PSYCHOLINGUISTICS
心理語言學 Course
code number: 1306558
Spring 2026
Wednesday
14:10-17:00
文學院 (Humanities) Room 413
Psycholinguistics papers used in previous
semesters
Other Web
resources
Me:
James Myers (麥傑)
Office: 文學院 (Humanities) Room 247
Tel: 31506
WWW: https://lngmyers.ccu.edu.tw/
Office hours: Thursday 10 am -12 noon, or by appointment (made at least 24
hours ahead)
Required readings:
* Handouts of lecture notes
* Weekly research articles
* No textbook!
Evaluation:
30%
Questions about articles (weekly, a minimum of four for grading [details
below])
40% Take-home midterm exam (due
4/22)
30% Term paper (choose paper
topic by 4/29, final paper due 6/10)
This class is organized around weekly readings: lecture notes plus real psycholinguistic journal articles (different every time this class is taught).
Before each class you should read the lecture notes and the week’s research article. Then you should answer the following four questions about the article: (1) What are the study’s main hypotheses, predictions, findings, and conclusions? [Be sure you know how to distinguish these four things.] (2) How well are the conclusions actually supported by the findings? [That is, critically but fairly evaluate the study, focusing on the logic and methods.] (3) How do this study’s findings reconfirm, or conflict with, those of other studies that we’ve previously discussed (especially the journal articles)? (4) What do the authors do to follow ethical research principles? Your answers will help guide our in-class discussion of the article, which will take about the last hour of each class. You have to hand in four (or more) sets of these answers (in English, about one page total, in your own words, by email by 12 noon on class day), and I will grade them for clarity and depth of understanding. I will average the grades on all the answer sets that you hand in (not just the top four).
The midterm exam (due 4/22) only covers material from the first part of the course. It will be a take-home exam, so you’ll have one week to finish it. Students must work independently, but they may email me clarification questions (I’ll email my replies to all but keep the questioner anonymous). A skipped, plagiarized, or AI-written answer will get zero points.
The term paper (about 10 pages, in English) describes your own empirical psycholinguistic research. The only constraints are that your paper must use a method described in any of the class readings and that it must focus on some theoretical issue(s) discussed in class. For example, the paper could describe a new experiment on speech perception or production, lexical access, or sentence comprehension; or a new analysis of natural speech errors; or an original description of the language of some child. You must choose a topic by 4/22; if you want to work on a topic discussed later in the semester, you’ll have to read ahead. Prepare early - things always take longer than you expect! At the end of the semester (6/3), everybody will give a short, informal, ungraded presentation of their research, just to get feedback from everybody. The term paper is due by 5 pm on 6/10 as a PDF emailed to me. When I grade, I will focus on your academic style, logic/methodology, and understanding of the theoretical issues.
WARNING #1: Plagiarism (pretending that other people’s words and ideas are your own) is a serious crime and will not be tolerated. Homework, exams, or term papers containing plagiarism will receive a score of zero, and you will be reported to the department chair. Note that in this class, using AI tools to write for you also counts as plagiarism, since all those tools do is plagiarize other people’s hard work while making it harder for you to think for yourself.
WARNING #2: Submit your homework, exams, and term paper on time! Unless you have a really good excuse, you will lose 5 points for each day you are late. So don’t make yourself sick working overnight, but get your stuff done early enough.
Schedule [* marks deadlines]
|
Week |
Topic/activity |
Reading |
|
2/25 |
Introduction to psycholinguistics |
|
|
3/4 |
Planning for language production |
Brentari et al. (2018) [ASL] |
|
3/11 |
Word production |
Zemla et al. (2023) [English] |
|
3/18 |
Production monitoring and gesture |
Siahaan et al. (2023) [Indonesian] |
|
3/25 |
Speech perception |
Winskel et al. (2017) [Thai] |
|
4/1 |
Word recognition |
Yin et al. (2022) [Mandarin] |
|
4/8 |
Syntactic and semantic comprehension |
Phillips & George (2018) [English] |
|
4/15 |
Discourse comprehension |
Chu et al. (2002) [English, Mandarin] |
|
4/22 |
*MIDTERM EXAM DUE |
|
|
4/29 |
*Introduce your paper topic |
|
|
5/6 |
Nonliteral language processing |
Chahboun et al. (2016) [English] |
|
5/13 |
First language acquisition |
Lee et al. (2020) [English] |
|
5/20 |
Bilingualism |
Giezen et al. (2015) [English, ASL] |
|
5/27 |
Other modularity issues |
|
|
6/3 |
*Presentations [last class] |
|
|
6/10 |
*TERM PAPER DUE (PDF, email, by 5 pm) |
|
WEEKLY PSYCHOLINGUISTIC ARTICLES
Brentari, D., Falk, J., Giannakidou, A., Herrmann, A., Volk, E., & Steinbach, M. (2018). Production and comprehension of prosodic markers in sign language imperatives. Frontiers in Psychology, 9, 770.
