This award recognizes excellence at integrating educational technology in the classroom and was made in recognition of Peggy’s incorporation of online 3-D virtual environments and a student-centered approach to teaching and learning with technology in her academic ESL classes.

Great work Peggy!

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“Collaborating through Space and Time in Educational Virtual Environments: 3 Case Studies”, just out in The Journal of Interactive Technology and Pedagogy, examines the use of a 3D online virtual space (Carleton Virtual) to facilitate learning. Hartwick shares publication credits with an interdisciplinary team:

• Ali Arya (Instructional Media Design)
• Shawn Graham (History)
• Nuket Nowlan (Technology Innovation Management)

Winner of the Chancellor’s Medal as she graduates this fall, Bokhari says…

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The following is an abstract of her planned research.

Neural Investigation of Language Processing
- Masako Hirotani

Language plays a critical role in our daily life and having full command of our language faculties provides us with many valuable social advantages.  In fact, so important are these faculties that, if we lose or experience difficulty with any one of them, the consequences to our mental health can be catastrophic.  Therefore, it is essential that reliable interventions be developed to counter these difficulties when they occur.

We believe that our research into language processing will contribute significantly to the development of these interventions and has the potential to benefit a wide variety of people experiencing language difficulties.

Specifically, our research will investigate the neurological basis for computing the meaning of a sentence.

Using Event Related Potentials (ERP) or ‘brain waves’, a temporal measure of brain activity, and neuroimaging (fMRI) techniques, a standard method of examining brain regions recruited during sentence comprehension, we will carry out two sets of experiments.  This work will examine: 1) the comprehension of modal sentences and 2) the interpretation of negation. We have chosen to target these two measures because they bring together a distinct and particularly useful interaction between structure and context in the interpretation of sentences.

Lastly, in addition to the actual experimentation itself, this research effort seeks to create an interdisciplinary network of researchers, both domestic and international (Germany, Japan, and US), who are interested in the same topic (linguists, psycholinguists, psychologists, neuroscientists, and speech-language pathologists). Such a diverse research team is indispensable when tackling the complex and multi-faceted questions found in the field of language processing.

Early Researcher Awards are provided by the Ministry of Research and Innovation, Province of Ontario,

“Languages are essential for communicating with each other,” notes Dr. Masako Hirotani, director of the new Centre for Cognitive Neuroscience: Language and Brain (CCN.LaB). “So if we can better understand how we learn to speak and understand a language, then we will be able to do all kinds of things like help stroke victims or children who are struggling to learn a language. Eventually, we might even be able to help government workers who are learning how to speak a second language.”

The lab features three small rooms. One contains an EEG machine that will allow researchers to study brainwave patterns when people use language. A second room is equipped with an EyeLink 1000 eyetracker that records readers’ eye movements every millisecond. The eye-tracker is hooked up to two computers that will read and analyze the data. In a third room, researchers will record conversations that will allow them to study the acoustic nature of human speech, as well as conduct behavioural experiments using both conversations and auditory stimuli.

Hirotani, an assistant professor of linguistics and cognitive science based in the School of Linguistics and Language Studies (SLaLS), says: “We’ll be playing detective using different techniques and sensitive equipment that marry the fields of linguistics, psychology and neuroscience in order to help solve the real-world problem of how we acquire and process language. This could lead to breakthroughs in speech audiology and pathology, which could result in more effective reading intervention programs to help people with dyslexia and other reading disorders.”

“The Language and Brain lab will add an important and exciting dimension to a school already known for its impressive variety of research into the nature of language and its use,” says Randall Gess, director of SLaLs. “The new work on language processing and language development will complement leading work on structural properties of language ranging from the semantics of Cree to the phonetics of Inari Saami, and functional aspects of language ranging from blogging and virtual community in the Kurdish diaspora to the use of language by major powers in the climate change debates.”

The lab cost just over $344,000 and was funded by grants from the Canada Foundation for Innovation (CFI), the Ministry of Research and Innovation and four “in-kind” contributors.

“This new laboratory will enable researchers to perform their cutting-edge research into the relationship between language and brain function right here at Carleton,” says Dr. Eliot Phillipson, president and CEO of the CFI.

“The CFI is a proud partner in this project that will bring to life innovative ideas on how people acquire and process language.”

“Ontario is the largest hub of biomedical activity in Canada and the fourth largest biomedical research centre in North America,” says Minister of Research and Innovation, John Milloy.

“Our government has made growing this sector a priority because we know it is good for Ontario families and for our economy. That’s why we’re proud to invest in the work of researchers like Dr. Hirotani and Carleton University’s new Centre for Cognitive Neuroscience.”

Dr. Hirotani is affiliated with Carleton’s School of Linguistics and Language Studies and the Institute of Cognitive Science. Last year, she was appointed a research associate at the highly regarded Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences. She often visits her native Japan, where she researches speech patterns unique to the Japanese.

“I will also be researching Japanese words and sentences in the new lab,” she says.

When she travels to Germany, she uses brain scans to test how people respond to various cues in speech. In the classroom, she encourages her students to examine interesting questions that make her lectures anything but textbook.

Inside the Language and Brain Lab

Additional Media Coverage

• Innovation Canada, online magazine of the Canada Foundation for Innovation (CFI)
• The Ottawa Citizen
• The Ottawa Buzz, a local community newspaper
• Language Portal of Canada, Public Works and Government Services Canada

Read more at:

• Carleton University Newsroom
• This Week @ FASS
• Government of Canada News Site
• Dean of FASS’ Blog – Applause

Mako Hirotani, Assistant Professor and Undergraduate Advisor ( Linguistics), for being one of the six Carleton University projects receiving funding from the Ontario Government (CU news release).

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CU news
Research@Carleton
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