Psycholinguistics 101

This book explores a set of key topics that have shaped research and given us a much better understanding of how language processing works. The study of language involves examining sounds, structure, and meaning, and the book covers the aspects of language in each of these areas that are most relevant to psycholinguistics. The book then covers relatively low-tech methods that simply involve pencil and paper as well as very high-tech methods like functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) that use advanced technology to determine brain activity in response to language and discusses a topic that has dominated the field for over two decades how people handle ambiguity in language. It describes how language is represented, both in the brain itself and in how multiple languages interact, which parts of the brain are critical for the basics of language, and how language ability can be disrupted when the brain is damaged. The book further talks about progressive language disorders like semantic dementia and what the study of disordered language can tell us about the neurological basis of language. Finally, it looks at sign language research to see if and how sign language processing differs from speech and a relatively new hypothesis that has emerged: most previous work has taken for granted that comprehenders (and speakers) fully process language, that is that we try to build complete representations of what we hear, read, or produce.