Descartes
   PhD Student
   Office: MC-729
   Department of Psychology
   2001 McGill College Ave, 7th floor
   McGill University
   Montreal, QC, Canada, H3A 1G1
   [email protected]
Scroll down for:
  • EDUCATION
  • PUBLICATIONS
  • CONFERENCE PRESENTATIONS
  • HONOURS, AWARDS, FELLOWSHIPS
  • TEACHING
  • SERVICE
Research Interests
I am a PhD student in the Cognitive Computing Lab, at McGill University. 

My broad interests are in cognitive science. Specifically, I am interested in understanding (a) how conceptual knowledge is represented in the brain, (b) how they compose, and (c) how they interface with language and vision.

I have tackled these topics from an interdisciplinary perspective, combining psycholinguistic, neuropsychological, computational, neuroimaging (RSA), and theoretical work, all with the goal of understanding how the brain represents and organizes conceptual knowledge.

You can download my CV here.
Education
  • Ph.D. in Psychology
    McGill University, Montreal, Quebec, Canada
    Supervisor: Dr. Brendan T. Johns
    2021 – 2025 (expected)
    ​GPA: 4.0/4.0

  • Masters of Arts in Psychology
    Concordia University, Montreal, Quebec, Canada
    Thesis: What do we grasp at a glance? Investigating conceptual representations through object categorization
    Supervisor: Dr. Roberto G. de Almeida
    2019 - 2021
    GPA: 4.15/4.3

  • Ph.D. in Linguistics
    Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut, USA
    Supervisor: Dr. Maria Mercedes Piñango
    2018 - 2019 – [Withdrew from program]
    GPA: 4.17/4.3

  • Bachelor of Arts (Honours) in Psychology 
    Concordia University, Montreal, Quebec, Canada
    Thesis: Category-Specific Semantic Deficits for Verb Concepts in Alzheimer’s Disease
    Supervisor: Dr. Roberto G. de Almeida
    2012 - 2017
    GPA: 3.87/4.3 – Graduated with Distinction​
Publications
Submitted
  • Antal., C., Johns, B. T., & de Almeida, R. G. (Under Review). The effect of contextual and semantic diversity in lexical and conceptual access: Evidence from a picture-word semantic congruency task. 
  • de Almeida, R. G., Antal, C., & Salehi, K. (Under review). Early morpho-orthographic and semantic effects in word recognition: Evidence from a foveal-splitting dichoptic paradigm with anaglyphs. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition.
  • Ungerer, T., Antal, C., & de Almeida, R. G. (Under Review). How to sneeze the napkin off the table: Online comprehension of grammatically creative sentences.

Published
  • Antal., C., & de Almeida, R. G. (2024). Grasping the concept of an object at a glance: Category information accessed by brief dichoptic presentation. Cognitive Science, 48(10), 1-54. [link to article]
  • de Almeida, R. G., Gallant, J., Antal, C., & Libben, G. (2024). Semantic access to ambiguous word roots cannot be stopped by affixation--not even in sentence contexts: Evidence from eye tracking and the maze task. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition. [link to article]
  • Antal, C., & de Almeida, R. G. (2023). The units of gating and access to lexical representations during spoken word recognition. In M. Goldwater, F. Anggoro, B. Hayes, & D. Ong (Eds.), Proceedings of the 45th Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society. Sydney: Cognitive Science Society. [link to article]
  • Antal., C., de Almeida, R. G., & Johns, B. T. (2022). Which semantic properties of a feature affect access to an object concept? In J. Culbertson, A. Perfors, H. Rabagliati, & V. Ramenzoni (Eds.), Proceedings of the 44th Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society (pp. 2364-2371). Toronto, ON: Cognitive Science Society. [.pdf] [link to article]​​
  • Antal, C., & de Almeida, R. G. (2021). Indeterminate and enriched propositions in context linger: Evidence from an eye-tracking false memory paradigm. Frontiers in Psychology, 4376(12), 1-9. [.pdf] [link to article]
  • de Almeida, R. G., Mobayyen, F., Antal, C., Kehayia, E., Nair, V., & Schwartz, G. (2021). Category-specific verb-semantic deficits in Alzheimer’s disease: Evidence from static and dynamic action naming. Cognitive Neuropsychology, 38(1), 1-26. [.pdf] [link to journal]
  • de Almeida, R. G., & Antal, C. (2021). How can semantics avoid the troubles with the analytic/synthetic distinction? In S. Löbner et al. (Eds.) Concepts, Frames and Cascades in Semantics, Cognition and Ontology (pp. 103-120). New York: Springer.​ [.pdf] [book]
  • de Almeida, R. G., Dumassais, S., & Antal, C. (2020) Morphological parsing by foveal split: Evidence from Anaglyphs. In S. Deninson, M. Mack, Y. Xu, & B. C. Armstrong (Eds.), Proceedings of the Cognitive Science Society (pp. 3055-3061). Toronto, ON: Cognitive Science Society. [link to article]
  • de Almeida, R. G., Di Nardo, J. C., Antal, C., & von Grünau, M. W. (2019). Understanding events by eye and ear: Agent and verb drive non-anticipatory eye movements in dynamic scenes. Frontiers in Psychology, 2162(10), 1-20. [link to article]

