Mara E. Breen

Mara Breen Curriculum Vitae

pdf of CV

Mount Holyoke College

Department of Psychology and Education

50 College Street

South Hadley, MA 01075

413-538-2067

mbreen@mtholyoke.edu

PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE:

July, 2012-present

Assistant Professor of Psychology, Mount Holyoke College

July, 2011-June, 2012

Visiting Assistant Professor of Psychology, Mount Holyoke College

September, 2007-June, 2011

Postdoctoral Researcher, Psychology Department, UMass Amherst

September, 2009-May, 2011

Lecturer, Psychology Department, UMass Amherst

September, 2010-January 2011

Adjunct Assistant Professor of Psychology, Hampshire College

September, 2005-December, 2006

Teaching Fellow, Psychology Department, Harvard University

September, 2002-August, 2007

Research Assistant, Teaching Assistant, and Graduate Fellow

Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, MIT

January-August, 2002:

EEG (Electro-encephalogram) Laboratory Manager, Hampshire College

EDUCATION:

September, 2007

Ph.D., Cognitive Science

Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA

Thesis: The identification and function of English prosodic features

Advisor: Edward Gibson

May, 2002

B.A., Cognitive Science

Hampshire College, Amherst, MA

ARTICLESÊ IN REFEREED JOURNALS:

Breen, M., Kingston, J., and Sanders, L.D. (in press). Perceptual representations of phonotactically illegal syllables. Attention, Perception, and Psychophysics

Breen, M., Dilley, L., Kraemer, J., and Gibson, E. (in press). Inter-transcriber agreement for two systems of prosodic annotation: ToBI (Tones and Break Indices) and RaP (Rhythm and Pitch). Corpus Linguistics and Linguistic Theory.

Levy, R., Fedorenko, E., Breen, M., and Gibson, E. (2012). The processing of extraposed structures in English. Cognition, 122(1), 12-36.

Breen, M. and Clifton, C., Jr. (2011). Stress matters: Effects of anticipated lexical stress on silent reading. Journal of Memory and Language, 64 (2), 153-170.

Breen, M.,Gibson, E. and Watson, D. (2010). Intonational phrasing is constrained by meaning, not balance.Language and Cognitive Processes, published online 9/20/2010.

Breen, M.,Fedorenko, E., Wagner, M., Gibson, E. (2010). Acoustic correlates of information structure. Language and Cognitive Processes. 25 (7), 1044-1098.

Watson, D., Breen, M.,& Gibson, E. (2006). The role of syntactic obligatoriness in the production of intonational boundaries. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory and Cognition, 32(5), 1045-1056.

PROCEEDINGS OF REFEREED CONFERENCES:

Wagner, M., Breen, M.,Flemming, E., Shattuck-Hufnagael, S., and Gibson, E. (2010) Prosodic Effects of Discourse Salience and Association with Focus. In Proceedings of Speech Prosody 2010, Chicago, IL.

Brugos, A., Veilleux, N., Breen, M.,& Shattuck-Hufnagel, S. (2008) The Alternatives (Alt) Tier for ToBI: Advantages of capturing prosodic ambiguity. InProceedings of Speech Prosody 2008, Campinas, Brazil.

Dilley, L., Breen, M.,Bolivar, M., Kraemer, J. and Gibson, E. (2006) A comparison of inter-coder reliability for two systems of prosodic transcriptions: RaP (Rhythm and Pitch) and ToBI (Tones and Break Indices). In Proceedings of the International Conference on Spoken Language Processing, Pittsburgh, PA.

ARTICLES UNDER REVIEW OR IN PREPARATION

Breen, M., Dilley, L., McAuley, J.D., & Sanders, L.D. (submitted). Distal prosodyÊaffects on-line word segmentation: An ERP study.

White, S.J., Breen, M., and Rayner, K. (submitted). Consonant and vowel beginning words: Parafoveal processing of partial word previews.

INVITED TALKS

Behavioral and ERP evidence for the representation of metrical structure in silent reading.Presented at the 2nd Conference on Experimental and Theoretical Advances in Prosody, McGill University (Montreal, Canada) September, 2011.

Stress matters: Evidence of lexical stress assignment in silent reading. Haskins Laboratories (New Haven, CT). June, 2010.

