Professor Dr Antje S. Meyer

Research Priorities: Psychology of language, conversation, individual differences on processes of speech and comprehension, attention
Antje Meyer is an experimental psychologist and psycholinguist. She researches several aspects of the psychology of language. She investigates how humans employ language in various contexts (for example in every-day dialogues) as well as how and why humans differ in their verbal abilities and habits.
Together with a team of psychologists, cognitive scientists, and linguists, she researches how humans comprehend written or spoken statements and the way they write and speak. A central question is how speakers use language in naturally occurring conversations. How can people listen and at the same time prepare for a response? How do people attune themselves to a conversation, when, for example, they adjust to speakers with an uncommon dialect or when they adapt the tempo of their speech. Another main question of the team is how individual differences in language style and ability develop: do they correspond to general cognitive abilities and intelligence or is there additionally a specific linguistic talent?
To answer these questions, Antje Meyer’s team applies a broad spectrum of methods, amongst them the analysis of everyday conversations, computer simulations, behavioural experiments, surveys of individual differences, as well as neurobiological techniques. Even if Antje Meyer is concerned with fundamental research, many of her insights have a practical use, such as the development of language tests or teaching materials.