My primary research interest lies in the psychology of language and communication, with the goal of understanding the cognitive processes underlying language production and comprehension.
My work focuses on questions such as:
How do speakers choose between different referring expressions or sentence structures?
How do listeners comprehend various referring expressions—such as pronouns and nouns—or deal with ambiguous or redundant expressions?
How do language and communication skills develop?
If you're interested in any of these topics, or in other issues related to the psychology of language, feel free to get in touch.
Article
The Interplay of Animacy and Thematic Role in Structural Persistence
Fukumura K (2025) The Interplay of Animacy and Thematic Role in Structural Persistence. Journal of Memory and Language, 144, Art. No.: 104643. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jml.2025.104643
Article
Gender Effects on Non-Gendered Pronouns in Hindi and Mandarin Chinese
Fukumura K, Zhang S, Bhatia S & Husain S (2025) Gender Effects on Non-Gendered Pronouns in Hindi and Mandarin Chinese. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology. https://doi.org/10.1177/17470218251348218
Article
Interactive structure building in sentence production
Fukumura K & Yang F (2024) Interactive structure building in sentence production. Cognitive Psychology, 148, Art. No.: 101616. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cogpsych.2023.101616
Article
The interplay between syntactic and non-syntactic structure in language production
Fukumura K & Zhang S (2023) The interplay between syntactic and non-syntactic structure in language production. Journal of Memory and Language, 128, Art. No.: 104385. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jml.2022.104385
Article
Representations underlying pronoun choice in Italian and English
Fukumura K, Hervé C, Sandra V, Zhang S & Foppolo F (2022) Representations underlying pronoun choice in Italian and English. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 75 (8), pp. 1428-1447. https://doi.org/10.1177/17470218211051989
Article
Avoiding gender ambiguous pronouns in French
Fukumura K, Pozniak C & Alario F (2022) Avoiding gender ambiguous pronouns in French. Cognition, 218, Art. No.: 104909. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cognition.2021.104909
Article
Overspecification and incremental referential processing: An eye-tracking study
Fukumura K & Carminati MN (2021) Overspecification and incremental referential processing: An eye-tracking study. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition. https://doi.org/10.1037/xlm0001015
Article
Ambridge B, Tatsumi T, Doherty L, Maitreyee R, Bannard C, Samanta S, McCauley S, Arnon I, Zicherman S, Bekman D, Efrati A, Berman R, Narasimhan B, Sharma DM & Fukumura K (2020) The crosslinguistic acquisition of sentence structure: Computational modeling and grammaticality judgments from adult and child speakers of English, Japanese, Hindi, Hebrew and K'iche'. Cognition, 202, Art. No.: 104310. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cognition.2020.104310
Article
Ordering adjectives in referential communication
Fukumura K (2018) Ordering adjectives in referential communication. Journal of Memory and Language, 101, pp. 37-50. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jml.2018.03.003
Article
How do violations of Gricean maxims affect reading?
Fukumura K & van Gompel RPG (2017) How do violations of Gricean maxims affect reading?. Journal of Memory and Language, 95, pp. 1-18. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jml.2017.01.008
Article
Development of audience design in children with and without ASD
Fukumura K (2016) Development of audience design in children with and without ASD. Developmental Psychology, 52 (1), pp. 71-87. https://doi.org/10.1037/dev0000064
Article
Aiming at shorter dependencies: the role of agreement morphology
Ros I, Santesteban M, Fukumura K & Laka I (2015) Aiming at shorter dependencies: the role of agreement morphology. Language, Cognition and Neuroscience, 30 (9), pp. 1156-1174. https://doi.org/10.1080/23273798.2014.994009
Article
Interface of Linguistic and Visual Information During Audience Design
Fukumura K (2015) Interface of Linguistic and Visual Information During Audience Design. Cognitive Science, 39 (6), pp. 1419-1433. https://doi.org/10.1111/cogs.12207
Article
Effects of order of mention and grammatical role on anaphor resolution
Fukumura K & van Gompel RPG (2015) Effects of order of mention and grammatical role on anaphor resolution. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 41 (2), pp. 501-525. https://doi.org/10.1037/xlm0000041
Article
The effect of noun phrase length on the form of referring expressions
Karimi H, Fukumura K, Ferreira F & Pickering MJ (2014) The effect of noun phrase length on the form of referring expressions. Memory and Cognition, 42 (6), pp. 993-1009. https://doi.org/10.3758/s13421-014-0400-7
Conference Paper (published)
Clausal interference during reference production
van Gompel RPG & Fukumura K (2013) Clausal interference during reference production. In: Proceedings of PRE-CogSci 2013: Production of Referring Expressions: Bridging the gap between cognitive and computational approaches to reference. PRE-CogSci 2013: Production of Referring Expressions: Bridging the gap between cognitive and computational approaches to reference, Berlin, Germany, 31.07.2013-31.07.2013. Amsterdam: Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research. https://pre2013.uvt.nl/workshop-program.html
Article
Gender affects semantic competition: The effect of gender in a non-gender-marking language
Fukumura K, Hyona J & Scholfield M (2013) Gender affects semantic competition: The effect of gender in a non-gender-marking language. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 39 (4), pp. 1012-1021. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0031215
Article
Producing Pronouns and Definite Noun Phrases: Do Speakers Use the Addressee's Discourse Model?
Fukumura K & van Gompel RPG (2012) Producing Pronouns and Definite Noun Phrases: Do Speakers Use the Addressee's Discourse Model?. Cognitive Science, 36 (7), pp. 1289-1311. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1551-6709.2012.01255.x
Article
The effect of animacy on the choice of referring expression
Fukumura K & van Gompel RPG (2011) The effect of animacy on the choice of referring expression. Language and Cognitive Processes, 26 (10), pp. 1472-1504. https://doi.org/10.1080/01690965.2010.506444
Article
How does similarity-based interference affect the choice of referring expression?
Fukumura K, van Gompel RPG, Harley T & Pickering MJ (2011) How does similarity-based interference affect the choice of referring expression?. Journal of Memory and Language, 65 (3), pp. 331-344. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jml.2011.06.001
Article
The use of visual context during the production of referring expressions
Fukumura K, van Gompel RPG & Pickering MJ (2010) The use of visual context during the production of referring expressions. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 63 (9), pp. 1700-1715. https://doi.org/10.1080/17470210903490969
Article
Choosing anaphoric expressions: Do people take into account likelihood of reference?
Fukumura K & van Gompel RPG (2010) Choosing anaphoric expressions: Do people take into account likelihood of reference?. Journal of Memory and Language, 62 (1), pp. 52-66. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jml.2009.09.001
Conference Paper (published)
Fukumura K & van Gompel RPG (2009) Speakers use their own discourse model to determine referents' accessibility during the production of referring expressions. In: van Deemter K, Gatt A, van Gompel R & Krahmer E (eds.) Proceedings of the Workshop on the Production of Referring Expressions (PRE-CogSci 2009): Bridging the gap between computational and empirical approaches to reference. PRE-CogSci 2009 Workshop, Amsterdam, 29.07.2009-29.07.2009. Amsterdam: Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research. https://pre2009.uvt.nl/workshop-program.html
