The Power of Words and the Secrets of Language

Dr. McNamara explores the power of language--how it is much more than a form of communication, and how it serves as an insight into your thought process.

Danielle S. McNamara, Ph.D., is a Professor of Psychology in the Psychology Department and Senior Scientist in the Institute for the Science of Teaching and Learning at Arizona State University. Her academic background includes a Linguistics B.A. (1982), a Clinical Psychology M.S. (1989), and a Cognitive Psychology Ph.D. (1992). She is an international expert in the fields of cognitive and learning sciences, comprehension, literacy, writing, natural language processing, and intelligent tutoring systems. She develops educational technologies and conducts research to better understand cognitive processes involved in comprehension, knowledge and skill acquisition, and writing. Her research also involves the development and assessment of game-based intelligent tutoring systems (e.g., Writing Pal, iSTART) and natural language processing (NLP) tools (e.g., Coh-Metrix, SÉANCE, CRAT, TAACO, the Writing Assessment Tool). Two of her projects, the Writing Pal and iSTART, are computer assisted learning programs designed to improve students’ writing and reading comprehension. Much of Dr. McNamara’s research employs computational linguistic as a means of analyzing discourse. Such tools allow for quick, efficient, and reliable analyses of large corpuses of text, which is particularly relevant and valuable when analyzing big data. More information about her research is available at soletlab.com.