Psycholinguistics 

Instructor: Ebru Evcen (she/her)
Email: eevcen@ucsd.edu 

Class Time/Place: Tuesday & Thursday 2 - 4:50pm CENTR 205

Office Hours: Mon 1-2pm (virtual) & Thu 12-1pm (McGill 2137)

Course syllabus here

TA: Penny Pan (she/her)

Email: dipan@ucsd.edu 

Office Hours: Fri 1-2pm (virtual)

Course Description:
How do people do things with language?  How do babies learn to turn sounds into words while surrounded by all sorts of noises? How does our brain make sense of complicated sentences we hear? How do we think of the right words so quickly when we're talking? How do we understand the hidden messages in what people say, finding meaning beyond the words they use? This course is a theoretical 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 include language acquisition, word recognition, sentence processing, sentence production, and the communicative aspect of language.

Course Objectives

By the end of this course, students will be able to:

1.    Describe fundamental concepts in language acquisition

2.    Explain the cognitive processes involved in word recognition and sentence processing and the mechanisms of sentence production, focusing on how the brain interprets and constructs complex linguistic structures in real time.

3.    Analyze the use of pragmatic cues in language to understand how speakers convey meanings beyond the literal words.

4.    Identify and describe common psycholinguistic experimental paradigms, such as behavioral tasks (e.g., acceptability judgments, priming, inference tasks), self-paced reading, and eye tracking.

5.    Critically assess psycholinguistics research by reviewing methodology and findings, identifying research questions, describing experimental designs, evaluating results and conclusions

6.    Identify challenges and solutions related to diverse research practices in psycholinguistics, including native speaker bias, WEIRD population limitations, and generalizability of the findings.