Language and the BrainModule Details

Background and Rationale

This module looks at the psycholinguistic and cognitive processes involved in human communication. We examine the ways in which sounds, words and sentences are comprehended and produced. This module involves the description of linguistic processes as they are depicted in the brain. It also gives an account of the brain regions related to language as they are interpreted through the different theoretical accounts. We look at what happens when communication goes wrong: what the speech errors are, tip of the tongue states, misinterpretation of ambiguous utterances, and developmental language disorders tell us about typical linguistic processing and production, and about how the language faculty may be organised in the mind and its possible implications to the brain.

Learning Outcomes

On completion of this module , students should be able to:
 understand a broad range of concepts and terminology from psycholinguistics
 critically analyse aspects of experimental design and methodology used in psycholinguistic research, to analyse its data, and to select such data to illustrate a point under discussion
 show critical awareness of psycholinguistic literature in scientific journals
 propose a rigorous and feasible research proposal to investigate an area of language processing