Experimental psycholinguistics 2500-KOG1-PL-PLGE

One of the central questions of the cognitive science is human language: what distinguishes it from animal communication systems, what has enabled our species to develop such an sophisticated tool and why there are various mutually incomprehensible languages, what it actually means to know a language and whether it is exactly the same as knowing how to use it, what links language to thinking and other higher cognitive processes, and finally, how the psychological mechanisms that allow us to use language that enable us to use a language (or languages) on a daily basis, to understand and construct statements, and how, as young children, we develop in ourselves the ability to use this complex tool (often acquiring more than one language). All these questions put language at the crossroads of many different disciplines: biology, neurology, anthropology, psychology or linguistics. In this course, students will learn about attempts to answer these questions within the psychology of language.
During the semester, students will be introduced to the basic areas of interest in psycholinguistics, but the main focus will be on the students' own exploration of psycholinguistic themes of interest.

The class (2 hours per week) will combine student presentations with seminar discussions; an important part will also be taken up by individual student work: reading assigned source texts, independent text searches and a final project.
(a presentation paper on a specific research problem and its possible solution). Estimated number of hours that a student should devote to achieve the learning outcomes: 30h (in the classroom) + 45h of individual work.
Topics covered:
1. the biological basis of language;
2. Word recognition;
3. speech comprehension;
4. Meaning in psycholinguistics;
5. Sentence processing;
6. Construction of utterances;
7. Discourse and pragmatics of language;
8. linguistic development;
9. Language and thinking;
11. bilingualism and multilingualism
12. reading and writing
13. language disorders
14. cross-linguistic comparisons

One of the central questions of the cognitive science is human language: what distinguishes it from animal communication systems, what has enabled our species to develop such an sophisticated tool and why there are various mutually incomprehensible languages, what it actually means to know a language and whether it is exactly the same as knowing how to use it, what links language to thinking and other higher cognitive processes, and finally, how the psychological mechanisms that allow us to use language that enable us to use a language (or languages) on a daily basis, to understand and construct statements, and how, as young children, we develop in ourselves the ability to use this complex tool (often acquiring more than one language). All these questions put language at the crossroads of many different disciplines: biology, neurology, anthropology, psychology or linguistics. In this course, students will learn about attempts to answer these questions within the psychology of language.
During the semester, students will be introduced to the basic areas of interest in psycholinguistics, but the main focus will be on the students' own exploration of psycholinguistic themes of interest.

The class (2 hours per week) will combine student presentations with seminar discussions; an important part will also be taken up by individual student work: reading assigned source texts, independent text searches and a final project.
(a presentation paper on a specific research problem and its possible solution). Estimated number of hours that a student should devote to achieve the learning outcomes: 30h (in the classroom) + 45h of individual work.
Topics covered:
1. the biological basis of language;
2. Word recognition;
3. speech comprehension;
4. Meaning in psycholinguistics;
5. Sentence processing;
6. Construction of utterances;
7. Discourse and pragmatics of language;
8. linguistic development;
9. Language and thinking;
11. bilingualism and multilingualism
12. reading and writing
13. language disorders
14. cross-linguistic comparisons

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