Project Grant 2213960

This National Science Foundation Project Grant award of $136,392 provides funding from September 1, 2022 through February 28, 2026 to support research titled "Collaborative Research: Deconstructing Wordlikeness Judgments." The award is made under the Social, Behavioral, and Economic Sciences program (CFDA 47.075) to Michigan State University.

The project will deconstruct factors involved in human wordlikeness judgments through experimental and computational studies. Researchers will conduct experiments manipulating response measures, stimulus modality, and response modality to elicit English and Korean speakers' judgments on nonword forms. A variety of computational models will be assessed based on how well they can fit the experimental results. The interconnected studies aim to examine how different explicit computational models perform against observed wordlikeness judgments, the relationship between gradation in acceptability judgments and probabilistic human perception, and whether results are affected by stimulus or response modality. The funding will also support research training, an open-access database of experimental results, and outreach activities focusing on informal science education.