Liberal Arts and Sciences
Kaan Lab
Led by Edith Kaan · Linguistics
What we study
The Kaan Lab, part of UF's Brain, Language and Bilingualism Laboratory, studies how the brain processes sentences, texts, lexical tones and second languages, using questionnaires, reading studies and event-related brain potentials (EEG).
What working here is like
- Computational
- Wet lab
- Surveys & interviews
- Human participants
- Coding helps
- Projects
- 4
- Papers
- 7
What we're looking for
“If you are an undergraduate interested in this type of research, please feel free to reach out to learn more about how you can make research in BLaB part of your UF experience.”
Current projects
Adaptation of control processes in code-switching
A four-year NSF-funded project studying how speakers adapt control processes when switching languages.
Cognitive Control Adaptation in Code-Switching: An ERP Study
The lab records brain activity with EEG while early Spanish‑English bilinguals listen to either single‑language or code‑switched sentences and then complete a flanker attention task; preliminary data show the brain wave components N2 and P300 are the same or larger for difficult trials after a code switch.
From the Spring 2025 UF Undergraduate Research Symposium · abstract book, p. 493
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Tricked by Grammar? Language Processing in Learners of Spanish
The lab investigates whether English speakers learning Spanish make grammatical mistakes when an unrelated noun interferes with gender agreement. Students will run self‑paced reading tests and measure how long it takes to read sentences that are grammatical or contain an attractor mismatch.
From the Spring 2025 UF Undergraduate Research Symposium · abstract book, p. 335
Can Attention Modulate Predictive Eye-Movements in Sentence Processing?
The lab studies whether paying attention changes how people’s eyes move while they predict upcoming words in sentences. The student ran eye‑tracking experiments with English speakers listening to sentences and measured where they looked.
From the Spring 2025 UF Undergraduate Research Symposium · abstract book, p. 72
Summaries are written by AI in plain language from public symposium abstracts and may be imperfect.
Recent papers, explained
- Using reaction and reading time techniques to study bi/multilingual sentence processing
2026 · Research methods in applied linguistics
Reviews how reading and reaction times can study sentence comprehension in multilinguals.
- Comparing Brain Responses to Moral and Semantic Violations
2026 · Brain Sciences
Tests brain responses to moral and semantic violations in English speakers.
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- Investigating the effects of code-switch types on cognitive control.
2025 · Journal of Experimental Psychology Learning Memory and Cognition
Checks if different code-switching types affect cognitive control in bilinguals.
- The Neurocognition of Prediction in Second Language Processing and Learning
2023 · Routledge eBooks
Reviews how prediction works in second-language sentence processing.
- Bilingual attentional control: Evidence from the Partial Repetition Cost paradigm
2023 · Bilingualism Language and Cognition
Uses a task to test if bilinguals differ in attentional control.
- Investigating Adaptation to And-Coordination in English: An ERP Study
2023 · Languages
Studies how readers adjust to sentence structures in English.
- Adaptation in L2 sentence processing: An EEG study
2023 · Second language Research
Measures brain activity in bilinguals processing ambiguous English sentences.
Plain-language summaries are AI-written and reviewed by us; check the paper for details.
How to reach out
Edith Kaan hasn't set up this page yet. Their UF Scholars profile lists their publications.