fasted Laboor™ Psycholinguistics Bes Somecter ae //Paveholinguisties or Psychology of language is the study of the psychological and Neurobiological factors that enable humans to, acquire, use, comprehend and produce lenguage)) J ag Poyehotingustesis the sty ofthe mental aspects of langue and speech) tes marily concerned with the ways in which language is represented and processed in # foe Pan arch of linguistics and psychology, psycholinguistics is part of the field of aod : ‘gnitive Science, i {Initial forays (ventures) into psychoinguistics were largely philosophical or educational “schools of thought) due mainly to their location in departments other than applied sciences (e.g., cohesive data on how the human brain functioned). (Modern research makes use of biology, neuroscience, cognitive science, linguistics, and information Science to study how the brain processes language} and less so the known processes ‘Of suclai sciences, human development, communication theniies and i 4, development, among others. There are a number of sud disciplines techniques for studying the neurolhe * ch used for t a fonko. It was Psycholinguistics: 3 ae by his student Nicholas Henry Pr coherent”. first time to talk about an interdisciplinary science "that could be ud) \ yoy = : i froma . rchers fr es ‘linguistics is an interdisciplinary field. Hence, it is studied by resea! Variety of different nd speech and | these topics can, children “acquire but “nguage pathology! Psycholinguists study many different oes s Tenguage (language acquisiton)7; (2) how do people process a metlonguaos (language comprehnsian)?; (3) how do people produce language (langu SE Production)?; and (4) Si lage 298 production); (4) how do people acquire a new languag! (Second language acquisitio ? Subdivisions in psycholinguistics are ‘make up human language. ‘ Linguistics-elated areas: inguistics, backgrounds, TS psychology, cognitive science, ling also made based on the different components thateuftwe. - > con bee ies is concerned with the role of beep interpretation of meaning. ) interpretatio ition ld Tesearcher interested in language comprehension ists ur coma n researcher c en nay Se 1 y ay reading to *éxai ‘the processes involved “in the ae in " ee sek ti \N earaPhic, morphological, phonological, and semantic information from patter 2Sy Pitted text. researcher interested in language production might study how werds are ~ A, PISPared to be spoken starting from the conceptual or semantic level) Developmental XY Psycholinguists study infants’ and children’s ability to learn and process language. text in the Theories In this section, some influential theories are discusced for each of the fundamental questions listed in the section above. Language acquisition 4 . Leas 3 Yin Language acquisition is the Process by ‘whieh mans acquire the capacity to perceiye and comprehend language, as well as to and use words and sentences to ‘communicate, Language acquisition is one of the quintessential human traits, because theory sta that" " in the language and that complex syntactic features, such as recursion, are oe os brain. These abilities are thought to be beyond the grasp of the ne ete vast Social non-humans. According to Chomsky, children acquiring a language pet et SPace to explore among all possible human grammars, yet at the time there was No evidence that children receive sufficient input to learn all the rules of their language ae Of the stimulus). Hence, there must be some other innate CE iS the eee ee ability to humans, Such a language faculty is, acon? Peis fle Fypotheels, what defines human language and makes it different from Sophisticated forms of animal communication. The field of linguisti al f linguistics and Psycholinguistics since then has been defined by reactions to lomsky, pro and con. ‘The pro view still holds that the human ability to use language (Specifically the ability i : to use recursion) is qualitatively different from any sort of animal ability. This abit ae , Abii ity. This ability may have resulted from a favécable cullen from an adettetion of See cael Burposes. view that language can be learned has had a . festgence inspired by emergentism—This view challenges the-"innate" view as Scientifically falsifiable; that is to say, it cant be tested, With the amount of computer mera teasies sing te 1988 researc hae been abe b aye ance acquisition using ws peti models." These models provide eviden’s that there may, in fact, be suffi information contained in the input to learn language, even syntax. If this is true, then an innate mechanism is no longer necessary to explain language acquisition. ~ a i “! y tion n of tanguage comprehension Pefinakie bE ¢g ( Language comprehensionis an important aspect of day to functioning in adulthood. Comprehension of written and spoken language relies on the ability to” correctly process word and phrase meanings, sentence and discourse or text Py structure. )vparc-wired in the 5 recursion, @ a most intellige” language and that complex syntactic features, such a t and grasp of the g a lan tthe time there their language brain. These abilities are thought to be beyond the social non-humans. According to Chomsky, children aequrn et al search space to explore among all possible human grammars. ¥ ules of guage have @ no evidence that children receive sufficient input to learn all the m that (see poverty of the stimulus). Hence, there must be some other innate mechan's' endows language ability to humans. Such a language faculty 'S: the innateness hypothesis, what defines human language and makes ! even the most sophisticated forms of animal communication. according to it different from The field of linguistics and psycholinguistss since then has been defined by reactions to Chomsky, pro and con. The pro view still pi ce the human ability to use language (specifically the ability to use recursion) is ova stwely different from any sort of ae ability. This ability may have resulted from a fa pula skills svolips fo for other purposes. he view that language can be learned has had a recent restroGhce inspired by emeFgentismThis view challenges the-"innate" viow as scientifically cere that is to say, it can't be tested, With the amount of computer power int i the 1980s, researchers have been able to simulate language acquisition using twork models. These models provide erie that there may, in fact, be wnt mation ¢ contained in the input to learn language, even syntax. If this is true, then an innate , mechanism is no longer necessary to explain language acquisition.» yf -tanguage comprehension Defensor 9 (Language comprehensionis an important aspect of day to ght functioning in adulthood. Comprehension of written and spoken language relies on the “the ability to correctly process word and phrase meanings, sentence grammar, nd dis