LIGN 170 Summer Session 1, 2023

Table of contents

1. About the Course
   1. Learning Outcomes
   2. Summary of Grade Criteria
2. Week 1
   1. Tuesday, July 4th
   2. Thursday, July 6th
3. Week 2
   1. Tuesday, July 11th
   2. Thursday, July 13th
4. Week 3
   1. Tuesday, July 18th
   2. Thursday, July 20th
5. Week 4
   1. Tuesday, July 25th
   2. Thursday, July 27th
6. Week 5
   1. Tuesday, August 1st
   2. Thursday, August 3rd
7. Anti-Racist Pedagogy Resources
   1. General
   2. Diversifying Examples
8. Anti-Racist Pedagogy Course Design

About the Course

This course introduces students to psycholinguistics. We will discuss fundamental theories, explore common experimental methodologies, and engage with the literature. Students will be introduced to different theories through lectures, in-class activities, independent readings, and written assignments.

This course meets twice a week for 2h50.

Learning Outcomes

Course Learning Outcomes

1. Describe fundamental models of language comprehension and productions
   • List processes involved in speech perception, word recognition, sentence processing, text processing, reading and language acquisition
2. Identify common psycholinguistics experimental paradigms, such as behavioral tasks (e.g. acceptability judgements, priming), self-paced reading, and eye tracking.
3. For a psycholinguistics article,
   • Identify research questions;
   • Explain elements of experimental design using key terminology;
   • Critically assess results and conclusions in a psycholinguistics journal article
   • Even if the student does not understand every term or every part of the paper, extract the key components of a paper: research question, hypothesis, experimental logic, methods, results, conclusions.
4. Critique a psycholinguistics article, evaluate its methodology and conclusions, and formulate an idea for a follow-up experiment to address issues identified
5. Gain confidence in engaging with primary literature in psycholinguistics
6. Demonstrate knowledge of course material through written assessment, applying the writing tips introduced in class to improve clarity

Summary of Grade Criteria

Week 1

Tuesday, July 4th

• Slides [pdf]
• Topics:
  • Scientific Method, QALMRI
  • The structure of a paragraph
  • How to read a journal article
• Materials
  • Kosslyn, S. M., & Rosenberg, R. S. (2004). The Research Process: How We Find Things Out. In Kosslyn, S. M., & Rosenberg, R. S. (Ed.) Psychology: The brain, the person, the world (pp. 35-71). Pearson Education New Zealand.
    • overview of scientific method
    • introduction of QALMRI
  • Feldman, L. B., & Siok, W. W. (1999). Semantic radicals contribute to the visual identification of Chinese characters. Journal of memory and language, 40(4), 559-576.
    • journal article about reading Chinese characters, lexical decision task, decomposition vs. full-listing hypothesis
  • Sarnecka, B. W. (2021). Paragraphs. In Sarnecka, B. W. (Ed.) The Writing Workshop: Write More, Write Better, Be Happier in Academia (pp. 235-264). Retrieved from osf.io/n8pc3
    • advice about how to write clearly structure paragraphs for academic writing
  • WIRED (2019) Astrophysicist Explains Gravity in 5 Levels of Difficulty
    • video showing explanations at different levels of difficulty/detail
  • Purdue. (n.d.). How to Read a Scientific Paper. Purdue University. URL
    • strategies for reading academic articles

