taylor renee joyce

linguist + harrington doctoral fellow @ ut austin

WHO I AM
Taylor, a white woman with shoulder-length, brown hair, smiles at the camera, with a light blue background.

Hello! My name is Taylor, and I’m a research scientist soon to be graduating with my PhD in linguistics from the University of Texas at Austin. I study sign language acquisition with a focus on disabled second language learners. I’m a second language learner of ASL and disabled myself, as well as a proud first-generation high school and college graduate. I’m passionate about communication, learning, and accessibility in all forms, and the science thereof.

(Want to know more? I invite you to read my background in full, interactive detail here!)

Besides my research, I also participate in mentorship and advocacy for first-generation students. As someone born and raised in small-town rural Texas, I deeply care about opening science up to underrepresented communities. I also work as an Apartments Resident Assistant in University Housing, where I focus on building community in student residential life.

When I’m not working, I’m usually hanging out with my dog (an Austin Pets Alive! rescue), playing Nintendo games, or on a volleyball court.

Cubby, a large dog with yellow and white fur, sits atop concrete stairs that descend behind him. behind the stairs is a view of a very sunny and green downtown Austin.

WHAT I’M DOING

Research:

  • Visual Attention in Hearing Non-Signers with ADHD: As part of my dissertation project, I’ve designed a novel experiment which gauges visual attention while undergoing ASL and gestural (non-linguistic) processing. I’m interested in comparing participants with and without ADHD who have not been previously exposed to signed language.

  • Associative Language Learning and ADHD: The second experiment in my dissertation will use associative lexical learning tasks in both speech, sign, and fingerspelling. Again, I’m interested in comparing non-signers with and without ADHD here, but for this experiment, they have undergone an explicit language learning task.

  • Interviews of ASL Instructors: I’ve had some interview data that I collected in collaboration with my advisor, Dr. Jenny Singleton, with ASL instructors regarding their experiences teaching disabled students. Our next step is to interview disabled students in ASL classes.

Teaching:

  • I’m currently serving as a teaching assistant (for “Signed Languages and Signing Communities”), but I’ve served twice as a lead instructor for “Introduction to the Study of Language,” which I thoroughly enjoyed! As part of the course, I designed an activity where students complete a scaled-down version of a real-world psycholinguistic experiment. It’s easy, accessible, and takes only about an hour in class! Here is the link to the folder with the experimental task materials, which anyone is welcome to use (credit appreciated).