Fernanda Ferreira (psychologist)
{{Short description|Cognitive psychologist}}
{{Other people|Fernanda Ferreira}}
{{Infobox academic
| name = Fernanda Ferreira
| occupation = Professor of Psychology
| citizenship =
| workplaces = University of California, Davis
| alma_mater = University of Manitoba; University of Massachusetts, Amherst
| awards =
| spouse = John Henderson
| website = Ferreira Lab
}}
Maria Fernanda Ferreira (born 22 September 1960) is a cognitive psychologist known for empirical investigations in psycholinguistics and language processing. Ferreira is Professor of Psychology at University of California, Davis.{{Cite web|title=Fernanda Ferreira — People in the Social Science Departments at UC Davis|url=https://psychology.ucdavis.edu/people/fferreir|access-date=2021-03-02|website=psychology.ucdavis.edu|language=en}}
In 1995, Ferreira was awarded the Distinguished Scientific Award for Early Career Contribution to Psychology for cognition and human learning by the American Psychological Association.{{Cite web|title=APA Distinguished Scientific Awards for an Early Career Contribution to Psychology|url=https://www.apa.org/about/awards/early-career-contribution?tab=4|access-date=2021-03-16|website=www.apa.org}} She is a Fellow of the Association for Psychological Science,{{Cite web|title=Association for Psychological Science: APS Fellows|url=https://www.psychologicalscience.org/fellows/NewFellows.cfm|access-date=2021-03-16|website=www.psychologicalscience.org|archive-date=2018-05-20|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180520060116/https://www.psychologicalscience.org/fellows/NewFellows.cfm|url-status=dead}} the Cognitive Science Society,{{Citation needed|date=September 2024}} and the Royal Society of Edinburgh (FRSE).{{Citation needed|date=September 2024}}
Biography
Ferreira received her BA (Honours) in Psychology from the University of Manitoba in 1982. She went on to complete postgraduate work at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, obtaining degrees in Linguistics (MA 1986) and Psychology (MS 1985, PhD 1988). At U Mass Amherst. Ferreira worked under the supervision of Charles (Chuck) Clifton, Jr investigating relationships between syntactic processing and phonology. Her dissertation, "Planning and Timing in Sentence Production: The Syntax-to-Phonology Conversion," provided evidence that phonological structures and representations, rather than syntactic structures, impact the timing of sentence-level speech.{{cite thesis |id={{ProQuest|303594196}} |last1=Ferreira |first1=Maria Fernanda |date=1988 |title=Planning and timing in sentence production: The syntax-to-phonology conversion }}
Ferreira was previously an editor of Collabra: Psychology, an open-access psychology journal published by the University of California Press,{{Cite web|title=Collabra: Psychology Editor Spotlight|date=13 September 2017 |url=https://medium.com/@CollabraOA/collabra-editor-spotlight-fernanda-ferreira-bbded239fdc8}} and is currently a co-Editor-in-Chief of Glossa Psycholinguistics.{{Cite journal |title=Editorial Board |url=https://escholarship.org/uc/glossapsycholinguistics/editorialBoard |journal=Glossa Psycholinguistics |language=en}}
She is married to John Henderson, a collaborator and fellow professor at the University of California, Davis. Her brother, Victor Ferreira, is also a psycholinguist, and a Professor at the University of California, San Diego.
Research
Ferreira's research investigates the processes allowing for efficient comprehension and production of speech. One such theoretical contribution to the is the Good Enough theory of sentence processing, which posits that listeners, when processing linguistic input, engage in satisficing rather than constructing detailed representations. That is, the language processing system develops partial or superficial representations, which are "good enough" for the task they are meant to perform.
Further, these representations, which may be inaccurate when dealing with difficult input (e.g. garden path sentences), may persist after syntactic reanalysis. Ferreira's work on comprehension errors in adults reading passive sentences further supports the Good Enough model.{{cite journal |last1=Ferreira |first1=F |title=The misinterpretation of noncanonical sentences |journal=Cognitive Psychology |date=September 2003 |volume=47 |issue=2 |pages=164–203 |doi=10.1016/S0010-0285(03)00005-7 |pmid=12948517 |s2cid=3863800 }} This model of syntactic representation challenged the theories that held that sentence processing mechanisms generated fully complete and accurate representations.{{cite journal |last1=Ferreira |first1=Fernanda |last2=Bailey |first2=Karl G.D. |last3=Ferraro |first3=Vittoria |title=Good-Enough Representations in Language Comprehension |journal=Current Directions in Psychological Science |date=February 2002 |volume=11 |issue=1 |pages=11–15 |doi=10.1111/1467-8721.00158 |s2cid=4126375 }}{{cite journal |last1=Engelhardt |first1=Paul E. |last2=Ferreira |first2=Fernanda |last3=Jones |first3=Manon W. |title=Good Enough Language Processing: A Satisficing Approach |journal=Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society |date=2009 |volume=31 |issue=31 |url=https://escholarship.org/uc/item/5vr5976s }}
One of Ferreira's methodological contributions is the auditory moving-window technique, which was used to assess influences of prosody,{{cite journal |last1=Ferreira |first1=Fernanda |last2=Anes |first2=Michael D. |last3=Horine |first3=Matthew D. |title=Exploring the use of prosody during language comprehension using the auditory moving window technique |journal=Journal of Psycholinguistic Research |date=March 1996 |volume=25 |issue=2 |pages=273–290 |doi=10.1007/BF01708574 |pmid=8667299 |s2cid=31551267 }} lexical frequency, and syntactic complexity{{cite journal |last1=Ferreira |first1=Fernanda |last2=Henderson |first2=John M. |last3=Anes |first3=Michael D. |last4=Weeks |first4=Phillip A. |last5=McFarlane |first5=David K. |title=Effects of lexical frequency and syntactic complexity in spoken-language comprehension: Evidence from the auditory moving-window technique. |journal=Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition |date=March 1996 |volume=22 |issue=2 |pages=324–335 |doi=10.1037/0278-7393.22.2.324 }} in spoken-language comprehension.
References
{{Reflist}}
External links
- [https://psychology.ucdavis.edu/people/fferreir Faculty homepage at the University of California, Davis]
- {{google scholar id|c3-_R14AAAAJ}}
{{Authority control}}
{{DEFAULTSORT:Ferreira, Fernanda}}
Category:American women psychologists
Category:American cognitive psychologists
Category:University of California, Davis faculty
Category:University of Massachusetts Amherst alumni