Edd 599 Psycholinguistics

EDD 599 PSYCHOLINGUISTICS
Introduction to Psycholinguistics

BATAAN PENINSULA STATE UNIVERSITY
MAIN CAMPUS
CITY OF BALANGA

GRADUATE SCHOOL
Presented by:

MAR-ELEN FE G. RENOSA
Ed.D. Student
Presented to:

FLORA D. CANARE, Ed. D.
Professor
Introduction to Psycholinguistics:

History and Nature of
Psycholinguistics
Observations on the Past and Future of
Psycholinguistics
o Historical Perspectives
(Philosophical Beginnings,
Psychological Beginnings,
Modern Era)
Future Directions

Introduction to Psycholinguistics
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V0CX_5jKJYI
What is psycholinguistics?
Psychology
-scientific study of
human mind
Linguistics
-scientific study of
language
Psycholinguistics
-studies the psychological and neurobiological
factors that enable humans to acquire, use,
comprehend and produce language.
What is psycholinguistics?
Mental Processes
- Short Term Memory
- Long Term Memory
- Encoding
- Retrieval
- Mental
Representations
Linguistic Theory
- Phonology
- Morphology
- Syntax
- Semantics
- Rules
Psycho Linguistics
Concerned with: language processing, language acquisition and
neurolinguistics
History and Nature of Psycholinguistics
1900
10 20 50 60 70 80 90 2000
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
History
1900
10 20 50 60 70 80 90 2000
Paul Broca (1861):
described a patient who could say only one
word..."tan."
damage to part of the left frontal cortex
("Broca's Area)
History
1900
10 20 50 60 70 80 90 2000
Karl Wernicke (1876):
Found that damage to posterior part of the
temporal lobe caused a different kind of
language problems.
Wernicke's Area

History
1900
10 20 50 60 70 80 90 2000
Pre-psycholinguistics (1800s):
Philosophers of Language:
Wittgenstein: underlying logic of language
Russell: reference and language universals
Frege: sense and reference (meaning)
History
1900
10 20 50 60 70 80 90 2000
Merringer & Meyer (1895):
Speech errors reveal properties of linguistic
system
psycINFO
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Pre 1920
History
1900
10 20 50 60 70 80 90 2000
Wilhelm Wundt:
Physiologist
Established the first psychological laboratory
Wrote about language
Early theory of language production
psycINFO
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Pre 1920
History
1900
10 20 50 60 70 80 90 2000
Ferdinand de Saussure:
Linguist
Separation of historical linguistics and
descriptive linguistics
psycINFO
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Pre 1920
History
1900
10 20 50 60 70 80 90 2000
From the 1920s to the mid 1950s Psychology was
dominated by behaviorism
John B. Watson (1920): Is thinking merely the
action of language mechanisms?
Leonard Bloomfield (1935): Language
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1920-50
History
1900
10 20 50 60 70 80 90 2000
Dawn of psycholinguistics (50s):
Lashley (1951):
Neuropsychologist
Argued that the structure of a sentences must
be more than just associations between
adjacent words
psycINFO
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1951-60
History
1900
10 20 50 60 70 80 90 2000
1951: Social Science Research Council
Conference which invited many of the most
prominent psychologists and linguists
Often identified as the birth of
psycholinguistics
psycINFO
2911
1951-60
History
1900
10 20 50 60 70 80 90 2000
1953: Another conference
Included psychologists, linguists,
anthropologists, and communication engineers
First time the term psycholinguistics is used
Birth of Cognitive Science
psycINFO
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1951-60
History
1900
10 20 50 60 70 80 90 2000
Defense department funds projects:
Machine translators
Machine speech processors
The beginnings of the field of artificial
intelligence research
psycINFO
2911
1951-60
History
1900
10 20 50 60 70 80 90 2000
B. F. Skinner (1957):
Behavioral psychologist
Published Verbal Behavior
In-depth analysis of language within the
behavioral framework
psycINFO
2911
1951-60
History
1900
10 20 50 60 70 80 90 2000
Noam Chomsky :
Linguist
(1957) published Syntactic Structures
(1959) book review of Verbal Behavior
psycINFO
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1951-60
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
History
1900
10 20 50 60 70 80 90 2000
Psycholinguistics (60s):
George Miller
Cognitive psychologist
Collaborated with Chomsky
Beginnings of the search for the psychological
reality of linguistic rules
psycINFO
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1961-70
History
1900
10 20 50 60 70 80 90 2000
The search for psychological reality of
syntactic transformations begins
e.g., studies by Bever, Fodor, and Garrett
psycINFO
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1961-70
History
1900
10 20 50 60 70 80 90 2000
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
psycINFO
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1971-80
History
1900
10 20 50 60 70 80 90 2000
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
psycINFO
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1971-80
History
1900
10 20 50 60 70 80 90 2000
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
psycINFO
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1971-80
History
1900
10 20 50 60 70 80 90 2000
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
psycINFO
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1981-90
History
1900
10 20 50 60 70 80 90 2000
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
psycINFO
16,838
1981-90
History
1900
10 20 50 60 70 80 90 2000
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
psycINFO
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1990-now
Observations on the Past and Future of Psycholinguistics
by Alan Garnham, Simon Garrod and Anthony Sanford
(Chapter 1, Handbook of Psycholinguistics, Second Edition
Edited by Matthew J. Traxler and Morton Ann Gernsbacher)
Alan Garnham-Professor of Experimental Psychology, University of Sussex
Simon Garrod- Professor of Cognitive Psychology, University of Glasgow
Anthony Sanford- Professor of Psychology, University of Glasgow
(Cognitive Psychologist)

