Teenie Matlock

Teenie Matlock is Assistant Professor of Psychology and Founding Faculty in the School of Social Science, Humanities, and the Arts at the University of California, Merced. A cognitive psychologist and linguist by training, Matlock studies how people use and understand language, especially spatial language and metaphorical language.

Matlock does research on spatial language, metaphor, spatial cognition, and gesture. Her studies investigate how people (1) use motion language to describe situations with no movement (e.g., Highway 140 runs through Merced, Let’s move the meeting back); (2) describe abstract objects in terms of more concrete objects (e.g., That peninsula is like a dog’s head); (3) gesture while they describing space (e.g., tracing a path in the air while giving driving directions); and (4) integrate what they see with what they hear during scene perception (scan a path while listening to a description of a path).

Matlock’s publications span psychology, cognitive science, linguistics, and human-computer interaction. She is a member of the Cognitive Science Society, American Psychological Society, American Psychological Association, Psychonomics Society, Society for Text and Discourse, and the International Cognitive Linguistics Association. She has won awards for teaching excellence, and has taught courses at three University of California campuses: San Diego, Santa Cruz, and Berkeley.

Matlock completed her PhD in cognitive psychology in 2001 at University of California, Santa Cruz. She came to Merced from Stanford University, where she was a post-doctoral researcher in the Psychology Department. She is originally from Mariposa, California, and enjoys running, cycling, hiking, and traveling in her free time.