Conference: Connecting Minds, Building Bridges: Community Outreach in Language Processing Research

Language is a fundamental aspect of human experience, influencing how humans communicate, understand, and shape the world. This workshop, held in conjunction with an annual interdisciplinary conference, highlights societal impacts of psycholinguistic research. This workshop bridges the gap between academic research in psycholinguistics and the broader community, including educators, mental health professionals, government stakeholders, and industry colleagues, highlighting why diverse outreach efforts are essential for the field of language sciences. Other benefits to society include providing education on innovative tools and strategies for amplifying the impact of language sciences research, including lessons learned and best practices. This workshop explores how language science can address real-world challenges, how translational applications can inform language science, and how to foster productive collaborations between researchers and the broader community. Focusing on examples of successful partnerships with museums, health professionals, government agencies, and the tech industry, the workshop aims to encourage language scientists to work alongside community partners to understand and address real-world problems. Through interactive discussions and presentations, attendees explore how language science can contribute to more effective and equitable workplace policies, diagnostic tools, interventions, and frameworks for informal science education. The workshop also showcases successful research partnerships that have influenced quality of life in various ways, illustrating the practical applications of language processing studies beyond the lab. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.