Johanne Sofie Krog Nedergaard

Deparment of Nordic Studies and Linguistics · University of Copenhagen · Denmark · jskn@hum.ku.dk

Postdoc working on how Greenlandic grammar is affected by aphasia. Other academic interests include inner speech, perspective-taking in communication, and language-augmented cognition. Peruse my PhD thesis on inner speech here.


Example projects

Self-talk and sustained control of attention

A very boring online study

Do you need to talk to yourself to stay focused on a very boring task?

We asked people to stare at a blank screen for several minutes at a time and occasionally prompted them to say what was going on in their heads. We then tried to predict reaction time to the prompt from the contents of inner experience.

Language and types of abstract concepts

A dual-task interference study

TRAINCREASE collaboration with Anna Borghi on the role of language in representing and processing different kinds of abstract concepts.

People had to decide between three images of abstract concepts (like freedom, conscience, and loneliness) which one did not depict the same concept as the others. Try it out below:

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While people solved these problems, we also interfered with their visual or verbal processing to see what kinds of resources were involved in thinking about abstract concepts.

Generously supported by IMC seed funding.

Are you thinking what I'm thinking?

A word guessing game

Which word would you provide to get someone else to say 'cheese'? Photography, brie, pizza, smelly, or something else? In this game, people provided single clue words to get their partner to guess target words. We thought people would get better at this when they interacted many times - but they did not!

Mind over body

Linguistic control of sustained physical efforts

Participants cycle on a stationary exercise bike while trying to perform simultaneous visuospatial and verbal working memory tasks. The main idea is that if people need to talk to themselves to push themselves, they should bike slower when they're distracted from talking to themselves.

Selected Publications

Nedergaard, J., Christensen, M. S., & Wallentin, M. (2023). Mind over body: Interfering with the inner voice is detrimental to endurance performance. Psychology of Sport and Exercise, 102472.

Nedergaard, J., Skewes, J. C., & Wallentin, M. (2023). "Stay focused!"": The role of inner speech in maintaining attention during a boring task.Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 49(4), 451-464.

Nedergaard, J., Wallentin, M., & Lupyan, G. (2022). Verbal interference paradigms: A systematic review investigating the role of language in cognition. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 1-25.

Nedergaard, J., Christensen, M. S., & Wallentin, M. (2021). Valence, form, and content of self-talk predict sport type and level of performance. Consciousness & Cognition, 89, 103102.

Nedergaard, J., & Smith, K. (2020). Are you thinking what I'm thinking? Perspective-taking in a language game. In 42nd Annual meeting of the Cognitive Science Society (pp. 1001-1007). Cognitive Science Society.

Nedergaard, J. S., Martínez-Ferreiro, S., Fortescue, M. D., & Boye, K. (2020). Non-fluent aphasia in a polysynthetic language: five case studies. Aphasiology, 34(6), 654-673.

Education

Aarhus University

PhD Cognitive Science (2023)
Supervisors Mikkel Wallentin and Mark Schram Christensen

Inner Speech: Content, Functions, and Individual Differences.

Aarhus University

MA Cognitive Semiotics (2021)
Dissertation with Mikkel Wallentin

What does the inner voice do? Self-regulation in sport and cognitive psychology.

University of Edinburgh

MSc Cognition in Science and Society (2019)
Dissertation with Kenny Smith

Are you thinking what I'm thinking? Perspective-taking in a language game

University of Oxford

BA Philosophy, Psychology, and Linguistics (2018)
Specialising in metacognition, psycholinguistics, syntax, and philosophy of cognitive science.