Chris F. Westbury

_{I
am a clinically-trained research psychologist whose work focuses
on understanding the cognitive structure and neurological
underpinnings of language. I have a particular interest in
semantics, or what it means for words to have meaning. I mainly
use experimental methods and statistical/ computational
modeling, and, occasionally, functional imaging and patient
studies.}

Curriculum Vitae

Citizenship: Canadian

Work Address: Department Of Psychology

P220 Biological Sciences Bldg.

University Of Alberta

Edmonton, Alberta

T6G 2E1 Canada

Telephone: (780) 492-5275

E-mail: chrisw@ualberta.ca

Education

• 1988- 1995: McGill University, Montreal, Quebec, Canada

Ph.D. (Clinical Psychology)

Graduated on the Dean’s List in October, 1995

Thesis title: A Variation Of Forms: The Cognitive Neuropsychology Of Primary Progressive Aphasia

• September, 1992- 1993- Clinical Internship (Cognitive Therapy)

Allan Memorial Institute, Montreal, Quebec, Canada

• September, 1991- 1992- Clinical Internship (Neuropsychology)

Montreal Neurological Institute, Montreal, Quebec, Canada

• 1986-1988: McGill University, Montreal, Quebec, Canada

B.A., Psychology Major

Graduated with 'Great Distinction’ in June, 1988

• 1981-1982, 1983-1986: McGill University, Montreal, Quebec, Canada

B.A., Philosophy Major; Computer Science Minor

Graduated in November, 1986

• 1982-1983: American College In Paris, Paris, France

Year abroad: Studied mainly French language and history

Work Experience

• July, 2015 – Now

Professor

Department Of Psychology

University Of Alberta

• July, 2006 – June, 2015

Associate Professor

Department Of Psychology

University Of Alberta

• July, 2001 – 2006

Assistant Professor

Department Of Psychology

University Of Alberta

• September, 2000 – July, 2001

Postdoctoral fellow

Department Of Psychology & Department Of Linguistics (Half-time each)

University Of Alberta

• August, 1998- August 2000

Postdoctoral fellow

Department Of Psychology

University Of Alberta

• September, 1996 - July, 1998

Research Associate

Center For Cognitive Studies, Tufts University, Medford, MA, USA

• October, 1995 - August, 1996

Postdoctoral Researcher

Department Of Neuropsychology

Montreal Neurological Institute, Montreal, Quebec, Canada

Publications

A.) Peer-reviewed publications

• Ross, D., Schipper, S., Westbury, C., Banh, H.L., Loeffler, K., Allan, G.M., Ross, S. (In press) Examining critical thinking skills in family medicine residents. Accepted for publication in: Family Medicine.

• Keith, J., Westbury, C., & Goldman, J. (In press). Performance Impact of Stop-Lists & Morphological Decomposition on Word-Word Corpus-based Semantic Space Models. Accepted for publication in: Behavioral Research Methods.

• Shaoul, C., Baayen, H., & Westbury (2014). N-gram probability effects in a cloze task. The Mental Lexicon, 9:3, 437–472.

• Westbury, C., Keith, J., Briesemeister B.B., Hofmann M.J., & Jacobs A.M. (2015) Avoid violence, rioting and outrage; Approach celebration, delight, and strength: Using large text corpora to compute valence, arousal, and the basic emotions. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology.

• Shaoul, C., Westbury, C. & Baayen, H. (2013) The subjective frequency of word n-grams. Psihologija, 46 (4), 497–537

• Westbury C.F., Shaoul C., Hollis G., Smithson L., Briesemeister B.B., Hofmann M.J., & Jacobs A.M. (2013). Now you see it, now you don’t: On emotion, context, & the algorithmic prediction of human imageability judgments. Frontiers in Psychology, 4:991. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2013.00991.

• Westbury, C. (2013). You can’t drink a word: Lexical and individual emotionality affect subjective familiarity judgments. Journal of Psycholinguistic Research, 43(5), 631-49.

• Murphy, C. & Westbury, C. (2013). Expanding the Scope of Selective Exposure: An Objective Approach to Measurement of Media Ideology. Communication Methods and Measures, 7, 145-168.

• Ozier, D. & Westbury, C. (2013). Experiencing, psychopathology, and the tripartite mind. Journal of Behavioral and Brain Science, 3(2), 252-275.

