Headshot of Dr.Matthew Lowder

Dr. Matthew Lowder

He/Him
Associate Professor of Psychology and Cognitive Science Coordinator
Data Science Advisory Board Member
Curriculum Vitae

  • Profile

    Dr. Matthew Lowder is a cognitive scientist whose research draws on principles of experimental psychology and linguistic theory to understand how the mind processes and comprehends language. Some of the overarching questions that motivate his work include: What is the nature of the memory processes that support language comprehension? How do we represent sentence structure and sentence meaning in the mind, and how do these representations interact? What cognitive constructs best account for individual variability in reading behavior? To what extent does the language comprehension system anticipate and predict upcoming linguistic input? To address these questions, his research relies primarily on eyetracking methodology, but also incorporates approaches from cognitive neuroscience and computational linguistics.

    Dr. Lowder earned a Ph.D. in cognitive psychology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and completed postdoctoral training at the University of South Carolina and the University of California, Davis.

  • Publications
    Journal Articles

    *Denotes University of Richmond undergraduate student

    Lowder, M. W., *Cardoso, A., *Pittman, M., & *Zhou, A. (2023). Effects of syntactic structure on the processing of lexical repetition during sentence reading. Memory & Cognition, 51, 1249-1263.

    Kim, D., Lowder, M. W., & Choi, W. (2023). Emotionality effects in Korean visual word recognition: Evidence from lab-based and web-based lexical decision tasks. Acta Psychologica, 237, 103944.

    Lowder, M. W., & Gordon, P. C. (2021). Relative clause effects at the matrix verb depend on type of intervening material. Cognitive Science, 45, e13039.    

    Kim, D., Lowder, M. W., & Choi, W. (2021). Effects of print exposure on an online lexical decision task: A direct replication using a web-based experimental procedure. Frontiers in Psychology, 12, Article 710663.

    Lowder, M. W., *Ryan, G., *Opie, J., & *Kaminsky, E. (2021). Effects of contrastive focus on lexical predictability during sentence reading: The case of not only…but also constructions. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 74, 179-186.  

    Lowder, M. W., Maxfield, N. D., & Ferreira, F. (2020). Processing of self-repairs in stuttered and non-stuttered speech. Language, Cognition and Neuroscience, 35, 93-105. 

    Gordon, P. C., Moore, M., Choi, W., Hoedemaker, R. S., & Lowder, M. W. (2020). Individual differences in reading: Separable effects of reading experience and processing skill. Memory & Cognition, 48, 553-565. 

    Lowder, M. W., & Ferreira, F. (2019). I see what you meant to say: Anticipating speech errors during online sentence processing. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 148, 1849-1858. 

    Lee, H., Seong, E., Choi, W., & Lowder, M. W. (2019). Development and assessment of the Korean Author Recognition Test (KART). Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 72, 1837-1846. 

    Lowder, M. W., Choi, W., Ferreira, F., & Henderson, J. M. (2018). Lexical predictability during natural reading: Effects of surprisal and entropy reduction. Cognitive Science, 42, 1166-1183. 

    Lowder, M. W., & Gordon, P. C. (2017). Print exposure modulates the effects of repetition priming during sentence reading. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 24, 1935-1942.

    Choi, W., Lowder, M. W., Ferreira, F., Swaab, T. Y., & Henderson, J. M. (2017). Effects of word predictability and preview lexicality on eye movements during reading: A comparison between young and older adults. Psychology and Aging, 32, 232-242.

    Lowder, M. W., & Ferreira, F. (2016). Prediction in the processing of repair disfluencies: Evidence from the visual-world paradigm. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 42, 1400-1416.

    Lowder, M. W., & Gordon, P. C. (2016). Eye-tracking and corpus-based analyses of syntax-semantics interactions in complement coercion. Language, Cognition and Neuroscience, 31, 921-939.

    Henderson, J. M., Choi, W., Lowder, M. W., & Ferreira, F. (2016). Language structure in the brain: A fixation-related fMRI study of syntactic surprisal in reading. NeuroImage, 132, 293-300.

    Lowder, M. W., & Ferreira, F. (2016). Prediction in the processing of repair disfluencies. Language, Cognition and Neuroscience, 31, 73-79.

    Choi, W., Lowder, M. W., Ferreira, F., & Henderson, J. M. (2015). Individual differences in the perceptual span during reading: Evidence from the moving window technique. Attention, Perception, & Psychophysics, 77, 2463-2475.

    Lowder, M. W., & Gordon, P. C. (2015). Focus takes time: Structural effects on reading. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 22, 1733-1738.

    Lowder, M. W., & Gordon, P. C. (2015). The manuscript that we finished: Structural separation reduces the cost of complement coercion. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 41, 526-540.

    Lowder, M. W., & Gordon, P. C. (2015). Natural forces as agents: Reconceptualizing the animate-inanimate distinction. Cognition, 136, 85-90.

    Lowder, M. W., & Gordon, P. C. (2014). Effects of animacy and noun-phrase relatedness on the processing of complex sentences. Memory & Cognition, 42, 794-805.

    Lowder, M. W., & Gordon, P. C. (2013). It’s hard to offend the college: Effects of sentence structure on figurative-language processing. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 39, 993-1011.

    Lowder, M. W., Choi, W., & Gordon, P. C. (2013). Word recognition during reading: The interaction between lexical repetition and frequency. Memory & Cognition, 41, 738-751.

    Lowder, M. W., & Gordon, P. C. (2012). The pistol that injured the cowboy: Difficulty with inanimate subject-verb integration is reduced by structural separation. Journal of Memory and Language, 66, 819-832.

    Gordon, P. C., & Lowder, M. W. (2012). Complex sentence processing: A review of theoretical perspectives on the comprehension of relative clauses. Language and Linguistics Compass, 6, 403-415.

    Johnson, M. L., Lowder, M. W., & Gordon, P. C. (2011). The sentence-composition effect: Processing of complex sentences depends on the configuration of common noun phrases versus unusual noun phrases. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 140, 707-724.

    Book Chapters

    Ferreira, F., & Lowder, M. W. (2016). Prediction, information structure, and good-enough language processing. Psychology of Learning and Motivation, 65, 217-247.

    Gordon, P. C., Lowder, M. W., & Hoedemaker, R. S. (2016). Reading in normally aging adults. In Wright, H. H. (Ed.), Cognition, Language and Aging (pp. 165-191). Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing.