My research focuses on adult language comprehension. I am particularly interested in how language comprehenders compute meaning from linguistic content. My research has focused on the conceptual representation of plurals. For example, consider the sentence "The cats slept on the rug." When a comprehender hears this sentence, what conceptual representation is built for "cats"? The plural referent cats could be left underspecified and represented as a single, non-differentiated group or it could be fully specified and thus represented as a set of differentiated cats. My work is informed by formal linguistics as well as cognitive psychology.

Awards, Honors and Recognition

2024: Community Partnership Award, The Ohio State University (Awarded to Labs in Life)
2024: Program of Excellence in Engaged Scholarship, The Ohio State University (Awarded to PALS)
2022: Fellow of the Psychonomic Society
2018: Distinguished Undergraduate Research Mentor Award, The Ohio State University
2014: Teaching Award, The Ohio State University at Marion
2008: Tim Post Memorial Award for Research Excellence, University of Pittsburgh

Selected Publications

Patson, N.D. (2016). Evidence in support of a scalar implicature account of plurality. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory and Cognition, 42, 1140-1153.

Patson, N.D., and Husband, E.M. (2015). Misinterpretation in agreement and agreement attraction. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 69, 950-971.

Patson, N.D., and Warren, T. (2015). The mental representation of plural events. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 68, 1249-1267.

Patson, N.D. (2014). The processing of plural expressions. Language and Linguistics Compass, 8, 319-329.

Patson, N.D., George, G.E., and Warren, T. (2014). The conceptual representation of number. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 68. 1349-1365.

Patson, N.D., and Warren, T. (2011). Building complex reference objects from dual sets. Journal of Memory and Language, 62, 443-459.