Language and the Mind - An Introduction to Psycholinguistics UCL

Overview

The Language and the Mind - An Introduction to Psycholinguistics course from UCL Summer School will begin by asking what it means to know a language and explore the nature of our linguistic competence.

Finally, you will explore issues in perception, production and acquisition in three core domains: speech sounds, words and sentences.

The experimental studies discussed in the lectures and seminars include those which employed eye-tracking and EEG in reading, comprehension and lexical decision tasks, as well as semantic and syntactic priming in comprehension and production tasks.

Learning outcomes

By the end of the module, students will have:

• Recognised the relations between Linguistics and Cognitive Psychology and differentiated between different areas of Cognitive Science.

• An understanding of how knowledge is created in Cognitive Science through hands-on experience.

• Become familiar with major theoretical models of language processing and representation and appreciate the limitations of LLMs in modelling human language.

• Gained a solid understanding of both the research methodologies used in Psycholinguistics and many of the well-established major findings in the field.

• Developed active-learning and transferable skills (e.g. critical thinking, communication and group work skills).