Experimental investigations of the acoustics of information structure.Ghent University, Psychology Department (Ghent, Belgium). January, 2009.

Experimental investigations of the acoustics of information structure.Presented at The Workshop onExperimental Studies on Intonation: Phonetic, Phonological and Psycholinguistic Aspects of Sentence Prosody;Potsdam University (Potsdam, Germany), January, 2009.

CONFERENCE PRESENTATIONS:

Breen, M. and Clifton, C. Jr. Stress matters revisited: A boundary change experiment. Poster presented and the 25th Annual CUNY Conference on Human Sentence Processing, New York, New York. March, 2012.

Breen, M., Pollatsek, A., & Staub, A. Eye-tracking evidence for implicit prosodic phrasing of unambiguous sentences. Poster presented and the 25th Annual CUNY Conference on Human Sentence Processing, New York, New York. March, 2012.

Petty, D., Breen, M., & Staub, A. PRO beats gap, revisited: Eyetracking evidence. Poster presented and the 25th Annual CUNY Conference on Human Sentence Processing, New York, New York. March, 2012.

Breen, M., Sanders, L. & Clifton, C. ERP evidence of a cost for metrical reanalysis in silent reading. Poster presented atthe 3^rdNeurobiology of Language Conference, Annapolis, MD. November, 2011.

Breen, M., Dilley, L., McAuley, J.D. and Sanders, L.D. Event-related potential indices of speech segmentation are modulated by distal prosody. Poster presented at the 2^ndConference on Experimental and Theoretical Advances in Prosody, Montreal, Canada. September, 2011.

Levy, R., Fedorenko, E., Breen, M., & Gibson, E. Input uncertainty and cue redundancy in syntactic comprehension and adaptation. Talk presented at the 17^thConference on Architectures and Mechanisms for Language Processing, Paris, France. September, 2011.

Breen, M.,Dilley, L., McAuley, J.D. and Sanders, L.D. Pitch and rhythmic regularities in speech context affect on-line word perception: An ERP study. Poster presented at the 4^thNeurosciences and Music Conference, Edinburgh, Scotland. June, 2011.

Sanders, L. D., Astheimer, L., Zobel, B., Breen, M.,and Demers, L. Auditory selective attention in 3-to 5-yr-old children. Poster presented at the 17^thAnnual Meeting of the Cognitive Neuroscience Society, Montreal, QC. April, 2010.

Breen, M.and Clifton, C., Jr. Implicit metrical prosody affects on-line ambiguity resolution.Talk presented at the 23rd Annual CUNY Conference on Human Sentence Processing, New York, New York. March, 2010.

Breen, M.and Clifton, C. Prosody matters: Lexical stress effects in silent reading. Poster presented at the 50^thAnnual Meeting of the Psychonomic Society, Boston, MA. November, 2009.

Breen, M., Sanders, L. D., and Kingston, J. Perceptual representations of phonotactically illegal syllables. Poster presented at the 50^thAnnual Meeting of the Psychonomic Society, Boston, MA. November, 2009.

Breen, M., Wagner, M., Shattuck-Hufnagel, S., Flemming, E & Gibson, E. Factoring out Speaker Variation in Experimental Studies of Prosody: The Case of Association with Focus. Poster presented at the Workshop on Prosody and Meaning, Barcelona, Spain. September, 2009.

Breen, M. and Clifton, C. Eye-tracking Limericks: Lexical stress effects in silent reading. Poster presented at the 22^ndCUNY Conference on Human Sentence Processing, Davis, CA. March, 2009.

Breen, M.and Clifton, C. Lexical stress effects in silent reading. Poster presented at the 49^thAnnual Meeting of the Psychonomic Society, Chicago, IL. November, 2008.

Breen, M.,Wagner, M., Fedorenko, E., and Gibson, E. Prosody signals focus location, not focus type. Talk presented at theConference on Experimental and Theoretical Advances in Prosody, Ithaca, NY. April, 2008.

Breen, M.,Wagner, M., Fedorenko, E., and Gibson, E. An Empirical Investigation of the Acoustic Features Associated with Markers of Information Structure. Poster presented at the 21^stCUNY Conference on Human Sentence Processing, Chapel Hill, NC. March, 2008.

