Wolfgang Goethe-University in Frankfurt, Germany (1989-1991), I relocated to the United States and received a bachelor's degree from the College of New Jersey (1993) and a Master's degree (1996) and a Ph.D. degree (1998) in cognitive psychology from Rice University, Houston. Between 1998 and 2000 I was a staff member in the language production group at the Max-Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics in Nijmegen, the Netherlands, where I worked with Pim Levelt. I joined the Department of Experimental Psychology in Bristol as a Lecturer in 2000.


Teaching and Administration



Currently, I co-ordinate and co-teach a Level 3 undergraduate option called "Psychology of Language", and I contribute to the L1 unit "Cognitive Psychology" and to the L2 unit "Psychological Experiments". I also co-ordinate and co-teach an MSc unit "Psychology of Language".

I am the final year project coodinator, a serve on both the ethics and the resources committees.


Research interests

Key words: language production, speaking, psycholinguistics, visual word recognition, computational models of language, unconscious processing, numerical cognition

My research is concerned with the cognitive processes of language, more specifically with those engaged when humans speak (as opposed to when they comprehend language). I investigate the way in which humans cognitively develop intentions of what they are trying to say, the way in which words are organised in and retrieved from a mental lexicon for the purpose of the utterance, and the processes involved in generating the appropriate articulation. Much of my work is based on chronometrical studies; however, I have also been involved in neuroimaging research, and in studies of acquired brain damage.

Reflecting the state of this field, most of my work to this point has been concerned with the generation of very short phrases or merely single words (e.g., Damian & Martin, 1999). I am currently attempting to expand the approach to more complex phrases and connected speech. Two questions are currently of particular interest to me: (1) what is the extent of advance planning in language production – at any given time, how far are speech sounds planned ahead while speakers generate language (see, e.g., Damian, 2003), (2) for literate persons, does the spoken production of words automatically activate orthographic codes (e.g., Damian & Bowers, 2003)?

Other domains that I have been involved in are (1) reading (e.g., Bowers, Damian & Havelka, 2002), (2) the extent to which information can be processed in the absence of conscious awareness (e.g., Damian, 2001), (3) the representation of numbers (e.g., Damian, in press), and (4) similarities and dissimilarities between object processing and naming, and face processing (e.g., Damian & Abdel Rahman, in press).

Recent and current grants

2002-2004 Damian, M. F., & Bowers, J. S. "Effects of orthography in speech comprehension and production". Grant funded by the British Academy.

2002-2005 Bowers, J. S., & Damian, M. F., "Contrasting two frameworks of connectionism when applied to word identification". Grant funded by the BBSRC.

2003-2004 Meyer, A. S., & Damian, M. F., "Retrieval of task-irrelevant picture names". Grant funded by the Nuffield Foundation.


Some recent publications

For a full list and downloadable versions, see my personal web site at http://seis.bris.ac.uk/~psmfed/

Damian, M. F. (in press). Asymmetries in the processing of arabic digits and number words. Memory & Cognition.

Damian, M. F., & Abdel Rahman, R. (in press). Semantic priming in the name retrieval of objects and famous faces. British Journal of Psychology.

Damian, M. F. , & Bowers, J. S. (2003). Effects of orthography on speech production in a form preparation paradigm. Journal of Memory and Language, 49, 119-132.

Damian, M. F. (2003). Articulatory duration in single word speech production. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 29, 416-431.

Bowers, J. S., Damian, M. F., & Havelka, J. (2002). Can distributed orthographic knowledge support word specific long-term priming? Apparently so. Journal of Memory and Language, 46, 24-38.

Damian, M. F. (2001). Congruity effects evoked by subliminally presented primes: Automaticity rather than semantic processing. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 27, 154-165.

Damian, M. F., & Martin, R. C. (1999). Semantic and phonological codes interact in single word production. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 25, 1-18.

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