Language and Mind (230-0-20)

Instructors

Jiayi Lu

Meeting Info

Technological Institute M164: Tues, Thurs 2:00PM - 3:20PM

Overview of class

How do people do things with language? How do we go from perceiving the acoustic waves that reach our ears to understanding that someone just announced the winner of the presidential election? How do we go from a thought to spelling that thought out in a sentence? How do babies learn language from scratch? This course is an introduction to psycholinguistics -- the study of how humans learn, represent, comprehend, and produce language. The course aims to provide students with a solid understanding of both the research methodologies used in psycholinguistic research and many of the well-established findings in the field. Topics covered will include visual and auditory recognition of words, sentence comprehension, reading, discourse and inference, sentence production, language acquisition, and language in the brain.

Learning Objectives

As a course that satisfies the requirements for the Foundational Discipline in Social and Behavioral Sciences, this course will prepare the students to meet the following three learning objectives:
1. Recognize and articulate reciprocal relationships between societal forces, psychological forces, and the behaviors of individuals and groups, specifically in relation to the comprehension and production of human language by speakers during language use.
2. Develop the ability to critique theories and claims in language processing through careful evaluation of an argument's major assertions, assumptions, evidential basis, and explanatory utility.
3. Use appropriate quantitative or qualitative research methodologies to observe, describe, understand, and predict human behavior in language processing.

Teaching Method

There will be two 80-minute lectures and a 50-minute discussion section per week.

Evaluation Method

Students will complete and be graded on five homework assignments, a lab assignment (consisting of three parts: stimuli creation, data collection, and a lab report, an in-class midterm exam, and a final exam during the exam week.

Class Materials (Required)

Textbook (Language in Mind: An Introduction to Psycholinguistics, 2nd Edition, by Julie Sedivy)

Class Attributes

Social and Behavioral Science Foundational Discipl

Enrollment Requirements

Enrollment Requirements: REASON: Pre-registration is not allowed for this class. Please try again during regular registration.

Associated Classes

DIS - University Hall 102: Fri 10:00AM - 10:50AM

DIS - 555 Clark B01: Fri 12:00PM - 12:50PM