Three questions to XPrag.de intern Alice Rees

From October 2017 to January 2018, Alice Rees is an XPrag.de intern in the project “InfoPer2: Processing speaker’s meaning: Epistemic state, cooperation, commitment“ at the University of Cologne, supervised by Petra Schumacher. Alice is a final year PhD student at the School of Psychology at Cardiff University. The topic of her dissertation project is “Structural priming of pragmatic enrichment.”

Alice ReesQ: Alice, how would you describe the topic of your doctoral thesis in three sentences to your grandmother?
A: My thesis looks at how people make inferences and how the preceding context affects this. I’ve been looking at how deriving an inference influences subsequent interpretations and whether this also influences a speaker’s choice to make use of inferences.
Q: What led you to apply for an internship in our program ?
A: I was really keen to learn EEG and this internship offered the perfect opportunity. I also wanted to work in a different lab so the XPrag.de internship program was ideal.
Q: Your internship has been running for a while now. How do you like it? Does it meet your expectations?
A: I love it. I am having a great time and learning so much. It has exceeded my expectations.