Allison Nguyen
Assistant Professor
Office
DEG Degarmo Hall 435
Office Hours
Please email for office hours.
Office Phone
Email
Website
- About
- Education
- Awards & Honors
- Selected Research
Biography
I am a psycholinguist deeply interested in understanding how people can shape the conversations they participate in. My work sits at the intersection of linguistic representation and spontaneous communication, with much of my work exploring how conversational effects arise from the interaction of semantic, pragmatic, and contextual factors. I employ a variety of methods in my work, including experimental methods, corpus analyses, and qualitative methods, as well as collaborating with psychologists across subfields, linguists across subfields and scholars in neighboring fields, such as computer science. I hold a B.S. in Cognitive Science from UCLA, a MS in Psychology (Cognitive) from UCSC, a PhD in Psychology (Cognitive), and an MA in Linguistics from UCSC.
Current Courses
PSY 390.016 Advanced Research Apprenticeship
PSY 455.001 Cognitive Science
PSY 499.016 Independent Research For The Master's Thesis
PSY 400.016 Independent Study
PSY 331.002 Laboratory In Research Methods For Psych: Cognitive Processes
PSY 290.016 Special Projects: Research Apprenticeship
MA Linguistics
University of California, Santa Cruz
PhD Cognitive Psychology
University of California, Santa Cruz
MS Cognitive Psychology
University of California, Santa Cruz
BS Cognitive Science
University of California, Los Angeles
Impact Award
Illinois State University
2025
Outstanding TA Award
UCSC Psychology Department
2023
Humanizing Technology Teaching Fellowship
UCSC The Humanities Institute
2022
Quarter Dissertation Fellowship
UCSC Division of Social Sciences
2022
Summer Dissertation Fellowship
UCSC Psychology Department
2022
Frank X. Barron Award in Creativity Research
UCSC Psychology Department
2019
Summer Research Award
UCSC Psychology Department
2019
Fellowship
UC Regents
2018
The Federico and Rena Perlino Award
UCSC Psychology Department
2018
Travel Grant
UCSC Psychology Department
2017
Grants and Contracts
BirdFEEDER
Allison Nguyen, Will Ervin.
Illinois State University. October 2024 - December 2024
Journal Article
How authority affects social evaluations of negotiation words
Allison Nguyen, Jean E. Fox Tree.
Cognitive Research: Principles and Implications, 10 (1), (2025), 10.1186/s41235-025-00669-8
Language as an Act of Human Connection
Allison Nguyen.
The American Journal of Psychology, 138 (3), 342-344, (2025), 10.5406/19398298.138.3.09
Pragmatic uses of I don’t know, boosters, and hedges in text and talk
Allison Nguyen, Jean E. Fox Tree.
Dialogue & Discourse, 16 (1), 68-90, (2025), 10.5210/dad.2025.103
Backchannels in the lab and in the wild
Allison Nguyen, Andrew J. Guydish, Jean E. Fox Tree.
Interaction Studies. Social Behaviour and Communication in Biological and Artificial Systems, 25 (1), 70-99, (2024), 10.1075/is.21036.ngu
Conversational Fluency and Attitudes Towards Robot Pilots in Telepresence Robot-Mediated Interactions
Jean E. Fox Tree, Susan C. Herring, Allison Nguyen, Steve Whittaker, Rob Martin, Leila Takayama.
Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW), 33 (3), 473-498, (2024), 10.1007/s10606-023-09476-5
Discourse markers in small talk and tasks
Andrew J Guydish, Allison Nguyen, Jean E Fox Tree.
Discourse Studies, 26 (5), 606-620, (2024), 10.1177/14614456241230253
Look, Dude: How hyperpartisan and non-hyperpartisan speech differ in online commentary
Allison Nguyen, Tom Roberts, Pranav Anand, Jean E Fox Tree.
Discourse & Society, 33 (3), 371-390, (2022), 10.1177/09579265221108022
Psychological distance in mobile telepresence
Jean E. Fox Tree, Steve Whittaker, Susan C. Herring, Yasmin Chowdhury, Allison Nguyen, Leila Takayama.
International Journal of Human-Computer Studies, 151, 102629, (2021), 10.1016/j.ijhcs.2021.102629
Presentations
Knowing versus Believing: the effects evidentials and authority have on certainty
Will Ervin, Allison Nguyen.
