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Sascha Wolfer, M.A.

Personal homepage of Sascha Wolfer

 

PLEASE NOTE: This page is no longer being maintained. Please refer to Sascha Wolfer's personal home page at the Institute for the German Language.   

Portrait2SW
  Ph.D. student
room: Friedrichstr. 50, room 3007a
phone: +49 761 203 4940
fax: +49 761 203 4938
e-mail:

sascha<at-sign>cognition.uni-freiburg.de

IDS: wolfer<at-sign>ids-mannheim.de

Center for Cognitive Science
Institute of Computer Science and Social Research
Friedrichstr. 50

D-79098 Freiburg, Germany

Institut für Deutsche Sprache (IDS)

Abteilung Lexik

R 5, 6-13

D-68161 Mannheim, Germany

 

PLEASE NOTE: This page is no longer being maintained. Please refer to Sascha Wolfer's personal home page at the Institute for the German Language.  

 

Research interests

  • Text comprehension research
    • Comprehension and processing difficulity
    • Optimizing of texts
    • Statistical models of text complexity
    • Eyetracking corpora
    • Measurement of complexity using corpus-linguistic methods
  • Impaired word identification, letter-by-letter readers
  • Embodied Language and Sentence Processing
    • Anaphora resolution and the "pointing sentence compatibilty effect"
    • Negation scope
  • Connectionist modeling and empirical inspection of anaphor resolution
  • Connectionist modeling of sentence comprehension and scence perception
  • Local coherences in spoken language comprehension
  • Theory of Mind and language
  • R, and all the cool stuff you can do with it.

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Projects / Academic activities

  • Optimizing comprehensibility of terminological texts, based on decisions by the Federal Constitutional Court of Germany
    (Verständlichkeitsoptimierung von fachsprachlichen Texten ausgehend von Urteilen des Bundesverfassungsgerichts)
  • PopSci - Understanding Science: Cognitive and linguistic studies on the optimization of knowledge representation and knowledge transfer in popular science writing, in cooperation with the University of Mainz and the German Linguistics department at the University of Freiburg
  • Alexia and eyetracking - Investigations on letter-by-letter reading
  • A connectionist model of scene perception and embodied sentence comprehension
  • ELoC (Interpretation of Local Syntactic Coherences)
  • Embodied anaphora resolution and the pointing action sentence compatibility effect
  • Reviews for TopiCS in Cognitive Science, CUNY Conference on Human Sentence Processing, Architectures and Mechanisms for Language Processing (AMLaP conference)

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Teaching

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Vita

  • 2002 - 2007: Studies of Linguistics, Cognitive Science and Political Science at the University Freiburg
  • 2007: Magister Artium (M.A.), Thesis: Semantische Verarbeitung in konnektionistischen Netzwerken (Semantic processing in connectionist networks)
  • 2007 - 2009: Graduate Assistant for the Center for Cognitive Science at the University Freiburg
  • 2007 - 2010: Graduate Assistant for the German Linguistics Department at the University Freiburg
  • since 2008: Dissertation project on "Optimizing the comprehensibility of terminological texts" at the Center for Cognitive Science, University of Freiburg (supervisor: Lars Konieczny)
  • since 2008: Associated member of the research training group "Empirical Linguistics" at the Hermann Paul School for Language Sciences at the University Freiburg.
  • 2008 - 2010: Scholarship holder of the Friedrich Naumann foundation
  • 2010 - 20XX: Research assistant for the project PopSci (Optimization of comprehensibility of popular science writing, in cooperation with the University of Mainz and the German Linguistics department at the University of Freiburg) funded by the Volkswagen-Stiftung.
  • 2013 - 20XX: Research assistant for the project Empirical Methods at the Institut für Deutsche Sprache (Institute for the German Language), Abteilung Lexik (Department Lexical Studies).
  • 2014: Research assistant for the project Korpusgrammatik (Corpus-based Grammar) at the Institut für Deutsche Sprache (Institute for the German Language), Abteilung Grammatik (Department Grammar).

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Publications

Journal articles

  • Hansen-Schirra, S., Hansen, S., Wolfer, S., & Konieczny, L. (2009): Fachkommunikation, Popularisierung, Übersetzung: Empirische Vergleiche am Beispiel der Nominalphrase im Englischen und Deutschen. Linguistik Online 39, 109-118.