Philosophical Beginnings
Psychological Beginnings
Modern Era
Noted the similarity of Platos Theory of
Concepts with that of Fodor.
Much of the interest in language before the late
nineteenth century was not psychologically
oriented
Eventhough language use is clearly (primarily
and almost entirely) a human activity and mental
activity at that, most people throughout most of
the history of the study of language have treated
language as in Jerry Katzs(1981) phrase, an
abstract object.
The link between the study of language and
study of logic was strong.
This strand of work on language led, eventually,
to the development in the work of Boole, Frege,
and others of formal logical systems that bore
certain resemblances to natural languages.
Other traditions focused more closely on the
details and intricacies of natural languages
leading eventually to the comparative method of
William Jones and others in the nineteenth
century, and then to Saussure (structuralism and
modern linguistics proper).
Seeds of Chomskian revolution can be traced back to
Plato.
Because of Aristotles disputes with Plato there were
debates on: rationalism vs. empiricism, ideas
(concepts) vs. knowledge
In philosophical tradition, other aspects of language
received little attention.
Chomsky picked up on Descartes remarks about the
creative nature of language and discovered precursors
of his own ideas in the works of lesser Cartesian
philosophers such as Cordemoy and in the rationalist
influenced Port Royal Grammar (notion of universal
grammar).
The foundation of Wundts lab in Leipzig as the
beginning of psychology as an independent
discipline.
Nineteenth century German universities both
freed psychologists from some of their
philosophical shackles and allow them to begin
or expand programs of empirical research.
Medicine saw spectacular changes and growth,
with detailed case studies appearing of
psychological deficits of various kinds.
The different approaches and philosophies of
the various German labs appeared to produce
irreconcilable problems with psychology itself.
This led some linguists to argue that linguists
should seek to work independently of
psychologists (Blumenthal).
Reber (1987) similarly argued that one of the
reasons of the modern (Chomskian)
psycholinguistics was that linguists could not
agree among themselves, and that
psychologists therefore thought they would be
better working on their own.

Based on arguments with Wundt emerged other
concepts:
Functionalism (Karl Buhler)- opposed Wundt
with ideas similar to Gestalt psychologists
Behaviorism (Bloomfield)- believes that one can
pursue the study of language without reference
to any one of the psychological doctrine.
Behaviorists maintain that Skinners purpose
was entirely different from what Chomsky
construed it to be, and that it is a functional
analysis in broader sense of that term that is
common in linguistics (Catania, 1998)

Notable theories, concepts and linguists
Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis
The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis is the theory that an
individual's thoughts and actions are determined by the
language or languages that individual speaks. The strong
version of the hypothesis states that all human thoughts
and actions are bound by the restraints of language, and
is generally less accepted than the weaker version, which
says that language only somewhat shapes our thinking
and behavior. Following are quotes from the two linguists
who first formulated the hypothesis and for whom it is
named, Edward Sapir
and Benjamin Whorf

In the psychopathology of everyday life, Freud
introduced the idea that has come to be known as
Freudian slip, one type of which the slip of the
tongue. Freud had particular ideas about the
genesis of speech and errors, and little concern for
the form they took.
Use of Corpus techniques
- Corpus- a collection of naturally occurring samples of
language which have been collected and collated for
easy access by researchers and materials developers
who want to know how words and other linguistic items
are actually used.

