Susan Brennan

About

Susan E. Brennan is a cognitive scientist who studies the psychology of language use, particularly how people adapt their speaking and understanding in conversational contexts. Her research includes examining how individuals modify their speech and comprehension strategies to facilitate effective communication, with a focus on interactive spoken dialogue. She is interested in how people adopt their speaking styles and understandings to their conversational partners and the variations that occur in speech. Her recent interests involve the neural circuits that support interactive communication, and she also studies the human use of technology, especially speech and language interfaces to computers. Brennan has developed computational models of caricature and has worked on projects such as the Walking Around Project, the Adaptive Spoken Dialogue Project, and the Shared Gaze Project. Her work emphasizes the importance of eye-tracking in language processing and communication, and she explores how gesture focus groups and other non-verbal cues contribute to effective interaction. Brennan's background includes previous research in psychology, cognitive and empirical approaches to discourse, and the study of language and gesture. She is a professor in the Department of Psychology at Stony Brook University, where she also holds a joint appointment in the Department of Linguistics.

Research topics

• Computer Science
• Psychology
• Political Science
• Public relations
• Linguistics
• Meteorology
• Human–computer interaction
• Geography
• Communication
• Cognitive psychology

Selected publications

• Language in dialogue: when confederates might be hazardous to your data

  Psychonomic Bulletin & Review · 2012-11-26 · 155 citations

  reviewSenior author
  PublisherDOI

• Speakers adapt gestures to addressees' knowledge: implications for models of co-speech gesture

  Language Cognition and Neuroscience · 2013-05-29 · 85 citations

  articleSenior author

  Are gesturing and speaking shaped by similar communicative constraints? In an experiment, we teased apart communicative from cognitive constraints upon multiple dimensions of speech-accompanying gestures in spontaneous dialogue. Typically, speakers attenuate old, repeated or predictable information but not new information. Our study distinguished what was new or old for speakers from what was new or old for (and shared with) addressees. In 20 groups of 3 naive participants, speakers retold the s…

  PublisherDOI

• Phonetic adaptation in non-native spoken dialogue: Effects of priming and audience design

  Journal of Memory and Language · 2015-02-14 · 44 citations

  article
  PublisherDOI

• Brains in dialogue: decoding neural preparation of speaking to a conversational partner

  Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience · 2017-02-15 · 37 citations

  articleOpen access

  In dialogue, language processing is adapted to the conversational partner. We hypothesize that the brain facilitates partner-adapted language processing through preparatory neural configurations (task sets) that are tailored to the conversational partner. In this experiment, we measured neural activity with functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) while healthy participants in the scanner (a) engaged in a verbal communication task with a conversational partner outside of the scanner, or (b)…

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• The Role of Metarepresentation in the Production and Resolution of Referring Expressions

  Frontiers in Psychology · 2016-07-27 · 36 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  In this paper we consider the potential role of metarepresentation-the representation of another representation, or as commonly considered within cognitive science, the mental representation of another individual's knowledge and beliefs-in mediating definite reference and common ground in conversation. Using dialogues from a referential communication study in which speakers conversed in succession with two different addressees, we highlight ways in which interlocutors work together to successful…

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

Recent grants

• ITR: Adaptive Spoken Dialog with Human and Computer Partners

  NSF · $1.5M · 2003–2008

Frequent coauthors

• Jeanne Glidden Prickett

  Holtec International (United States)

  13 shared

• John F. Knutson

  University of Iowa

  13 shared

• Pena Lubrica

  Holtec International (United States)

  13 shared

• Lenore Holte

  University of Iowa

  13 shared

• Claudia L. Knutson

  Holtec International (United States)

  13 shared

• Don C. Van Dyke

  University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics

  13 shared

• Randall J. Olson

  13 shared

• Justina O. Ohaeri

  State University of New York

  11 shared

Education

• Ph.D., Computer Science

  University of California, Berkeley

  1990

• M.S., Computer Science

  University of California, Berkeley

  1985

• B.S., Computer Science

  University of California, Berkeley

  1983

Awards & honors

• Dean's Award for Excellence in Service to Graduate Education…
• Chancellor's Research Recognition Award, The Research Founda…
• NSF Graduate Research Fellowship, Stanford University (1986-…
• American Can Company Full Scholarship, Cornell University (1…

Similar researchers at Stony Brook University

• Michael R. Douglash-91
• Miriam Rafailovichh-84
• Ramana V Davulurih-75