Thursday, July 6th

• Slides [pdf]
• Topics:
  • Syllabus overview, course logistics
  • Introduction to Psycholinguistics
  • Fundamentals of Experimental Design
  • Example methods section
  • Brief mention of statistics and validity
• Assigned readings
  • Altmann, G. T. (1998). Looking towards Babel. In Altmann, G. T. (Ed.). The ascent of Babel: An exploration of language, mind, and understanding (pp. 1-9). Oxford: OUP.
  • Sedivy, J. (2014). Science, Language, and the Science of Language. In J. Sedivy (Ed.). Language in Mind: An Introduction to Psycholinguistics (pp. 1-7). Sunderland, MA, USA: Sinaeuer Associates, Inc.
• Materials
  • Ratner, N. B. & Gleason, J.B. (2004). Psycholinguistics. In Squire (Ed.), Encyclopedia of Neuroscience (pp. 1199-1204). Elsevier.
    • goals of the field of psycholinguistics
  • Peter Hagoort et al. ,Integration of Word Meaning and World Knowledge in Language Comprehension.Science304,438-441(2004).DOI:10.1126/science.1095455
    • definition of world knowledge
  • Eimas, P. D., Siqueland, E. R., Jusczyk, P., & Vigorito, J. (1971). Speech perception in infants. Science, 171(3968), 303-306.
    • paper about acquisition of phonemes in infants, non-nutritive sucking
  • Berko, J. (1958). The child’s learning of English morphology. Word, 14(2-3), 150-177.
    • canonical wug paper, acquisition of morphological rules in children
  • Ramachandran, V. S., & Hubbard, E. M. (2001). Synaesthesia–a window into perception, thought and language. Journal of consciousness studies, 8(12), 3-34.
    • kiki/bouba, sound symbolism, form of language isn’t completely arbitrary
  • Blumenthal, A. L. (1975). A reappraisal of Wilhelm Wundt. American Psychologist, 30(11), 1081.
    • history of Wundt’s research
  • Schneider, S., Lee, J.H. & Mathis, M.W. Learnable latent embeddings for joint behavioural and neural analysis. Nature 617, 360–368 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-023-06031-6
    • article showing decoding of neural signal, visual output
  • Tang, J., LeBel, A., Jain, S., & Huth, A. G. (2023). Semantic reconstruction of continuous language from non-invasive brain recordings. Nature Neuroscience, 1-9.
    • article showing decoding of neural signal, linguistic output
  • Morling, B. (2021) Research Methods in Psychology EVALUATING A WORLD OF INFORMATION 3rd Ed. (chapter 1, chapter 3)
    • Four types of validity: construct, external, internal, statistical
  • Frank et al. (2023) Experimentology: An Open Science Approach to Experimental Psychology Method (chapter 1, chapter 2)
    • textbook chapters introducing theories and experiments for research
  • Kosslyn, S. M., & Rosenberg, R. S. (2004). The Research Process: How We Find Things Out. In Kosslyn, S. M., & Rosenberg, R. S. (Ed.) Psychology: The brain, the person, the world (pp. 35-71). Pearson Education New Zealand.
    • overview of scientific method
    • introduction of QALMRI
  • Bylund, Emanuel. “10 WEIRD Psycholinguistics”. Struggles for Multilingualism and Linguistic Citizenship, Bristol, Blue Ridge Summit: Multilingual Matters, 2022, pp. 183-200. https://doi.org/10.21832/9781800415324-012
    • WEIRD bias in psycholinguistics, breakdown of publishing affiliations by country
  • Feldman, L. B., & Siok, W. W. (1999). Semantic radicals contribute to the visual identification of Chinese characters. Journal of memory and language, 40(4), 559-576.
    • journal article about reading Chinese characters, lexical decision task, decomposition vs. full-listing hypothesis

Week 2

Tuesday, July 11th

• Slides [pdf]
• Topics:
  • Overview of WEAVER++ and spreading activation models of production
  • Introdution to production research, why studying production is hard
  • Example Methods for QALMRI: Berko (1958)
  • Conceptualization (from WEAVER++)
    • Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis
    • Linguistic Relativity, Thinking for Speaking
  • Units of Planning, Smith & Wheeldon (1999)
  • Structural Priming
    • within-language
    • across languages
• Assigned Reading:
  • Traxler, M. (2012) ntroduction to Psycholinguistics: Understanding Language Science, First Edition. pp. 37-51
    • overview of WEAVER++ and spreading activation theories of language production
• Materials:
  • Pickering MJ, Garrod S. An integrated theory of language production and comprehension. Behav Brain Sci. 2013 Aug;36(4):329-47. doi: 10.1017/S0140525X12001495. Epub 2013 Jun 24. PMID: 23789620.
    • diagram showing the interaction of production and comprehension during communication
  • Treiman, R., Clifton, C., Jr, Meyer, A. S., & Wurm, L. H. (2003). Language comprehension and production. Comprehensive Handbook of Psychology, Volume 4: Experimental Psychology. New York: John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Pages 527-548. Copyright John Wiley & Sons (from p. 31)
    • overview of language production
  • Levelt WJ, Roelofs A, Meyer AS. A theory of lexical access in speech production. Behav Brain Sci. 1999 Feb;22(1):1-38; discussion 38-75. doi: 10.1017/s0140525x99001776. PMID: 11301520.
    • description of WEAVER++ model, diagram of model components
  • MacDonald MC (2013) How language production shapes language form and comprehension. Front. Psychol. 4:226. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2013.00226
    • trends in production research
  • Bock, K. (1996). Language production: Methods and methodologies. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 3, 395-421.https://link.springer.com/article/10.3758/bf03214545
    • trends in production research
    • overview of common production experimental paradigms
  • Berko, J. (1958). The child’s learning of English morphology. Word, 14(2-3), 150-177.
    • canonical wug paper, acquisition of morphological rules in children
  • Bock, K., & Levelt, W. J. (1994). Language production: Grammatical encoding. In Handbook of Psycholinguistics (pp. 945-984). Academic Press.
    • description of the message (during conceptualization)
  • Comrie, B. (n.d.) Language and Thought. Linguistic Society of America. URL: https://www.linguisticsociety.org/resource/language-and-thought.
    • overview of linguistic determinism and linguistic relativity (Sapir-Whorf)
  • Ekkehart Malotki, Hopi time: a linguistic analysis of the temporal concepts inthe Hopi language. (Trends in Linguistics, Studies and Monographs 20.) Berlin-New York-Amsterdam: Mouton, 1983. Pp. xxi + 677.
    • evidence against Whorf’s claims about Hopi and time
  • Pullum, G. K. (1989). The great Eskimo vocabulary hoax. Natural Language & Linguistic Theory, 275-281.
    • evidence against Whorf’s claims about the Inuit and words for snow
  • Winawer, J., Witthoft, N., Frank, M. C., Wu, L., Wade, A. R., & Boroditsky, L. (2007). Russian blues reveal effects of language on color discrimination. Proceedings of the national academy of sciences, 104(19), 7780-7785.
    • experiment about perception of color by Russian speakers, evidence for linguistic relativity
  • Slobin, D. I. (1996). From “thought and language” to “thinking for speaking”.
    • overview of “thinking for speaking”, weak linguistic relativity
  • Talmy, L. (2000). Toward a cognitive semantics: Concept structuring systems (Vol. 1). MIT press.
    • verb framing, Spanish and English examples demonstrating differences between two verb framing types
  • Smith, M., & Wheeldon, L. (1999). High level processing scope in spoken sentence production. Cognition, 73(3), 205-246.
    • experiment investigating units of planning for production
  • Medina Fetterman, A.M., Vazquez, N.N. & Arnold, J.E. The Effects of Semantic Role Predictability on the Production of Overt Pronouns in Spanish. J Psycholinguist Res 51, 169–194 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10936-021-09832-w
    • experiment investigating usage of null/overt pronouns in Spanish
  • Rosa, E. C., & Arnold, J. E. (2017). Predictability affects production: Thematic roles can affect reference form selection. Journal of Memory and Language, 94, 43-60.
    • experiment investigating usage of null/overt pronouns in Spanish
  • Bock, J. K. (1986). Syntactic persistence in language production. Cognitive psychology, 18(3), 355-387.
    • canonical/original paper demonstrating structural priming
  • Hall, M. L., Ferreira, V. S., & Mayberry, R. I. (2015). Syntactic priming in American sign language. PloS one, 10(3), e0119611.
    • experiment testing structural priming in ASL
  • Garcia, R., & Kidd, E. (2020). The acquisition of the Tagalog symmetrical voice system: Evidence from structural priming. Language Learning and Development, 16(4), 399-425.
    • experiment, structural priming in Tagalog
  • Garcia, R., Roeser, J., & Kidd, E. (2023). Finding your voice: Voice-specific effects in Tagalog reveal the limits of word order priming. Cognition, 236, 105424.
    • experiment, structural priming in Tagalog

