Matt Wagers

About

I am a PhD candidate in the Department of Linguistics at the University of Maryland, and a member of the Cognitive Neuroscience of Language Laboratory. I am interested most broadly in how hierarchically structured representations are encoded biologically. I study linguistic representation and structure-building using the tools of experimental psycholinguistics and computational models. I am interested in the use of time course measures to understand how structure is encoded and navigated in real-time.

Mapping a sequence of words onto an interpretation seems to involve highly-ordered representations (whether they correspond to phrase markers, or logical forms, or deduction structures, or whatever), that are both "long and deep." I am interested in the computational problem this poses for current network models of computation or associative models of human memory. How much structure can be explicitly represented? And how is attention shifted from one part of a representation to another in a structure-sensitive fashion? How grammatically faithful are the representations typically constructed in real-time, and how much 'faking' can we get away with?

I have on-going research projects on the resolution of A' dependencies (filler-gap dependencies), agreement processing, and the format of combinatorial memories. In sentence comprehension, I am currently investigating the dissociation of content-dependent and content-independent processes, the scope of structural interference in comprehension, and whether children are active comprehenders in the way adults are. I am conducting work on whether combinatorial memories "wear their parts on their sleeve" or are more holistic in nature. I have also written on how and when linguistic and psycholinguistic theories are mutually informative.

I am also interested in top-down derivational models in syntax and theories of structural optimization and organization in the brain. In the past, I have done research on structural optimization principles in the organization of neocortical white matter and adult neurogenesis in primates.

I'm originally from North Carolina (a little town called Ellerbe). I'm an alumnus of the North Carolina School of Science and Math (c/o 99), a public, residental high school in Durham, NC, which is an affiliate of the UNC system, and Princeton University. Now I live in Washington DC. Along the way, I've been fortunate to work with many wonderful people, like my undergraduate thesis advisor Sam Wang.

My supervisor is Colin Phillips.

Education

• UNIVERSITY OF MARYLAND (College Park, MD): Ph.D. student, Linguistics, 2003 -- present
  University Graduate Fellow 2003-4, 2005-6, Wylie Dissertation Fellow 2008
  Dissertation: The structure of memory meets memory for structure
  Expected completion date: Spring 2008

  PRINCETON UNIVERSITY (Princeton, NJ): A.B. Molecular Biology cum laude, Certificate in Neuroscience, Linguistics, 2003.

  Thesis: Optimization of neocortical white matter: constraints of space and time [ abstract ]

Teaching

• LING499A: Seminar in Psycholinguistics: Sentence Cognition, Fall 2006: [web site ]
• LING240: Language and Mind, Summer 2005: [web site ]
• TA'ing-- LING200: Introduction to Linguistics, Spring 2005, 2007; LING240: Language and Mind, Fall 2004

Papers

• Wagers M & Phillips C, Multiple dependencies and the role of the grammar in real-time comprehension. Submitted. [Draft copy PDF]
• Wagers M, Lau E, & Phillips C, Agreement attraction in comprehension: representations and processes. Submitted. [Draft copy PDF]
• Wang SS-H, Shultz JR, Burish MJ, Harrison KH, Hof PR, Towns LC, Wagers MW, Wyatt KD. Functional trade-offs in white matter axonal scaling. J Neurosci 28: 4047-56. [ Pubmed ]
• Phillips C & Wagers M (2007) Relating Structure and Time in Linguistics and Psycholinguistics. In G. Gaskell, ed., Oxford Handbook of Psycholinguistics, Oxford University Press. 50pp [ PDF ]
• Phillips C & Wagers M (2006) Constituent structure and the binding problem. Behav Brain Sci 29: 81-2. (commentary on target article by van der Velde & de Kamps) [ PDF ]
• Gould E, Vail N, Wagers M, Gross CG (2001) Adult-generated hippocampal and neocortical neurons in macaques have atransient existence. Proc Natl Acad Sci USA 98: 10910-7. [ abstract ]

Presentations, proceedings, seminar papers etc.

• Wagers M, Lau E, Stroud C, & Phillips C (2008) Agreement and the subject of confusion, Talk to be given at the CUNY Sentence Processing Conference, March, 2008, Chapel Hill, NC.
• Lau E, Wagers M, & Phillips C (2008) Early and late effects of agreement attraction in comprehension, Poster to be given at the CUNY Sentence Processing Conference, March, 2008, Chapel Hill, NC.
• Wagers M, Lau E, & Phillips C (2008) Agreement attraction in comprehension: representations and processes, Talk given at the Linguistic Society of America Annual Conference, Chicago, IL.
• Lau E, Wagers M, & Phillips C (2007) How (not) to get confused in comprehension: the case of agreement attraction, Talk given at the Architectures and Mechanisms for Language Conference, 13, Turku, Finland.
  [ slides PPT ]
• Caputo-Nimbark R, Hines P, Larson R, Levy J, Longini A, Quon H, Smith C, Wagers M (2007) The impact of resolved filler-gap dependencies on later dependency formation. Poster given at CUNY 2007, San Diego, CA.
  [ abstract | poster PDF] This research is largely comprised by the LING499A Fall 2007 final project.
• Wagers M & Phillips C (2007) Content-dependent and content-independent processes in filler-gap resolution. Poster given at CUNY 2007, San Diego, CA. [ abstract | poster PDF ]
• Wagers M & Lau E (2006) Non-intervening attraction and the computation of agreement in comprehension. Poster presentation given at AMLaP 2006, Nijmegen, The Netherlands [ abstract PDF 2pp | poster PDF (324K) ]
• Wagers M (2006) (Re)active dependency formation: the scope of active filling and the representational basis of sentence processing. [ paper (65 pp; 1.3Mb) | Table 2 (96Kb) ] LING895 (PhD Qualifying Paper) version 3, 28 May 2006
• Wagers M & Phillips C (2006) Re-active filling. Talk given at the 19th Annual Cuny Sentence Processing Conference, New York, NY. [ slides PDF ]
• Wagers M, Functional compositionality in sentence processing: the limitations of holistic operations on linguistic structure. December 2005 seminar paper. 15 pp [ PDF (452K)]

  Discusses the implications of holistic representations on sentence processing architecture and demonstrates some limitations via simulations. Provides an introduction to the binding challenge of compositional structure, the solution provided by Plate's Holographic Reduced Representations, and the computational system of Neumann.

• Wagers M & Phillips C (2005) Fillers after the gap. Poster presented at 18th Annual CUNY Sentence Processing Conference, Tucson AZ. [ abstract | pdf ]
• Shultz JR, Harrison KH, Wagers MW, Burish MJ, Wang, SS-H. (2003) Speed limits in mammalian brains: scaling constraints from biophysics. Society for Neuroscience.
• Gould E, Vail N, Wagers M, Gross CG (2001) Adult-generated hippocampal and neocortical neurons in macaques have a transient existence. Proc Natl Acad Sci USA 98: 10910-7. [ abstract ]

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