Robert Kluender

Robert Kluender is a professor of linguistics at UC San Diego. The underlying question addressed in his research is the extent to which the natural limitations of human cognition shape and constrain the human language system: how much of linguistic competence can be reduced to facts of performance, and how language is represented and processed in the brain. Dr. Kluender addresses these questions in experimental studies of language processing focused on the interaction of working memory, semantics and pragmatics, and language structure, particularly as it unfolds in real time. Other interests include the methodology of language research, individual differences in language ability (particularly linguistically gifted individuals), first and second language acquisition, gesture and sign language, and the evolutionary foundations of language. Dr. Kluender heads the Language and Brain Laboratory, an event-related brain potential (ERP) laboratory in the Department of Linguistics, funded by the National Institutes of Health and devoted primarily to studies of sentence processing. He serves on the advisory board of the Center for Research in Language at UC San Diego, and periodically serves on the language review panel for the National Institutes of Health.