Breen, M.,Dilley, L., Gibson, E., Bolivar, M., and Kraemer, J. Advances in prosodic annotation: A test of inter-coder reliability for the RaP (Rhythm and Pitch) and ToBI (Tones and Break Indices) transcription systems. Poster presented at the 19th CUNY Conference on Human Sentence Processing, New York, NY. March, 2006.

Gibson, E., Fedorenko, E., & Breen, M. Processing extraposed structures in English: grammatical and processing factors. Poster presented at the 19th CUNY Conference on Human Sentence Processing, New York, NY. March, 2006.

Gibson, E., Breen, M., Rozen, S., & Rohde, D. (2006) Language processing in children as measured using self-paced reading and listening. Talk presented at the Online Methods in ChildrenÕs Language Processing workshop,New York, NY. March, 2006.

Breen, M., Gibson, E., & Watson, D. Two factors predicting intonational boundary production in sentence production. Talk presented at the 11^thConference on Architectures and Mechanisms for Language Processing, Ghent, Belgium. September, 2005.

Gibson, E. and M. Breen.Processing crossed dependencies in English. Poster presented at the 17^thCUNY Conference on Sentence Processing, Univ. of Maryland, March, 2004.

Johnson, S., Clifton, C., Breen, M., Martin, A., & Morris, J. ERP Investigation of Prosodic and Semantic Focus. Poster presented at the 10^thAnnual Meeting of the Cognitive Neuroscience Society, New York, NY. April, 2003.

Breen, M.,Morris, J., & Stillings, N. Constraint, phonology and visual word recognition: An ERP investigation. Poster presented at the 14^thAnnual Convention of the American Psychological Society. New Orleans, LA. June, 2002.

TEACHING:

Courses Taught:

Introduction to Psychology (UMass Amherst)

Statistics In Psychology (UMass Amherst)

Introduction to Cognitive Psychology (UMass Amherst; Hampshire College;

Mount Holyoke College)

Visual and Auditory Perception (Mount Holyoke College)

Psychology of Music (UMass Amherst, Mount Holyoke College)

Seminar in Language and Thought (Mount Holyoke College)

Lab in Cognition: Speech (Mount Holyoke College)

Teaching Assistant

Cognitive Psychology (Hampshire College)

Psychology of Language (Hampshire College)

Introduction to Psychology (MIT, Harvard University)

Guest Lecturer

Language Processing: Prosody and Sentence Processing (MIT)

Introduction to Psychology: Language (MIT)

Supervisor

Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program (UROP) (MIT)

Undergraduate Research in Psychology (UMass Amherst, Mount Holyoke

College)

Seminars

Summer R Workshop (Summer, 2009) (UMass Amherst)

Workshop on multi-level statistical modeling in R (August, 2010) (Hampshire

College)

HONORS:

2005 CUE Award; Certificate for Excellence in Teaching; Harvard University

2003 Howard Hughes Medical Institute Pre-doctoral Fellowship in Biological Sciences; Alternate

2003 National Science Foundation Graduate Fellowship, Honorable Mention

SERVICE:

Ad-hoc Journal Reviewer: Language and Cognitive Processes, Language, Journal of Phonetics, Laboratory Phonology

Conference Reviewer: ETAP (2008, 2011), CUNY (2010, 2011), AMLaP (2011)

RESEARCH INTERESTS:

The role of prosody in on-line speech comprehension; The role of implicit prosody in reading; The identification and function of prosodic features; Speech segmentation;

The interaction of prosody with attention and memory; Similarities between the processing of language and music

REFERENCES:

Edward Gibson

Professor of Cognitive Sciences

Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Brain & Cognitive Sciences Department
43 Vassar Street, Building 46, Room 3035
Cambridge, MA 02139

(617) 253-8609

egibson@mit.edu

Charles Clifton

Professor Emeritus and Research Professor

Department of Psychology

Tobin Hall 435

University of Massachusetts

Amherst, MA 01003

(413) 545-2653

cec@psych.umass.edu

Lisa Sanders

Associate Professor of Psychology

Department of Psychology

Tobin Hall 429

University of Massachusetts

Amherst MA 01003

(413) 545-5962

lsanders@psych.umass.edu