• Reilly, J., Westbury, C., Kean, J., & Peele, J. (2012). Arbitrary Symbolism in Natural Language Revisited: When Word Forms Carry Meaning. PLoS ONE, 7(8), e42286. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0042286

• Tremblay, A., Baayen, R.H., Derwing, B., Libben, G., Tucker, B., & Westbury C. (2011). Empirical evidence for an inflationist lexicon. In the Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Linguistics Society of America. 3 pages.

• Griffin, R. & Westbury, C. (2011). Infant EEG activity as a biomarker for autism: A promising approach or a false promise? BMC Medicine, 9:61.

• Shaoul, C. & Westbury, C. (2011). Formulaic sequences: Do they exist and do they matter? The Mental Lexicon, 6:1, 171-196.

• Westbury, C. (2010). Assessing language impairment in aphasia: Going beyond pencils and paper in the computer age. The Mental Lexicon, 5:3, 300-322

• Westbury, C. (2010). Bayes’ rule for clinicians: An introduction. Frontiers in Clinical Psychology, 1:192.

• Westbury, C. & Titone, D. (2011). Idiom literality judgments in younger and older adults: Age-related effects in resolving semantic interference. Psychology & Aging, 26(2), 467-474.

• Shaoul, C., & Westbury, C. (2011). HiDEx: The High Dimensional Explorer. In: Applied Natural Language Processing and Content Analysis: Identification, Investigation, and Resolution. Editors P McCarthy and C Boonthum. IGI Global, 230-246.

• Shaoul, C., & Westbury, C. (2010). Exploring lexical co-occurrence space using HiDEx. Behavior Research Methods, 42(2), 393-413.

• Tremblay, A., Derwing, B., Libben, F., & Westbury, C. (2011). Processing Advantages of Lexical Bundles: Evidence from Self-paced Reading and Sentence Recall Tasks. Language Learning, 61(2), 569-613.

• Westbury, C. & Moroschan, G. (2009). Imageability x phonology interactions during lexical access: Effects of modality, phonological neighbourhood, and phonological processing efficiency. The Mental Lexicon, 4(1), 115-145.

• Frishkoff, G.A., Perfetti, C., & Westbury, C. (2009). ERP measures of partial semantic knowledge: Left temporal indices of skill differences and lexical quality. Biological Psychology, 80:1, 130-147

• Shaoul, C. & Westbury, C. (2008). Performance of HAL-like word space models on semantic categorization tasks. Proceedings of the workshop on lexical Semantics, ESSLLI 2008, 42-46.

• Westbury, C. & Hollis, G. (2007). Putting Humpty Together Again: Synthetic Approaches to Nonlinear Variable Interactions Underlying Lexical Access. In: The Mental Lexicon: Core Perspectives. G. Jarema & G. Libben, Eds. p. 7-30. Oxford, UK: Elsevier Press.

• Westbury, C., Hollis, G. and Shaoul, C. (2007). LINGUA: The Language-Independent Neighbourhood Generator of the University of Alberta. The Mental Lexicon, 2: 271-284.

• Binder, J., Medler, D., Westbury, C., Liebenthal, E., and Buchanan, L. (2006). Tuning of the human left fusiform gyrus to sublexical orthographic structure. Neuroimage, 33(2):739-748.

• Westbury, C. (2006). The Alberta Language Function Assessment Battery. Brain & Language, 99:1-2, 53-54.

• Shaoul, C. & Westbury, C. (2006). Word frequency effects in high dimensional co-occurrence models: A new approach. Behavior Research Methods, 38:2, 190-195.

• Hollis, G., Westbury, C., & Peterson, J. (2006). NUANCE 3.0: Using Genetic Programming to Model Variable Relationships. Behavior Research Methods, 38:2, 218-228.

• Hollis, G. & Westbury, C. (2006). NUANCE: Naturalistic University of Alberta Nonlinear Correlation Explorer. Behavior Research Methods, 38(1), 8-23.

• Westbury, C. & Buchanan, L. (2006). Toward a frontal lobe disconnection model of deep dyslexia: The role of semantic feedback in phonological false memories. Journal of Neurolinguistics, 19: 124-156.

• Chan, K.M, Strohschein, F.J., Rydz, D., Allidina, A., Shuaib, A., & Westbury, C. (2006). Randomized controlled trial of Madafinil for the treatment of fatigue in post-polio patients. Muscle & Nerve, January: 138-141.

• Westbury, C. & Hollis, G. (2005). In the tiniest house of time: Parametric constraints in evolutionary models of symbolization. Behavioral & Brain Science, 28(4), 513-4

• Binder, J., Westbury, C., McKiernan, K.A., Possing, E.T., Medler, D.A. (2005). Distinct Brain Systems for Processing Concrete and Abstract Concepts. The Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 17:6, 1-13.

