Alice Rees
Lecturer

- Psychology
- School of Philosophy, Psychology, & Language Sciences
Contact details
- Tel: 0131 650 3597
- Email: Alice.Rees@ed.ac.uk
- Web: https://sites.google.com/site/alicebrees/
Address
- Street
-
Room F12, Psychology Building
- City
- 7 George Square, Edinburgh
- Post code
- EH8 9JZ
Availability
To book an appointment:
https://www.shorturl.at/DHLR7
Background
My work asks how we use language to communicate. Communication relies on more than producing and understanding words; there is a lot of meaning that we need to infer beyond what a speaker has chosen to say. Consider the following interaction:
Frankie: Have you tried Charlie's cake? It's moist and delicious
Ashley: Well, it's moist...
Here Ashley communicates that Charlie's cake is not delicious. Although they haven't said this, as listeners, we assume that if Ashley had agreed with this they would have said so. Since they did not say the cake was delicious we infer the cake is not delicious. This is an example of an inference. As competent langauge users we have expectations for how other language users are going to interact with us. When these expectations are not met we often try to understand why which results in making inferences. My work looks at how we reconcile our expectations with our reality during communication.
I am interested in questions about:
- how listeners make sense of the things people say
- how speakers choose what to say
- how people learn about the world from language
- how our expectations shape communication
Qualifications
2019 Fellow of the Higher Education Academy
2014-2018 PhD Cardiff University "Priming pragmatic enrichment"
2011-2014 Bsc Psychology Hons (First Class)
Undergraduate teaching
Pragmatics
Dissertation supervision
Postgraduate teaching
Pragmatics
Research project supervision
Current PhD students supervised
Vilde Reksnes
Research summary
Experimental pragmatics; Psycholinguistics; Developmental psychology
Research activities
Past project grants
Leverhulme Early Career Fellowship- Pragmatic priming in Children: from comprehension to production.
-
Effects of negation and knowledgeability on pragmatic inferences
Research output: Contribution to Conference › Conference contribution (Published) -
Effects of a regional school-based mindfulness programme on students’ levels of Wellbeing and resiliency
In:
International Journal of Spa and Wellness
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/24721735.2021.1909865
Research output: Contribution to Journal › Article (E-pub ahead of print) -
Priming children’s number interpretations
Research output: Contribution to Conference › Poster (Published) -
Priming implicatures in young children
Research output: Contribution to Conference › Conference contribution (Published) -
Psychopathy moderates the relationship between nature connectedness and cognitive reappraisal
In:
Ecopsychology, vol. 12, pp. 301-308
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1089/eco.2019.0075
Research output: Contribution to Journal › Article (E-pub ahead of print)