Psycholinguistic research

**سناء احمد** · 31-10-2010, 10:23 PM

Psycholinguistic research
falls into six major areas, some of which overlap:
a. Language processing. What precisely goes on when we are listening, speaking, reading and writing? What stages do we go through when engaging in these skills? How do we manage to turn a grammatical structure into a piece of information?
b. Language storage and access. How is vocabulary stored in our mind? How do we manage to find it when we need it? What form do grammar rules take?
c. Comprehension theory. How do we manage to bring world knowledge to bear upon new information that is presented to us? How do we manage to construct a global meaning representation from words that we hear or read?
d. Language and the brain. What neurological activity corresponds to reading or listening? Where does the brain store linguistic knowledge and semantic concepts? What neurological and muscular activity is involved in speech? Can differences in the human brain account for the fact that our species alone has developed language?
e. Language in exceptional circumstances. Why do some infants grow up with language impairments such as dyslexia or stuttering? How does brain damage or age affect language? What is the effect of profound deafness upon language acquisition?
f. First language acquisition. How do infants come to acquire their first language? What stages do they go through in developing syntax, vocabulary and phonology? What evidence is there that we possess an innate faculty for language which enables us to acquire our first language, despite the supposedly poor quality of the input we receive?

Some commentators include

second language acquisition in the study of psycholinguistics. However, SLA is best regarded as a different discipline. Its content ranges widely over topics drawn from sociolinguistics, from social psychology and from educational psychology. By contrast, mainstream psycholinguistics bases itself heavily upon a body of theory provided by cognitive psychology. Furthermore, whereas mainstream psycholinguistics uses a limited range of established experimental techniques, studies in second language acquisition tend to be more eclectic in the methods they employ.