In our laboratory, we conduct basic research on human language activities such as reading, writing, speaking, and listening from a cognitive-psychological perspective, and aim to apply the results obtained to practice in various fields such as education and disaster prevention.

One of the most important basic research themes is the elucidation of the text understanding process.  Text comprehension is the process of constructing meanings through the interaction of text and reader.  Within a limited capacity of working memory, the reader activates prior knowledge related to the sentence, processes the language information, supplements the unspecified information with inferences, and builds a situation model described by the text.  We focus on the influence of the reader's working memory capacity, the role of prior knowledge, the inference process during text understanding, and the structure and nature of the situation model.

The results of these basic research can be applied to various communication situations.  In education, for example, how to transfer knowledge from teacher to student can lead to effective learning is an important theme.  We propose and implement effective educational methods based on the learner's cognitive process.  As for disaster reduction, we are trying to design a new disaster reduction education program.