On eye-movements in reading
Emile Javal, in Paris, first observed that the
eyes do not move smoothly in reading, but in a
series of jerky movements (saccades) interspersed
with pauses in which the eye are effectively still
(fixations).
Modern Era
Quasi-mythical founding of modern
psycholinguistics:
Two seminars sponsored by the Social Science
Research Council (US) in 1950s and
subsequent publication of the original version of
Osgood and Sebeoks (1965) Psycholinguistics:
A survey of theory and research problems.
The seminar identified three approaches to
learning behavior:
1. linguistic approach
2. learning theory approach (behaviorism)
3. information theory approach

Modern Era
While learning theory approaches never recovered
from withering attacks by Chomsky (1959), Fodor
(1965) and others, information theory has been
important for cognitive psychology, more generally.
It influenced work on attention, short term memory,
and to some extent work on language.
Miller, information theorys most important
psychological proponent, was soon lured away
from that approach by the idea that a theory like
that outlined in Chomskys Syntactic Structures
could form the basis of a processing theory (later
known as Derivational Theory of Complexity).
Modern Era
Derivational Theory of Complexity
Notion that difficulty in the production and/or
comprehension of a sentence is related to how
different thesurface structure is from the deep
structure, according to the rules of transformational
(derivational) grammar.
But this was never formulated in a testable way.
Other linguists, even those who claim that cognitive
considerations are important for language, have
similarly reluctant (like Chomsky) to engage with
psychological methods (in experiment)
PSYCHOLINGUISTICS IS ALIVE AND
KICKING!

New Directions
1
st
issue: the range of language use addressed by
the subject (more on monologue, but in reality, the
more natural way of communicating is dialogue)
The central goal of psycholinguistics should be to
provide an account on the basic processing
mechanisms that are employed during natural
dialogue

2
nd
issue: Scope but in this case, in relation to the
more conventional topic of reading and
comprehension, and the extent to which standard
psycholinguistic approaches do justice to the
complexity of texts that people read in everyday
life.
Language Processing and
Dialogue
There are many reasons why psycholinguists have avoided
dialogue in the past, both theoretical
and practical.
Theoretical linguistics, at least in the generative tradition,
has developed theories about the structure of isolated,
decontextualized sentences that are used in texts or
speeches in other words, in monologue. In contrast,
dialogue is inherently interactive and contextualized:
Each interlocutor both speaks and comprehends during
the course of the interaction; each interrupts both others
and himself; on occasion two or more speakers
collaborate in producing the same sentence (Coates,
1990).
Dialogue
So it is not surprising that generative
linguists commonly view dialogue as being of
marginal grammaticality, contaminated by
theoretically uninteresting complexities. Dialogue
sits ill with the competence/performance distinction
assumed by most generative linguistics (Chomsky,
1965), because it is hard to determine whether a
particular utterance is well-formed or not (or even
whether that notion is relevant to dialogue).
Dialogue
Thus, linguistics has tended to concentrate
on developing generative grammars and related
theories for isolated sentences; and
psycholinguistics has tended to develop
processing theories that draw upon the rules and
representations assumed by generative linguistics.
However, the situation in linguistics is changing
and linguists are beginning to explicitly take
dialogue into account (see e.g., Ginzburg & Sag,
2001; Keysar, this volume). So there is less
theoretical excuse for psycholinguists to ignore
dialogue.
Dialogue
The practical reason is that dialogue is generally
assumed to be too hard or impossible to study, given
the degree of experimental control necessary. Until
quite recently it was also assumed that imposing a
sufficient level of control in many language production
studies was impossible. Thus, Bock (1996) points to
the problem of exuberant responding how can the
experimenter stop subjects saying whatever they
want? However, it is now regarded as perfectly
possible to control presentation so that people
produce the appropriate responses on a high
proportion of trials, even in sentence production (e.g.,
Bock, 1986; Levelt & Maassen, 1981)
Dialogue
This problem can now be answered through
experimental ingenuity and the development of more
extensive dialogue corpora available in electronic from
which makes the study of language processing in the
wild much easier.
Example: Corcondancer (a piece of software, either
installed on a computer or accessed through a website, which can be
used to search, access and analyse language from a corpus. They can
be particularly useful in exploring the relationships between words and
can give us very accurate information about the way language is
authentically used.)
There is also the development of more
sophisticated behavioral measures of on-line
processing during dialogue, such as the head-
mounted or remote eye-tracking systems now
available.

