Curriculum vitae

Address

Home: Budakeszi, Zichy Péter u. 4 H-2092 Hungary
Work: Department of Cognitive Science,
Budapest University of Technology and Economics (BUTE),
Budapest Sztoczek u 2. III. e. 311 H-1111
e-mail: pleh@cogsci.bme.hu Phone at work: (36) 14632155
Fax: (36) 1 4631072
Home phone: (36) 23 453 933.
PERSONAL: born the 29th November, 1945, in Sárisáp, Hungary. Married to Ottilia Boross, a Hungarian psychologist working at the Péter Pázmány Catholic University at Piliscsaba, Hungary. One son, Dániel of 27 years, one daughter, Kamilla of 13 years, two stepsons. Aurél Gábris and Krisztián Gábris of 27 and 25.

Education and honors

B.A. in Hungarian language and literature, 1966, Eötvös University, Budapest, Hungary.
M.A. and Ph.D. in psychology, Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest, 1969, 1970.
M.A. in linguistics, 1973, at the same university.
"Candidate" of psychology on the basis of a dissertation entitled
Story organization and memory, Budapest, 1983.
"Doctor of psychology" on the basis of a dissertation entitled:
The psycholinguistics of sentence understanding in Hungarian, 1997, Hungarian Academy of Sciences
Habilitation in history of psychology, Eötvös University, Budapest, October, 1997: Intentionality as a basic category of cognition
Corresponding member of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, 1998
Full member of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences (HAS), 2004

Languages spoken: Hungarian, English, French, Russian, and German.

Positions

2004 July-:. Chair, and founder, Department of Cognitive Science BUTE
2002- director, Center for Cognitive Science, BUTE
2002-: head of the neuropsychology and Psycholinguistics group, HAS-BUTE
2002-2004 professor of psychology, and chair, Department of Information and Knowledge Management, BUTE
1998 – 2002 September professor of psychology, University of Szeged, Hungary
1984 - 1998: associate professor and department head, Department of General
Psychology, Loránd Eötvös University, Budapest.
1969 - 1984: Department of General Psychology, Loránd Eötvös University,
Budapest, assistant and associate professor.
1991 - 1992: Visiting Hungarian Chair professor, Indiana University,
Department of Uralic and Altaic Studies
1989, Spring: visiting professor of linguistics and psychology at Rutgers University. N.J.

Visiting positions and scholarships

2001-2002 fellow, Collegium Budapest, focus group on Evolution and the barin, organized by J-P.- Cahengeux and ER.- Szathmáry

1999 Spring, 1998 spring, 1995 spring, 1994 spring, 1991 Fall, 1985-1986 : Vienna University, Dept of Linguistics, visiting professor of psycholinguistics
1997-2000: NIAS (Netherland Institute for Advanced Studies) at Vassenaar, Netherlands, working group of "Acquisition of Verb clusters "
1996-1997. Fellow at the Center for Advanced Studies in the Behavioral Sciences, Stanford

1993 - on: Aarhus University, Denmark, visiting Hungarian examination committee fellow
1991-1992 : Indiana U., Bloomington, Hungarian Chair Professor
1991 spring: Trieste University (Italy), Dept of Psychology visiting professor of psycholinguistics
1990 September: visiting senior researcher at the Social Science Graduate Center, Paris, Laboratory of Cognition
1989 May - July : Carnegie Mellon University (Pittsburgh), Dept of Psychology, research visit
1989 spring: Rutgers University, New Brunswick, N.J. professor of psycholinguistics, Department of Psychology and Linguistics
1985 summer : Carnegie Mellon University and University of California, San Diego, visiting researcher
1984 January : Columbia University (New York) visiting researcher
1975 summer : Tampa, Florida. Visiting scholarship at the Summer Institute of Linguistics of the Linguistic Society of America
1969, spring : Nanterre, France, student of psychology

Acedemic positions and awards

2004: full member of HAS
2002-: vice president, section of Philosophy and History, HAS
1998: corresponding member of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences
1996: price of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences
for a book on the history of psychology
1975 - 1990, 1993 -: member, Committee on Psychology, HAS
1985 - 1990: secretary of the Committee on Psychology, HAS
1980 – on : member, Committee on Applied Linguistics, HAS