Thursday, July 13th

• Slides [pdf]
• Topics:
  • Lexical Access
  • Review of Lemmas
  • Evidence for Lemma Theory
  • Phonological Encoding
  • Slips of the Tongue
• Assigned Readings
  • Baars, B. J., Motley, M. T., & MacKay, D. G. (1975). Output editing for lexical status in artificially elicited slips of the tongue. Journal of verbal learning and verbal behavior, 14(4), 382-391.
• Materials
  • Roelofs, A. (1992). A spreading-activation theory of lemma retrieval in speaking. Cognition, 42(1-3), 107-142.
    • clarifying lexeme and lemma
  • Bierwisch, M., & Schreuder, R. (1992). From concepts to lexical items. Cognition, 42(1-3), 23-60.
    • overview of lexical concepts, example
  • https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k61nJkx5aDQ
    • video demo of lexical storage in the brain
  • Bock, J. K. (1986). Meaning, sound, and syntax: Lexical priming in sentence production. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 12(4), 575.
    • experiment showing differences between semantic and phonological priming for lexical priming
  • Bock, K., & Levelt, W. J. (1994). Language production: Grammatical encoding. In Handbook of Psycholinguistics (pp. 945-984). Academic Press.
    • description of semantic subtitution errors, example
  • Levelt WJ, Roelofs A, Meyer AS. A theory of lexical access in speech production. Behav Brain Sci. 1999 Feb;22(1):1-38; discussion 38-75. doi: 10.1017/s0140525x99001776. PMID: 11301520.
    • description of word exchange errors, example
  • Vigliocco, G., Antonini, T., & Garrett, M. F. (1997). Grammatical gender is on the tip of Italian tongues. Psychological science, 8(4), 314-317.
    • experiment testing retrieval of grammatical gender knowledge during tip-of-the-tongue states in Italian speakers
  • Thompson, R., Emmorey, K., & Gollan, T. H. (2005). “Tip of the fingers” experiences by deaf signers: Insights into the organization of a sign-based lexicon. Psychological Science, 16(11), 856-860.
    • experiment testing retrieval of phonological information during tip-of-the-fingers states in ASL signers
  • Sandler, W. (2012). The phonological organization of sign languages. Language and linguistics compass, 6(3), 162-182.
    • overview of sign language phonology
  • Hill, J. C., Lillo-Martin, D. C., & Wood, S. K. (2018). Sign languages: Structures and contexts. Routledge. (Chapter 2: Phonology)
    • overview of sign language phonology
  • Chen, J. Y. (1999). The representation and processing of tone in Mandarin Chinese: Evidence from slips of the tongue. Applied psycholinguistics, 20(2), 289-301.
    • article investigating tone errors in production of Mandarin Chinese as compared to segment errors

