Overview

Psycholinguistics stands at the crossroads of linguistics, psychology, computer science and neuroscience. The basic objective of psycholinguistics is to understand how the human mind/brain supports the learning, comprehension and production of language.

This course provides a hands-on introduction to the state-of-the-art in psycholinguistics, covering the following general questions:

• Knowledge: What is the current state of our understanding of language learning and processing?
  This will be studied through readings, lectures and in-class discussions, and written homework assignments.
• Techniques: What experimental and analytic techniques have been used to learn these things?
  This will be studied over the course of a series of Lab Assignments and a Group Project, which together will provide hands-on experience in designing and running experiments, analyzing data, searching databases and manipulating computer models.
• Frontiers: What areas of psycholinguistics are still poorly understood, and where can we hope to make significant progress in coming years?

By virtue of the different disciplines and techniques that psycholinguistics brings together, it is a field in which collaborative work is very important. Accordingly, a good deal of the work in this course will involve working in a team with your classmates.