Annual Meeting of the Psychonomic Society, New York, November, 2025
Understanding Negotiation in Communication
Allison Nguyen.
Cognitive Psychology Colloquium, Santa Cruz CA, October 3, 2025
Authority and Expressions of Knowledge
Will Ervin, Allison Nguyen.
Annual Meeting of the Midwestern Psychological Association, Chicago, IL, April, 2025
Do college students understand political orientation?
Aidan Marcikic, Charlisa Mao, Madi Sapp, Kelly Fletcher, Alexandria Hernandez, Dante Caruso, Allison Nguyen.
Annual Meeting of the Midwestern Psychological Association, Chicago, IL, April, 2025
Authority and Expressions of Knowledge
Will Ervin, Allison Nguyen.
Illinois State University Research Symposium, Normal, IL, April, 2025
New Discourse Markers in Mediated Communication
Allison Nguyen, Dante Caruso, Madi Sapp.
Illinois State University Research Symposium, Normal, IL, April, 2025
Optimizing AAC board layouts: the impact of organization on communication efficiency
Ari O'Connell, Allison Nguyen.
Illinois State University Research Symposium, Normal, IL, April, 2025
Political Orientation and Ostracism
Aidan Marcikic, CharlisA Mao, Ari O'Connell, Madi Sapp, Kelly Fletcher, Alexandria Hernandez, Allison Nguyen.
Illinois State University Research Symposium, Normal, IL, April, 2025
Reading comprehension as a result of syntactic structures
Kelly Fletcher, Allison Nguyen.
Illinois State University Research Symposium, Normal, IL, April, 2025
omg lol: New Discourse Markers in Text and Talk
Allison Nguyen.
Colloquium, Online, March, 2025
What do you meme? Memes & Internet Virality
Allison Nguyen.
Science on Tap, Normal, IL, March, 2025
Online Discourse Markers, LOL
Allison Nguyen.
Annual Meeting of the Psychonomic Society, New York, NY, November, 2024
Comments on Andrea Beltrama’s Talk
Allison Nguyen.
Studies in Language, Information, Meaning, and Expression 3, Los Angeles, CA, September, 2024
LOL as a discourse marker
Aidan Marcikic, Allison Nguyen.
Annual Meeting of the Midwestern Psychological Association, Chicago, IL, April, 2024
Emojis as backchannels
Will Ervin, Allison Nguyen, Andrew J. Guydish, Jean E. Fox Tree.
Illinois State University Research Symposium, Normal, IL, April, 2024
Negotiation and agreement in conversations.
Allison Nguyen.
Workshop on Argumentation and Maneuvering Agreement in Discourse, Cologne, Germany., December, 2023
Writing Style Affects Partisanship and Persuasiveness Ratings
Allison Nguyen, Tom Roberts, Pranav Anand, Jean E. Fox Tree.
Multidisciplinary International Symposium on Disinformation in Open Online Media., Amsterdam, Netherlands., November, 2023
Absolutely Persuasive, Kinda Negotiating
Allison Nguyen.
Rising Star Colloquium Series., Charlottesville, VA, December, 2022
Hedges Hedge, Boosters Boost
Allison Nguyen, Jean E. Fox Tree.
Annual Meeting of the Psycho- nomic Society., Boston, MA. Poster., November, 2022
Understanding Words of Negotiation in Context
Allison Nguyen, Jean E. Fox Tree.
The 35th Annual Conference on Human Sentence Processing., Online., March, 2022
Interpreting Negotiation Words In and Out of Context.
Allison Nguyen, Jean E. Fox Tree.
Annual Meeting of the Psychonomic Society, Online, November, 2021
Hedging words in conversation.
Allison Nguyen, Jean E. Fox Tree.
California Meeting on Psycholin- guistics., Irvine, CA., May, 2021
These words kinda matter.
Allison Nguyen, Jean E. Fox Tree.
Annual Meeting of the Psychonomic Society, Online., November, 2020
Little Words in a Big Corpus
Allison Nguyen, Andrew J. Guydish, Yasmin Chowdhury, Jean E. Fox Tree.
Annual Meeting of the Psychonomic Society, Montreal, Quebec, Canada., November, 2019
Words of Negotiation.
Allison Nguyen, Jean E. Fox Tree.
California Meeting on Psycholinguistics., Santa Cruz, CA, October, 2019