Olivia DrakeWesleyan's Board of Trustees recently announced the promotions of nine faculty members, effective July 1, 2020. Five faculty were conferred tenure with promotion. They join six other faculty members who were awarded tenure earlier this spring. Joslyn Barnhart Trager, associate professor of government Anthony Keats, associate professor of economics Andrew Quintman, associate professor of religion Michael Slowik '03, associate professor of film studies Takeshi Watanabe, associate professor of East Asian studies In addition, four faculty members are being promoted. They join one other faculty member who was promoted earlier this spring. Erika Franklin Fowler, professor of government Barbara Juhasz, professor…
Barbara Juhasz, Jeffrey L. Shames Professor of Civic Engagement and associate professor of psychology and neuroscience and behavior, is the co-author of an article titled "The time course of age-of-acquisition effects on eye movements during reading: Evidence from survival analyses," published in Memory and Cognition, January 2020. According to the paper's abstract: Adults process words that are rated as being learned earlier in life faster than words that are rated as being acquired later in life. This age-of-acquisition (AoA) effect has been observed in a variety of word-recognition tasks when word frequency is controlled. AoA has also previously been found to…
An article by Barbara Juhasz, associate professor of psychology, associate professor of neuroscience and behavior, has been published in the January 2018 edition of the Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology. The study, titled "Experience with compound words influences their processing: An eye movement investigation with English compound words" appears in Issue 71, pages 103–12. Recording eye movements, Juhasz explains, provides information on the time-course of word recognition during reading. Eye movements also are informative for examining the processing of morphologically complex words such as compound words. In this study, Juhasz examined the time-course of lexical and semantic variables during morphological processing.…
Andrew Logan ’18Wesleyan Associate Professor of Psychology Barbara Juhasz and alumna Jennifer Brewer ’13 recently coauthored an article titled “An Investigation into the Processing of Lexicalized English Blend Words: Evidence from Lexical Decisions and Eye Movements During Reading” in the Journal of Psycholinguistic Research. Their work examines the process of blending, through which a new word or concept develops from the synthesis of two source words. Some examples of common blended words include "smog," "brunch" and "infomercial." Though previous research on blending has inspected the structure of blends, Juhasz and Brewer examined how common-blended words are recognized compared to other kinds of words. Pairing…
Associate Professor Barbara Juhasz, Akila Raoul '16 and Micaela Kaye '16 visited the Green Street Teaching and Learning Center Dec. 2 to lead a workshop on word recognition. Juhasz is associate professor of psychology, associate professor of integrative sciences and associate professor of neuroscience and behavior. The trio worked with students enrolled in Green Street's AfterSchool program. During this special half day program, Juhasz spoke to the Green Street students (in grades 1-5) about her word recgonition research at Wesleyan and then lead a hands-on workshop involving word games. "Our students had a wonderful time exploring the concept of compound…
Associate Professor Barbara Juhaz, Yun-Hsuan Lai '14 and Michelle Woodcock '14 are the co-authors of a paper titled "A database of 629 English compound words: Ratings of familiarity, lexeme meaning dominance, semantic transparency, age-of-acquisition, imageability, and sensory experience," published in Behavior Research Methods, 47(4), pages 1004-1019 in 2015. Juhasz is associate professor of psychology, associate professor of integrative sciences, associate professor of neuroscience and behavior. In this study, the authors collected ratings on 629 English compound words for six variables: familiarity, age of acquisition, semantic transparency, lexeme meaning dominance, imageability, and sensory experience ratings. All of the compound words selected for this study are contained…
The Wesleyan Board of Trustees reviews tenure cases three times each year during its meetings on campus, scheduled as the cases arise. At the most recent meeting in March, the Board awarded tenure — effective July 1, 2013 — to these faculty members: Elijah Huge, associate professor of art, has taught at Wesleyan since 2006. A licensed architect, his work includes private commissions and award-winning competition entries for the High Line (New York, N.Y.), the Bourne Bridge|Park (Bourne, Mass.), and the Tangshan Earthquake Memorial (Tangshan, China). His writing and design work have been featured in Praxis, Thresholds, Perspecta, Architectural Record, Landscape Architecture, Dwell, Journal of Architectural Education, and Competitions. His current scholarly…
Lauren Rubenstein Read the following words in your head: Incense Lemon Kick Though it may be happening on a subconscious level, all these words share an important feature: They all evoke a sensation or perceptual experience in the mind of the reader. Incense brings to mind a particular scent; lemon, a tart taste in the mouth; and kick activates a part of the brain responsible for motor behavior. Research suggests that these mental reactions occur very quickly—within fractions of a second—after reading a word. In the Eye Movement and Reading Lab at Wesleyan, Barbara Juhasz, assistant professor of psychology, assistant professor…
Barbara Juhasz, assistant professor of psychology, assistant professor of neuroscience and behavior, is the author of an article titled, "Sensory experience ratings for over 5,000 mono- and disyllabic words." The article was published online on Aug. 31 in the Behavior Research Methods journal, a publication of The Psychonomic Society. It was co-authored with Melvin Yap of the National University of Singapore. The study provides sensory experience ratings (SERs)--which reflect the extent to which a word evokes a sensory and/or perceptual experience in the mind of the reader—for 2,857 monosyllabic words used in a 2011 study, as well as 3,000 new disyllabic words.…
Barbara Juhasz, assistant professor pf psychology, assistant professor of neuroscience and behavior, is the co-author of the paper, "Tangible words are recognized faster: The grounding of meaning in sensory and perceptual systems." The paper was published in the September 2011 issue of the Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, Issue 64, pages 1683-1691.
Jessica Sullivan '08; Barbara Juhasz, assistant professor of psychology; and Hilary Barth, assistant professor of psychology, assistant professor of neuroscience and behavior, are the co-authors of a paper titled, "Adults’ number-line estimation strategies: Evidence from eye movements," published in Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, Issue 18, pages 557-563, in June 2011.
Barb Juhasz, assistant professor of psychology, assistant professor of neuroscience and behavior, and Rachel Berkowitz '09 are the co-authors of "Effects of morphological families on English compound word recognition: A multitask investigation," published in Language and Cognitive Processes, Issue 26, pages 653-682, in 2011.