Week 3

Tuesday, July 18th

• Slides [pdf]
• Topics:
  • Sociolinguistics
  • Bilingualism
• Assigned Readings
  • D’Onofrio, A. (2020). Personae in sociolinguistic variation. Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Cognitive Science, 11(6), e1543.
    • review article about personae, indexing social meaning with linguistic features, enregisterment, many examples
• Materials
  • How to Sign IN BASL (Black American Sign Language)
    • brief history of BASL, examples of dialectal differences between ASL and BASL
  • Labov, W. (1986). The social stratification of (r) in New York City department stores. In Dialect and language variation (pp. 304-329). Academic Press.
    • canonical study testing socioconomic variables as predictors for production of New York accent feature (word-final /r/)
  • Eckert, P. (2012). Three waves of variation study: The emergence of meaning in the study of sociolinguistic variation. Annual review of Anthropology, 41, 87-100.
    • review article summarising three waves in sociolinguistics
  • Zhang, Q. (2005). A Chinese yuppie in Beijing: Phonological variation and the construction of a new professional identity. Language in society, 34(3), 431-466.
    • sociolinguistic study of Beijing yuppies, comparing linguistic features of young business professionals and state-owned business employees, example of indexing social meaning and constructing identity
  • Southern Mandarin VS. Northern Mandarin 南北差异
    • video demonstrating syllable-final rhoticization (erhua) in Northern Mandarin varieties
  • Key & Peele Phone Call
    • video demonstrating codeswitching between MUSE and AAE (comedic sketch)
  • Quinto-Pozos, D. G. (2002). Contact between Mexican sign language and American sign language in two Texas border areas. The University of Texas at Austin.
    • study of code-switching with users of ASL and LSM (Mexican Sign Language)
  • Emmorey, K., Borinstein, H. B., Thompson, R., & Gollan, T. H. (2008). Bimodal bilingualism. Bilingualism: Language and cognition, 11(1), 43-61.
    • study of bimodal code-switching between ASL and English
  • Northern Cities Vowel Shift
    • video demonstrating Northern Cities Vowel Shift and the matched guise task
  • Kroll, J. F., Bobb, S. C., Misra, M., & Guo, T. (2008). Language selection in bilingual speech: Evidence for inhibitory processes. Acta psychologica, 128(3), 416-430.
    • overview of accounts of bilingual control, theories of inhibition of non-target langauge
  • Kirk, N. W. (2023). MIND your language (s): Recognizing Minority, Indigenous, Non-standard (ized), and Dialect variety usage in “monolinguals”. Applied Psycholinguistics, 44(3), 358-364.
    • article discussing bias in psycholinguistic research to not consider bidialectal participants, not collect sufficient language background information
• Practice QALMRI paper
  • Lee, C., Lew-Williams, C., & Goldberg, A. (2022). Accessibility factors that lead to good-enough language production. In Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society (Vol. 44, No. 44).
    • experiments testing factors that affect lexical selection: frequency, priming, priming competition, time pressure

Thursday, July 20th

• Slides [pdf]
• Topics:
  • Speech perception
  • Lexical Access
• Assigned Readings
  • MacDonald, J., & McGurk, H. (1978). Visual influences on speech perception processes. Perception & psychophysics, 24(3), 253-257.
    • canonical McGurk effect, demonstrating non-auditory information used during speech perception
• Materials
  • Traxler, M. (2012) ntroduction to Psycholinguistics: Understanding Language Science, First Edition. pp. 54-69
    • overview of speech perception
  • Traxler, M. (2012) ntroduction to Psycholinguistics: Understanding Language Science, First Edition. pp. 97-115
    • overview of lexical access
  • Zhang, Y., Kuhl, P. K., Imada, T., Iverson, P., Pruitt, J., Kotani, M., & Stevens, E. (2000). Neural plasticity revealed in perceptual training of a Japanese adult listener to learn American/lr/contrast: a whole-head magnetoencephalography study. In Sixth International Conference on Spoken Language Processing.
    • Experiment testing L2 speakers of English (Japanese native speakers) distinction between /l/ and /r/
  • Abramson, A. S., & Lisker, L. (1973). Voice-timing perception in Spanish word-initial stops. Journal of Phonetics, 1(1), 1-8.
    • differences in perception of VOT between Spanish and English speakers
  • Ganong, W. F. (1980). Phonetic categorization in auditory word perception. Journal of experimental psychology: Human perception and performance, 6(1), 110.
    • Ganong effect, influence of top-down lexical knowledge on speech perception
  • Diehl, R. L., & Kluender, K. R. (1989). On the objects of speech perception. Ecological psychology, 1(2), 121-144.
    • speech perception by animals (chinchillas and quails), supports general auditory approach of speech perception
  • Morton, J. (1969). Interaction of information in word recognition. Psychological review, 76(2), 165.
    • Logogen model of lexical access
  • Allopenna, P. D., Magnuson, J. S., & Tanenhaus, M. K. (1998). Tracking the time course of spoken word recognition using eye movements: Evidence for continuous mapping models. Journal of memory and language, 38(4), 419-439.
    • experiment using eye tracking (visual world) to investigate the time course of lexical access
  • Urbach, T. P., DeLong, K. A., Chan, W. H., & Kutas, M. (2020). An exploratory data analysis of word form prediction during word-by-word reading. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 117(34), 20483-20494.
    • ERP experiments investigating prediction in lexical access
  • DeLong, K. A., Urbach, T. P., & Kutas, M. (2005). Probabilistic word pre-activation during language comprehension inferred from electrical brain activity. Nature neuroscience, 8(8), 1117-1121.
    • ERP experiments investigating prediction in lexical access