Editorial work

1999: member of the editorial board of Quarterly Review of Cognitive Sciences, Frankfurt
1999: member of the editorial board of Replika (A general Review of Social Science), Budapest
1997-: editor in chief The Hungarian Journal of Psychology (Budapest)
1974 - 1997: section editor, The Hungarian Journal of Psychology
1985 - on : member of the editorial committee, Pszichológia (Budapest)
1988 - 1995: editorial committee Studies on Language Disorders, John Benjamins

Memberships

Hungarian Academy of Sciences, corresponding member
European Society of the History of Human Sciences (Cheiron Europe)
International Society for Behavior Development
International Association for the Empirical Study of Literature
International Association for the Study of Child Language
European Society for Cognitive Psychology
International Association for the Philosophy of Science
Hungarian Psychological Association
Hungarian Linguistics Association
Hungarian Philosophical Association, president, 1998- 2002
Hungarian Semiotic Association
Founding member and chair of the board (1993-2003) Hungarian Cognitive Science Foundation

Organizing activity

2001-2003, organizer Cognition at Christmas, small conference series, Budapest
2000: member of the organizing Committee, 7th International Pragmatic Conference
1997 September, Budapest- Szeged, Hungary: Co-organizer of the First European meeting of the Society of the History of Human Sciences
1993-1999: First to Seventh Hungarian Symposium on Cognitive Science, Visegrád, Hungary
1992 - organizer of the conference "The structure of Hungarian" Bloomington, Indiana, USA
1991 - member, organizing committee 2nd European Congress of Psychology, Budapest
1990 - president, 5th International Congress for the Study of Child Language
1988 September, Budapest, member of the national organizing committee, Seventh European Cheiron Conference
1977 - member, organizing committee of 3rd Congress of Psychologists from the Danubian Countries

Major talks and conferences

(only the ones given at international conferences during the last few years are given)

Csaba Pléh, Ágnes Lukács and Mihály Racsmán: Language in Williams syndrome: morphology and the mental lexicon in acquisition EARLY COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT AND ITS IMPAIRMENTS Workshop at Collegium Budapest, December 21, 2001

2000, July 10, Budapest: invited plenary talk at the 7th International Pragmatic Conference Modularity and pragmatics
1999 January, Vienna: Popper and the Würzburg school. Talk at the Popper Ring Vorlesung.
1998, September, Dresden: Hungarian psychology in a changing society. . Invited talk at the meeting of the German Society of Psychology
1996, February: Don't hesitate, agglutinate. Invited talk at the 6th International Morphology Meeting, Vienna
1994 December: Spatial expressions in Hungarian children. Invited talk at Linguistik Tagung of the Austrian Linguistics Association, Wien
1993 Aug : 5th Meeting of the Austrian Wittgenstein Society Was Wittgenstein a connectionist, after all?

Teaching activity

Undergraduate and graduate courses (both in Hungarian and English) on history of psychology, cognition, psycholinguistics. Directs the work of several graduate (doctoral) students in the above fields.
Organized and directs the Doctoral School of Psychology (Cognitive Science) of BUTE, from 2004 on.

Research areas and interests

Psychology of language, with special focus on the specificity of Hungarian. Concerning language acquisition and language processing typologically specific models for language performance are proposed on the basis experimental data.

Sentence understanding

(i) The role of morphology in the development and process of understanding in Hungarian. Case markers and prefixes.
(ii) Spatial language and morphology.
(iii) Language typology and processing typology.

Language acquisition

(i) The prefix system in Hungarian language acquisition.
(ii) Language development delay in an agglutinative language.

Cognitive development and its impairments: Hungarian studies on Williams syndrome and SLI children are organized n a longitudinal basis to look for the specificities off cognitive impairments in these groups, the modular or general nature of the cognitive disturbances, and their relations to language profiles.

Theory of cognition and history of psychology and social science with a look at the special situation of social sciences in Hungarian social history

(i) Modularity, PDP, and classical approaches to cognition.
(ii) Conceptual brain models and psychology.
(iii) Evolutionary models of cognition and language

History of psychology

(i) Academic and practical approaches in early twentieth century Hungarian psychology.
(ii) Evolutionary theory and psychology.
(iii) Social change and social science in contemporary Hungary.