In Prep
Category repetition priming, rhyme identification, and category verification are predicted by inner speech
Breeden, K., & Lupyan, G.
About
I am a fourth-year PhD student in the Department of Psychology at The University of Wisconsin-Madison, working with Professor Gary Lupyan. My research sits at the intersection of language and cognition, with a focus on how people process and resolve semantic ambiguity — specifically, how we recover meaning by exploiting the distributional properties of language.
I received my B.S. in Computational Cognitive Science from The University of Michigan, where I worked under the supervision of Dr. Twila Tardif and Dr. Susan Gelman. Prior to my PhD at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, I completed a Master in Data Science at Northwestern University and worked as a Data Scientist for two years.
I am interested in how linguistic context shapes semantic representation, and how the statistical structure of language provides the scaffolding through which ambiguous meaning becomes interpretable. I also bring an inner speech lens to these questions, investigating how individual differences in inner speech experience predict variation in categorical and semantic cognition.
Research Interests
Semantic Representation and Ambiguity
I am currently involved in multiple projects investigating the relationship between contextual semantic ambiguity and our ability to infer meaning of unknown or novel words.
Inner Speech
I am also interested in individual differences in inner speech and what areas of language processing, comprehension, and representation these differences may predict.
Selected Publications
Journal Publications
Conference Proceedings
2026
Finding the Conceptual Glue: Ad-hoc Categorization in People and LLMs
Altenhof, A. M., Breeden, K., & Lupyan, G. (2026). Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society, 48.
2026
Recovering Meaning from "Meaningless" Texts: Semantic Ambiguity Reduction as Recovery of Distributional Structure
Breeden, K., & Lupyan, G. (2026). Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society, 48.
2025
Who notices object repeats? Individual differences in inner experience influence repetition priming
Breeden, K., & Lupyan, G. (2025). Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society, 47.
Conference Posters
Jul 2026
Finding the Conceptual Glue: Ad-hoc Categorization in People and LLMs
Altenhof, A.*, Breeden, K.*, & Lupyan, G. CogSci 2026
Jul 2026
Recovering Meaning from "Meaningless" Texts: Semantic Ambiguity Reduction as Recovery of Distributional Structure
Breeden, K.*, & Lupyan, G. CogSci 2026
Aug 2025
Who notices object repeats? Individual differences in inner experience influence repetition priming
Breeden, K., & Lupyan, G. CogSci 2025
Spring 2025
Who notices object repeats? Individual differences in inner experience influence repetition priming
Breeden, K., & Lupyan, G. UW-Madison Psychology Research Fair
Invited Talks
Oct 31, 2025
Reasoning in Humans and LLMs: Language as Compression and Pattern-Matching, But Not Logic
Upgrade Science Insights Lunch Talk Series
Sep 18, 2025
Power Analyses! What are they? Why are they tricky? How can we use them?
Language Acquisition and Bilingualism Lab, UW-Madison
Oct 9, 2024
Inner Speech as a Predictor of Individual Differences in Cognition
Cognitive Origins Lab, UW-Madison
Guest Lectures
Apr 13, 2026
Missing Data: Why we care and how we handle it
Design and Analysis of Psychological Experiments II, UW-Madison — Instructor: Dr. Markus Brauer
Nov 24, 2025
Power Analyses! What are they? Why are they tricky? How can we estimate power in LMER?
Statistics for Linguists, UW-Madison — Instructor: Dr. Eric Raimy
Nov 12, 2024
Language, Cognition, and Inner Speech
Animal Cognition, UW-Madison — Instructor: Dr. Stephen Ferrigno
Teaching Assistantships
Spring 2026
Design and Analysis of Psychological Experiments II
Instructor: Dr. Markus Brauer
Second course in a graduate statistics sequence, covering advanced methods including linear mixed-effects models, repeated measures mediation analysis, exploratory factor analysis, signal detection theory, missing data, and Bayesian statistics. TAship involved teaching an independent lab section and creating original lab and homework materials.
Spring 2025
PSYCH 210: Basic Statistics for Psychology
Instructor: Dr. Rebecca Addington
Undergraduate level course covering an introduction to statistics. TAship included teaching four lab sections every week including content on performing statistical tests by hand, running statistical software, and reviewing essential concepts.
Fall 2024
PSYCH 505: Animal Cognition
Instructor: Dr. Stephen Ferrigno
Undergraduate upper-level breadth course on and introduction to cognition in animals. TAship included teaching three discussion sections every week discussing content and evaluating presentations on primary research articles.
Grants, Honors, and Awards
Sep 2025
UW-Madison Psychology Department Menzies Research Fund Award
Jan 2024