My research examines how language is learned, represented, and used in the context of memory, perception, and action. I work across psycholinguistics, cognitive psychology, and research methods, using behavioural experiments, eye tracking, and cognitive neuroscience approaches to study how people understand and remember language in the real world.
Current research questions
- How are new words integrated into memory over time?
- What roles do sleep and waking rest play in consolidation?
- How do perception and action shape spoken-language processing?
- How do visual scenes and language combine during comprehension?
- How can better measurement and analytic practice improve psychological research?
Research areas
Word learning, memory, and consolidation
This strand of work examines how people acquire new vocabulary, how those representations stabilise, and how sleep, wakeful rest, and related factors affect consolidation.
Selected outputs:
- Richards, B., Holle, H. & Lindsay, S. (2025). Does oral breathing disrupt memory consolidation during waking rest? A registered report. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 78(12), 2610-2626. DOI
- Cairney, S. A., Lindsay, S., Paller, K. A. & Gaskell, M. G. (2018). Sleep preserves original and distorted memory traces. Cortex, 99, 39-44. DOI
- Tham, E. K. H., Lindsay, S. & Gaskell, M. G. (2015). Markers of automaticity in sleep-associated consolidation of novel words. Neuropsychologia, 71, 146-157. DOI
- Lindsay, S. & Gaskell, M. G. (2013). Lexical integration of novel words without sleep. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 39(2), 608-622. PDF
Speech, perception, and production
This work investigates how perceptual and motor systems contribute to spoken-language processing and how speech categories adapt through experience.
Selected outputs:
- Lindsay, S., Clayards, M., Gennari, S. & Gaskell, M. G. (2022). Plasticity of categories in speech perception and production. Language, Cognition and Neuroscience, 37(6), 707-731. DOI
- Krieger-Redwood, K., Gaskell, M. G., Lindsay, S. & Jefferies, E. (2013). The selective role of premotor cortex in speech perception: a contribution to phoneme judgements but not speech comprehension. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 25(12), 2179-2188. PDF
- Lindsay, S., Sedin, L. & Gaskell, M. G. (2012). Acquiring novel words and their past tenses: evidence from lexical effects on phonetic categorisation. Journal of Memory and Language, 66(1), 210-225. PDF
Language, vision, and event representation
Here I examine how language unfolds in visually rich contexts, and how listeners use perceptual information to build dynamic mental representations of events.
Selected outputs:
- Kamide, Y., Lindsay, S., Scheepers, C. & Kukona, A. (2016). Event processing in the visual world: projected motion paths during spoken sentence comprehension. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 42(5), 804-812. PDF
- Lindsay, S., Scheepers, C. & Kamide, Y. (2013). To dash or to dawdle: verb-associated speed of motion influences eye movements during spoken sentence comprehension. PLOS ONE, 8(6), e67187. Article
- Bergen, B., Lindsay, S., Matlock, T. & Narayanan, S. (2007). Spatial and linguistic aspects of visual imagery in sentence comprehension. Cognitive Science, 31, 733-764. PDF
Statistics, methods, and research quality
I am also interested in measurement precision, analytic decision-making, and the quality of inference in developmental and cognitive research.
Selected outputs:
- Lindsay, S. & Mather, E. (2022). Developmental psychologists should care about measurement precision. Infant and Child Development, 31(1), e2321. DOI
- Gould, E., Fraser, H. S., Parker, T. H., Nakagawa, S., Griffith, S. C., Vesk, P. A., Fidler, F., Hamilton, D. G., Abbott, J. K., Aguirre, L. A., Altschul, D., Atkins, J. W., Atkinson, J., Baker, C. M., Lindsay, S. & Bell, K. (2025). Same data, different analysts: variation in effect sizes due to analytical decisions in ecology and evolutionary biology. BMC Biology, 23, Article 35. DOI
- Terry, J. et al. (2023). Data from an international multi-centre study of statistics and mathematics anxieties and related variables in university students. Journal of Open Psychology Data, 11(1), Article 8. DOI
Working with students and collaborators
I welcome conversations about student projects, postgraduate supervision, and collaborations connected to language, memory, cognition, or research methods. The Research Students and CogLang Lab pages outline the kinds of questions, methods, and supervision routes that fit especially well with this work.