• Westbury, C. (2005). Implicit sound symbolism in lexical access: Evidence from an interference task. Brain & Language, 93:1, 10-19.

• Siakaluk, P., Buchanan, L. & and Westbury, C. (2003). The Effect of Semantic Distance in Yes/No and Go/No-Go Semantic Categorization Tasks. Memory & Cognition. 31:1, 100-113.

• Buchanan, L., McEwan, S., Westbury, C., & Libben, G. (2003). Semantics and Semantic Errors: Implicit Access to Semantic Information from Words and Nonwords in Deep Dyslexia. Brain & Language. 84:65-83.

• Binder, J.R., McKiernan, K.A., Parsons, M.E., Westbury, C.F., Possing, E.T., Kaufman, J.N., and Buchanan, L. (2003). Neural Correlates of Lexical Access During Visual Word Recognition. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience. 15:3, 372-393

• Colangelo, A., Stephenson, K., Westbury, C.F., and Buchanan, L. (2003). Word associations in deep dyslexia. Brain and Cognition, 53:2, 166-170.

• Westbury, C. (2003). Negation. Entry in the Digital Semiotics Encyclopedia, an edited, peer-reviewed on-line encyclopedia at http://www.semioticon.com/

• Westbury, C. (2003). Cognitive Science. Entry in the Digital Semiotics Encyclopedia, an edited, peer-reviewed on-line encyclopedia at http://www.semioticon.com/

• Westbury, C., Buchanan, L., Sanderson, S., Rhemtulla, M., & and Phillips, L. (2003). Using genetic programming to discover non-linear variable interactions. Behavior Research Methods, Instruments, and Computers 35:2, 202-216.

• Strohschein, F., Carl G. Kelly, C.G., Clarke, A.G., Westbury, C.F., Shuaib, A., & Chan, K.M. (2003). The Applicability, Validity, and Reliability of the Piper Fatigue Scale in Post-Polio Patients. American Journal of Physical Medicine & Rehabilitation. 82:2 (2003): 1-8.

• Westbury, C. (2002). Blind men, elephants, and dancing information processors [Commentary on Shanker & King's The emergence of a new paradigm in ape language research.]. Behavioral & Brain Science. 25:5, 645-646.

• Westbury, C. & Buchanan, L. (2002). The probability of the least likely non length-controlled bigram affects lexical decision RTs. Brain and Language, 81(1/2/3):66-78.

• Westbury, C., Bub, D., Chertkow, H. (2002). Distinct neurolinguistic symptom clusters in Alzheimer’s-type dementia and primary progressive aphasia. Brain & Cognition, 48(2-3),611-617

• Westbury, C., Buchanan, L., & Brown, N. (2002). Sounds Of The Neighbourhood: False Memories & The Structure of the Phonological Lexicon. Journal of Language & Memory, 46, 622-651.

• McEwan, S., Westbury, C., Buchanan, L., & Libben, G. (2001) Semantic information is used by a deep dyslexic to parse compounds. Brain And Cognition, 46:201-205

• Buchanan, L., Westbury, C., & Burgess, C. (2001). Characterizing Semantic Space: Neighbourhood Effects in Word Recognition. Psychonomic Bulletin And Review, 8(3), 531-544

• Buchanan, L., McEwen, S., Westbury, C., & Libben, G. (2000). Semantic processing of nonwords by a deep dyslexic. Brain and Language, 74, 379-381.

• Westbury, C. & Buchanan, L. (2000). Improving Neighbourhood Relations: Using Evolutionary Programming To Uncover Non-linear Functional Dependencies In Lexical Access. The Proceedings of Neural Computation 2000, Berlin, Germany [Published as a CD]

• Westbury, C., & Buchanan, L. (1999). What's In A Word? A Sublexical Effect In A Lexical Decision Task. In: M. Hahn & S.C. Stoness, Eds. The Proceedings of the Twenty First Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society, Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum, 824.

• Westbury, C. & Dennett, D. (2000). Mining the past to construct the future: Memory and belief as forms of knowledge. In: Schacter, D.L. and Scarry, E. (Eds.) Memory, Brain, and Belief. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

• Dennett, D. & Westbury, C. (1999). Stability is not intrinsic [Commentary on O’Brien and Opie: A Connectionist theory of Phenomenal Experience]. Behavioral And Brain Science.

