Psychology

Course Goals:

The course is intended to provide the student with an in-depth understanding of the theories and methods involved in the study of human language comprehension and production.

Lecture and Text Topics:

The biological foundations of language

Linguistic principles

Speech perception

Word recognition

Syntax and parsing processes

Representation and memory for discourse

Understanding coherent discourse

Inference processes

Conversational interaction

Course Format:

Lecture:  3 hours (questions, discussion, and demonstrations).

Exams: Three exams consisting of short-essay questions. Each exam constitutes 25% of

the final grade.

Research Proposal:

Each student will propose an original research project concerning a topic in the area

of language processing and will submit the project as an APA-style research proposal. The research

proposal constitutes 25% of the final grade.

Text:

Whitney, P. (1998). The Psychology of Language. New York: Houghton Mifflin.