Dialogue
The key difference between a dialogical and a monological
approach to language processing is in how they define the system
under investigation.
In a monological approach there are two basic systems:
one for language production the other for language
comprehension. The only relation between the two is that the
output of one system is taken as the input to the other. In other
respects the two systems are to all intents and purposes
independent.
However, the dialogical approach treats the system as
minimally bounded by two interlocutors engaged in both
production and comprehension of the language being used.
Communication and language processing is taken to be joint
activity between both interlocutors (Clark, 1996). Hence, how
one interlocutor formulates her message is inevitably
influenced by how the other interlocutor has formulated his.
An Enriched Approach to Reading and
Comprehension
A prevalent perception of psycholinguistics by
many academics outside of the discipline, but interested
in language use, is that the materials used in most
experiments are short, typically dull, de-contextualised,
and generally unrelated to anything in real life. As
psycholinguists, the authors would of course defend the
subject against any negative construal of these facts,
pointing out that adequate control over sentence
structure and content is essential if we are to
understand the basic mechanisms of comprehension. It
is of central interest, for instance, to determine the
syntactic and semantic interpretations given particular
sentence structures.
Comprehension
However, they also think that it is important for
psycholinguistics to take a broader view of
interpretation.
They are advocating the study of processing
within situations where sentences are treated as
utterances within a setting. While hopefully there will
be many instances in which processing is identical
whether the sentence in question is in vacuo or in situ,
it is a question that needs an answer for any specific
proposed processing mechanism.

Comprehension
Another aspect of greater realism in materials concerns
claims of richness in interpreting these materials. This is
concerned with the inferential activity that goes along with
reading (which may deal with the richness of experience
when immersed in a story world for example, whether the
reader experienced excitement or not or predicted what may
happen next and so on).
The authors also suggested that a better understanding of
how written communication works is possible only by
exploring a fuller range of written material- the realistic
written material. It is not advocating a lack of controlled
experimental materials, but rather, an expansion of the types
of questions that are being asked. One growing area that
should rather obviously benefit from a broader perspective is
what might be termed the grounding program.
Comprehension
In the past two or three decades there has been an
upsurge of interest in the problem of how meaning is
grounded in the world of perception and action (e.g.,
Searle, 1980; Harnad, 1990; Glenberg, 1997; Barsalou,
1999; Ziemke & Sharkey, 2001). Consideration of the
symbol grounding problem is of course having an impact
on questions about language comprehension and is a
likely area for a major upsurge of future research.
First, pioneering efforts by Glenberg and his
colleagues, and the later work of others, have
demonstrated that when actions are carried out that are
incompatible with the direction of movement (represent
motion away from or toward the observer) implied by a
description, then interference occurs.
Comprehension
Secondly, studies in neuroscience have also been
recruited as evidence of embodied cognition. There is now good
evidence that areas of the brain near the appropriate motor
cortex areas are activated when words denoting certain bodily
actions are presented in a variety of tasks. For instance, the verb
walk activates areas near those associated with movements of
the lower limbs, while talk activates areas associated with control
of verbal articulation (Pulvermuller, Harle, & Hummel, 2001).
This work is seen as supporting the belief that understanding is
somehow rooted in experience (action and perception).
While this angle constitutes an interesting way of
approaching at least some of the fundamental problems of
meaningful, grounded interpretation, it also appears to provide a
basis for linking reading to the kinds of phenomenological
experiences described by Zwaan.
Scope and Interest
We see a major problem for a proper psychology of
language as being one of lack of interaction between
different sub-disciplines. For instance, the lack of overlap of
attendance at the major conferences on sentence
processing (e.g., the CUNY series of conferences) and
those on discourse (e.g., the series on Text and Discourse)
is very noticeable to those of us interested in both
perspectives. While sentence processing and text
processing and dialogue fail to fall under integrating
umbrellas, there will never be a Language Science
comparable to the recently emerged Vision Science. What
we cannot tell about the future is whether there ever will be
a Language Science (or even an integrated Psychology of
Language). But it makes a fine goal. (Garnham, Garrod
and Sanford, 2006)
Thank you very much.

Edd 599 Psycholinguistics

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