Susan E. Brennan

Associate Professor, Departments of Psychology and Computer Science

Associated, Department of Linguistics

Editorial Board, Psychological Science, Discourse Processes

Department of Psychology	Telephone: (631) 632-9145
S.U.N.Y. at Stony Brook	Fax: (631-632-7876
Stony Brook, NY 11794-2500	Email: susan “dot” brennan "at" sunysb “dot” edu

Adaptive Spoken Dialog Project

Shared Gaze Project

Gesture Focus Group

I am a cognitive scientist who studies the psychology of language use—in particular, interactive spoken dialogue. I am interested in how people adapt their speaking and understanding to their conversational partners and to the variation that is rampant in speech. Some of my current studies use eye-tracking, either as a measure of language processing or as a mode of communication. I also study the human use of technology, especially speech and language interfaces to computers. Long, long ago, I developed a computational model of caricature.

TEACHING
EDUCATION & EXPERIENCE
PUBLICATIONS
GRANTS & AWARDS
LINKS
LIFE, etc.

TEACHING

FALL 2007: Psychology 384, Research Laboratory in Human Factors (undergraduate, yearly)
FALL 2007: Psychology 260, Survey in Cognition and Perception (undergraduate, yearly)
UPCOMING: SPRING, 2008: Psychology 520, Psycholinguistics (graduate, every other year)
PREVIOUS: Introduction to Grant-Writing: the Rest of the Iceberg (graduate seminar)
PREVIOUS: Computational and Empirical Approaches to Discourse (Language, Mind, & Brain Seminar, graduate)
PREVIOUS: Psychology 365, Psychology of Language (undergraduate, occasionally)
PREVIOUS: Pointing, Pausing, Tune, and Turn: Paralinguistic Aspects of Language Use (graduate seminar)
PREVIOUS: Human-Computer Interaction (graduate seminar)

EDUCATION

1986-1990 Ph.D., Psychology (specializing in Psycholinguistics and Cognitive Science), Stanford University , Stanford, CA. Dissertation: "Seeking and providing evidence for mutual understanding"
1980-1982 M.S.V.S., Architecture Machine Group (now known as The MIT Media Lab ). Massachusetts Institute of Technology , Cambridge, MA. Thesis: "Caricature generator"
1971-1975 B.A., Anthropology, Cornell University , Ithaca, NY.

EXPERIENCE

2001-2004. Director of Graduate Studies and Associate Chair, Department of Psychology, State University of New York at Stony Brook.
2001-pres. Associate Professor, Department of Computer Science, State University of New York at Stony Brook.
1996-pres. Associate Professor, Department of Psychology, State University of New York at Stony Brook.
1999-2001 Area Head, Cognitive-Experimental Graduate Training Program. Department of Psychology, State University of New York at Stony Brook.
1990-1996 Assistant Professor, Department of Psychology, State University of New York at Stony Brook. Associated, Department of Linguistics.
1991-1992 Visiting Scholar, Center for the Study of Language and Information (CSLI), Stanford University.
Summer 1991 Consultant, Human Interface Group, Apple Computer, Inc. , Cupertino, CA. Conducted research on computer speech applications.
1986-1989 Part time/summer employment, Member of the Technical Staff, Human/Computer Interface Department, Hewlett-Packard Labs , Palo Alto, CA. Conducted user interface research & development on the Natural Language Project; also conceived and ran weekly seminar in empirical research methods for social scientists.
1984-1986 Member of the Technical Staff, Hewlett-Packard Labs , Palo Alto, CA. Conducted research on natural language understanding, discourse models, human-computer interfaces; prototyped software in LISP.
1982-1984 Research Scientist, Atari Inc., Sunnyvale, CA. Conducted research on multimedia interfaces, computer-generated caricature, animation, and educational software in Alan Kay’s group [1] [2]. Consulted for parent company Warner Bros., New York, NY, on user interfaces, videodisc applications, electronic encyclopedia, and interactive cable network.
Previously...

PUBLICATIONS

Kraljic, T, Samuel, A. G., & Brennan, S. E. (Accepted pending revisions). First impressions and last resorts: How listeners adjust to speaker variability. Psychological Science.
Kraljic, T, Brennan, S. E. & Samuel, A. G. (In press). Accommodating Variation: Dialects, Idiolects, and Speech Processing. Cognition.
Ekeocha J. O., & Brennan, S. E. (In press, manuscript version). Collaborative recall in face-to-face and electronic groups. Memory.
Stent, A., Huffman, M. K. & Brennan, S. E. (In press, uncorrected proofs). Adapting speaking after misrecognition: A study of hyperarticulation. Speech Communication.
Brennan, S. E., Chen, X., Dickinson, C., Neider, M., & Zelinsky, G. (2007; In press). Coordinating cognition: The costs and benefits of shared gaze during collaborative search . Cognition.
Hanna, J. E. & Brennan, S. E. (2007; In press). Speakers' eye gaze disambiguates referring expressions early during face-to-face conversation. Journal of Memory and Language.
Brennan, S. E., Mueller,K., Zelinsky, G., Ramakrishnan, I.V., Warren, D. S., & Kaufman, A. (2006). Toward a Multi-Analyst, Collaborative Framework for Visual Analytics. IEEE Symposium on Visual Analytics Science and Technology (VAST 2006). Baltimore, MD.
Brennan, S. E., & Lockridge, C. B. (2006). Computer-mediated communication: A cognitive science approach. In K. Brown (Ed.), ELL2, Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics, 2nd Edition (pp. 775-780). Oxford, UK: Elsevier Ltd.
Kraljic, T., & Brennan, S. E. (2005). Using prosody and optional words to disambiguate utterances: For the speaker or for the addressee? Cognitive Psychology, 50, 194-231.
Brennan, S. E. (2005). How conversation is shaped by visual and spoken evidence. In J. Trueswell & M. Tanenhaus (Eds.), Approaches to studying world-situated language use: Bridging the language-as-product and language-action traditions (pp. 95-129). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Stein, R. & Brennan, S. E. (2004). Another person's eye gaze as a cue in solving programming problems. Proceedings, ICMI 2004, Sixth International Conference on Multimodal Interfaces (pp. 9-15), Penn State University, State College, PA.
Brennan, S. E. & Metzing, C. A. (2004). Two steps forward, one step back: Partner-specific effects in a psychology of dialogue. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 27.
Metzing, C. & Brennan, S. E. (2003). When conceptual pacts are broken: Partner-specific effects in the comprehension of referring expressions. Journal of Memory and Language, 49, 201-213.
Schober, M. F., & Brennan, S. E. (2003). Processes of interactive spoken discourse: The role of the partner. In A. C. Graesser, M. A. Gernsbacher, & S. R. Goldman (Eds.), Handbook of discourse processes (pp. 123-164). Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
Lockridge, C. B., & Brennan, S. E. (2002). Addressees’_needs influence speakers’ early syntactic choices. Psychonomic Bulletin and Review, 9, 550-557.
Brennan, S. E. (2002). Visual co-presence, coordination signals, and partner effects in spontaneous spoken discourse. Journal of the Japanese Cognitive Science Society, 9, 7-25.
Kraut, R. E., Fussell, S. R., Brennan, S. E., & Siegel, J. (2002). Understanding effects of proximity on collaboration: Implications for technologies to support remote collaborative work. In P. Hinds & S. Kiesler, Distributed work (pp. 137-162). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Brennan, S. E., & Schober, M. F. (2001). How listeners compensate for disfluencies in spontaneous speech. Journal of Memory