jordan hall, bldg 420, stanford, ca 94305-2130
email: lera at stanford dot edu, fax:
650.725.5699,
admin assistant: 650.724.8630
academic positions
- 2004-0000 Assistant Professor of
Cognitive Psychology, Department of Psychology at Stanford
- 2003-2004 Class of 1942 Career Development Professor at MIT
- 2001-2004 Assistant Professor in the Department of Brain & Cognitive Sciences at MIT
education
- PhD - 2001 in Cognitive
Psychology from
Stanford University
- BA - 1996 with Honors in Cognitive
Science from Northwestern University
awards
- 2003 - NSF CAREER award (5 years)
- 2003 - Class of 1942 Career Development Professorship for innovative and imaginitive teaching (3 years)
- 2002 - Searle Scholars award
(3 years)
- 2002 - Surdna Foundation Research Award (1 year)
- 2001 - Outstanding Service Award, Stanford Psychology
- 1999 - Marr Prize awarded by the Cognitive Science Society
- 1997 - National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship
- 1995 - Benton J. Underwood Research Fellowship - Northwestern
University
research
- general
- mental representation; language; learning; meaning and use
- specific
- acquisition of language and meaning
- metaphoric structuring, conceptual development, and conceptual
change
- cross-linguistic similarities and differences in thought
- working representations: how are long term representations
used in thinking?
- more about our research
unabashed self-promotion
- 04/23/08 - article in the New York
Times
- 05/01/07 - articles on language and color perception in Nature
News, The
New Scientist
- 02/04/07 - radio interview on NPR show Philosophy Talk on Mental
Imagery
- 10/22/06 - radio interview on NPR show Philosophy Talk on Language
and Thought
- 09/11/04 - interview on CBC radio Quarks and Quirks (listen here)
- 02/21/04 - radio interview for the Commonwealth Journal on WUMB radio
- 02/06/04 - BBC World Service radio interview (in Russian) (listen to it)
- 01/08/04 - story in the Economist (on-line version)
- 02/01/04 - story in the Indonesian journal Tempo (read it here in
Indonesian)
- 02/07/04 - story in the Israeli paper Haaretz (read in here in
Herbew)
- 11/18/03 - profile in the Boston Globe (on-line
version)
- 11/30/02 - cover story in New Scientist magazine (read it
here)
- 05/29/02 - 1hr chat about Linguistic Relativity aired on WBEZ Chicago Public Radio (listen to
it)
- 03/25/02 - an article in the Scientific American (read it here)
- 03/20/02 - a 30-minute interview on NPR
(low
quality or high
quality)
- 02/14/02 - an article in the Boston Globe (on-line version or
print
version)
fun stuff
- 04/03 - was "The Wizard" for Discover Magazine's "Ask the Wizard"
(read my wizardly
wisdom here)
-
- 01/00 - gave a public lecture on
"The Science of Illusion (and vice versa)" at the Tentacle Sessions, SF, CA - named "Best Verbal Series" by the SFWeekly (read a review of the show in the SFGuardian)
teaching
- 2006 Winter - Graduate Seminar on Language, Cognition, and
Perception, Stanford
- 2005 Spring - Freshman Seminar on Language and Society, Stanford
- 2004 Spring - Cognitive Science Graduate Core (co-taught with Josh
Tenenbaum, Nancy Kanwisher, & Ted Gibson), MIT
- 2003 Autumn - Language and Thought, MIT
- 2003 Spring - Cognitive Science Graduate Core (co-taught with Josh
Tenenbaum, Nancy Kanwisher, & Ted Gibson), MIT
- 2002 Autumn - Graduate
Seminar on Language & Thought (co-taught with Liz Spelke & Sue Carey
at Harvard), MIT & Harvard
- 2001 Winter - Graduate
Research Methods: How to do stuff, Stanford
- 2000 Spring - Mental Representation: Theoretical,
Empirical, and Computational Muddles, Stanford
- 2000 Winter - Symbolic Systems Honors Seminar, Stanford
- 1999 Summer - Sensation and
Perception (co-taught with Alex Huk), Stanford
- 1998 Summer - Cognitive Psychology
(co-taught with Beth Marsh), Stanford
advising
- 2005-2006 primary advisor for 6 graduate students, Stanford & MIT
- 2004-2005 primary advisor for 6 graduate students, Stanford & MIT
- 2003-2004 primary advisor for 4 graduate students, Stanford & MIT
- 2002-2003 primary advisor for 5 graduate students, MIT
- 2001-2002 primary advisor for 3 graduate students, MIT
- 2001-2004 research advisor for 10-15 undergraduate
research assistants
- 2001-2004 academic advisor to 6 BCS undergraduates
- 1999-2000 served as academic advisor to undergraduate majors in Symbolic Systems
- 1997-2001 served as the primary advisor for three Honors students
papers
- Boroditsky, L.