Week 4

Tuesday, July 25th

• Slides [pdf]
• Topics:
  • Acceptability Judgments
  • Sentence Processing
• Assigned Readings
  • Goodall, G. (2021). Sentence acceptability experiments: What, how, and why. The Cambridge handbook of experimental syntax, 7-38.
    • recommendations on methodology for Acceptability Judgments
• Materials
  • Goodall, G. (Ed.). (2021). The Cambridge handbook of experimental syntax. Cambridge Handbooks in Language. [introduction]
    • what are acceptability judgments, why are they used?
  • Ugwuanyi, K. O. (2023). Acceptability Judgement Tasks in New Englishes research. New Englishes, New Methods, 158.
    • Acceptability Judgments for Nigerian English
  • MacDonald, D. The changing status of Korean plural-marking: Evidence from an acceptability judgement task.
    • experiment using Acceptability Judgments to test diachronic changes in Korean plural marking
  • Ford, M., & Bresnan, J. (2010). Studying syntactic variation using convergent evidence from psycholinguistics and usage. Research methods in language variation and change.
    • experiment using Acceptability Judgments to test variation in acceptability of dative alternations in Australian and US English
  • Sprouse, J., Villata, S., & Goodall, G. (2021). Island effects. The Cambridge handbook of experimental syntax, 227-257.
    • overview of Island Effects, experimental evidence for Island Effects using Acceptability Judgments
  • Snyder, W. (2021). Satiation. The Cambridge Handbook of Experimental Syntax. Cambridge: CUP.
    • introduction to effects of repeated exposure (satiation) in Acceptability Judgements
  • Sedarous, Y., & Namboodiripad, S. (2020). Using audio stimuli in acceptability judgment experiments. Language and Linguistics Compass, 14(8), e12377.
    • article discussing issues with using written stimuli for Acceptability Judgments, Acceptability Judgment experiment using audio stimuli with Malayalam speakers
  • Ritchart, A., Goodall, G., & Garellek, M. (2016). Prosody and the that-trace effect: An experimental study. In 33rd West Coast Conference on Formal Linguistics (pp. 320-8). Cascadilla Proceedings Project.
    • effect of prosody on Acceptability Judgments
  • Wellwood, A., Pancheva, R., Hacquard, V., & Phillips, C. (2018). The anatomy of a comparative illusion. Journal of Semantics, 35(3), 543-583.
    • overview of comparative illusions, Acceptability Judgment experiments
  • Han, Chung-hye (2021). Resumptive Pronouns in English. The Cambridge Handbook of Experimental Syntax. Cambridge: CUP.
    • example of resumptive pronouns, discussion of Acceptability Judgments and comprehension scores with and without resumptive pronouns
  • Sedivy, J. (2014). Science, Language, and the Science of Language. In J. Sedivy (Ed.). Language in Mind: An Introduction to Psycholinguistics (pp. 1-7). Sunderland, MA, USA: Sinaeuer Associates, Inc.
    • description of garden path sentences, garden path theory, theories of sentence processing

Thursday, July 27th

• Slides [pdf]
• Topics:
  • Discourse and Inference
• Assigned Readings
  • Altmann, G. T., & Kamide, Y. (1999). Incremental interpretation at verbs: Restricting the domain of subsequent reference. Cognition, 73(3), 247-264.
    • eye tracking experiment testing use of knowledge of verbs to predict upcoming object
• Materials
  • Jegerski, J. (2013). Self-paced reading. In Research methods in second language psycholinguistics (pp. 20-49). Routledge.
    • overview of self-paced reading, issues with paradigm
  • Sedivy, J. (2014). Science, Language, and the Science of Language. In J. Sedivy (Ed.). Language in Mind: An Introduction to Psycholinguistics (Chapter 10). Sunderland, MA, USA: Sinaeuer Associates, Inc.
    • discourse processing, inference; pronoun resolution
  • Gordon, P. C., Grosz, B. J., & Gilliom, L. A. (1993). Pronouns, names, and the centering of attention in discourse. Cognitive science, 17(3), 311-347.
    • experiment investingating repeated naming penalty
  • Degen, J., & Tanenhaus, M. K. (2015). Processing scalar implicature: A constraint‐based approach. Cognitive science, 39(4), 667-710.
    • experiment testing judgements of ‘some’ given different contexts; scalar implicature
  • Keysar, B., Barr, D. J., Balin, J. A., & Brauner, J. S. (2000). Taking perspective in conversation: The role of mutual knowledge in comprehension. Psychological Science, 11(1), 32-38.
    • experiment about perspective during comprehension; mutual knowledge

