PSY 369: Psycholinguistics

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PSY 369 Psycholinguistics

• Introductions, Syllabus
• Brief History of Psycholinguistics

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Your syllabus

• Can be found on-line
• Through ReggieNet
• https//reggienet.illinoisstate.edu
• Login and password - use your ULID
• Also accessible at
• http//www.psychology.ilstu.edu/jccutti/psych369/s
  p14/sp14syllabus.html

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TED talks on Language

• Some are relevant to the course, others not as
  much
• Try
• Steven Pinker What our language habits reveal
• Mark Pagel How language transformed humanity
• Deb Roy The birth of a word
• Patricia Kuhl The linguistic genius of babies
• Susan Savage-Rumbaugh The gentle genius of
  bonobos
• James Geary Metaphorically speaking

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What is psycholinguistics?
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What is psycholinguistics?
Psycho
Linguistics
The study of language
from a psychological perspective.
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What is psycholinguistics?

• How are these two going to communicate?
• What are the issues going to be?

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What is psycholinguistics?
Psycho
Linguistics

• Mental Processes
• Short Term Memory
• Long Term Memory
• Encoding
• Retrieval
• Mental Representations

• Linguistic Theory
• Phonology
• Morphology
• Syntax
• Semantics
• - Rules

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Psycholinguistics A brief history
Pre-psycholinguistics

• The ancient Greeks
• Noticed that brain damage could cause aphasia
• Aristotle objects of the world exist
• independent of language and that definite
• words are subsequently allied to these objects

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Psycholinguistics A brief history
Pre-psycholinguistics
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Psycholinguistics A brief history
Pre-psycholinguistics
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Psycholinguistics A brief history
Pre-psycholinguistics (1800s)
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Psycholinguistics A brief history
Pre-psycholinguistics
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Psycholinguistics A brief history
Pre-psycholinguistics
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Psycholinguistics A brief history
Pre-psycholinguistics
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Psycholinguistics A brief history
Pre-psycholinguistics
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Psycholinguistics A brief history
Dawn of psycholinguistics (50s)
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Psycholinguistics A brief history
Dawn of psycholinguistics (50s)
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Psycholinguistics A brief history
Dawn of psycholinguistics (50s)
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Psycholinguistics A brief history
Dawn of psycholinguistics (50s)
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Psycholinguistics A brief history
Dawn of psycholinguistics (50s)
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Psycholinguistics A brief history
Dawn of psycholinguistics (50s)
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Chomskyan revolution

• Major proposals/innovations
• Develop a grammar that can generate an infinite
  number of grammatical sentences
• Transformational-generative grammar
• Language acquisition - innate universal grammar
• Limited explicit instruction for language
  learners
• Arguments against behaviorist accounts of
  language
• Often credited with the downfall of behaviorism

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Psycholinguistics A brief history
Psycholinguistics (60s)
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Psycholinguistics A brief history
Psycholinguistics (60s)
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Psycholinguistics A brief history
Artificial intelligence (60s 70s)

• Computer theory began to have an impact
• Newell Simon computers are symbol
  manipulators,
• information processing approach
• Collins Quillian natural language processing
  requires an
• explicit representation of conceptual
  knowledge
• Networks of proposition spreading activation

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Psycholinguistics A brief history
Psycholinguistics (70s)

• Psycholinguistic research begins to drift away
  from linguistics
• Mounting evidence against psychological reality
  of
• transformation
• New competing linguistic theories (e.g.,
  generative semantics)
• and rapid change to existing theories

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Psycholinguistics A brief history
Psycholinguistics (mid70s)

• Psycholinguistics without linguistics
• Began to shift focus away from syntax
• Higher levels of comprehension (e.g., meaning
  and
• discourse)
• Lower levels word recognition and sub-lexical
  perception

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Psycholinguistics A brief history
Psycholinguistics (80s)

• Psycholinguistics further splits
• More drifting away from linguistic, focusing on
  cognitive psychology (i.e. incorporation of more
  information processing ideas)
• Splits within psycholinguistics experimental
  psycholinguistics and developmental
  psycholinguistics

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Psycholinguistics A brief history
Psycholinguistics (mid to late 80s)

• Rise of connectionism
• Neural network models are (re-?)introduced to
  psychological
• theory, including models of language
• Attracts a lot of excitement and debate

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Psycholinguistics A brief history
Psycholinguistics (90s today)

• Cognitive Science starts to re-unify linguistics
  and psycholinguistics
• ( neuropsychology, philosophy, anthropology,
  computer science)
• Linguists begin paying attention to
  psycholinguistic findings
• Psycholinguists start using linguistic theory
  again

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Psycholinguistics

• A multidisciplinary field
• Psychology
• Linguistics
• Computer science
• Neuropsychology
• Philosophy
• Anthropology
• And more