Education

• Ph.D., Psychology and Cognitive Science, UC San Diego, 1991
• M.A., Linguistics, Gallaudet University, 1983
• B.S., Educational Psychology, New York University, 1982 (magna cum laude)

About

David Corina is a professor of linguistics and psychology at the University of California, Davis. He also is a faculty member at the Center for Mind and Brain, where he is the director of the Cognitive Neurolinguistics Laboratory. He is a cognitive neuroscientist studying the comprehension and production of signed and spoken languages. His research includes the study of linguistic abilities in children and adults and in persons with neurological impairments. He is an active member for the Cognitive Neuroscience Society, Society for Neurobiology of Language and Linguistics Society of America. He serves as an ad hoc editor for many scholarly journals, foundations and funding agencies.

Research Focus

Professor Corina's research focuses on understanding the cognitive and neural mechanisms of language processing. Professor Corina conducts studies that compare and contrast language processing in deaf users of American Sign Language (ASL) and hearing users of spoken languages. Developmental studies of deaf children seek to understand the effects of spoken and signed language abilities on auditory and visual development. Additional interests include the processing of human actions and gestures. Collectively these studies help elucidate the mechanisms and neural systems related to human language processing, and the degree of plasticity within these systems. His lab uses behavioral, functional imaging (EEG/ERP, fMRI) and neuropsychological techniques to elucidate normal language and language breakdown.

Lab

Cognitive Neurolinguistic Lab (Corina)

Select Publications

Corina, D. P., Marschark, M., & Spencer, P. E. (2015). Neurolinguistic studies of sign language bilingualism. In The Oxford handbook of deaf studies in language (p. 276). Oxford University Press.

Corina, D. P., & Gutierrez, E. (2016). Embodiment and American Sign Language: exploring sensory-motor influences in the recognition of American Sign Language. Gesture, 15(3), 291-305.

Corina, D. P., Blau, S., LaMarr, T., Lawyer, L. A., & Coffey-Corina, S. (2017). Auditory and visual electrophysiology of deaf children with cochlear implants: Implications for cross-modal plasticity. Frontiers in Psychology, 8, 59.

Lawyer, L. A., & Corina, D. P. (2018). Putting underspecification in context: ERP evidence for sparse representations in morphophonological alternations. Language, cognition and neuroscience, 33(1), 50-64

Corina, D. P., & Lawyer, L. A. (2019). The Neural Organization of Signed Language. In The Oxford Handbook of Neurolinguistics (p. 402). Oxford University Press.

Leonard, M. K., Lucas, B., Blau, S., Corina, D. P., & Chang, E. F. (2020). Cortical Encoding of Manual Articulatory and Linguistic Features in American Sign Language. Current Biology, 30(22), 4342-4351.e3. https://doi.org/10.1016/J.CUB.2020.08.048

Corina, D. P., Farnady, L., LaMarr, T., Pedersen, S., Lawyer, L., Winsler, K., Hickok, G., & Bellugi, U. (2020). Effects of age on American Sign Language sentence repetition. Psychology and Aging, 35(4), 529–535. https://doi.org/10.1037/pag0000461

Corina, D. P. (2021). Articulatory postures and forward models in American Sign Language: Linguistic and neuroscience evidence. FEAST. Formal and Experimental Advances in Sign language Theory, 4, 61-73.

Cates, D., Traxler, M., & Corina, D. (2022). Predictors of reading comprehension in deaf and hearing bilinguals. Applied Psycholinguistics, 43(1), 81-123. doi:10.1017/S0142716421000412

Corina, D.P., Coffey-Corina, S., Pierotti, E., Bormann, B., LaMarr, T., Lawyer, L., Backer, K.C. and Miller, L.M., 2022. Electrophysiological Examination of Ambient Speech Processing in Children With Cochlear Implants. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, pp.1-16.

Pierotti, E., Coffey-Corina, S., Schaefer, T., & Corina, D. P. (2022). Semantic word integration in children with cochlear implants: electrophysiological evidence. Language, Cognition and Neuroscience, 37(2), 224-240.

Teaching

David Corina teaches courses in the area of linguistics. He has taught classes in Introduction to Linguistics, Psycholinguistics and Brain Basis of Language, Bilingualism.