Week 5

Tuesday, August 1st

• Slides [pdf]
• Topics:
  • Sociolinguistics and Comprehension
  • Linking Comprehension and Production
• Assigned Readings
  • Campbell-Kibler, K. (2007). Accent,(ING), and the social logic of listener perceptions. American speech, 82(1), 32-64.
    • social perceptions relating to -ing vs. -in pronunciations in American English varieties (California and Southern)
• Materials
  • Levon, E. Experimental sociolinguistics. The Routledge Handbook of Experimental Linguistics, 106-119.
    • overview of the goals of sociolinguistics
  • McGowan, K. B., & Babel, A. M. (2020). Perceiving isn’t believing: Divergence in levels of sociolinguistic awareness. Language in Society, 49(2), 231-256.
    • experiment testing influence of social perceptions on speech perceptions of Quechua-accented Spanish
  • Campbell‐Kibler, K. (2010). Sociolinguistics and perception. Language and linguistics compass, 4(6), 377-389.
    • definition of language attitudes, examples
    • role of context and experience for language attitudes
  • Pickering, M. J., & Garrod, S. (2013). An integrated theory of language production and comprehension. Behavioral and brain sciences, 36(4), 329-347.
    • role of production system in comprehension
  • Ferreira, V. S. (2019). A mechanistic framework for explaining audience design in language production. Annual review of psychology, 70, 29-51.
    • audience design, role of comprehension systems in production
  • MacDonald, M. C. (2013). How language production shapes language form and comprehension. Frontiers in psychology, 4, 226.
    • audience design, Production-Distribution-Comprehension account

Thursday, August 3rd

• Slides [pdf]
• Topics:
  • Issues in Psycholinguistics
  • Final Paper Tips, review
• Assigned Readings
  • none
• Materials
  • Shrout, P. E., & Rodgers, J. L. (2018). Psychology, science, and knowledge construction: Broadening perspectives from the replication crisis. Annual review of psychology, 69, 487-510.
    • overview of the replication crisis
  • The Slow Science Manifesto
  • Ioannidis, J. P. (2005). Why most published research findings are false. PLoS medicine, 2(8), e124.
    • trends in papers that fail to replicate
  • Youyou, W., Yang, Y., & Uzzi, B. (2023). A discipline-wide investigation of the replicability of Psychology papers over the past two decades. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 120(6), e2208863120.
    • predictions about replicability rates across Psychology subfields in top journals
  • Kobrock, K., Roettger, T. B., Kobrock, K., & Roettger, T. B. (2023). Assessing the replication landscape in experimental linguistics. Glossa Psycholinguistics, 2(1).
    • meta-analysis of replications done in experimental Linguistics
  • Vasishth, S., Mertzen, D., Jäger, L. A., & Gelman, A. (2018). The statistical significance filter leads to overoptimistic expectations of replicability. Journal of Memory and Language, 103, 151-175.
    • role of statistical power and statistical significance on replicability
  • Skloot, R. (2017). The immortal life of Henrietta Lacks. Broadway Paperbacks.
    • biography of Henrietta Lacks, discussion of ethical violations in medical research
  • Drager, K. (2013). Experimental methods in sociolinguistics. Research methods in sociolinguistics: A practical guide, 58-73.
    • discussion of ethical regulations in research, IRB
  • Andrews, E., & Swaine, A. (2022). Diversity and Inclusion in EEG protocol design and recruitment. Glossos, (17).
    • study finding that EEG does not work for certain hair types, common for people of African descent
  • Kutlu, E., & Hayes-Harb, R. (2023). Towards a just and equitable applied psycholinguistics. Applied Psycholinguistics, 44(3), 293-300.
    • discussion of issues relating to equity and justice in psycholinguistics
  • Tripp, A., & Munson, B. (2023). Acknowledging language variation and its power: Keys to justice and equity in applied psycholinguistics. Applied Psycholinguistics, 1-19.
    • discussion of the inclusion of sociolinguistic factors in psycholinguistic studies that are not explicitly concerned with social variables
  • Blasi, D. E., Henrich, J., Adamou, E., Kemmerer, D., & Majid, A. (2022). Over-reliance on English hinders cognitive science. Trends in cognitive sciences, 26(12), 1153-1170.
    • article showing how disproportionate amount of research conducted on English may be limiting scientific discoveries
  • Cheng, L. S., Burgess, D., Vernooij, N., Solís-Barroso, C., McDermott, A., & Namboodiripad, S. (2021). The problematic concept of native speaker in psycholinguistics: Replacing vague and harmful terminology with inclusive and accurate measures. Frontiers in Psychology, 12, 715843.
    • issues with the term “native speaker” in (psycho)linguistic research
  • Leivada, E., Rodríguez-Ordóñez, I., Couto, M. C. P., & Perpiñán, S. (2023). Bilingualism with minority languages: Why searching for unicorn language users does not move us forward. Applied Psycholinguistics, 44(3), 384-399.
    • discussion of issues within bilingualism research
  • Luk, G. (2023). Justice and equity for whom? Reframing research on the “bilingual (dis) advantage”. Applied Psycholinguistics, 44(3), 301-315.
    • argument for moving away from the “bilingual (dis)advantage” in bilingualism research
  • Street, J. A., & Dąbrowska, E. (2010). More individual differences in language attainment: How much do adult native speakers of English know about passives and quantifiers?. Lingua, 120(8), 2080-2094.
    • example of external/ecological validity concern in psycholinguistic experiments
  • Forssman, L., Ashorn, P., Ashorn, U., Maleta, K., Matchado, A., Kortekangas, E., & Leppänen, J. M. (2017). Eye-tracking-based assessment of cognitive function in low-resource settings. Archives of Disease in Childhood, 102(4), 301-302.
    • example of increased availability of experimental technology in low-resource settings