(in press). Comparison and the development of knowledge.
To appear in Cognition.
- Boroditsky, L. (in press). Linguistic Relativity. To Appear in the Encyclopedia of Cognitive Science. MacMillan Press.
- Boroditsky, L. (2001). Does language shape
thought? English and Mandarin speakers' conceptions of time.
Cognitive
Psychology, 43(1), 1-22.
- Boroditsky, L. & Ramscar, M. (2002). The Roles of
Body and Mind in Abstract Thought. Psychological
Science, 13(2), 185-188.
- Boroditsky, L., Schmidt, L., & Phillips, W. (in press).
Sex, Syntax, and Semantics.
To appear in Gentner & Goldin-Meadow (Eds.,) Language in Mind:
Advances in the study of Language and Cognition
.
- Boroditsky, L. & Ramscar, M. (2001). "First, we assume a
spherical cow..." A commentary on
Tenenbaum & Griffiths "Generalization,
Similarity, and Bayesian Inference". Behavioral & Brain
Sciences, 24(4), 656-657............. click here to see our commentary... (to see the paper we're commenting on click here)
- Boroditsky, L. (2000). Metaphoric Structuring:
Understanding time through spatial metaphors.
Cognition, 75(1), 1-28.
- Gentner, D., & Boroditsky, L. (2001). Individuation,
relational
relativity and early word learning. In M. Bowerman & S.
Levinson (Eds.), Language acquisition and conceptual development.
Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press.
- Gentner, D., Imai, M., & Boroditsky, L. (2002). As time goes by: Evidence for two systems in processing space time metaphors. Language & Cognitive Processes, 17(5), 537-565.
- Gentner, D., & Boroditsky, L. (under review).
Early acquisition of nouns and verbs: Evidence from Navajo.
- Boroditsky, L., Schmidt, L.A., & Phillips (under review). Sex, Syntax, and Semantics.
- Boroditsky, L. (2001). Mental representations of abstract
domains. Ph.D. Thesis, Stanford University.
peer reviewed conference papers
- Casasanto, D. & Boroditsky, L. (2003) Do we think about time in terms of
space? Proceedings of the 25th Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society.
Boston, MA.
- Witthoft, N, Winawer, J, Wu, L, Frank, M, Wade, A, Boroditsky, L. (2003). Effects of language on color discriminability. Proceedings of the 25th Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society.
- Matlock, T., Ramscar, M., & Boroditsky, L. (2003). The experiential basis of meaning. Proceedings of the 25th Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society. Boston, MA.
- Phillips, W. & Boroditsky, L. (2003). Can Quirks of Grammar Affect the Way You Think? Grammatical Gender and Object Concepts. Proceedings of the 25th Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society. Boston, MA.
- Boroditsky, L. (2002). The role of comparison in the development of knowledge. Proceedings of the
24th Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society. Fairfax, VA.
- Boroditsky, L., Ham, W. & Ramscar, M. (2002). What is universal about event perception? Comparing English and Indonesian speakers. Proceedings of the
24th Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society. Fairfax, VA
- Boroditsky, L., Ramscar, M., & Frank, M. (2001). The Roles
of Mind and Body in Abstract Thought.
Proceedings of the
23rd Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society,
Edinburgh, Scotland.
- Boroditsky, L. & Schmidt, L. (2000). Sex, Syntax, and Semantics.
