About

Anna Papafragou is a Professor of Linguistics and the Director of the Language & Cognition Lab at the University of Pennsylvania. Her research focuses on understanding how the human mind enables language acquisition and use across diverse communities. The lab combines a variety of experimental methods to study the nature, growth, and use of language, with a particular interest in the nature, acquisition, and processing of linguistic meaning and how meaning interacts with context during human learning and communication. Additionally, the research explores the relationship between language and other cognitive systems in both children and adults. The Language & Cognition Lab conducts experiments in various settings including the lab, local daycares, museums, and international sites such as Greece, Germany, Turkey, Korea, China, and indigenous Mayan communities in Mexico. The lab has recently expanded its research to include online studies involving both children and adults. Their work has received funding from prominent organizations such as the National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation. The lab is part of the Department of Linguistics at the University of Pennsylvania and is integrated within a vibrant cognitive science community, participating in interdisciplinary groups such as MindCore, ILST, SCEW, SBSI, and the Penn Child Development Labs consortium.

Research topics

• Computer Science
• Psychology
• Linguistics
• Natural Language Processing
• Cognitive psychology
• Philosophy
• Communication
• Algorithm
• Neuroscience
• Mathematics

Selected publications

• Children Use an Agent's Goals to Determine Event Culmination

  Figshare · 2026-04-07

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  Do young children use intentionality to place event boundaries? In Experiment 1, 4–5-year-old children and adults in the U.S. learned about an agent’s goal (e.g. “Jessie wants to eat an orange with her breakfast to make it healthier”), saw an image of a partly complete outcome (e.g. a partly peeled orange) and were asked whether an event had occurred (“Did she peel the orange?”). Adults, but not children, were more likely to respond positively if the outcome satisfied the agent’s goal. In Experiment 2, 4–5-year-old children and adults in the U.S. watched videos of two people in a social interaction. Both groups were more likely to accept that one character completed an event for the other, even if the visual outcome was incomplete, if the beneficiary’s goal had been satisfied. These results support theories of event cognition that integrate multiple sources of information to explain how events are represented by both young and more mature minds.

  PublisherDOI

• Dwell Times Reveal Effects of Abstract Event Type on Attention Allocation

  OSF Preprints (OSF Preprints) · 2026-01-04

  other1st authorCorresponding

  The human mind can segment continuous streams of activity in the world into meaningful, discrete units known as events. However, not all events are created equal. We draw a distinction between bounded events (e.g., folding a handkerchief) that have a predictable structure that develops in distinct stages (i.e., a beginning, middle, and end) and a well-defined endpoint, and unbounded events (e.g., waving a handkerchief) that lack such a well-defined structure and endpoint. We predict that event boundedness affects attention allocation patterns over the course of the event. Here, we tested this prediction using a dwell time paradigm by measuring the time participants spent on each still frame of an activity. We found that event endpoints attracted increased attention compared to midpoints; importantly, this increase was significantly greater when people viewed bounded events compared to unbounded events. In addition, event endpoints attracted increased attention compared to event beginnings, but this pattern also interacted with event boundedness (Experiment 1). These results replicated even when a linguistic preview of the events was introduced (Experiment 2). We conclude that abstract internal event structure (specifically, event boundedness) affects attention allocation during online event apprehension.

  Publisher

• Representation of event boundedness in English and Mandarin speakers

  Cognition · 2026-01-09

  articleSenior author
  PublisherDOI

• Children Use an Agent's Goals to Determine Event Culmination

  Figshare · 2026-04-07

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  Do young children use intentionality to place event boundaries? In Experiment 1, 4–5-year-old children and adults in the U.S. learned about an agent’s goal (e.g. “Jessie wants to eat an orange with her breakfast to make it healthier”), saw an image of a partly complete outcome (e.g. a partly peeled orange) and were asked whether an event had occurred (“Did she peel the orange?”). Adults, but not children, were more likely to respond positively if the outcome satisfied the agent’s goal. In Experiment 2, 4–5-year-old children and adults in the U.S. watched videos of two people in a social interaction. Both groups were more likely to accept that one character completed an event for the other, even if the visual outcome was incomplete, if the beneficiary’s goal had been satisfied. These results support theories of event cognition that integrate multiple sources of information to explain how events are represented by both young and more mature minds.

  PublisherDOI

• Children Use an Agent's Goals to Determine Event Culmination

  Figshare · 2026-04-07

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  Do young children use intentionality to place event boundaries? In Experiment 1, 4–5-year-old children and adults in the U.S. learned about an agent’s goal (e.g. “Jessie wants to eat an orange with her breakfast to make it healthier”), saw an image of a partly complete outcome (e.g. a partly peeled orange) and were asked whether an event had occurred (“Did she peel the orange?”). Adults, but not children, were more likely to respond positively if the outcome satisfied the agent’s goal. In Experiment 2, 4–5-year-old children and adults in the U.S. watched videos of two people in a social interaction. Both groups were more likely to accept that one character completed an event for the other, even if the visual outcome was incomplete, if the beneficiary’s goal had been satisfied. These results support theories of event cognition that integrate multiple sources of information to explain how events are represented by both young and more mature minds.

