Course Info: CS-0226
| Course | CS-0226 The Psychology of Language |
| Long Title | The Psychology of Language |
| Term | 2018F |
| Note(s) |
Satisfies Distribution Textbook information |
| Meeting Info | Adele Simmons Hall 221 on T,TH from 10:30-11:50 |
| Faculty | Joanna Morris |
| Capacity | 25 |
| Available | 0 |
| Waitlist | 0 |
| Distribution(s) |
Mind, Brain, and Information |
| Cumulative Skill(s) | Writing and Research |
| Additional Info | In this course, students are expected to spend at least six to eight hours a week of preparation and work outside of class time. This time includes reading, writing, research. |
| Description | Language is paramount among the capacities that characterize humans. We hold language as a marker of our humanity, and by understanding language, we assume that we will understand something important about ourselves. In this course, we ask and try to answer questions such as the following: What's so special about language? How do we produce sentences? How do we understand them? What might cause us to fail at either task? What is meaning, and how does language express it? Is our capacity for language a biological endowment unique to the human species? The aim of this course was to become familiar with the tools of research used in psycholinguistics and with questions that motivate researchers in the field. Students were expected to complete several short-answer assignments that were designed to evaluate mastery of the readings and material covered in class. They were also required to write an 8-10 page research proposal consisting of a literature review justifying or motivating their proposed research, a testable hypothesis, clear quantitative predictions that derive from that hypothesis, and a detailed description of an empirical study designed to test those predictions. Students were expected to demonstrate a clear grasp of the fundamentals of experimental design and of how quantitative methods can be used to answer behavioral questions. |