Research Interests: Cristina Dye holds a Ph.D. from Cornell University with a specialization in syntax and first language acquisition and a minor in cognitive science. Her research interests span linguistic theory, typical and atypical language acquisition and development, and the neurocognition of language. Her main work has been on the first language acquisition of grammatical categories, especially auxiliaries. Dr. Dye is interested in interdisciplinary approaches to language acquisition, that is, approaches that merge advances from linguistic theory with methodologies from experimental psychology and recent developments in brain imaging techniques. Her work has been informed by cross-linguistic comparisons involving English and the Romance languages (in particular, French, Romanian, Italian, and Spanish).

In current work, she is focusing on the development of language in child populations with Tourette's Syndrome, Attention Deficit and Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), Dyslexia, and Specific Language Impairment (SLI).

Dye, C. (2006). A- and Ā-Movement in Romanian Supine Constructions. Linguistic Inquiry, 37(4), 665-674.

Dye, C. (2005). The Status of Ostensibly Nonfinite Matrix Verbs in Child French: Results from a New Corpus. In Brujos, A., Clark-Cotton, M. R., and Ha, S. (eds.), Proceedings of the 29th Boston University Conference on Language Development (pp. 168-179). Boston, MA: Cascadilla Press.

Dye, C. (2002). Optional Infinitives or Silent Auxes? New Evidence from Romance. In Bok-Bennema, R., Hollebrandse, B., Kampers-Manhe, B., and Sleeman, P. (eds.) Romance Languages and Linguistic Theory 2002: Selected Papers from 'Going Romance' 2002, Groningen, 28-30 November (pp. 83-98). Amsterdam: Benjamins.

Research Interests: Robbin received her PhD in 2007 from Georgetown's Interdisciplinary Program in Neuroscience. Her dissertation, which was funded by an NSF Graduate Research Fellowship, examines behavioral and ERP responses to violations of rule-governed vs. idiosyncratic musical and linguistic information. Her research also examines the effects of sex (male vs. female) and musical training on cognitive processes involved in music and language perception.

Representative Publications:

Miranda, R.A., Ullman, M.T. (In Press, 2007) Double dissociation between rules and memory in music: An event-related potential study, NeuroImage, 38(2), 331-345.

Ullman MT, Travers M, Miranda RA (In Press) Sex differences in the neurocognition of language. In: Sex on the Brain: From Genes to Behavior (Becker JB, Berkley KJ, Geary N, Hampson E, Herman J, Young E, eds). NY, NY: Oxford University Press.

Miranda RA , Ullman MT (Under Revision) Sex differences in music: A female advantage in the recognition of familiar melodies. Memory & Cognition.

Conference Presentations and Abstracts:

Miranda R and Ullman M. (2007) An ERP study of idiosyncratic and rule-governed aspects of music and language. Cognitive Neuroscience Society Abstracts. A-66.

Wood R and Ullman M. (2005) Female advantage in the processing of familiar melodies. Society for Music Perception and Cognition Workshops. La Jolla, CA, USA.

Wood RA and Ullman MT. (2005) Processing of familiar melodies: Effects of sex and musical training. Cognitive Neuroscience Society Abstracts. C-138.

Wood RA and Ullman MT. (2004) Processing of familiar melodies: Effects of sex and musical training. Society for Neuroscience Abstracts 766.14. (Also published as a lay-language summary for the 2004 SfN press book)