 

Conference contributions

  • Baumann, P., Konieczny, L., Müller, D., Hachmann, W., & Wolfer, S. (2009): Local syntactic coherence interpretation and its interaction with prosody: Evidence from two visual-world studies. ECEM 2009.
  • Bormann, T., Wolfer, S., Hachmann, W., & Konieczny, L. (2011): Blickbewegungsmessungen bei reiner Alexie - sind "schnelle" und "langsame" Reaktionen Ausdruck zweier unterschiedlicher Lesestrategien? Aphasietagung GAB 2011.
  • Bormann, T., Wolfer, S., Hachmann, W., Lagreze, W., & Konieczny, L. (accepted): Eye movement studies of pure alexia: The role of the visual field defect and eye movements during 'fast reading'. Poster presented at the 30th European Workshop on Cognitive Neuropsychology, Bressanone, Italy, January, 22-27, 2012.
  • Feldmeth, A. K., Müller-Feldmeth, D., Wolfer, S., Konieczny, L. (accepted): Identification depends on individual characteristics: A new perspective on perspective in simulated actions. ESLP 2013.
  • Konieczny, L., Hachmann, W., Müller, D., Schwarzkopf, S., & Wolfer, S. (2007): Local syntactic coherence interpretation: evidence from visual-world experiments. In: R. Kliegl & R. Engbert (Eds.): Conference Abstracts. 14th European Conference on Eye Movements ECEM2007.
  • Konieczny, L., Haser, V., Müller, D., Weldle, H., & Wolfer, S. (2010): Grounding of anaphora in pointing gestures. CUNY 2010.
  • Konieczny, L., Haser, V., Müller-Feldmeth, D., Wolfer, S., Hemforth, B., Bold, A. (2012): Grounding of anaphora in pointing gestures: Empirical support for the embodied cognition view. DGKL 2012.
  • Konieczny, L., Müller, D., Baumann, P., Hachmann, W., & Wolfer, S. (2009): Local syntactic coherence interpretation, and how prosody modulates it. CUNY 2009.
  • Konieczny, L., Weldle, H., Haser, V., Müller, D., Wolfer, S., & Baumann, P. (2010): Anaphern sind in Zeigegesten verankert - der Pointing-Compatibility Effect. In C. Frings, A. Mecklinger, D. Wentura & H. Zimmer (Eds.), Beiträge zur 52. Tagung experimentell arbeitender Psychologen. Saarbrücken. (22.-24. März)
  • Müller, D., Baumann, P., Wolfer, S., & Konieczny, L. (2011): Still ambiguous: Statistical properties influence local coherence interpretation - evidence from a visual world experiment and connectionist modeling. AMLaP 2011. 
  • Müller, D., Weldle, H., Konieczny, L., Wolfer, S., Baumann, P., Feldmeth, A.K., Kühner, D., & Teske, M. (2009): Local syntactic coherences interfere with online anaphora resolution. ECEM 2009.
  • Müller-Feldmeth, D., Baumann, P., Wolfer, S., & Konieczny, L. (2012): A connectionist model of graded effects in local syntactic coherence interpretation. CUNY 2012.
  • Müller-Feldmeth, D., Wolfer, S., & Konieczny, L. (2013): The influence of pre-verbal referents on verb processing: Evidence for similarity-based interference from a new German reading corpus. AMLaP 2013.
  • Weldle, H., Baumann, P., Müller, D., Wolfer, S., & Konieczny, L. (2009): Connectionist modelling of syntax and anaphora resolution. CUNY 2009.
  • Weldle, H., Konieczny, L., Müller, D., Wolfer, S. & Baumann, P. (2009): Connectionist modelling of Situated Language Processing: Language and meaning acquisition from an embodiment perspective. CogSci 2009.
  • Weldle, H., Konieczny, L., Müller, D., Wolfer, S., & Baumann, P. (2009): Language acquisition and processing in integrative connectionist models. ESLP 2009.
  • Weldle, H., Konieczny, L., Müller, D., Wolfer, S., & Baumann, P. (2010): Emergence of language comprehension from multiple task integration - a connectionist investigation. CUNY 2010.
  • Weldle, H., Konieczny, L., Wolfer, S., Baumann, P., & Müller, D. (2010): Local syntactic coherences violate structural binding domains in on-line anaphora resolution. CUNY 2010. 
  • Weldle, H., Konieczny, L., Wolfer, S., Müller, D., & Baumann, P. (2010): Anaphora and local coherences. CogSci 2010.
  • Wolfer, S., Hansen, S., & Konieczny, L. (2012): Familiarity and frequency disentangled: An eye-tracking corpus study with German texts. CUNY 2012.
  • Wolfer, S., Hansen, S., & Konieczny, L. (2012): The effect of reference distance on anaphora processing: Evidence from a reading corpus of German texts. AMLaP 2012.
  • Wolfer, S., Hansen, S., & Konieczny, L. (accepted): Are shorter sentences always easier? Discourse level processing consequences of reformulating texts. EST 2013.

