| CODE | CGS5051 | ||||||||
| TITLE | Language in Use | ||||||||
| UM LEVEL | 05 - Postgraduate Modular Diploma or Degree Course | ||||||||
| MQF LEVEL | 7 | ||||||||
| ECTS CREDITS | 5 | ||||||||
| DEPARTMENT | Cognitive Science | ||||||||
| DESCRIPTION | This unit will show how theoretical debates in psycholinguistics can be addressed through experimental research. The students will be assigned reading papers from opposing theoretical points of view in the first week of the course. These will cover different fields of psycholinguistic work, which will include: Phonological processing (gestural versus auditory approaches); Lexical processing (episodic versus abstractionist approaches); Morphological processing (rule-based versus analogical approaches). Students will be introduced to the sometimes strained relationship between psychological versus linguistic approaches to language. In the second week, these papers will be discussed and the students are asked to propose possible experiments relevant to these theoretical controversies. The merits and weaknesses of these proposals will then be evaluated. The best experiments will be implemented and performed. The students will then write a short empirical paper on the results of the performed experiment(s). Study-unit Aims: The study-unit seeks to teach the intricacies of theoretical reasoning in psycholinguistics as well as the complexity of psycholinguistic experiments with subject and items.. The course will also spend some time on the specific statistical issues that are typical for psycholinguistic research and the technical skills to implement an experiment with, as typical in psycholinguistics, has crossed random effects for subjects and items. Learning Outcomes: 1. Knowledge & Understanding By the end of the study-unit the student will be able to: - translate the core assumptions of theoretical models into empirical predictions; - judge whether an experiment is likely to have sufficient power to detect a difference. 2. Skills By the end of the study-unit the student will be able to: - implement a psycholinguistic experiment with different items over different lists; - analyze the data according to current practices to deal with multiple sampling levels; - write a succinct and short report on an empirical project. Main Text/s and any supplementary readings: - Baayen, H. R. (2008). Analyzing linguistic data. A practical introduction to statistics using R. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. - Brysbaert, M. (2007). “The language-as-fixed-effect fallacy”: Some simple SPSS solutions to a complex problem (Version 2.0). - Cutler, A. (2012). Native Listening: Language Experience and the Recognition of Spoken Words. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Tbd: various highly recent papers on psycholinguistic theoretical controversies. |
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| STUDY-UNIT TYPE | Lecture and Practical | ||||||||
| METHOD OF ASSESSMENT |
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| LECTURER/S | Holger Mitterer |
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The University makes every effort to ensure that the published Courses Plans, Programmes of Study and Study-Unit information are complete and up-to-date at the time of publication. The University reserves the right to make changes in case errors are detected after publication.
The availability of optional units may be subject to timetabling constraints. Units not attracting a sufficient number of registrations may be withdrawn without notice. It should be noted that all the information in the description above applies to study-units available during the academic year 2024/5. It may be subject to change in subsequent years. |
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