Iris Berent

Berent's undergraduate training was in music performance and musicology. She subsequently pursued research in music cognition, including fieldwork in ethnomusicology (in Mexico).Berent, I., El enfoque émico en el análisis de tradiciones  musicales orales:  Hacia un estudio del pensamiento musical.  [The  emic perspective in the analysis of oral musical traditions:  Towards a study of  musical thought] in Signos. El Arte y la Investigación. 1988, Instituto Nacional  de Bellas Artes: Mexico, DF. p. 208-222.Berent, I., La psicología de la música como una teoría del conocimiento  musica l[The psychology of music as a theory of musical  knowledge]. Heterofonía, 1987. 97: p. 28-44. Her early research sought to examine how listeners parse musical structure as they listen to music on-line,Berent, I. and C.A. Perfetti, An on-line method in studying music parsing. Cognition, 1993. 46(3): p. 203-22. and how this process is shaped by both innate principles as experience with distinct musical idioms. She earned an MA degrees in Musicology and an MS degree in Psychology at the University of Pittsburgh. She was the recipient of a Predoctoral Mellon Fellowship. Her dissertation research (supported by a second Mellon Fellowship) examined the universal constraints on the sound pattern of language shapes the on-line representation of printed words (under Charles Perfetti). She earned her PhD in cognitive psychology, also from the University of Pittsburgh. She pursued Post-Doctoral research with Guy Van Orden at Arizona State University (supported by NIH NRSA award).Berent, I. and G.C. Van Orden, Do null phonemic masking effects reflect strategic control of phonology? Reading and Writing, 2003. 16(4): p. 349-376.Berent, I. and G. Van Orden, Homophone dominance modulates the phonemic-masking effect. Scientific studies of reading, 2000. 42: p. 133-167.  

Berent has explored phonology as a window into the basis of the human capacity for language, and, more generally, into human nature.

Every natural language—spoken or signed—is composed of abstract patterns of meaningless elements (phonology).Hockett, C.F., The origin of speech. Sci Am, 1960. 203: p. 89-96.    English, for example, allows syllables such as blog, but it disallows patterns like lbog. Moreover, syllables like blog are also more frequent across languages.Greenberg, J., H., Some generalizations concerning initial and final consonant clusters, in Universals of Human Language, J.H. Greenberg, C.A. Ferguson, and E.A. Moravcsik, Editors. 1978, Stanford University Press: Stanford, CA. p. 243-279.  Berent's research has examined whether phonological patterns are governed by tacit linguistic rules that are inborn in humans (universal grammar).Chomsky, N. and M. Halle, The sound pattern of English. 1968, New York: Harper & Row. xiv, 470.Chomsky, N., Language and mind. Enl. ed. 1972, New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich. xii, 194 p.   

Most languages, however, realize phonological patterns as speech acts, so it is possible that the constraints on phonological patterns arise not from abstract linguistic rules but rather from the motor and sensory constraints on the production and perception of speech sounds.Ohala, J.J., The origin of sound patterns in vocal tract constraints, in The production of speech, P.F. MacNeilage, Editor. 1983, Springer-Verlag: New-York. p. 189 - 216.MacNeilage, P.F. and B.L. Davis, On the origin of internal structure of word forms. Science, 2000. 288: p. 527-531.Blevins, J., Evolutionary phonology. 2004, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. xix, 366 p. For example, blog might be preferred only because it is easier for the speech motor system to perceive and produce. Additionally, English speakers might prefer patterns like blog because these patterns are more familiar, not because people rely on abstract rules. Thus, knowledge of language could be due to factors are not specific to language, namely, sensorimotor constraints and experience.

Berent's research has examined both possibilities.  One line of research has demonstrated that knowledge of language is governed by tacit algebraic rules, that are evident in adults (both speakersBerent, I. and S. Pinker, The dislike of regular plurals in compounds: Phonological familiarity or morphological constraint? The Mental Lexicon, 2007. 2(2): p. 129–181.Berent, I., S. Pinker, and J. Shimron, Default nominal inflection in Hebrew: Evidence for mental variables. Cognition, 1999. 72: p. 1-44.Berent, I. and G. Marcs, No integration without structured representations:  Reply to Pater. Language, 2019. 95: p. e75-e86.Berent, I., G.F. Marcus, J. Shimron, and A.I. Gafos, The scope of linguistic generalizations: evidence from Hebrew word formation. Cognition, 2002. 83(2): p. 113-39.   Berent, I., D.L. Everett, and J. Shimron, Do phonological representations specify variables? Evidence from the Obligatory Contour Principle. Cognitive Psychology, 2001. 42: p. 1-60. and signers.Berent, I., A. Dupuis, and D. Brentari, Phonological reduplication in sign language: Rules rule. Frontiers in Language Sciences, 2014. 5: p. 560.) and newborn infants.Gervain, J., I. Berent, and J. Werker, Binding at birth: Newborns detect identity relations and sequential position in speech. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 2012. 24(3): p. 564-574. A complementary line of work has shown that speakers—adults and newborn infants—converge on the same abstract phonological rules even when these principles are unattested in their linguistic experience.Tamasi, K. and I. Berent, Sensitivity to phonological universals: The case of fricatives and stops. Journal of Psycholinguistic Research, 2015. 44(4): p. 59-81.Lennertz, T. and I. Berent, On the sonority levels of fricatives and stops. The mental lexicon, 2015. 10(1): p. 88-132.Berent, I., H. Pan, X. Zhao, J. Epstein, M.L. Bennett, V. Deshpande, R. Seethamraju, and E. Stern, Language universals engage Broca’s area. PLoS ONE, 2014. 9(4): p. e95155.Gomez, D.M.,, S. Benavides-Varela, Bion. R. A.H., F. Macagno, M. Nespor, I. Berent, and J. Mehler. Sonority hierarchy in one-month-old infants’ brains. in Boston University Conference on Language Development. 2011. Boston, MA.Berent, I., T. Lennertz, J. Jun, M.A. Moreno, and P. Smolensky, Language universals in human brains. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2008. 105(14): p. 5321-5325. The possibility that these phonological restrictions are governed by abstract rules is further supported by the discovery that these rules are spared in individuals with dyslexia—a reading disorder known to compromise low levels of speech processing (phonetics).Leppänen, P.H.T., U. Richardson, E. Pihko, K.M. Eklund, T.K. Guttorm, M. Aro, and H. Lyytinen, Brain responses to changes in speech sound durations differ between infants with and without familial risk for dyslexia. Developmental Neuropsychology, 2002. 22(1): p. 407-422.Serniclaes, W., L. Sprenger-Charolles, R. Carré, and J.F. Demonet, Perceptual discrimination of speech sounds in developmental dyslexia. Journal Of Speech, Language, And Hearing Research: JSLHR, 2001. 44(2): p. 384-399. These results suggest that phonological knowledge is not solely due to experience with certain sound patterns.