ise or text structure. ) Oe y A can One question in the realm of language comprehension is how people understand See as they read (also known as sentence pI jing). Experimental research has spawned a number of theories about the architecthre and mechanisms of sentence - comprehension. Typically these theories are concer with what types of information avorable my or from an asailationoffs vn ~ example, the semantics of a senter f contained in the sentence the reader can use to build meaning, and at what point in reading does that information become available to the reader. Issues such as "modular" Oy ides in the field. gare ee processing have been Wie ‘A modular view of sentence processing assumes that the stages involved in reading 2 sentence function independently in separate modules. These modulates have limited interaction with one another. For_example, one _inflient ory_of_sentence it e garden-path theory," states that syntactic analysis takes place first. Under this theory as the reader is reading a sentence, he or she creates the simplest sible in order to minimize effort and cognitive toad. This fs done without endent information. Hence, ‘in the structure poss any input from semantic analysis or context-deps ned out to be unreliable,” by the itted to a reading of e simplest sentence "The evidence examined by the lawyer tu! time the reader gets to the word "examined" he or she has comm the sentence in which the evidence is examining something because it is the toleariqatves - . we parse. )——> ao This commitment is made despite the fact that it results in an i fausible situation; we eee rarely if ever examine something. Under this know from experience that evidence can that the reader will recognize that he or she needs to revise the initial parse into one in “jg being examined. In this example, readers typically recognize which "the evidence their misparse by the time they reach "by the lawyer” and must go back and re-parse the sentence. This reanalysis is costly and contributes to slower reading times. ‘count, an interactive theory of sentence processing, such as roach!" assumes that information contained y cootint, for "syntax first" theory, semantic information is processed. at 2 tater stage. {tis only later In contrast to a modular ac: a constraint-based lexical app! within a sentence can be processed at any time. nce (such as plausi bil in order to help determine the structure of a reader would be able to use of plauv 4 Language production ‘“ n language. In psycholinguistics, language production is the production of spoken or written lang! into linguistic escribes all ofthe stages between having a concept, and translating that concept into ling form. “ Language production concems how peo, produce language, either in written or spoken form, in @ way that conveys meanings comprehensible to others )One of the nest effective ways fo explain the way people represent meanings usiag rule governed hey include languages is by observing and analyzing instances of speech errors. TI Speech dysfluencies like false Starts, repetition, reformulation and constant pauses in between words or sentences; also, slips of tongue, like blending, substitutions, exchanges (e.g. Spoonerism), and various pronunciation errors. These s “Jield significant implication on language production, in that they reflect that: me peech errors rT Aa 1. Speech is planned in s eePan voit ‘Scoe” stiings would be actuel English words requiring a "yes" res; a co lords by merging morphemes rather than retfieving them as chunks Methodologies Behavioral tasks Poe cota oo" Conducted in psycholinguistics, especially ea ater on, re ani Se In these types of studies, subjects are presented with linguist . ‘© Perform an action. For example, they may be asked to make, iB Judgment about a,word (lexical decision), reproduce the stimulus, or name a visually re ed Word aloud, Reaction times to respond tothe stimuli (usualy on the order of milliseconds) and propértion’ of ‘correct Tesponses are the most often employed measvfes Of performance in behavioral tasks. Such experiments often take advantage Of priming effects, whereby a "priming word or phrase appearing in the experiment can Speed up the lexical decision for a related "target" word later. As an example of how jet, Pehavioral methods can be used in psycholinguistics research, Fischler_(1977) 2 _jnvestigated word encoding using the lexical decision task. He asked participants to pol 2 i to Make decisions about whether two strings of letters were English words. Sometimes the : \Se, and other times they Fay relat tay ¢ licit words were related would be nonwords requiring a ‘no’ response. A Subset of semantically (e.g., cat-dog) while others were unrelated (e.g., bread-stem). Fischler found that related word pairs were responded to faster when compared to unrelated word pairs. This facilitation suggests that/semantic relatedness can facilitate word encoding, ‘Soy Somaborg om ephy pate! a typic © 4 sort Eye-movements e Recently, eye tracking has been used to study online language processing Beginning») with Rayner (1978) The importance and informativity of eye-movements during reading was established. Later, Tanenhaus et al. (1995) used the visual-world paradigm ‘fo study the cognitive processes related to spoken language. Assuming that eye “movements are closely linked to the current focus of attention, language processing canLBewe be © studied by monitoring eye movements while a Subject is presented auditorily with linguistic input. / Language production errors, speaker is in the midst of an utterance. Speech errors tend to occur. in the lexical, morpheme, and phoneme encoding Steps of language production, as seen by the ways errors can manifest!" The types of speech errors, and some examples, are: Substitutions (phoneme and exical) — replacing a sound with an unrelated sound, or a word with an antonym, and Saying "verbal outfit" instead of “verbal output", or "He rade his bike tomorrow" instead of "yesterday", respectively, | | + Blends — mixing two synonyms together and saying “my sturimy huris" in place of either "stomach" or “tummy”, Exchanges (phoneme [aka. Spoonerisms] and morpheme) — swapping two onset sounds or two root words, and saying "You hissed my mystery lectures" instead of "Youmissed myhistory lectures", or > "They're Turking talkish" instead of "They're talking Turkish", respectively, Morpheme shifts — moving a function morpheme such as ". ed" to a different word and saying "easy enoughly" ly" or instead of easily enough", Perseveration — continuing to start a word with a sound that was in the utterance previously and saying "John gave the goy a ball" instead of "John gave the boy a ball’, and + Anticipation — replacing a sound with one that is coming up later in the utterance and "She drank a cot cup of