Proceedings of the
22nd Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society,
Philadelphia, PA.
- Boroditsky, L. (1999). First-language thinking for
second-language understanding: Mandarin and English speakers' conceptions of time. Proceedings of the
21st Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society,
Vancouver, BC. - paper received Marr prize
- Boroditsky, L. (1998). Evidence for metaphoric
representation:
Understanding time. In K. Holyoak, D. Gentner, and B. Kokinov
(Eds.), Advances in analogy research: Integration of theory and data
from the cognitive, computational, and neural sciences. Sofia,
Bulgaria: New Bulgarian University Press.
abstracts
- Winawer, J, Huk, A, Boroditsky, L. (2003). Mental imagery of motion causes direction-specific motion adaptation. Cognitive Neuroscience Society Annual Meeting.
- Boroditsky, L. (2003). Long-term and on-line consequences of language use:
Cross-linguistic differences in tense, aspect, and the representation of
actions. Proceedings of the 8th International Meeting of the Cognitive Linguistics Association. La Rioja, Spain.
- Boroditsky, L. (2003). Space and Time in Language and Thought. Proceedings of the 8th International Meeting of the Cognitive Linguistics Association. La Rioja, Spain.
- Winawer, J., Witthoft, N, Wu, L, Boroditsky, L. (2003). Effects of language on color discriminability. Vision Sciences Society Annual Meeting.
- Witthoft, N, Winawer, J, Wu, L, Frank, M, Wade, A, Boroditsky, L. (2003). Effects of language on color discriminability. Proceedings of the 25th Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society (submitted).
- Casasanto, D. & Boroditsky, L. (2003) Metaphoric Structuring of Time:
Psychophysical Evidence from English, Greek, and Spanish Speakers.
Proceedings of the 8th International Meeting of the Cognitive Linguistics Association. La Rioja, Spain.
- Casasanto, D. & Boroditsky, L. (2003)
Temporal estimation depends on spatial
experience. Proceedings of the 8th International Meeting of the Cognitive Linguistics
Association. La Rioja, Spain.
- Prather, R. & Boroditsky, L. (2003). Left of zero: Representing negative numbers on the mental number-line. Proceedings of the 25th Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society. Boston, MA.
- Boroditsky, L., Ham, W. & Ramscar, M. (2002). Tense markers and event perception: Comparing English and Indonesian speakers. 8th Annual Conference on Architectures and Mechanisms of Language Processing. Tenerife, Canary Islands.
- Casasanto, D., & Boroditsky, L. (2002). Displacement affects duration but not the other way around. Proceedings of the
24th Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society.
- Boroditsky, L., Phillips, W., & Schmidt, L.A. (2001).
Sex and Similarity: How do quirks of language shape the way we think?
Proceedings of
the 42nd Annual Meeting of the Psychonomic Society, Orlando, FL.
- Frank, M., & Boroditsky, L. (2001). Language
affects color memory, but does it affect perception?
Proceedings of the 23rd Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society,
Edinburgh, Scotland.
- Schmidt, L., & Boroditsky, L. (2001). Sex, Syntax, and Semantics. Proceedings of the 7th International
Cognitive
Linguistics Conference, Santa Barbara, CA.
- Boroditsky, L., & Ramscar, M. (2001). The roles of body and
mind in abstract thought. Proceedings of the 7th International Cognitive
Linguistics Conference, Santa Barbara, CA.
- Boroditsky, L. (1999). First-language thinking for
second-language understanding: Mandarin and English speakers'
conceptions of time. Proceedings of the 6th International Cognitive
Linguistics Conference, Stockholm, Sweden.
- Boroditsky, L. (1999). Does language shape thought?
Mandarin and English speakers' conceptions of time. Proceedings of
the 40th Annual Meeting of the Psychonomic Society, Los Angeles, CA.
- Boroditsky, L. (1998). Comparison in context. Proceedings of
the 20th Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society, Madison, WI.
- Boroditsky, L. (1997). Evidence for metaphoric representation.
Proceedings of the 19th Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science
Society, Stanford, CA.
