Maya Taliaferro
I have been studying the Japanese language since the age of 13. I knew very little about Japanese when I made this ultimately life altering decision, all I knew was that everyone told me that Japanese was one of the hardest languages for a native English speaker to learn. Well, I was – and always have been – a person who loved to take challenges head on, so I decided Japanese would become my second language no matter how much work it took. As it turns out, and as any person who has attempted to learn a second language after their elementary years can attest, it takes a great deal of work. It is this experience learning (and struggling with) Japanese which first sparked my interest in the process of learning a second language more generally. So many questions plagued my mind constantly. Why did it seem so hard to learn a second language after early childhood? Why did normal phrases in English, when directly translated, sound rude in Japanese? Indeed, it was these questions and the many others like them which inspired me to pursue a study of language in the mind and brain. Since no one in my undergraduate institute specialized in such research, I sought the opportunity to immerse myself in this area of study through a two-year post-baccalaureate research fellowship at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
My goals during this time at MIT have always been twofold: improve my technical skills and expand my intellectual horizons. In a technical sense, I wanted to learn how to code. Before coming to MIT I had only taken one computer programming class in python (which I found to be extremely difficult) and had a bit of experience modifying code in MATLAB. While at MIT I’ve been able to dive head first into experimental coding, and gain a proficiency in MATLAB, Python, R/RStudio and JavaScript. In an intellectual sense I’ve been able to explore my interests in language processing from both a neural and behavioral perspective. In the labs of Dr. Evelina Fedorenko and Dr. Ted Gibson I work on two large scale fMRI studies. The first investigates the contributions of various brain networks in pragmatic reasoning (such as understanding sarcasm, white lies and metaphors) while the second seeks to understand whether the processing of constructed languages (such as Klingon, Esperanto and Dothraki) activate the same neural areas as seen in the processing of natural languages. In the ECCL I work on two behavioral studies looking at the communicative efficiency of two different linguistic phenomena - in the usage of loopholes (when a listener obeys a possible interpretation of a speaker’s utterance, but one which is definitely not the intended interpretation) and color adjectives overspecification (when color is used to differentiate an object even when it is differentiable without color). These projects have been critical in helping me to hone my technical skills while also narrow down my own personal research interests.
Besides a budding scientist, I also consider myself a huge movie buff – especially with horror movies. I enjoy spending time with my family and friends watching movies, eating popcorn and relaxing. I also enjoy a great book and going outside for runs and picnics.
