1.

Psycholinguistics

Psycholinguistics is “an interdisciplinary field of study that includes psychology and

linguistics and concerns with the study of the psychological factors that enable

humans to acquire, process and produce language”.

Psycholinguistics mainly concerns with the use of psychological, scientific,

experimental methods to study language acquisition, production and processing. As

the name interdisciplinary suggests, it counts with contributions from psychology,

linguistics, cognitive science, philosophy, anthropology, and neuroscience.

Psychological processes involve listening, reading, speaking and writing

Concerning the interdisciplinary nature of psycholinguistics, debate has been ongoing

about how the melding of psychology, linguistics, and other fields has historically

been characterized by a “crossing of boundaries” between disciplines. The scope of

psycholinguistics includes language performance under normal circumstances and

when it breaks down.

1. Existence of Psycholinguistics as a scientific discipline

“Psycholinguistics came to existence as a scientific discipline, with the Chomsky’s

review of Skinner’s book Verbal Behaviour which detailed how language is acquired

from a behaviourist perspective. Chomsky claimed that behaviourist principles were

not enough to account for language acquisition or for higher order mental processes

in general”.
Moreover, the work of Skinner and Chomsky introduced a long-standing debate

regarding the degree to which language is acquired through innate faculties, and

the role that environmental input plays in language acquisition. The review of

Chomsky still holds that the human ability to use syntax is qualitatively different

from any sort of animal communication; this ability may have resulted from a

favourable mutation or from an adaptation of skills evolved for other purposes.

Currently, cognitive neuroscience has enabled further understanding of the role of

language in human experience through brain imaging and other technological

advances. Since its rise in the 1960s, the study of psycholinguistics, has involved

a wide range of topics.

2. The object of study of psycholinguistics and its application to education

The object of study of psycholinguistics are the cognitive aspects that encode

language processing, language comprehension and language production in the human

mind.

It is assumed that the cognitive process that are revealed as individuals acquire

proficiency in a second language share a common bases with the process that are

in place for competent bilinguals. Therefore, the second-language teaching is a field

that provides an excellent meeting ground for the many theoretical and practical

aspects of psycholinguistics to come together.

 3. The three themes in Psycholinguistics

“The three main themes in psycholinguistics are language processing, language

comprehension and language production”.

Language processing: research in psycholinguistics has produced several theories of

how human beings process language. Chomsky claimed that language ability is seated

in innate capacities and that evolution of mental processes has enabled the

sophisticated use of language.

Processing is carried out through weights on linguistic cues that provide probabilistic

information about meaning. The model rests on learning principles. Other theories

of processing state that as language is processed, it integrates with past linguistic

information that has already been encountered and forms meaning by linking

together past and current input.

Language comprehension: comprehended language is called receptive language,

whereas produced language is known as expressive language. Language comprehension

is known to precede language production developmentally. A major area of study

in language comprehension is that of spoken language comprehension. Authors

provide theories of spoken language comprehension and how single-word theories

have evolved, including modular, parallel, and dual-route processing of words. The

role of phonology in language comprehension is an important aspect of processing.

It has been argued that the processing of morphological information takes place

during comprehension.
Language production: the production of language, called expressive language, occurs

after the ability to comprehend language has been acquired. Spoken language

production is a large area of research that has flourished since the 1950s. The

four stages (conceptual basis, lexical encoding, phonological encoding, and

articulatory program) are discussed in terms of the process of lexical access during

speech production.

4. Lateralization of the human brain

Lateralization of brain function is the view that functions are performed by distinct

regions of the brain. It’s believed that there are different areas of the brain that

are responsible for controlling language, formulating memories, and making

movements. If a certain area of the brain becomes damaged, the function associated

with that area will also be affected. The human brain is split into two hemispheres,

right and left. They are both joined together by the corpus callosum, a bundle of

nerve fibres which is located in the middle of the brain.

Hemispheric Lateralization is the idea that both hemispheres are functionally

different and that certain mental processes and behaviours are mainly controlled

by one hemisphere rather than the other. There is evidence of some specialization

of function mainly regarding differences in language ability. For instance, the left

hemisphere controls the right half of the body, and the right hemisphere controls

the left half of the body.

The left hemisphere is associated with language functions, such as formulating

grammar and vocabulary, speech production, understanding and containing different

language centres (Broca’s and Wernicke’s area). The right hemisphere, however, is

associated with more visuospatial functions such as visualization, depth perception,

and spatial navigation.