PSYCHOLINGUISTICS

This course belongs to the didactic activities of the Master's Degree in Language Sciences (curricula: Language Sciences, Linguistics for Deafness and Developmental Disorders, Language and Cognition).
The general aim of the course is to provide students with basic theoretical and methodological skills for the study of language in its psychological representation.
More precisely, it addresses issues of language representation and processing in monolingual adults with sporadic mention to bi-/multilingualism, second languages, pathological conditions and language acquisition, and it introduces experimental methodologies used in psycholinguistic research.
Finally, this course aims at familiarizing students' with psycholinguistic literature and at strenghtening their ability to discuss possible experimental follow-ups and to make connections among different areas of linguistic research (theoretical linguistics, language education, ...).

1. Knowledge and understanding
Knowledge of the main themes and areas of psycholinguistic research.
Knowledge and understanding of the main analyses and methodologies employed in psycholinguistic studies.
Understanding of the main relationships between language and extra-linguistic cognitive components.
Knowledge of scientific terminology and understanding of scientific texts that use it.

2. Ability to apply knowledge and understanding
Ability to critically compare different analyses of the same phenomenon.
Ability to apply theoretical and methodological knowledge in understanding scientific texts.
Ability to apply theoretical and methodological knowledge in the development of original research questions.
Ability to integrate psycholinguistic notions to the study and analysis of other disciplines investigating the use of language.

3. Ability to make judgments.
Ability to provide arguments for or against psycholinguistic theories discussed in class.
Ability to evaluate and argue for alternative hypotheses and methods of investigation for the same phenomenon.

4. Communication skills
Ability to present and argue for theories and concepts of psycholinguistics in written and oral modality, with appropriate use of scientific terminology.
Ability to elaborate effective presentations.
Ability to interact with peers and with the lecturer appropriately.

5.Learning skills.
Ability to develop empirical research questions.
Ability to organize literature research for psycholinguistic topics.

General linguistics, introduction to statistics

(1) Introduction to psycholinguistics: language in neurobiological and psychological perspective
(2) Levels of linguistic and psycholinguistic analysis
(3) Main concepts and methodologies of psycholinguistic and neurolinguistic research
(4) The lexicon: mental lexicon organization, access and retrieval
(5) Speech perception and recognition
(6) Sentence comprehension and representation: parsing
(7) Sentence comprehension and representation: filler-gap dependencies
(8) Psycholinguistics of discourse: inferences, theory of mind and communicative intentions
(9) Psycholinguistics of reading and writing

J. Fields (2003): Psycholinguistics. A resource book for students. Routledge
T. Harley (2013): The Psychology of Language. From Data to Theory. Routledge (capitoli 4-5-10-11-14)
V. Bambini (2012): Neurolinguistics. In: Östman J-O., Verschueren J. (eds.), Handbook of Pragmatics, Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 987-1013.

The list of articles for oral presentations will be available on the course Moodle page. Depending on one's interests, personalized readings can be arranged.
The list of references may be subject to small changes during the class period based on students' interests and inputs (updated version available on Moodle).

Learning assessment will consist of two parts:

- a written exam with five open-ended questions, in which knowledge and understanding of the lecture topics, ability to apply knowledge and written communication skills will be tested;

- an oral presentation on a scientific article agreed upon with the lecturer and related to the topics addressed during the course. Students may propose additional topics of interest pertaining to psycholinguistic research. Each presentation will last 15 minutes and it will be in the form of a scientific poster or slides. Presentations will preferably take place during the last course classes. This part of the exam will test judgment skills, oral communication skills and learning skills.

The final grade will be made up of the weighted average of the two parts (60% written exam; 40% oral presentation).

written and oral

Frontal lessons, students presentations.

English

Accessibility, Disability and Inclusion: Information regarding accommodation and support services for students with disabilities and students with specific learning impairments

Ca Foscari abides by Italian Law (Law 17/1999; Law 170/2010) regarding support services and accommodation available to students with disabilities. This includes students with
mobility, visual, hearing and other disabilities (Law 17/1999), and specific learning impairments (Law 170/2010). If you have a disability or impairment that requires accommodations (i.e., alternate testing, readers, note takers or interpreters) please contact the Disability and Accessibility Offices in Student Services: disabilita@unive.it.

This subject deals with topics related to the macro-area "Human capital, health, education" and contributes to the achievement of one or more goals of U. N. Agenda for Sustainable Development