Roberto G. de Almeida

Roberto G. de Almeida
Associate Professor
(Ph.D., Rutgers University)
Office: SP-253.11 (Loyola Campus)
Department of Psychology
7141 Sherbrooke Street West
Concordia University
Montréal, Québec
Canada H4B 1R6
Phone 514-848-2424 - ext. 2232
Fax 514-848-4545
almeida@alcor.concordia.ca

Areas of Research Interest

The Representation of Concepts
Lexical Representation and Processing
Sentence Processing
The Language-Vision Interface
Foundations of Cognitive Science
For more information, check the Psycholinguistics and Cognition Lab page
Research in the lab is also associated with these Centers: CSLP, CRIR, CRIUGM, QBIN

Teaching

2011-2012, Winter: Making Sense (PSYC 465M) [Moodle]
2010-2011, Fall: Fundamentals of Cognition (PSYC 364); Winter: Language (PSYC 465) [Moodle]
2009-2010, Winter: Cognitive Neuroscience of Concepts and Categories (PSYC 725) [Moodle]
2009-2010, Fall: Concepts & Categories (PSYC 463) [access via Moodle]
2008-2009, Winter: Cognition II: Concepts and Categories (PSYC 353) [access via Moodle]
1999-2009, Fall or Winter: Cognition I (PSYC 352) [new site on Moodle]
2005-2006, Winter: Special Topic Seminar: Memory (PSYC 721) (with Karen Li)
2005-2006, Fall, Winter: Cognitive Science Area Seminar (PSYC 670/845) (with all Cognitive Science area faculty)
2004-2005, Fall: Cognition II: Language & Concepts (PSYC 353)
2003-2004, Winter: Psychology of Language and Communication (PSYC 395)
2002-2003, Winter: Language and the Brain (SCOL 360B)
2002-2004, Winter: Perception and Cognition in Daily Life (PSYC 298W) (2004: PSYC 249)
2000-2001, Winter: Cognition II: Topics in Cognitive Science (PSYC 353)
1999-2000, Winter: Cognition II: Language & Concepts (PSYC 353)
1997-1999: University of Alberta, Department of Linguistics
1995-1997: Rutgers University, Department of Psychology

Recent invited talks

Rutgers Center for Cognitive Science, Rutgers University, December, 2011
Conference on Logical Metonymy, University of Stuttgart, September, 2011
Centro de Lingüística, University of Lisbon, October, 2010
Workshop on Word Meaning, University of Oslo, August, 2010
Biolinguistics Conference, Universite du Quebec a Montreal, May 2010
Psycholinguistics congress, Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, March 2010

