kevin j. holmes kevin.holmes [at] emory [dot] edu Ph.D. Candidate Department of Psychology [website] | Cognitive & Linguistic Systems Lab [website] Emory University [website]

research interests

How does the human mind make sense of the rich sensory input encountered in everyday experience? By what mechanisms is knowledge of the world structured in the mind? What are the specific properties of the mental representations that form this structure? My research addresses these questions by examining the fundamental roles of language and space in conceptual organization. In particular, my research program focuses on two major topics: (1) the relation between language and thought, and (2) the spatial representation of abstract domains.

CV [PDF]

papers

Holmes, K. J ., & Lourenco, S. F. (in press). Orienting numbers in mental space: Horizontal organization trumps vertical. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology.

Holmes, K. J., & Wolff, P. (2012). Does categorical perception in the left hemisphere depend on language? Journal of Experimental Psychology: General. doi: 10.1037/a0027289 [PDF]

Holmes, K. J., & Lourenco, S. F. (2011). Common spatial organization of number and emotional expression: A mental magnitude line. Brain and Cognition, 77, 315-323. [PDF]

Wolff, P., & Holmes, K. J. (2011). Linguistic relativity. Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Cognitive Science, 2, 253-265. [PDF]

Matlock, T., Holmes, K. J., Srinivasan, M., & Ramscar, M. (2011). Even abstract motion influences the understanding of time. Metaphor and Symbol, 26, 260-271. [PDF]

Holmes, K. J., & Wolff, P. (2011). Simulating realism in language comprehension. In L. Carlson, C. Hölscher, & T. Shipley (Eds.), Proceedings of the 33rd Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society (pp. 2884-2889). Austin, TX: Cognitive Science Society. [PDF]

Holmes, K. J., & Lourenco, S. F. (2011). Horizontal trumps vertical in the spatial organization of numerical magnitude. In L. Carlson, C. Hölscher, & T. Shipley (Eds.), Proceedings of the 33rd Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society (pp. 2276-2281). Austin, TX: Cognitive Science Society. [PDF]

Holmes, K. J., & Wolff, P. (2010). Simulation from schematics: Dorsal stream processing and the perception of implied motion. In R. Catrambone & S. Ohlsson (Eds.), Proceedings of the 32nd Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society (pp. 2704-2709). Austin, TX: Cognitive Science Society. [PDF]

Holmes, K. J., & Lourenco, S. F. (2009). Spatial organization of magnitude in the representation of number and emotion. In N. Taatgen & H. van Rijn (Eds.), Proceedings of the 31st Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society (pp. 2402-2407). Austin, TX: Cognitive Science Society. [PDF]

Wolff, P., Hausknecht, M., & Holmes, K. J. (2011). Absent causes, present effects: How omissions cause events. In J. Bohnemeyer & E. Pederson (Eds.), Event representation in language and cognition (pp. 228-252). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. [PDF]

teaching

Linguistics 201: Foundations of Linguistics, Summer 2011 [course description]

service

Emory Center for Mind, Brain, and Culture (CMBC) lunch series blog commentary
• "Narrative: Films and Texts" (Salman Rushdie) [blog post]
• "Handwriting: The Brain, the Hand, the Eye, the Ear" (Evelyne Ender) [blog post]
• "Cultural and Neuroscientific Perspectives on Emotion" (Jocelyne Bachevalier & Dierdra Reber) [blog post]
• "What Is Language?" (Susan Tamasi & Robert McCauley) [blog post]
• "The Bodily Aesthetics of Human Meaning-Making" (Mark Johnson) [blog post]