Welcome to the website for the Communicative Mind Laboratory (Co-Mind) in the Department of Communication at UCLA. We conduct research on the cognitive science of communication. Our focus is on dynamics—how communication and cognition are coordinated in time. The lab's research involves a diversity of methods, including corpus and large-scale data analysis, behavioral experimentation, and computational modeling. We are located in Rolfe Hall.

Image: automated analysis of body motion during interaction; click here for an example

Recent research
Investigating the complexity of communication.

Next time you have a conversation, try to attend to yourself as you talk. You do many things. Some of your behaviors are quick, such as subtle movements of your eyes. Some are slower, such as managing topic of conversation. How do you weave such complex, multimodal performances? You have to coordinate many verbal and nonverbal behaviors. In just seconds of language use, your mind actually coordinates many of these behaviors simultaneously. Are there statistical patterns that indicate how this integration takes place? What kind of computer models might help us to understand this complex integration? Is this multimodality critical to your ability to communicate? How does this coordination adapt to conflict or deception or other contexts?

info æt co-mind
Department of Communication
2225 Rolfe Hall, UCLA
Los Angeles, 90095