In the Pipeline​
  • Antal, C., & de Almeida, R. G. (In Preparation). Semantic properties and categorization norms for the 260 Snodgrass and Vanderwart's (1980) objects: A 45-year conceptual update to a classic set. [draft: request]
  • de Almeida, R. G., Antal, C., Pissani, L. (Under Revision). What are mental representations? And what do brains do when they process representations? Symbolic versus Embodied Cognitive Science evaluated. [draft: request]
  • Antal, C., & de Almeida, R. G. (In Preparation). Does semantic composition rely on predicate decomposition? Contrasting resultative and depictive sentences. [draft: request]
Conference Presentations (talks)                                        (presenter underlined; R = Refereed)​
  • Antal, C., de Almeida, R. G., & Johns, B. T. (2022). The effect of contextual and semantic diversity in word recognition: Evidence from a dichoptic lexical decision task with anaglyphs. 33rd Annual Meeting of the Canadian Society for Brain, Behaviour and Cognitive Science. Guelph, July 17-19. (R) 
  • Antal, C., de Almeida, R. G. (2022). Does semantic composition rely on predicate decomposition? Contrasting resultatives and depictives. Concepts in Action: Representation, Learning, and Application Conference. August 22-24th, Berlin. (R).
  • Antal, C., de Almeida, R. G., & Johns, B. T. (2022). Access to object concepts is modulated by usage-based properties of feature labels. 32nd Annual Meeting of the Canadian Society for Brain, Behaviour and Cognitive Science. Halifax, July 18-20. (R) 
  • Antal, C., & de Almeida, R. G. (2021). When you recognize a dog, you also know it’s an animal: Evidence from rapid object categorization using anaglyphs. Concepts in Action: Representation, Learning, and Application Conference​. September 16-17th, Online. (R). [published abstract]
  • Antal, C., Trankarov, D., Salehi, K., Falcone, A. R., Pissani, L., & de Almeida, R. G. (2021). Understanding implausible passives in aphasia: Algorithmic and heuristic processes compete. 13th Annual Meeting of the Society for the Neurobiology of Language Conference. October 5-8th. Online. (R). Slide Slam.
  • Antal, C., Falcone, A. R., Pissani, L., Salehi, K., & de Almeida, R. G. (2021). Indeterminate sentences in aphasia: Investigating coercion and the nature of compositionality. 13th Annual Meeting of the Society for the Neurobiology of Language Conference. October 5-8th. Online. (R). Slide Slam.
  • Salehi, K., Antal, C., Falcone, A. R., Pissani, L., & de Almeida, R. G. (2021). Undoable: Computing hierarchical morphological structures in aphasia. 13th Annual Meeting of the Society for the Neurobiology of Language Conference. October 5-8th. Online. (R). Slide Slam.
  • Pissani, L., Antal, C., Salehi, K., Falcone, A. R., & de Almeida, R. G. (2021). Where in the brain is “pragmatics”? The case of verbal metaphors in aphasia. 13th Annual Meeting of the Society for the Neurobiology of Language Conference. October 5-8th. Online. (R). Slide Slam.
  • Antal, C., de Almeida, R. G., & Sharp, J. (2020). The units of gating: A methodological investigation on spoken-word recognition. Words in the World (WoW) International Conference. October 16-18th. Online. (R). 
  • Antal, C., & de Almeida, R. G. (2019). False memories of enriched sentences in context: Evidence from an eye-tracking probe recognition paradigm. 20th European Conference on Eye Movements. Alicante. August 18-22th. (R). [published abstract]
  • de Almeida, R. G., & Antal. C. (2019). Talking about what we see: Eye movements in dynamic scenes are not under the control of linguistic stimuli. 20th European Conference on Eye Movements. Alicante. August 18-22th. (R). [published abstract]
  • de Almeida, R. G., & Antal, C. (2019). Metaphor interpretation, analyticity, and compositionality: a view from atomism. Metaphor Festival 2019. Amsterdam, August 28-30th. (R).
  • de Almeida, R. G., & Antal, C. (2018). Why atomism? 11th International Conference on the Mental Lexicon. Edmonton, September 25-28th. (R)
  • de Almeida, R. G., & Antal, C. (2017). Déficiences sémantiques des verbes chez la maladie d’Alzheimer: Les effets de structure thématique pour la production de phrases avec des scenes dynamiques. Colloque ACFAS.McGill University, Montreal, May 11th. (Invited)
  • de Almeida, R. G., & Antal, C. (2017). Verb semantic deficits in Alzheimer’s disease. CRIR Student Colloquium, Montreal, March 24th. 