Papers

de Almeida, R. G. & Riven, L. (2011, submitted, under review). Indeterminacy and the source of coercion effects: Minimal representations with pragmatic enrichment.
de Almeida, R. G., Riven, L., Manouilidou, C., Lungu, O., Dwivedi, V., Jarema, G., & Gillon, B. (2011, submitted, under review). Resolving indeterminacy pragmatically: An fMRI study on 'coercion'.
Roncero, C., Ashby, J., & de Almeida, R. G. (2011, submitted, under review). Metaphors are not (like) similes: Evidence from eye-movements.
de Almeida, R. G., Manouilidou, C., Roncero, C., Riven, L. (2010, submitted, under review). Three tales of semantic decomposition: Causatives, coercion, and metaphors. [.pdf | draft]
Leitão, M. M., Gadelha, L., & de Almeida, R. G. (2010, submitted, under review). Looking for coercion effects in Brazilian Poruguese. [.pdf | draft]
de Almeida, R. G., Di Nardo, J. C., & von Grunau, M. W. (2010, submitted, under review). Understanding sentences in dynamic scenes. [.pdf | draft]
Manouilidou, C. & de Almeida, R. G. (2010, submitted, under review). On the psychological reality of verb typologies: Contrasting the roles of internal strucutre and argument realization. [.pdf | draft]
Roncero, C., de Almeida, R. G., Smyth, R., & Kennedy, J.M. (2010, submitted; under review). The similar productions, but distinct interpretations, of metaphors and similes: Internet and reading-time evidence. [.pdf | draft]
Pollatsek, A., Drieghe, D., Stockall, L., & de Almeida, R. G. (2010). The interpretation of ambiguous trimorphemic words in sentence context. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 17, 88-94. [.pdf | uncorrected proofs]
Manouilidou, C., de Almeida, R. G., Schwartz, G., & Nair, N. P. V. (2009). Thematic roles in Alzheimer’s disease: Hierarchy violations in psychological predicates. Journal of Neurolinguistics, 22, 167-186. [.pdf | uncorrected proofs]
Manouilidou, C. & de Almeida, R. G. (2009). Canonicity in argument realization and verb semantic deficits in Alzheimer's disease. In S. Featherston & S. Winkler (Eds.). Process and Product in Empirical Linguistics. Berlin: Mouton De Gruyter. [.pdf | uncorrected proofs]
Derwing, B. L. & de Almeida, R. G. (2009). Non-chronometric experiments in linguistics. In Eddington, D. (Ed.). Experimental and Quantitative Linguistics. Munich: Lincom. [.pdf | early draft]
de Almeida, R. G. & Dwivedi, V. D. (2008). Coercion without lexical decomposition: Type-shifting effects revisited. Canadian Journal of Linguistics, 53, 301-328. [.pdf]
de Almeida, R. G. (2007). Cognitive science as paradigm of interdisciplinarity: The case of lexical concepts. In J. Audy & M. Morosini (Eds.) Interdisciplinarity in Science and at the University. Porto Alegre, EdiPUCRS. [.pdf | proofs]
de Almeida, R. G. (2006). On the status of "linguistic psychology" and the language faculty. In G. Wiebe, G. Libben, T. Priestly, R. Smyth, & S. Wang (Eds.), Phonology, Morphology, and the Empirical Imperative: Papers in Honour of Bruce Derwing . Taipei: Crane Publishing [.pdf | draft]
Mobayyen, F. & de Almeida, R. G. (2005). The influence of semantic and morphological complexity of verbs on sentence recall: Implications for the nature of conceptual representation and category-specific deficits. Brain and Cognition, 57, 168-171. [.pdf | proofs]
Lacroix, G. L., Constantinescu, I., Cousineau, D., de Almeida, R. G., Segalowitz, N., & von Grunau, M. W. (2005). Attentional blink differences between adolescent dyslexic and normal readers. Brain and Cognition, 57, 115-119. [.pdf | uncorrected proofs]
de Almeida, R. G. & Libben, G. (2005). Changing morphological structures: The effect of sentence context on the interpretation of structurally ambiguous English trimorphemic words. Language and Cognitive Processes, 20, 373-394. [.pdf ] [ Also in: R. Frost, J. Grainger & K. Rastle (Eds.) Current Issues in Morphological Processing . London: Psychology Press]
Derwing, B. L. & de Almeida, R. G. (2005). Métodos experimentais em lingüística. In M. Maia & I. Finger (Eds.), Processamento da Linguagem. Pelotas: Educat. [.pdf | draft]
Lacroix, G., Segalowitz, N., von Grünau, M. W., Gunrsey, R., G. de Almeida, R. G., Borokhovski, E., Wada, N., & Constantinescu, I. (2005). Sciences cognitives appliqués et habilités langagières de base. In Pierre, S. (Ed.) Developpement, Integration et Evaluation des Technologies de Formation et D'apprentissage-- D.I.V.A. Montreal, Presses Internationales Polytechnique.
de Almeida, R. G. (2004). The effect of context on the processing of type-shifting verbs. Brain and Language, 90, 249-261.[.pdf]
de Almeida, R. G. & Libben, G. (2002) Compound prelexical decomposition: Evidence from a masked priming paradigm. Folia Linguistica, 36, 97-115. [.pdf].
Segalowitz, N. & de Almeida, R. G. (2002). Conceptual representation of verbs in bilinguals: Semantic field effects and a second language performance paradox. Brain and Language, 81, 517-531. [.pdf].
Libben, G. & de Almeida, R. G. (2002). Is there a morphological parser? In S. Bendjaballah, W. U. Dressler, O. E. Pfeiffer & M. D. Voeikova (Eds.) Morphology 2000. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. [.pdf].

de Almeida, R. G. (2001). Conceptual deficits without features: A view from atomism. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 24(3): 482-483. [.pdf].
de Almeida, R. G. (1999) What do category-specific semantic deficits tell us about the representation of lexical concepts? Brain and Language, 68, 241-248. [.pdf].
Libben, G., Derwing, B., & de Almeida, R. G. (1999) Ambiguous Novel Compounds and Models of Morphological Parsing. Brain and Language, 68, 378-386. [.pdf].

