Roger J. Kreuz | |
|---|---|
| Occupation(s) | Psychologist, academic, and author |
| Academic background | |
| Education | B.A., Psychology and Linguistics M.A., Cognitive Psychology Ph.D., Cognitive Psychology |
| Alma mater | University of Toledo Princeton University |
| Academic work | |
| Institutions | University of Memphis |
Roger J. Kreuz is an American cognitive psychologist and author. He is a Professor and an Associate Dean at the University of Memphis.
Kreuz is known for his work on pragmatics,figurative language,miscommunication,and stylometry. He is a fellow of the Psychonomic Society,the Society for Text and Discourse,and the Association for Psychological Science.
Kreuz earned Bachelor of Arts degrees in Psychology and in Linguistics from the University of Toledo in 1983. He went on to receive a Master of Arts in Cognitive Psychology in 1985,followed by a Ph.D. in Cognitive Psychology in 1987 from Princeton University. [1]
Kreuz worked as a Research Associate in the Department of Psychology at Duke University from 1987 to 1988. Between 1988 and 1993,he was an Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychology at Memphis State University. In 1993,he was promoted to Associate Professor and became a Full Professor in 2000. He has held several administrative roles,including Program Director of the Master of Science in General Psychology from 2004 to 2014 and Associate Chair of the Department of Psychology from 2011 to 2014. Since 2014,he has worked as Associate Dean and Director of Graduate Studies in the College of Arts and Sciences at the University of Memphis. [1]
Kreuz’s early work helped to establish the empirical study of verbal irony within experimental psychology. [2] In later research,he and Richard Roberts explored the discourse goals that are accomplished by using various figures of speech,such as smile,hyperbole,metaphor,and irony,among others. They found that metaphors and similes serve similar purposes,but that metaphors added more interest and have greater pragmatic force. [3] He also co-developed AutoTutor,a computer tutor that mimics human teaching by asking questions,analyzing student responses,and deciding next steps,such as moving on or giving hints based on the meaning of inputs and understanding the grammar. [4]
Kreuz’s psychological research has been used by researchers attempting to create automatic sarcasm detection systems. [5] He and his students have also studied how punctuation and emoticons affect comprehension in computer-mediated communication (CMC),and how lexical choices influence the perception of sarcasm. [6]
In 2020,Kreuz authored the book Irony and Sarcasm,in which he traced the history of the two terms,distinguished their types,explored their social roles and challenges (especially online),and considered whether “irony”might eventually be replaced by “sarcasm.” [7] In his later work,he and his students examined how sarcasm is signaled in natural conversation,finding that sarcastic speech has distinctive acoustic features (e.g.,varied pitch,slower rate) and that these cues are more pronounced with friends than with strangers. [8]
In addition to his scholarly publications,Kreuz has also written about language and communication for a general audience. He has authored or co-authored seven books that have been translated into Korean,Russian,Turkish,Chinese,Japanese,and Spanish. [9] Moreover,he has also contributed articles to The Conversation [10] and Psychology Today. [11]