Dr Sanako Mitsugi

I am a Lecturer in Japanese at the School of Languages and Cultures at UQ.

I work in the area of second language processing, which explores the cognitive mechanisms that underlie second language parsing and learning.

More specifically, I am interested in prediction-driven models in morphosyntactic processing. In language use, we anticipate what we will encounter next even before we receive the actual input. Existing work has shown the ability to predict what comes next is a key to efficiency and robustness in comprehension in native languages. My work examines to what extent such a process is operative in a nonnative language, and various factors that mediates that process.

To address these questions, I use behavioral research methods (e.g., reaction times, eye-tracking, comprehension and production tasks) and corpus-linguistic techniques.

I received my BA in English language and literature from Waseda University, Japan, MA and Ph.D in Second Language Acquisition from Carnegie Mellon University, USA. Prior to joining UQ, I worked at the University of Kansas, USA.