​Conference Presentations (posters)​                                     (presenter underlined; R = Refereed)​
  • Antal., C., Le Bouar, C., de Almeida, R. G., Steele, C., & Johns, B. T. (2024). Object concepts in the brain: A representational similarity analysis of features and categories. 46th Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society. Rotterdam, July 24-27. (R)
  • Ungerer, T., Antal, C., & de Almeida, R. G. (2024). Sneezing the napkin off the table: Online comprehension of grammaticality creative sentences. 37th Annual Conference on Human Sentence Processing (HSP). Ann Arbor, May 16-18. (R). [published abstract]
  • La Serra, A., & Antal, C. (2023). The role of co-occurrences on conceptual tokening: Accessing object concepts by their category labels. 45th Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society. July 26-29th, Sydney. (R) [published abstract]
  • La Serra, A., Antal, C., & de Almeida, R. G. (2023). The time course of conceptual access: Evidence from a dichoptic presentation paradigm. 33rd Annual Meeting of the Canadian Society for Brain, Behaviour and Cognitive Science. Guelph, July 17-19. (R) 
  • de Almeida, R. G., Antal, C., & Ungerer, T. (2022). The authors wrote the paper dry: Contrasting resultative and depictive verb templates. 12th International Conference on the Mental Lexicon. Niagara-on-the-Lake, October 11-14th. (R)
  • Salehi, K., de Almeida, R. G., Antal, C. (2022). Parsing compounds and pseudocompounds at the fovea. 44th Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society. July 27-30th, Toronto. (R)
  • Antal, C., & de Almeida, R. G. (2021). When you recognize a dog, you also know it’s an animal: Evidence from rapid object categorization using anaglyphs. 62nd Annual Meeting of Psychonomic Society. November 4-7th, Online. (R)
  • Antal, C., Falcone, A. R., Pissani, L., Salehi, K., & de Almeida, R. G. (2021). Interpreting indeterminate sentences in aphasia: a probe into semantic coercion. 59th Annual Meeting of the Academy of Aphasia Conference. October 24-26th. Online. (R).
  • Salehi, K., Antal, C., Falcone, A. R., Pissani, L., & de Almeida, R. G. (2021). Parsing trimorphemic words in context: Evidence from aphasia. 59th Annual Meeting of the Academy of Aphasia Conference. October 24-26th. Online. (R).
  • Antal, C., & de Almeida, R. G. (2021). As soon as you recognize the dog, you know it’s an animal: Investigating conceptual representations through rapid object categorization. 30th Annual Meeting of the Canadian Society for Brain, Behaviour and Cognitive Science. June 17-18th. Online. (R)
  • Antal, C., & de Almeida, R. G. (2020). The recognition of object concepts sans features: Effects from brief exposure using anaglyphs. Object Perception, Attention, & Memory (OPAM). November 18-19th. Online. (R)
  • Antal, C., & de Almeida, R. G. (2020). Accessing object concepts: Effects from brief exposure using anaglyphs. 20th Annual Meeting of the Vision Sciences Society. May 15-20th, St-Pete Beach, Florida. Online. (R) [published abstract]
  • de Almeida, R. G., & Antal, C. (2020).Talking about what we see, again: Further evidence for non-anticipatory eye movements in dynamic scenes during sentence comprehension. 20th Annual Meeting of the Vision Sciences Society. May 15-20th, St-Pete Beach, Florida. Online. (R) [published abstract]
  • Antal, C., & de Almeida, R. G. (2019). Composing indeterminate event information in context: Evidence from an eye-tracking memory paradigm. 41st Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society. Montreal, July 24-27. (R) [published abstract]
  • de Almeida, R. G., Mobayyen, F., Kehayia, E., Antal, C., Nair, V., & Schwartz, G. (2019). Category-specific verb-semantic naming deficits in Alzheimer’s disease: Evidence from a dynamic action naming task. 41stAnnual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society. Montreal, July 24-27. (R) [published abstract]
  • Antal, C., & de Almeida, R. G. (2018). Accessing indeterminate event information in context: Evidence from an eye-tracking memory paradigm. The 2018 International Meeting of the Psychonomic Society Conference. Amsterdam, May 10-12. (R)
  • Antal, C., Turbide, J., & de Almeida, R. G. (2017). Verb deficits in Alzheimer’s disease and Aphasia: Argument-structure and thematic-hierarchy effects. 9th Annual Meeting of the Society of Neurobiology of Language Conference, Baltimore, USA, November 8-10. (R) [abstract]