  PublisherDOI

• Linguistic and conceptual encoding of transfer events in English and Mandarin Chinese speakers

  Glossa Psycholinguistics · 2026-05-13

  articleOpen access

  This study investigates how English and Mandarin Chinese speakers linguistically encode transfer events (e.g., give, take). We test the hypothesis that transfer events, like motion events, involve Goal and Source paths and are therefore subject to a Goal bias, such that Goals are encoded more prominently than Sources. Across two experiments, speakers of both languages described transfer events. In both languages, descriptions showed a robust Goal bias: speakers mentioned Goals more often than Sources, even when controlling for potential Agent–Subject mapping effects, and they were more likely to use canonical Goal-encoding devices for Goals than canonical Source-encoding devices for Sources. These findings reveal a cross-linguistically reliable preference for Goals in transfer-event descriptions, consistent with the possibility that Goal prominence reflects general principles of event message planning. More broadly, the results provide support for accounts that extend Goal/Source path representations beyond spatial language.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Children Use an Agent's Goals to Determine Event Culmination

  Journal of Cognition and Development · 2026-04-07

  articleSenior author
  PublisherDOI

• Dwell Times Reveal Effects of Abstract Event Type on Attention Allocation

  Cognitive Science · 2026-01-01

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  The human mind can segment continuous streams of activity in the world into meaningful, discrete units known as events. However, not all events are created equal. We draw a distinction between bounded events (e.g., folding a handkerchief) that have a predictable structure that develops in distinct stages (i.e., a beginning, middle, and end) and a well-defined endpoint, and unbounded events (e.g., waving a handkerchief) that lack such a well-defined structure and endpoint. We predict that event boundedness affects attention allocation patterns over the course of the event. Here, we tested this prediction using a dwell time paradigm by measuring the time participants spent on each still frame of an activity. We found that event endpoints attracted increased attention compared to midpoints; importantly, this increase was significantly greater when people viewed bounded events compared to unbounded events. In addition, event endpoints attracted increased attention compared to event beginnings, but this pattern also interacted with event boundedness (Experiment 1). These results replicated even when a linguistic preview of the events was introduced (Experiment 2). We conclude that abstract internal event structure (specifically, event boundedness) affects attention allocation during online event apprehension.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Distributional signatures of superordinate nouns

  Language Acquisition · 2025-01-23

  articleSenior author
  PublisherDOI

• The Unforgettable “Mel”: Pragmatic Inferences Affect How Children Acquire and Remember Word Meanings

  Developmental Science · 2025-03-23 · 2 citations

  articleOpen access

  Children can acquire novel word meanings by using pragmatic cues. However, previous literature has frequently focused on in-the-moment word-to-meaning mappings, not delayed retention of novel vocabulary. Here, we examine how children use pragmatics as they learn and retain novel words. Thirty-three younger children (mean age: 5.0, range: 4.0-6.0, 21 girls; 85% White) and 33 older children (mean age: 7.5, range: 6.1-9.2, 16 girls, 66% White) participated. During learning, the sound-meaning mapping was either readily available (Direct Mapping condition) or required pragmatic inference (Inference condition). Children's word retention was tested immediately after learning and after 10-15 min of delay. Across both conditions, children performed similarly during learning. There were no significant differences between conditions for either immediate recall or retention in younger children. Importantly, retention (but not immediate recall) in older children demonstrated a significant advantage for the Inference over the Direct Mapping condition. Word retention in the Inference condition was predicted by age and mediated by children's ToM ability. We conclude that children can successfully acquire and retain meanings via pragmatic inference; moreover, the effects of active pragmatic computation on meaning retention grow with development. Such a developmental difference in meaning consolidation is possibly mediated by children's developing ToM skills.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

Recent grants

• Evidential Categories in Language and Cognition

  NSF · $240k · 2010–2016

• Event Structure in Language and Cognition

  NSF · $482k · 2021–2024

• NIH Grant F32MH065020

  NIH · $125k · 2004

• Mapping Events onto Language

  NSF · $375k · 2007–2012

• NIH Grant R01HD055498

  NIH · $1.3M · 2014

Frequent coauthors

• John C. Trueswell

  University of Pennsylvania

  32 shared

• Ercenur Ünal

  Özyeğin University

  19 shared

• Lila R. Gleitman

  University of Pennsylvania

  15 shared

• Myrto Grigoroglou

  University of Toronto

  11 shared

• Ann Bunger

  Indiana University Bloomington

  11 shared

• Yue Ji

  Beijing Institute of Technology

  11 shared

• Sarah Fairchild

  University of Delaware

  9 shared

• Özge Öztürk

  University of Sheffield

  9 shared

Labs

• Department of Linguistics, University of PennsylvaniaPI

Education

• Ph.D., Experimental semantics and pragmatics, language acquisition, language and cognition

  University College London

  1998