Campus Directory

Division Social Sciences Division

Department/College/Unit Psychology Department

Title Distinguished Professor

Affiliation Faculty

Other UCSC Campus Affiliation Indigenous Faculty Network

Faculty Type Regular Faculty

Areas of Expertise Psycholinguistics
Cognition
Cognitive Science
Psychology
Human Computer Interaction
Language Processing

Web Site

Primary Office Location Social Sciences 2
Room 353

Office Hours for Students/ Office Hours (Spring 2025) contact via email

Mail Stop Psychology Faculty Services

Biography, Education and Training

Ph.D., Stanford University
M.Sc., University of Edinburgh
A.B., Harvard University

Summary of Expertise

Psycholinguistics: production and comprehension of speech and writing

Research Interests

Jean E. Fox Tree is a cognitive psychologist specializing in psycholinguistics. She studies the production and comprehension of spontaneous speech and writing.

Projects in Professor Fox Tree's lab include studies of discourse markers (such as well, oh, I mean, and you know), enquoting devices (such as said and like), backchannels (such as uh huh and mhm), and computer mediated communication, among other topics.

Professor Fox Tree uses a variety of techniques to explore her areas of interest, including corpora analyses, reaction time experiments, questionnaires, referential communication tasks, and analyses of speech produced under controlled conditions.

Selected Publications

• Nguyen, A., & Fox Tree, J. E. (2025). How authority affects interpretations of negotiation words. Cognitive Research: Principles and Implications, 10:58. 
• Oviedo, V. Y. & Fox Tree, J. E. (2024). Social presence and collaborative creativity in leaner media. Computers in Human Behavior Reports, 16, 100514.
• Larson, A. S. & Fox Tree, J. E. (2024) Framing, more than speech, affects how machine agents are perceived. Behaviour & Information Technology, 43(14), 3461-3480.
• Duffau, E. & Fox Tree, J. E. (2024). Expecting politeness: Perceptions of voice assistant politeness. Personal and Ubiquitous Computing, 28(6), 907-929.
• Guydish, A. J., & Fox Tree, J. E. (2023). In pursuit of a good conversation: How contribution balance, common ground, and conversational closings influence conversation assessment and conversational memory. Discourse Processes, 60(1), 18-41.
• Liu, K., D’Arcey, J. T., Walker, M., & Fox Tree, J. E. (2021). Referential communication between friends and strangers in the wild. Dialogue & Discourse, 12(1), 45-72.
• Tolins, J. & Fox Tree, J. E. (2016). Overhearers use addressee backchannels in dialog comprehension. Cognitive Science, 40(6), 1412–1434.
• Fox Tree, J. E. & Weldon, M. S. (2007). Retelling urban legends. American Journal of Psychology, 120(3), 459-476.
• Fox Tree, J. E. (2006). Placing like in telling stories. Discourse Studies, 8(6), 749-770.

Courses Psych 125: Psychology of Language
Psych 126: Conversations
Psych 139H: Weird Science
Psych 290: Grant Writing for Psychologists
Psych 215: Production and Comprehension of Spontaneous Communication