Chahboun, S., Vulchanov, V., Saldaña, D., Eshuis, H., & Vulchanova, M. (2016). Can you play with fire and not hurt yourself? A comparative study in figurative language comprehension between individuals with and without autism spectrum disorder. PloS ONE, 11(12), e0168571.
Chu, H. C. J., Swaffar, J., & Charney, D. H. (2002). Cultural representations of rhetorical conventions: The effects on reading recall. TESOL Quarterly, 36(4), 511-541.
Giezen, M. R., Blumenfeld, H. K., Shook, A., Marian, V., & Emmorey, K. (2015). Parallel language activation and inhibitory control in bimodal bilinguals. Cognition, 141, 9-25.
Lee, Y. S., Ahn, S., Holt, R. F., & Schellenberg, E. G. (2020). Rhythm and syntax processing in school-age children. Developmental Psychology, 56(9), 1632.
Phillips, J., & George, B. R. (2018). Knowledge wh and false beliefs: Experimental investigations. Journal of Semantics, 35(3), 467-494.
Siahaan, P., & Wijaya Rajeg, G. P. (2023). Multimodal language use in Indonesian: Recurrent gestures associated with negation. In W. Pouw, J. Trujillo, H. R. Bosker, L. Drijvers, M. Hoetjes, J. Holler, S. Kadava, L. Van Maastricht, E. Mamus, & A. Ozyurek (Eds.) Gesture and Speech in Interaction Conference (GeSpIn 2023). https://www.gespin2023.nl/proceedings.html.
Winskel, H., Ratitamkul, T., & Charoensit, A. (2017). The role of tone and segmental information in visual-word recognition in Thai. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 70(7), 1282-1291.
Yin, H., Libben, G., & Derwing, B. L. (2022). How the Chinese writing system can reveal the fundamentals of hierarchical lexical structure. Journal of Cultural Cognitive Science, 6(2), 199-218.
Zemla, J. C., Gooding, D. C., & Austerweil, J. L. (2023). Evidence for optimal semantic search throughout adulthood. Scientific Reports, 13(1), 22528.
USEFUL PSYCHOLINGUISTICS BOOKS
Ahlsén, E. (2006). Introduction to neurolinguistics. John Benjamins. [Prof. Tai used this textbook!]
Aitchison, J. (1998). The articulate mammal: An introduction to psycholinguistics. London: Routledge.
Altmann, G. T. M. (1997). The ascent of Babel: An exploration of language, mind, and understanding. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.
Bloom, P. (Ed.) (1993). Language acquisition: Core readings. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Caplan, D. (1993). Language: Structure, processing and disorders. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Carroll, D. W. (2008). Psychology of language (fifth edition). Thomson/Wadsworth.
Cowles, H. W. (2011). Psycholinguistics 101. Springer.
Field, J. (2003). Psycholinguistics: A resource book for students. London: Routledge.
Field, J. (2004). Psycholinguistics: The key concepts. London: Routledge.
Gleitman, L. R., & M. Liberman (1995). An invitation to cognitive science, vol. 1: Language, second edition. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Harley, T. (2007). The psychology of language: From data to theory. (3rd edition). Psychology Press.
Li, P., Tan, L. H., Bates, E., & Tzeng, O. J. L. (Eds.) (2006). The handbook of East Asian psycholinguistics, vol. 1: Chinese. Cambridge University Press.
Pinker, S. (1994). The language instinct. William Morrow. 洪蘭譯（1998）語言本能。商周出版。
Sedivy, J. (2019). Language in mind: An introduction to psycholinguistics. Oxford University Press.
Steinberg, D. D., & Sciarini, N. V. (2006). An introduction to psycholinguistics (2nd ed.). Harlow, England: Pearson Longman.
Stemmer, B., & Whitaker, H. A. (2008). Handbook of the neuroscience of language. Elsevier.
Traxler, M. (2012). Introduction to psycholinguistics: Understanding language science. Wiley-Blackwell.
Traxler, M., & Gernsbacher, M. A. (2006). Handbook of psycholinguistics (2nd ed.) San Diego: Academic Press.
Warren, P. (2013). Introducing psycholinguistics. Cambridge University Press.
為配合教育部針對保護智慧財產權觀念之宣導，課程大綱 內容請加註警語「請尊重智慧財產權，不得非法影印教師 指定之教科書籍」。（此項目為教育部「大專校院執行校 園保護智慧財產權行動方案自評表」重要指標，請授課教 師協助配合宣導。）