Dr. Josep Demestre | Team | Grup de recerca GIP

I am a psycholinguist and, as such, I am interested in how the human mind understands, produces, and acquires language. I am impressed by the rich structure of human language, especially the countless details of which we are not consciously aware. I want to know, in cognitive and neuroscientific terms, how linguistic structures are encoded and manipulated. With my research I try to understand how language comprehension proceeds in a mostly effortless manner, despite the apparent complexity of this process. I focus on real-time processing of Romance languages such as Spanish and Catalan. In particular, my research seeks to understand how and when adult native and bilingual speakers of a language make use of different sources of (linguistic and extra-linguistic) information when comprehending sentences in real time. I am particularly interested in the relationship between grammar and the human sentence processing system (the parser). To address these questions, I conduct comprehension experiments using behavioural, eye-tracking, and neurophysiological methods.

Contact(ELIMINAR)

ORCID

PUBLICATIONS 2024:

Demestre, J. (2024). On the rapid use of verb-control information in sentence processing. Frontiers in Psychology, 14:1320966. 10.3389/fpsyg.2023.1320966

PUBLICATIONS 2023:

Ferré, P., Obrador, J. A., & Demestre, J. (2023). Are Translation Equivalents Always Activated When Bilinguals Perform a Task in One of Their Languages? Behavioral and ERP Evidence of the Role of the Task. Brain Sciences, 13(3):432. 10.3390/brainsci13030432
Lobina, D. J., Demestre, J., García-Albea, J. E., & Guasch, M. (2023). Default meanings: language's logical connectives between comprehension and reasoning. Linguistics and Philosophy, 46, 135-168. 10.1007/s10988-022-09359-w

PUBLICATIONS 2022:

Aguilar, M., Ferré, P., Hinojosa, J. A., Gavilán, J. M., & Demestre, J. (2022). Locality and attachment preferences in preverbal versus post-verbal Relative Clauses. Language, Cognition and Neuroscience, 37:10, 1303-1310. 10.1080/23273798.2022.2066701
Lobina, D. J., Demestre, J., García-Albea, J. E., & Guasch, M. (2022). Unsaid thoughts: Thinking in the absence of verbal logical connectives. Frontiers in Psychology, 13:962099. 10.3389/fpsyg.2022.962099
Vela-Candelas, J., Català, N., & Demestre, J. (2022). Effects of world knowledge on the prediction of upcoming verbs: an eye-tracking study. Journal of Psycholinguistic Research, 51, 1335-1345. 10.1007/s10936-022-09900-9

PUBLICATIONS 2021:

Aguilar, M., Ferré, P., Gavilán, J. M., Hinojosa, J. A., & Demestre, J. (2021). The actress was on the balcony, after all: Eye-tracking locality and PR-availability effects in Spanish. Cognition, 211, 104624. 10.1016/j.cognition.2021.104624

PUBLICATIONS 2020:

Boada, R., Guasch, M., Haro, J., Demestre, J., & Ferré, P. (2020). SUBTLEX-CAT: Subtitle word frequencies and contextual diversity for Catalan. Behavior Research Methods, 52, 360-375. 10.3758/s13428-019-01233-1
Lobina, D. J., García-Albea, J. E. & Demestre, J. (2020). Parsing for position. Experimental Psychology, 67, 40-47. 10.1027/1618-3169/a000477
Paolieri, D., Demestre, J., Guasch, M., Bajo, T., & Ferré, P. (2020). The gender congruency effect in Catalan-Spanish bilinguals: Behavioral and electrophysiological evidence. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 23, 1045-1055. 10.1017/S1366728920000073

PUBLICATIONS 2018:

Lobina, D. J., Demestre, J., & García-Albea, J. E. (2018). Disentangling perceptual and psycholinguistic factors in syntactic processing: Tone monitoring via ERPs. Behavior Research Methods, 50, 1125-1140. 10.3758/s13428-017-0932-4

PUBLICATIONS 2017:

Ferré, P., Sánchez-Casas, R., Comesaña, M., & Demestre, J. (2017). Masked translation priming with cognates and noncognates: Is there an effect of words? concreteness? Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 20, 770-782. 10.1017/S1366728916000262
Gavilán, J. M., Rivera, D., Guasch, M., Demestre, J., & García-Albea, J. E. (2017). Exploring the Effects of Visual Frame and Matching Direction on the Vertical-Horizontal Illusion. Perception, 46, 1339-1355. 10.1177/0301006617724979
Haro, J., Demestre, J., Boada, R., & Ferré, P. (2017). ERP and behavioral effects of semantic ambiguity in a lexical decision task. Journal of Neurolinguistics, 44, 190-202. 10.1016/j.jneuroling.2017.06.001
Haro, J., Ferré, P., Boada, R., & Demestre, J. (2017). Semantic ambiguity norms for 530 Spanish words. Applied Psycholinguistics, 38, 457-475. 10.1017/S0142716416000266

PUBLICATIONS 2016:

Moldovan, C. D., Demestre, J., Ferré, P., & Sánchez-Casas, R. (2016). The role of meaning and form similarity in translation recognition in highly proficient balanced bilinguals: A behavioral and ERP study. Journal of Neurolinguistics, 37, 1-11. 10.1016/j.jneuroling.2015.07.002

PUBLICATIONS 2015:

Moldovan, C. D., Ferré, P., Demestre, J., & Sánchez-Casas, R. (2015). Semantic similarity: Normative ratings for 185 Spanish noun triplets. Behavior Research Methods, 47, 788-799. 10.3758/s13428-014-0501-z

PUBLICATIONS 2013:

Ferrando, P.J., Anguiano-Carrasco, C., & Demestre, J. (2013). Combining IRT and SEM: An hybrid model for fitting responses and response certainties. Structural Equation Modeling, 20, 208-225.
Villegas, A., Demestre, J., & Dussias. P. E. (2013). Processing Relative/Sentence Complement Clauses in Immersed Spanish-English Speakers. Proceedings of the 16th Hispanic Linguistics Symposium, ed. Jennifer Cabrelli Amaro et al., 70-79.

PUBLICATIONS 2012:

Demestre, J. (2012). Deleting the object marker renders the sentence ungrammatical: Comment on Casado, Martín-Loeches, Muñoz and Fernández-Frías (2005). Language and Cognitive Processes, 27, 682-692.
Moldovan, C. D., Sánchez-Casas, R., Demestre, J., & Ferré, P. (2012). Interference effects as a function of semantic similarity in the translation recognition task in bilinguals of Catalan and Spanish. Psicológica, 33, 77-110.
Sánchez-Casas, R., Ferré, P., Demestre, J., García-Chico, T., & García-Albea, J. E. (2012). Masked and Unmasked Priming Effects as a Function of Semantic Relatedness and Associative Strength. Spanish Journal of Psychology, 15, 891-900.

PUBLICATIONS 2011:

Ferrando, P.J., Demestre, J., Anguiano-Carrasco, C., Chico, E. (2011). Evaluación TRI de la escala I-E de Rotter: Un nuevo enfoque y algunas consideraciones. Psicothema, 23(2), 282-288.

PUBLICATIONS 2008:

Ferrando, P. J.; Demestre, J. (2008). Características de forma y contenido que predicen la capacidad discriminativa en ítems de personalidad: un análisis basado en la Teoría de Respuesta a los Ítems. Psicothema, 20 (4), 851-856.

PUBLICATIONS 2007:

Demestre, J.; García-Albea, J. E. (2007). ERP evidence for the rapid assignment of an (appropriate) antecedent to PRO. Cognitive Science, 31, 343-354.
Demestre, J.; García-Albea, J. E. (2007). Sobre la interpretación del sujeto nulo de los complementos de infinitivo. Anuario de Psicología, 38, 71-92.
Ferrando, P. J.; Demestre, J. (2007). Características del ítem que predicen el tiempo de respuesta en medidas de personalidad. Psicothema, 19 (2), 337-342.

PUBLICATIONS 2006:

Condón, L.; Ferrando, P.J.; Demestre, J. (2006). A note on some item characteristics related to acquiescent responding. Personality and Individual Differences, 40 (3), 403-407.

PUBLICATIONS 2004:

Demestre, J.; García Albea, J. E. (2004). The on-line resolution of the sentence complement/relative clause ambiguity: Evidence from Spanish. Experimental Psychology, 51, 59-71.

PUBLICATIONS FROM BEFORE THE YEAR 2000:

Demestre, J.; Meltzer, S.; García Albea, J.E.; Vigil, A. (1999). Identifying the null subject: evidende from event-related brain potentials. Journal of Psycholinguistic Research, 28, 293-312.