A second line of inquiry examined whether phonological restrictions reflect abstract linguistic principles or the sensorimotor constraints on speech processing, narrowly. To this end, Berent has compared phonological restrictions across two distinct language modalities—speech and signs.  In one line of inquiry, she has shown that spoken and signed languages share common principles.Berent, I., O. Bat-El, and V. Vaknin-Nusbaum, The double identity of doubling: Evidence for the phonology-morphology split. Cognition, 2017. 161: p. 117-128.Berent, I., O. Bat-El, D. Brentari, A. Dupuis, and V. Vaknin-Nusbaum, The double identity of linguistic doubling. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2016. 113(48): p. 13702-13707.Andan, Q., O. Bat-El, D. Brentari, and I. Berent, ANCHORING is amodal: Evidence from a signed language. Cognition, 2018. 180: p. 279-283. Strikingly, speakers who have had no command of a sign language can spontaneously project those principles from their native spoken language to linguistic signs.Berent, I., A. Dupuis, and D. Brentari, Amodal aspects of linguistic design. PLoS ONE, 2013. 8(4). A second line of work has demonstrated that people remain sensitive to phonological structure even when their brain motor system is temporarily altered (by mechanical stimulation Zhao, X. and I. Berent, The basis of the syllable hierarchy: articulatory pressures or universal phonological constraints? Journal of Psycholinguistic Research, 2018. 47(1): p. 29-64.    and Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation.Berent, I., A.-K. Brem, X. Zhao, E. Seligson, H. Pan, J. Epstein, A.M. Galaburda, and A. Pascual-Leone, Role of the motor system in language knowledge. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2015. 112: p. 1983-1988. These results suggest that the restrictions on phonology are not solely restrictions on speech sounds.

Taken as a whole, Berent's research is consistent with the hypothesis that language is constrained by abstract rules that are inborn in humans (universal grammar). Innateness, however, is a thorny question in philosophy, psychology, and linguistics. To explore why discussions of innate knowledge elicit such strong reactions, Berent has recently begun examining how laypeople reason about human nature. {{Citation needed|date=February 2023}} The results suggest that people are systematically and selectively biased against the possibility that knowledge is innate. Berent traces these biases to the collision between two principles of core cognition—Dualism and essentialism.

Her work has been supported by funding from the National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation. She is the recipient of several awards, and a Fellow of the Association of Psychological Sciences.

Her book The blind storyteller: How we reason about human nature (Oxford University Press, 2020) explores how core cognition meddles with our understanding of a host of topics, including why we go insane about our brain, why believe that psychiatric disorders like major depression are in our destiny (whereas dyslexia is “just in our heads”), and what we think happens when we die.

Berent is also the author of The Phonological Mind (Cambridge, 2013).Berent, I., The phonological mind. 2013, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Her scientific papers have appeared in journals such as Science,Marcus, G.F. and I. Berent, Are there limits to statistical learning? Science, 2003. 300: p. 53-55. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences,Gómez, D.M., I. Berent, S. Benavides-Varela, R.A.H. Bion, L. Cattarossi, M. Nespor, and J. Mehler, Language universals at birth. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2014. 111(16): p. 5837-5341. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, Psychological Review, Cognition,Berent, I., D. Steriade, T. Lennertz, and V. Vaknin, What we know about what we have never heard:  Evidence from perceptual illusions. Cognition, 2007. 104: p. 591-630. Language,Berent, I. and G. Marcus, No integration without structured representations:  Reply to Pater. Language, 2019. 95. Trends in Cognitive Sciences,Berent, I., [http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.tics.2013.05.004 The phonological mind]. Trends In Cognitive Sciences, 2013. 17(7): p. 319-327. and Current Directions in Psychological Science.{{Cite journal |last=Berent |first=Iris |date=2017-04-01 |title=On the Origins of Phonology |url=http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0963721416688891 |journal=Current Directions in Psychological Science |language=en |volume=26 |issue=2 |pages=132–139 |doi=10.1177/0963721416688891 |issn=0963-7214}}

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Category:American people of Israeli descent

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Category:21st-century American psychologists