CaLiCo Lab
The CaLiCo Lab studies how language processing works, from comprehension to production to conversation. We use a variety of methods, including laboratory and web experiments as well as Bayesian, connectionist, and large language models.
Recent Papers
Jacobs, C. L., Hubbard, R. J., & Federmeier, K. D. (2025) Uncovering patterns of semantic predictability in sentence processing. doi: 10.1016/j.jml.2025.104653 [OSF 10.31234/osf.io/znkpg]
Jacobs, C. L., & MacDonald, M. C. (2024). Constraint satisfaction in large language models. Language, Cognition, and Neuroscience, 1-18. doi: 10.1080/23273798.2024.2364339
Salehi, A. & Jacobs, C.聽 L. (2024, June). The effect of model capacity and script diversity on subword tokenization for Soran卯 Kurdish. In Proceedings of SIGMORPHON 2024, North American Association for Computational Linguistics, Mexico City, Mexico. [ACL anthology link]
Mailhot, F., & Jacobs, C. L. (2024, June). Acoustic barycenters as phonological output targets. In Proceedings of SIGMORPHON 2024, North American Association for Computational Linguistics, Mexico City, Mexico. [ACL anthology link]
L贸pez Cortez, M., & Jacobs, C. L. (2023). Incorporating annotator uncertainty into representations of discourse relations. In Proceedings of SIGDIAL 2023, Prague, Czechia. [ACL anthology link]
L贸pez Cortez, M., & Jacobs, C. L. (2023). The distribution of discourse relations in an annotated corpus of spontaneous conversation. In Proceedings of the 4th Workshop on Computational Approaches to Discourse (CODI), Association for Computational Linguistics, Toronto, Canada. [ACL anthology link]
Sullivan, M. J., Yasin, M. N., & Jacobs, C. L. (2023). University at Buffalo at SemEval-2023 Task 11: MASDA鈥揗odelling Annotator Sensibilities through DisAggregation. In Proceedings of the 2nd Learning with Disagreements (Le-Wi-Di) Shared Task: System Papers, SemEval, Association for Computational Linguistics, Toronto, Canada. *Nominated for SemEval Best Paper Award [ACL anthology link]
Jacobs, C. L., & MacDonald, M. C. (2023). A chimpanzee by any other name: The contributions of utterance context and information density on word choice. Cognition, 230, 105265. doi: 10.1016/j.cognition.2022.105265
Recent Conference Presentations
Jacobs, C. L., Grobol, L., Hubbard, R. J., & Federmeier, K. D. (2024, June). Modeling evidence for non-competitive lexical selection in serial and sentence-final cloze. Poster presented at the International Workshop on Language Production. Marseille, France.
Bux贸-Lugo, A., & Jacobs, C. L. (2024, June). A neural sequence decoder model of phonological and semantic priming effects on whole-word phonetic duration. Poster presented at the International Workshop on Language Production. Marseille, France.
Mailhot, F., & Jacobs, C. L. (2024, June). Modeling exemplar production over human speech tokens with dynamic time warping and barycenter averaging. Poster to be presented at the 2024 Meeting of the Society for Computation in Linguistics. Irvine, California.
Jacobs, C. L., De Santo, A., & Grobol, L. (2024). Structural and interpretative factors in the processing of zeugma. Poster presented at the 37th Annual Conference on Human Sentence Processing.
Jacobs, C. L., Hubbard, R. J., & Federmeier, K. D. (2023, November). Quantifying the semantic heterogeneity of cloze responses. Talk presented at the 64th Annual Meeting of the Psychonomic Society, San Francisco, California.
Kochupurackal, A., Jacobs, C. L., Cohen-Goldberg, A. M. (2023, November). Serial order mechanisms in spoken and typed language production. Talk presented at the 64th Annual Meeting of the Psychonomic Society, San Francisco, California.
Hubbard, R. J., Jacobs, C. L., & Federmeier, K. D. (2023, September). Reassessing the role of the N400 as an index of linguistic prediction. Poster presented at the 2023 Annual Meeting of the Society for Psychophysical Research. New Orleans, Louisiana.
Jacobs, C. L., De Santo, A., & Grobol, L. (2023, March). Online and offline processing in zeugmatic constructions is partially sensitive to argument order. Poster presented at the 2023 Annual Meeting of the Human Sentence Processing Society. Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
Myers, B., Jacobs, C. L., Bux贸-Lugo, A., & Watson, D. G. (2023, March). Pinny or penny? Dialect differences and their effect on phonological encoding. Talk presented at the 2023 Annual Meeting of the Human Sentence Processing Society. Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
Members and Affiliates
PI
Dr. Cassandra Jacobs (cxjacobs@buffalo.edu)
Graduate affiliates
Ali Salehi (PhD advisee, Linguistics)
Bahareh Yousefzadeh (PhD advisee, Linguistics)
Candy Angulo Pando (PhD student, Linguistics)
Romina Marazzato Sparano (PhD co-advisee, Information Science)
Tianle Yang (PhD co-advisee, Linguistics)
Sarah MacDougall (PhD co-advisee, Psychology)
Alvin Tsang (MS student, Computer Science and Engineering)
Yash Rathi (MS student, Computer Science and Engineering)
Eldar Hamzic (MS student, Computer Science and Engineering)
Atharva Vikas Jadhav (MS student, Computer Science and Engineering)
Marie Leopold-Hooke (BS student, Computer Science and Engineering)
Yessica Quinonez (BS student, Computer Science and Engineering)
Collaborators
Ariel Cohen-Goldberg (Tufts University)
Brett Myers (University of Utah)
Aniello De Santo (University of Utah)
Morgan Grobol (Universit茅 Paris Nanterre)
Robert Hawkins (Stanford University)
Jess Mankewitz (University of Wisconsin - Madison)
Ryan Hubbard (University at Albany, State University of New York)
Maryellen MacDonald (University of Wisconsin - Madison)
Fred Mailhot (Dialpad, Inc.)
Steve Schwering (Vantage Labs)
Anna Taylor (Erasmus student, University of Malta/Saarbr眉cken)
Duane Watson (Vanderbilt University)
Undergraduate alumni
Sean Afridi (BS 2023, Computer Science and Engineering)
Rin Krivokrysenko (BS 2022, Computer Science and Engineering)
Graduate alumni
Magal铆 L贸pez Cortez (PhD 2024, Linguistics)
Michael Sullivan (PhD 2025, Linguistics)
Han Pham (MS student, Computational Linguistics)
Kayla Shames (PhD research assistant, Linguistics)
Akshay Sahai (MS 2022, Computer Science and Engineering)
Nasheed Yasin (MS 2023, Linguistics)
Sarah Sues (MS 2023, Linguistics)
Eden Schaffer-Neitz (MS 2022, Linguistics)
Xianglong Meng (MS 2022, Computer Science and Engineering)
Joining the lab
If you are a student interested in computation, cognition, and language, and you have prior programming experience, please reach out by e-mail with the word marshmallow somewhere in the subject line along with a brief description of what research you find interesting as well as a copy of your resume.