- Boroditsky, L., Cantallops, I., McNamara, R.K., Yamamoto, H.,
and Routtenberg, A. (1995). Development of F1/GAP43 promoter
activity in vivo transgenic mice. Proceeding of the 25th Annual
Meeting of the Society for Neuroscience, 21, 787.
talks
- 2006
- Invited Talk: Psychology Colloquium, Columbia University
- Invited Talk: Psychology Colloquium, UCSD
- Invited Talk: Embodied Cognition symposium, Amsterdam, Netherlands
- Invited Course: 5-lecture series at the Australian Linguistics
Institute
- 2005
- Invited Talk: CogLunch at the Center for the Study of Language &
Information: Stanford, CA
- Invited Talk: Psychology Colloquium, University of Indiana,
Bloomington, IN
- Invited Talk: Perceptual Grounding Symposium, University of Indiana,
Bloomington, IN
- Invited Talk: Searle Scholars meeting, Chicago, IL
- Invited Talk: Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics, Neijmegen
- Invited Talk: BowerFest, Stanford, CA
- Invited Talk: Annual Meeting of the American Psychological Society,
Los Angeles
- Invited Panelist: FBI panel on lie-detection, NSF
- Invited Talk: Words and the World Conference, Lehigh University
- Invited Talk: The Science of Illusion and vice
versa - Public Lecture, San Francisco, CA
- Invited Talk: Psychology Colloquium, UBC, Vancouver
- Invited Talk: Language, Culture & Cognition Talk Series, UBC,
Vancouver
- Invited Talk: Wonderfest - Bay Area Festival of Science, Stanford, CA
- 2004
- Invited Talk: Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics, Neijmegen
- Invited Talk: Semantics & Pragmatics Workshop, Stanford Linguistics
- Invited Talk: Symbolic Systems Forum, Stanford University
- Invited Talk: CNBC Colloquium, CMU & University of Pittsburgh
- 26th Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society
- 8th International Symposium on Malay/Indonesian Linguistics
- 2 Invited Talks: UC Berkeley Institute for Cognitive and Brain Sciences Colloquium, Berkeley, CA
- Invited Talk: UC Berkeley Cognitive Science Students Association, Berkeley, CA
- Invited Talk: Stanford University Psychology Colloquium, Stanford, CA
- Invited Talk: Stanford Frisem Cognitive Psychology Seminar, Stanford, CA
- Invited Talk: UT Austin Psychology Colloquium, Austin, TX
- 2003
- 28th Annual Boston University Conference on Language Development, Boston
- Invited Talk: NIPS workshop on "Statistics, Syntax, and Semantics," Vancouver, BC
- Invited Talk: Umass Five College Cognitive Science Colloquium, Amherst, MA
- Invited Talk: BUCLD special symposium on Linguistic Relativity, Boston
- Invited Talk: Language, Cognition, and Computation Lecture Series, MIT
- Invited Talk: Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO), Amsterdam
- Invited Talk: Brain & Cognitive Sciences Boston Harbor Cruise, MIT
- Invited Talk: Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig
- Invited Talk: Knight Fellows Colloquium, MIT
- Invited Talk: Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics, Nijmegen
- Invited Talk: Johns Hopkins University - Symposium on Spatial Language and Cognition
- 8th International Cognitive Linguistics Conference - Special session on Relationships between Language & Thought
- Invited Talk: 8th International Cognitive Linguistics Conference - Special Session on Fictive Motion
- Invited Talk: Northwestern University - Cognitive Science Colloquium
- Invited Talk: University of Pennsylvannia - IRCS Colloquium
- Invited Talk: Empirical Methods in Cognitive Linguistics Workshop - Cornell University
- Invited Talk: Swarthmore College - Psychology Colloquium
- Invited Talk: Syracuse University - Cognitive Science Colloquium
- Invited Talk: Experimental Psychology Society Meeting, University College London
- 2002
- 43rd Annual Meeting of the Psychonomic Society, Kansas City.