  • Wolfer, S., Hansen-Morath, S., & Konieczny, L. (2014): The impact of nominalisations on the reading process: A case study using the Freiburg Legalese Reading Corpus. International Conference on Eyetracking and Applied Linguistics (ICEAL 2014). Warsaw.

  • Wolfer, S., Koplenig, A., Meyer, P., & Müller-Spitzer, C. (2014): Dictionary users do look up frequent and socially relevant words. Two log-file analyses. In A. Abel, C. Vettori & N. Ralli (Eds.): Proceedings of the XVI EURALEX International Congress: The User in Focus (pp. 281-290). Bolzano/Bozen.

  • Wolfer, S., Müller-Feldmeth, D., Held, U., Konieczny, L., & Auer, P. (2013): Investigating comprehensibility of intra-language translations: Introducing a reading corpus of popular science texts. EST 2013.

  • Wolfer, S., Müller-Feldmeth, D., Konieczny, L., Held, U., Maksymski, K., Hansen-Schirra, S., Hansen, S., & Auer, P. (2013): PopSci: A reading corpus of popular science texts with rich multi-level annotations. A case study.  In K. Holmqvist, F. Mulvey & R. Johansson (Eds.), Book of Abstracts of the 17th European Conference on Eye Movements, 11-16 August 2013, in Lund, Sweden. Journal of Eye Movement Research, 6(3), 46.

  • Wolfer, S., Müller-Spitzer, C. (2014): Evaluation of a new web design for the dictionary portal OWID. International Conference on Eyetracking and Applied Linguistics (ICEAL 2014). Warsaw.

  • Wolk, C., Baumann, P., Wolfer, S., Konieczny, L., & Hemforth, B. (2011): Acquiring English dative verbs: proficiency effects in German L2 learners. CUNY 2011.

  • Wolk, C., Wolfer, S., Baumann, P., Konieczny, L., & Hemforth, B. (2011): Acquiring English dative verbs: proficiency effects in German L2 learners. CogSci 2011. 

 

Talks/Posters at workshops

  • Hansen, S., Konieczny, L., Wolfer, S., Čulo, O., Hansen-Schirra, S. (2009): The comprehensibility of expert communication. Product- and process-oriented research on German legalese. Talk at the psycholinguistic colloquium, University of Saarbrücken, January 2009.
  • Wolfer, S. (2008): Optimizing and investigating comprehensibility of terminological texts. Poster at the opening of the Hermann Paul School for Language Sciences.
  • Wolfer, S. (2009): Local syntactic coherences interfere with online anaphora resolution. Talk at the Workshop Representation and Processing of Language, University of Freiburg, November 2009.
  • Wolfer, S. (2010): Verständlichkeitsoptimierung von fachsprachlichen Texten. Talk at the doctoral colloquium of the Friedrich Naumann foundation, Freiburg, April 2010.
  • Wolfer, S. & Hansen, S. (2009): "Erkennbare und hinreichend klare gesetzgeberische Entscheidungen": Verständlichkeitsforschung aus interdisziplinärer Perspektive. Talk at the Studentisches Forum Linguistik, University of Münster, July 2009.
  • Wolfer, S. (2012): How to measure the comprehensibility of jurisdictional texts: A psycholinguistic eye-tracking corpus approach. Poster at the visit of the Wissenschaftsrat at the Universität Freiburg, January 2012.
  • Wolfer, S. (2013): PopSci - Understanding Science: Verstehensprozesse beim Lesen naturwissenschaftlicher Texte. Vortrag auf dem 6. Forum Wissenschaftskommunikation - Wissenschaft im Dialog in Karlsruhe, November 2013.
  • Wolfer, S. (2013): Statistik und Empirie. Eine Orientierung. Universität Mainz-Germersheim. Internal Workshop at the School of Translating, Interpreting, Linguistics and Cultural Studies. December 2013.
  • Wolfer, S. (2014): PopSci: A reading corpus of popular science texts. Invited talk at the International Conference on Eyetracking and Applied Linguistics (ICEAL 2014), Warsaw, September 2014. (in substitute for Lars Konieczny)