PhD Dissertation

de Almeida, R. G. (1999) The Representation of Lexical Concepts: A Psycholinguistic Inquiry. Rutgers University (Department of Psychology / Center for Cognitive Science) New Brunswick, NJ. (Supervisor: Jerry A. Fodor) [abridged version in .pdf]

Selected Conference Presentations

Manouilidou, C. & de Almeida, R. G. (2009). On the psychological reality of verb typologies. Paper presented at the Verb Typologies conference. Ghent, Belgium, February.
Stockall, L, de Almeida, R. G., von Grünau, M. W., Guay , A., Petropoulou, A. & Sodo, D. (2008). Early compound constituent processing by the two hemispheres: Behavioral and MEG evidence. Paper presented at the International Morphology Meeting. Vienna, February.
Manouilidou, C., de Almeida, R. G., Nair , V., & Schwartz, G. (2008). Verb thematic roles and thematic hierarchy: Evidence from the performance of Alzheimer's Patients. Paper presented at Linguistic Evidence Conference. Tübingen, Germany, January.
Di Sciullo, A-M., de Almeida, R.G., Manouilidou, C., & Dwivedi, V.D. (2007). This poster reads clearly: Processing English middle constructions. Poster presented at the at the Architectures and Mechanisms of Language Processing conference. Turku, Finland, August 25.
Roncero, C., Smyth, R., Kennedy, J.M., & de Almeida, R. G. (2007) Online processing differences between metaphors and similies. Poster presented at the at the Architectures and Mechanisms of Language Processing conference. Turku, Finland, August 24.
Libben, G., Borgwaldt, S., Bolger, P., Kemps, R., de Almeida, R. G. (2007). Ambiguous roots in context. Paper presented at the Fifth International Workshop on Morphological Processing. Marseille, July.
Lacroix, G. L., Constantinescu, I., Segalowitz, N., de Almeida, R. G., & von Grünau, M. W. (2006). The relation between semantic memory and attentional blink. 47th Annual Meeting of the Psychonomic Society. Houston, TX, November.
de Almeida, R. G. & Dwivedi, V. (2006) Are lexical causatives semantically complex? Evidence from sentence recall and acceptability judgment. Poster presented at the Fifth International Conference on the Mental Lexicon, Montreal, October.
de Almeida, R. G., Novaes, C., & Libben, G. (2006). Processing unambiguous trimorphemic words in (Brazilian) Portuguese. Poster presented at the Fifth International Conference on the Mental Lexicon, Montreal, October.
Mobayyen, F., de Almeida, R. G., Kehayia, E., Schwartz, G., & Nair, V. (2006). The organization of semantic memory: Evidence from an investigation of verb-specific semantic dissociations in dementia of the Alzheimer type. Poster presented at the Fifth International Conference on the Mental Lexicon, Montreal, October.
de Almeida, R. G., Houston, S., Kehayia, E., & Libben, G. (2006). Processing ambiguous trimorphemic words in context: Evidence from aphasia. Paper presented at the VII Science of Aphasia conference. Alghero, Italy, August.
de Almeida, R. G., Di Nardo, J., & von Grünau, M. W. (2005). Understanding sentences in dynamic scenes: probing the locus of the interaction between language and vision. Talk given at the 13 th European Conference on Eye Movements. Bern, Switzerland, August.
Borgwaldt, S., de Almeida, R. G., Kemps, R., & Libben, G. (2005). Barking up the wrong tree: pre-lexical morphological parsing in sentences. Paper presented at the Annual meeting of the Canadian Society for Brain, Behavior, and Cognitive Science. Montreal, June.
de Almeida, R. G. (2004). Type-shifting verbs and semantic (de)composition. Paper presented at the (Language) Interfaces conference. Pescara, Italy, July.
de Almeida, R. G., Madon, Z., van de Velde, C., Di Nardo, J., Godfrey, J., & von Grünau, M. W., (2004). Verb-driven shifts of attention during sentence comprehension and dynamic scene processing. Journal of Vision, 4 (8), 828a.
de Almeida, R. G., van de Velde, C., von Grünau, M. W., & Galera, C. (2003). (Eye-)tracking the time course of visual and linguistic integration: the effect of verb-conceptual restrictions. Journal of Vision, 3 (9), 308a.
de Almeida, R. G., van de Velde, C., von Grunau, M. W., Galera, C., Madon, Z., & Godfrey, J. (2003). The interaction between verbs and objects in a modular architecture. Poster presented at the 12th European Conference on Eye Movements. Dundee, Scotland, August.
Fernandez, E., Fodor, J. D., de Almeida, R. G., Bradley, D. & Quinn, D. (2003). Relative clause attachment in Canadian French: Prosodic boundary or F0-matching? Poster presented at the Sixteenth CUNY Conference on Human Sentence Processing. Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, March.