- 2 talks at the 24th Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society, Fairfax, VA
- Invited Talk: Stanford - Social Psychology Seminar
- Invited Talk: Northeastern University - Language & Mind Seminar Series
- Invited Talk: Harvard - Cognition, Brain, & Behavior Seminar Series
- Invited Talk: MIT - Family Weekend (a talk to 400 MIT parents)
- Invited Talk: 28th Annual meeting of the Society for Philosophy and Psychology (a debate with Lila Gleitman)
- Invited Talk: MIT - School of Science Junior Faculty Retreat
- Invited Talk: Yale - Department of Psychology Colloquium
- Invited Talk: Harvard - Concepts & Words Seminar
- 2001
- Invited Talk: Russell Sage Foundation - Conference on Cultural Effects on Cognition, NY
- Invited Talk: MIT - Dinner for the School of Science (hosted by Alex & Brit
D'Arbeloff)
- Invited Talk: Rutgers - Center for Cognitive Science Colloquium Series, NJ
- CogLunch in BCS, MIT, Cambridge, MA
- Commencement Speech - Stanford Psychology
- Stanford Cognitive Psychology Friday Seminar (May), Stanford
- 23rd Annual Stanford-Berkeley Cognitive Psychology Symposium in
Berkeley, CA
- 23rd Annual Meeting of the
Cognitive Science Society in Edinburgh, Scotland
- 7th Annual Cognitive
Linguistics Conference in Santa Barbara, CA
- 2000
- Stanford Cognitive Psychology Friday Seminar (October), Stanford
- 22nd Annual
Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society in Philadelphia, PA
- Stanford Cognitive Psychology Friday Seminar (May), Stanford
- 22nd Annual Stanford-Berkeley Cognitive Psychology Symposium at
Stanford, CA
- Invited talk: Columbia University Psychology Department, New York, NY
- Invited talk: NYU Psychology Department, New York, NY
- Invited talk: Brown University, Cognitive and
Linguistic Sciences, Providence, RI
- Invited talk: MIT, Brain and Cognitive Sciences,
Cambridge, MA
- 1999
- 40th Annual Meeting
of the Psychonomic Society in Los Angeles, CA
- 21st Annual Meeting of the
Cognitive Science Society in Vancouver, BC
- 6th Annual Cognitive Linguistics Conference in Stockholm, Sweden
- 21st Annual Stanford-Berkeley Cognitive Psychology Symposium in
Berkeley, CA
- 1998
- Stanford Cognitive Psychology Friday Seminar (November), Stanford
- International Workshop on Analogy in Sofia, Bulgaria
- 20th Annual Stanford-Berkeley Cognitive Psychology Symposium,
Stanford
- Stanford Cognitive Psychology Friday Seminar (May), Stanford
- 1997
- 19th Annual Stanford-Berkeley Cognitive Psychology Symposium in
Berkeley, CA
- Stanford Cognitive Psychology Friday Seminar, Stanford
- 1996
- Northwestern University Cognitive Science Symposium, Evanston, IL
reviewing
- On the editorial board of Cognitive Science
- Ad-hoc reviewing for Cognition, Cognitive Psychology, JML,
Memory & Cognition, Psychological Science, Language in Society, European Journal of Cognitive Psychology, Cognitive Science Society Conference
- Grant reviewing for NSF
administrative functions
- 2001-2003
- organized symposium on "Relationships between language & thought" - held in La Rioja, Spain
- BCS graduate admissions committee
- BCS cognitive science faculty search committee
- 2000-2001
- student-faculty representative in Stanford Psychology
- developed new Graduate Research Methods course in Psychology
- 1999-2000
- Symbolic
Systems Program Coordinator
- Stanford Psychology Graduate Education Committee
- student-faculty representative in Stanford Psychology
- Cognitive Psychology Faculty Search Committee
- 1998-1999
- organized the FriSem Cognitive Psychology talk series
- Cognitive Psychology Faculty Search Committee
- 1997-1998
- Cognitive Psychology Graduate Admissions
Committee
- co-organized the Stanford-Berkeley Cognitive Psychology Conference
- student-faculty representative in Stanford Psychology
- 1996-1997
- organized the Coglunch Interdisciplinary Cognitive Science talk series