  • de Almeida, R. G., & Antal, C. (2016). Category-specific verb deficits in Alzheimer’s: Thematic structure effects in naming and sentence production with dynamic scenes. 8th Annual Meeting of the Society for the Neurobiology of Language Conference. London UK, August 17-20. (R) [abstract]
  • de Almeida, R. G., Antal, C., Anton, N., & Nair, V. P. (2016). Semantic deficits for verbs in Alzheimer’s disease: Evidence from action naming and sentence production. 26th Annual Meeting of the Canadian Society for Brain, Behaviour and Cognitive Science.  Ottawa, June 24-26. (R) 
Honours, Awards, Fellowships, & Distinctions (Total: $524,275)​
  • Graduate Excellence Award - McGill University ($ 7,700), September 2024
  • CRBLM Graduate Travel Award - McGill University ($ 700), May 2023
  • CRBLM Graduate Travel Award - McGill University ($ 700), May 2022
  • Dr. and Mrs. Milton Leong Grad Award - McGill University ($ 5,800), August 2021
  • NSERC Canada Graduate Scholarship-Doctoral (CGS-D) - ($ 105,000) (2021-2024), April 2021
  • FRQSC Bourse de Doctorat en Recherche - ($ 84,000) (2021-2025), April 2021, Declined
  • Concordia University Doctoral Graduate Fellowship - ($ 14,000/year) (2021-2024), March 2021, Declined
  • Concordia University Special Entrance Award – Doctoral ($ 10,000), April 2021, Declined
  • Concordia University Merit Scholarship Faculty of Arts and Science – ($ 17,500), July 2020
  • SSHRC Joseph-Armand Bombardier CGS – Masters ($ 17,500), April 2020, Declined
  • Concordia University Special Entrance Award – Masters ($ 6,000), September 2019
  • SSHRC Joseph-Armand Bombardier CGS – Masters ($ 17,500), April 2019
  • Yale University Graduate Fellowship ($31,000 USD/year) (2018-2023), August 2018
  • Concordia University Undergraduate Travel Award ($ 625), May 2018
  • NSERC Alexander Graham Bell CGS – Masters ($ 17,500), April 2018, Declined
  • SSHRC Joseph-Armand Bombardier CGS – Masters ($ 17,500), April 2018, Declined
  • Concordia University Undergraduate Travel Award ($ 500), October 2017
  • FRQNT Supplement to NSERC USRA ($ 2,000), March 2017
  • NSERC Undergraduate Student Research Award ($ 5,625), January 2017
  • Concordia Undergraduate Student Research Award ($ 5,625), May 2016
Teaching
  • 2024, Fall: Introduction to Behavioural Neuroscience (PSYC 211, TA; McGill University)
  • 2023, Fall: Cognition (PSYC 213, TA; McGill University)
  • 2023, Winter: Invited Lecturer - Concepts and Categories (PSYC 463; Concordia University)
  • 2020, Fall: Fundamentals of Cognition (PSYC 364, TA; Concordia University)
  • 2020, Winter: Linguistics and Cognitive Science: Concepts, Thought, and Belief (LING 322, TA; Concordia University)
  • 2016, Fall: Fundamentals of Cognition (PSYC 364, TA; Concordia University)
  • 2016, Winter: Concepts and Categories (LING 322, TA; Concordia University)
  • 2016, Winter: Review Class on the Theories of Concepts (LING 322, Invited Lecturer; Concordia University)
Service
Professional Services
  • Ad Hoc Journal Reviewer:
    • ​Behavior Research Methods; Cognitive Science Society; Register Aspects of Language in Situation; Mental Lexicon

Academic and Social Services
  • Workshop Co-Organizer
    • Concepts in Action: Representation, Learning, and Application Conference. August 23-25, 2023. Montreal, Canada. [Link]
  • Student Representative
    • ​CSBBCS Associate Departmental Representative - McGill University (2023-2024). [Link]
  • Workshop Organizing Committee Member
    • Concepts in Action: Representation, Learning, and Application Conference. August 22-24, 2022. Berlin, Germany. [Link]​

Membership in Professional Organizations
  • Canadian Society for Brain, Behaviour, and Cognitive Science; Vision Sciences Society; Society for the Neurobiology of Language; Academy of Aphasia; Psychonomic Society; Cognitive Science Society; Women in Cognitive Science Canada
Attended Workshops & Courses​
  • 2016, May: Spring Training in Experimental Psycholinguistics, University of Alberta.​
Technical Skills​​
  • R, Python, Case-Series Analyses (Crawford), EyeLink II, EyeLink 1000, Experiment Builder, DataViewer, PsychoPy3, PsyScope, SPSS, Open Sesame, E-Prime, Praat, MView.