Anti-Racist Pedagogy Resources

General

• Bylund, Emanuel. “10 WEIRD Psycholinguistics”. Struggles for Multilingualism and Linguistic Citizenship, Bristol, Blue Ridge Summit: Multilingual Matters, 2022, pp. 183-200. https://doi.org/10.21832/9781800415324-012
  • WEIRD bias in psycholinguistics, breakdown of publishing affiliations by country
  • Tags: WEIRD, linguistic diversity, critique of the field, psycholinguistics
• Kirk, N. W. (2023). MIND your language (s): Recognizing Minority, Indigenous, Non-standard (ized), and Dialect variety usage in “monolinguals”. Applied Psycholinguistics, 44(3), 358-364.
  • article discussing bias in psycholinguistic research to not consider bidialectal participants, not collect sufficient language background information
  • Tags: WEIRD, linguistic diversity, linguistic variation, critique of the field, psycholinguistics
• Sedarous, Y., & Namboodiripad, S. (2020). Using audio stimuli in acceptability judgment experiments. Language and Linguistics Compass, 14(8), e12377.
  • article discussing issues with using written stimuli for Acceptability Judgments, Acceptability Judgment experiment using audio stimuli with Malayalam speakers
• Andrews, E., & Swaine, A. (2022). Diversity and Inclusion in EEG protocol design and recruitment. Glossos, (17).
  • study finding that EEG does not work for certain hair types, common for people of African descent
• Kutlu, E., & Hayes-Harb, R. (2023). Towards a just and equitable applied psycholinguistics. Applied Psycholinguistics, 44(3), 293-300.
  • discussion of issues relating to equity and justice in psycholinguistics
• Tripp, A., & Munson, B. (2023). Acknowledging language variation and its power: Keys to justice and equity in applied psycholinguistics. Applied Psycholinguistics, 1-19.
  • discussion of the inclusion of sociolinguistic factors in psycholinguistic studies that are not explicitly concerned with social variables
• Cheng, L. S., Burgess, D., Vernooij, N., Solís-Barroso, C., McDermott, A., & Namboodiripad, S. (2021). The problematic concept of native speaker in psycholinguistics: Replacing vague and harmful terminology with inclusive and accurate measures. Frontiers in Psychology, 12, 715843.
  • issues with the term “native speaker” in (psycho)linguistic research

