Experimental Psycholinguistics
Cognitive and Language Processing Lab
The CLP Lab investigates how people process language in real time, with a particular focus on Thai and English. Directed by Benjamin Clarke, the lab combines behavioural psycholinguistic research with the systematic development of Thai-language datasets, experimental stimuli, and research resources.
The CLP Lab was established in 2026 and is currently based in the Department of Linguistics, Faculty of Liberal Arts, Thammasat University, Thailand. It provides a coordinating identity for a developing programme of research, resource development, postgraduate supervision and academic collaboration.
Explore the research programme
Cognitive and LanguageProcessing Lab
Why Study Thai?
Despite being spoken by tens of millions of people, Thai has a comparatively small experimental evidence base. Research based largely on English and a relatively narrow range of other languages cannot be assumed to explain language processing in every linguistic and writing system.
For the CLP Lab, this creates a practical need for Thai-specific psycholinguistic resources, experimental materials, and behavioural evidence. The names, familiarity, and conceptual associations attached to words and pictures can vary across languages and cultural settings. Developing these resources with Thai speakers supports better-controlled local research and makes wider cross-linguistic comparison possible. More Thai-specific evidence is therefore needed not only to support locally appropriate research, but also to strengthen broader theories of language and cognition across languages.
Why Thai is informative for psycholinguisticsResearch Themes
Psycholinguistic Resources for Thai
A central strand develops Thai-language psycholinguistic resources, including norms, datasets, and experimental materials concerning object, lexical, semantic, visual, and sensorimotor properties.
These resources are intended to support controlled research on word recognition, lexical access, semantic categorisation, picture naming, reading, and cross-linguistic comparison while providing infrastructure for future behavioural research. The programme is cumulative: individual datasets are developed with a view to future integration, validation and reuse.
Current developments include supervised work on Thai affective word norms, a curriculum-derived objective age-of-acquisition resource, and measures of visual and orthographic complexity for written Thai.
Lexical-Conceptual Processing
The lab uses these and related resources to examine how the lexical, semantic, visual, and sensorimotor properties of words and objects influence language processing. This includes behavioural work on semantic categorisation, object naming, word recognition and motor affordances, with a broader interest in how conceptual knowledge is organised and accessed during real-time language use.
L1 and L2 Language Processing
Beyond lexical-conceptual processing, the lab also investigates language processing across first- and second-language contexts. Current strands include English reading among Thai learners, the components that support second-language proficiency, sentence processing, and developing work on L2 speech perception and production. Future work will extend this cognitive approach to broader questions in L2 listening comprehension and spoken-language performance.
This work connects experimental psycholinguistics with selected questions in second language acquisition while retaining a focus on measurable knowledge and processing components.
Cross-Linguistic Research and Emerging Directions
The lab has contributed Thai data and expertise to international collaborations on semantic priming and English reading. These completed projects contribute to testing the generality of psycholinguistic findings across languages, writing systems and participant groups.
Doctoral supervision is also exploring lexical retrieval and word production in Thai speakers, including questions about ageing. This remains an emerging direction rather than a settled lifespan programme.
Methods and Research Resources
The lab uses behavioural and norming-based methods, including:
- Rating and norming studies
- Experimental stimulus and resource development
- Reaction-time and accuracy paradigms
- Semantic categorisation and lexical decision
- Picture naming and word-production tasks
- Reading and language-component assessments
- Online and laboratory-based data collection
Experimental work is supported by statistical analysis in R, SPSS, and JASP, together with experimental task development in PsychoPy and E-Prime.
Public resources currently include open datasets, norms, and research materials, including the Thai object norms and the mime initiation latency dataset. Other datasets remain in development and will be added only when they are ready for responsible public release.
Browse public resourcesResearch Training and Student Involvement
The CLP Lab supports research learning through structured tasks, postgraduate supervision and opportunities for increasing research independence. Students may contribute to an existing project or, where feasible, develop a focused project connected to the lab's research areas under academic research supervision.
Guidance is provided through structured research tasks, individual discussion, and monthly lab meetings. Opportunities vary with the stage and needs of current projects and are intended primarily for Thammasat University students and alumni, with some wider possibilities for Thai speakers or applicants whose experience is relevant to a particular L2 project.
View current research opportunitiesClinical and Clinically Relevant Connections
Although the CLP Lab is not a clinical research group, psycholinguistic theories and behavioural methods can inform research on language and communication difficulties. Current doctoral supervision and resource development therefore have potential relevance to selected questions concerning language and communication difficulties.
The CLP Lab is not a clinical service or professional training facility. Its work focuses on theoretically informed questions, behavioural methods, and language resources that may support future collaboration with qualified clinical researchers.
Read about Clinical Linguistics teachingAcademic Collaboration
The lab welcomes contact from researchers with shared interests in:
- Thai psycholinguistics
- Psycholinguistic norms and experimental materials
- Lexical-semantic and sensorimotor processing
- Cross-linguistic and multilingual research
- Reading and listening comprehension
- Speech perception and production, and spoken-language performance
- Sentence processing
- Language, cognition, and ageing
Possible forms of collaboration include comparative studies, shared methodological approaches, the development and validation of psycholinguistic resources, and projects that broaden the representation of Thai in international psycholinguistic research.
Discuss a potential collaboration