Assistant Professor in Cognitive Science

tel: 216-368-0115

office: Crawford 617G

vera.tobin@case.edu

Research interests: Social cognition, viewpoint, joint attention, cognitive biases, cognitive approaches to language and literature.

I study connections between cognition, language, and narrative, with a special interest in cognitive bias and how people think about other minds. My research looks at how people interpret and construct narratives together, how literature and film capitalize on various aspects of our social cognition, and the intersection of 'small' linguistic-pragmatic phenomena with sense making at the level of narrative and interaction.

Some current projects

Cognitive biases and narrative structure
Irony as a viewpoint phenomenon
Conceptual and linguistic compressions for identity and change

Selected publications

"Irony as a Viewpoint Phenomenon." (with Michael Israel). 2012. Viewpoint in Language: A Multimodal Perspective. Eds. Eve Sweetser and Barbara Dancygier. 25-46. Cambridge University Press.

"Attention, Blending, and Suspense in Classic and Experimental Film." (with Todd Oakley). 2012. Blending and the Study of Narrative. Eds. Ralf Schneider and Marcus Hartner. 57-83. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.

"Joint Attention, To the Lighthouse, and Modernist Representations of Intersubjectivity." 2010. English Text Construction, vol. 3, no. 2

"Grammatical and Rhetorical Consequences of Entrenchment in Conceptual Blending." 2010. Meaning, Form, and Body. Eds. Fey Parrill, Vera Tobin, and Mark Turner. Stanford, CA: CSLI Publications.

"Cognitive Bias and the Poetics of Surprise." 2009. Language and Literature, vol. 18, no. 2

"Ways of Reading Sherlock Holmes." 2006. Language and Literature, vol. 15, no. 1

"On Simile." (with Michael Israel and Jennifer Riddle Harding). 2005. Language, Culture and Mind. Ed. Suzanne Kemmer and Michel Achard. Stanford, CA: CSLI Publications.