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Faculty

Jean E Fox Tree
  • Title
    • Distinguished Professor
  • Division Social Sciences Division
  • Department
    • Psychology Department
  • Phone
    831-459-5181, 831-459-5084
  • Email
  • Website
  • Office Location
    • Social Sciences 2, Room 353
  • Office Hours (Fall 2024) contact via email
  • Mail Stop Psychology Faculty Services
  • Faculty Areas of Expertise Psycholinguistics, Cognition, Cognitive Science, Psychology, Human Computer Interaction, Language Processing
  • Courses Psych 125: Psychology of Language, Psych 126: Conversations, Psych 139H: Weird Science, Psych 290: Grant Writing for Psychologists, Psych 215: Production and Comprehension of Spontaneous Communication

Summary of Expertise

Psycholinguistics: production and comprehension of speech and writing

Research Interests

Jean E. Fox Tree is a cognitive psychologist specializing in psycholinguistics. She studies the production and comprehension of spontaneous speech and writing.

Projects in Professor Fox Tree's lab include studies of discourse markers (such as well, oh, I mean, and you know), enquoting devices (such as said and like), backchannels (such as uh huh and mhm), and computer mediated communication, among other topics.

Professor Fox Tree uses a variety of techniques to explore her areas of interest, including corpora analyses, reaction time experiments, questionnaires, referential communication tasks, and analyses of speech produced under controlled conditions.

Biography, Education and Training

Ph.D., Stanford University
M.Sc., University of Edinburgh
A.B., Harvard University

Selected Publications

  • Larson, A. S. & Fox Tree, J. E. (2024) Framing, more than speech, affects how machine agents are perceived. Behaviour & Information Technology, 43(14), 3461-3480.
  • Guydish, A. J., & Fox Tree, J. E. (2023). In pursuit of a good conversation: How contribution balance, common ground, and conversational closings influence conversation assessment and conversational memory. Discourse Processes, 60(1), 18-41.
  • Liu, K., D’Arcey, J. T., Walker, M., & Fox Tree, J. E. (2021). Referential communication between friends and strangers in the wild. Dialogue & Discourse, 12(1), 45-72.
  • Tolins, J. & Fox Tree, J. E. (2016). Overhearers use addressee backchannels in dialog comprehension. Cognitive Science, 40(6), 1412–1434.
  • Fox Tree, J. E. & Weldon, M. S. (2007). Retelling urban legends. American Journal of Psychology, 120(3), 459-476.
  • Fox Tree, J. E. (2006). Placing like in telling stories. Discourse Studies, 8(6), 749-770.