Diversifying Examples

• Medina Fetterman, A.M., Vazquez, N.N. & Arnold, J.E. The Effects of Semantic Role Predictability on the Production of Overt Pronouns in Spanish. J Psycholinguist Res 51, 169–194 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10936-021-09832-w * experiment investigating usage of null/overt pronouns in Spanish
  • Rosa, E. C., & Arnold, J. E. (2017). Predictability affects production: Thematic roles can affect reference form selection. Journal of Memory and Language, 94, 43-60.
    • experiment investigating usage of null/overt pronouns in Spanish
  • Hall, M. L., Ferreira, V. S., & Mayberry, R. I. (2015). Syntactic priming in American sign language. PloS one, 10(3), e0119611.
    • experiment testing structural priming in ASL
  • Garcia, R., & Kidd, E. (2020). The acquisition of the Tagalog symmetrical voice system: Evidence from structural priming. Language Learning and Development, 16(4), 399-425.
    • experiment, structural priming in Tagalog
  • Garcia, R., Roeser, J., & Kidd, E. (2023). Finding your voice: Voice-specific effects in Tagalog reveal the limits of word order priming. Cognition, 236, 105424.
    • experiment, structural priming in Tagalog
  • Thompson, R., Emmorey, K., & Gollan, T. H. (2005). “Tip of the fingers” experiences by deaf signers: Insights into the organization of a sign-based lexicon. Psychological Science, 16(11), 856-860. * experiment testing retrieval of phonological information during tip-of-the-fingers states in ASL signers
  • Sandler, W. (2012). The phonological organization of sign languages. Language and linguistics compass, 6(3), 162-182.
    • overview of sign language phonology
  • Hill, J. C., Lillo-Martin, D. C., & Wood, S. K. (2018). Sign languages: Structures and contexts. Routledge. (Chapter 2: Phonology)
    • overview of sign language phonology
  • Chen, J. Y. (1999). The representation and processing of tone in Mandarin Chinese: Evidence from slips of the tongue. Applied psycholinguistics, 20(2), 289-301.
    • article investigating tone errors in production of Mandarin Chinese as compared to segment errors
  • How to Sign IN BASL (Black American Sign Language)
    • brief history of BASL, examples of dialectal differences between ASL and BASL
  • Zhang, Q. (2005). A Chinese yuppie in Beijing: Phonological variation and the construction of a new professional identity. Language in society, 34(3), 431-466.
    • sociolinguistic study of Beijing yuppies, comparing linguistic features of young business professionals and state-owned business employees, example of indexing social meaning and constructing identity
  • Quinto-Pozos, D. G. (2002). Contact between Mexican sign language and American sign language in two Texas border areas. The University of Texas at Austin.
    • study of code-switching with users of ASL and LSM (Mexican Sign Language)
  • Emmorey, K., Borinstein, H. B., Thompson, R., & Gollan, T. H. (2008). Bimodal bilingualism. Bilingualism: Language and cognition, 11(1), 43-61.
    • study of bimodal code-switching between ASL and English
  • Zhang, Y., Kuhl, P. K., Imada, T., Iverson, P., Pruitt, J., Kotani, M., & Stevens, E. (2000). Neural plasticity revealed in perceptual training of a Japanese adult listener to learn American/lr/contrast: a whole-head magnetoencephalography study. In Sixth International Conference on Spoken Language Processing.
    • Experiment testing L2 speakers of English (Japanese native speakers) distinction between /l/ and /r/
  • Abramson, A. S., & Lisker, L. (1973). Voice-timing perception in Spanish word-initial stops. Journal of Phonetics, 1(1), 1-8.
    • differences in perception of VOT between Spanish and English speakers
  • Ugwuanyi, K. O. (2023). Acceptability Judgement Tasks in New Englishes research. New Englishes, New Methods, 158.
    • Acceptability Judgments for Nigerian English
  • MacDonald, D. The changing status of Korean plural-marking: Evidence from an acceptability judgement task.
    • experiment using Acceptability Judgments to test diachronic changes in Korean plural marking
  • Sedarous, Y., & Namboodiripad, S. (2020). Using audio stimuli in acceptability judgment experiments. Language and Linguistics Compass, 14(8), e12377.
    • article discussing issues with using written stimuli for Acceptability Judgments, Acceptability Judgment experiment using audio stimuli with Malayalam speakers
  • McGowan, K. B., & Babel, A. M. (2020). Perceiving isn’t believing: Divergence in levels of sociolinguistic awareness. Language in Society, 49(2), 231-256.
    • experiment testing influence of social perceptions on speech perceptions of Quechua-accented Spanish

Anti-Racist Pedagogy Course Design

• Provide asynchronous options
  • students who must access the course remotely due to lack of housing in San Diego or sickness have access to make-up opportunities and extensions for all assignments
  • if students miss a lecture, they can provide a lecture summary to make up the attendance grade
• Consider financial cost to students
  • all readings are provided on Canvas, no textbooks were required for the course
• Invite students to discuss any barriers to access with you
  • in the first lecture, I asked students to let me know if they had difficulty accessing the technology needed for the course and committed to help students find solutions
  • for students with health-related concerns, I have made specific plans with individual students
• Include varied assignment types
  • students are evaluated based on written assignments and multiple-choice quizzes
• Be explicit about your policy
  • policies about deadlines and late work are posted on the syllabus and were announced during the first lecture
• Note how and when students need to request extensions
  • according to the course policies announced on day 1, students are able to request extensions any time before the deadline via Canvas or email
• Consider allowing short extensions (24-72hrs) without justification or documentation
  • each student is allowed one 48-hour extension without any justification or documentation
• Clearly outline how you will work with students who need more significant extensions
• in the first class, I announced that I would work with students to find individualized solutions to any situations that make students unable to meet deadlines or come to class
• Offer make up options
  • any assignment or attendance grade can be made up, given an extension request or documentation of circumstances
• Invite students to share their accessibility needs with you
• during the first class, I requested students submit accommodations requests (AFA letters or informal accommodations) within the first two weeks of the class
• Emphasize that feedback goes both ways
  • I collected mid-quarter feedback requesting suggestions about any course policies or practices that could be reconsidered
• Provide multiple avenues for students to communicate with you
  • in addition to monitoring Canvas messages and emails, I created a course discourse that is monitored by the instructor and the TA; I take questions in class through an anonymous mentimeter; I collected anonymous mid-quarter feedback through a Google Form
• Carefully consider whether potentially distressing content needs to be included
  • I have done my best to not include any material that could be upsetting, including politically charged content
• Consider including a Land Acknowledgement
  • I have included a land acknowledgment on the syllabus and in my email signature