Mobayyen, F. & de Almeida, R. G. (2002). Memory for verbs: Recall as a function of semantic and morphological complexity. Poster presented at the Third International Conference on the Mental Lexicon. Banff, October.
Constantinescu, I., & de Almeida, R. G. (2002). Sentence processing in learning disabled adolescents: The effect of verb transitivity preference. Poster presented at the Theoretical and Experimental Neuropsychology (TENNET) conference. Montreal, June.
Mobayyen, F. & de Almeida, R. G. (2002). Semantic memory organization for verbs: Proactive Interference as a function of content and structure. Poster presented at the annual meeting of the Canadian Society for Brain, Behavior and Cognitive Science. Vancouver, June.
van de Velde, C., de Almeida, R. G., von Grunau, M. W., & Galera, C. (2002). Tracking the time course of visual-linguistic integration: Verbs in search of their objects. Poster presented at the annual meeting of the Canadian Society for Brain, Behavior and Cognitive Science. Vancouver, June.
Constantinescu, I. & de Almeida, R. G. (2002). The effect of verb transitivity preferences in sentence comprehension by LD readers. Poster presented at the Fifteenth Annual CUNY Conference on Human Sentence Processing. New York, March 22.
de Almeida, R. G., van de Velde, C., von Grunau, M. W., & Galera, C. (2001) Looking at objects of verbs: Visual representations help only post-linguistic operations during sentence comprehension. Paper presented at the Architectures and Mechanisms of Language Processing conference. Saarbrucken, Germany, September 19.
Constantinescu, I. & de Almeida, R. G. (2001) Verb processing during sentence comprehension by LD adolescents. Poster presented at the Canadian Society for Brain, Behavior and Cognitive Science Conference. Quebec City, June 25.
Turbide, J. & de Almeida, R. G. (2001) Sentence propositional complexity as a probe into the nature of causative concepts. Poster presented at the Canadian Society for Brain, Behavior and Cognitive Science Conference. Quebec City, June 25.

Libben, G. & de Almeida R. G. (2001) Activation and conflict resolution in prelexical morphological parsing. Paper presented at the Morphology Workshop, Max Plank Institute for Psycholinguistics. Nijmegen, The Netherlands, June 13.

van de Velde, C., de Almeida, R. G., Galera, C., von Grunau, M. W. (2001). Monitoring saccades during a visual search task to uncover the time-course of visual-linguistic integration. Poster presented at ARVO (Association for Research in Vision and Ophthalmology) Annual Meeting. Fort Lauderdale, May 2.

Libben, G. & de Almeida, R. G. (2000). Ambiguous suffixed words and the architecture of the mental lexicon. Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the Alberta Linguistic Society. Banff, October 28.
de Almeida, R. G., van de Velde, C., Galera, C., & von Grunau, M. (2000). Looking for objects of verbs: the use of visual information in the access to conceptual-structure representations. Paper presented at the Second International Conference on the Mental Lexicon. Montreal, October 18.

Tesolin, S. B. & de Almeida, R. G. (2000).Accessing arguments and conceptual fillers of verbs. Poster presented at the Second International Conference on the Mental Lexicon. Montreal, October 18.

Segalowitz, N. & de Almeida, R. G. (2000). Lexical-conceptual representation in bilinguals: semantic field effects in verb categorization. Paper presented at the Second International Conference on the Mental Lexicon. Montreal, October 19.

de Almeida, R. G. & Libben, G. (2000). Resolving morphological ambiguity in sentence context. Poster presented at the Architectures and Mechanisms of Language Processing conference. University of Leiden, The Netherlands, September 20.

de Almeida, R. G., & Libben, G. (2000) The effect of constituent disruption in English compound recognition. 9th International Morphology Meeting, Workshop on Compound Processing. University of Vienna, Austria, February.

McEwen, S., Libben, G., & de Almeida (1999) Do we really access multimorphemic representations during word recognition? Linguistic Association of Canada and the United States (LACUS) conference. University of Alberta, Edmonton, August.

de Almeida, R. G. (1998) Lexical Concepts do not Decompose: Evidence from Verbs. Architectures and Mechanisms for Language Processing conference. Freiburg, Germany, September.

de Almeida, R. G. & Libben, G. (1998) Morphological Decomposition: Effects of Semantic Ambiguity and Affixation. Architectures and Mechanisms for Language Processing conference. Freiburg, Germany, September.

de Almeida, R. G. (1998) Causatives and Lexical Atomism. Canadian Linguistics Association Annual Meeting. University of Ottawa, Ottawa, May.

de Almeida, R. G. & Fodor, J. A. (1998) Lexical Concepts in Sentence Comprehension: Evidence for Nondecompositionality. Eleventh Annual CUNY Conference on Human Sentence Processing. New Brunswick, NJ, March.

de Almeida, R. G. & Fodor, J. A. (1996-a). Still Looking for Structural Complexity Effects in Lexical Concepts. In G. W. Cottrell (Ed.), Proceedings of the Eighteenth Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

de Almeida, R. G. & Fodor, J. A. (1996-b) Looking for Structural Complexity Effects in Lexical Concepts. Ninth Annual CUNY Conference on Human Sentence Processing. New York, NY, March.

Research in Progress

(For more information, check the Psycholinguistics and Cognition Lab page)

Varia

Concordia University Department of Psychology