• Westbury, C. & Nicoladis, E. (1998). Meaning in children's first words: Implications for a theory of lexical ontology. In: The proceedings of the 22nd Boston University Conference On Language Development, p. 768-778.

• Westbury, C., Zatorre, R., & Evans, A. (1999). Measuring variability in the planum temporale: A probability map. Cerebral Cortex, June, 9(4), 392-405.

• Paus, T., Koski, S., Caramanos, Z., & Westbury, C. (1998). Regional differences in the effect of task difficulty and motor output on blood-flow response in the human anterior cingulate cortex: A review of 108 PET activation studies. NeuroReport., 9(9), 37-47.

• Zatorre, R.J., Perry, D.W., Beckett, C.A., Westbury, C.F., & Evans, A. (1998). Functional anatomy of musical processing in listeners with absolute pitch and relative pitch. Proceedings Of The National Academy Of Science, 95, 3172-3177

• Westbury, C. & Bub, D. (1998). Aphasia Diagrams: A New Notational Scheme For Representing Neurolinguistic Deficits. Brain & Language, 61, 105-114.

• Westbury, C. & Bub, D. (1997). Primary Progressive Aphasia: A Review Of 112 Cases. Brain & Language, 60, 381-406.

• Binik, I., Westbury, C., Servan-Schreiber, D. (1988). Interaction with a ‘Sex Expert’ enhances attitudes towards computerized sex therapy, Behaviour Therapy And Research. 27: 303-306.

B.) Other publications

• Libben, G., Jarema, G., & Westbury, C. (Eds.) (2012). Methodological and Analytic Frontiers in Lexical Research. [Edited volume; 475 pages] Philadelphia, PA: John Benjamins.

• Shaoul, C. & Westbury, C. (2012). Formulaic sequences: Do they exist and do they matter? In: Libben, G., Jarema, G., & Westbury, C. (Eds.) (2012). Methodological and Analytic Frontiers in Lexical Research. Philadelphia, PA: John Benjamins.

• Westbury, C. (2012). Assessing language impairment in aphasia: Going beyond pencils and paper in the computer age. In: Libben, G., Jarema, G., & Westbury, C. (Eds.) (2012). Methodological and Analytic Frontiers in Lexical Research. Philadelphia, PA: John Benjamins.

• Westbury, C. & Nicoladis, E. (2001). A Multiplicity of Constraints [Review of Paul Bloom’s How Children Learn The Meaning of Words]. Behavioral & Brain Science.

• Westbury, C. (2001). Symbols in Your Face [Review of Andrew Young’s Face And Mind], The Semiotic Review of Books, 12:1,7-9.

• Westbury, C. (2000). From syllable to syntax: Structural continuity or common cognitive cause? [Review of Andrew Carstairs-McCarthy's The Origins Of Complex Language ] Psycoloquy, 11(126).

• Westbury, C. (2000). Re-mapping Snow’s Gulf [Review of Jordan Peterson's Maps Of Meaning: The Architecture Of Belief] The Semiotic Review Of Books, 11.1, 5-7.

• Westbury, C. (2000). Probability theory [as the greatest invention of the last 2000 years] In: Brockman, J. (ed.) The Greatest Inventions of the Last 2000 Years, p.139-141, New York: Simon & Schuster.

• Westbury, C., Buchanan, L., & Brown, N. (1999). Noys In The Neighbourhood: False Memories & The Structure of the Phonological Lexicon. Experimental & Theoretical Linguistics, the working papers of the Department Of Linguistics (Volume 6), University Of Alberta.

• Westbury, C. & Wilensky, U. (1998). Knowledge representation in cognitive science: Implications for education. Internal document commissioned by the Planning Office of the Ministry of Education, Government of Peru.

• Westbury, C. (1998) Hacking the world: On the origin of objects [Review of Brian Smith’s On The Origin Of Objects]. Pattern Analysis & Applications, 1:202-204.

• Westbury, C. (1998). Research strategies: psychological and psycholinguistic methods in neurolinguistics. In: Stemmer, B. & Whitaker, H. (eds.), Handbook Of Neurolinguistics. p. 83-94. Academic Press.

• Westbury, C. (1997). Artificial Minds [Review of Stan Franklin's Artificial Minds]. The Journal Of Nervous & Mental Disease, 185(3), 202-203.

C.) Digital Resources

• Westbury, C. (2007). Assessing Cases: The University of Alberta Testing Environment (ACTUATE). Macintosh and Windows versions.