Psycholinguistics
is concerned with the cognitive faculties and processes that are necessary to
produce the grammatical constructions of language. It is also concerned with
the perception of these constructions by a listener. It
is also concerned with the biological and neurological bases of human
communicative behavior, how people understand spoken and written
language (language comprehension), how people produce language (language
production), how people acquire language (language acquisition).
Psycholinguistics investigates and describes the psychological processes that make it possible for humans to master and use language. Psycholinguists conduct research on speech development and language development and how individuals of all ages comprehend and produce language. For descriptions of language, the field relies on the findings of linguistics, which is the discipline that describes the structure of language. Although the acquisition, comprehension, and production of language have been at the core of psycholinguistic research, the field has expanded considerably since its inception: The neurology of language functioning is of current interest to psycholinguists, particularly to those studying sex differences, aphasia, language after congenital or acquired injury to the immature brain, and developmental disorders of language (dysphasia). Some psycholinguists have also extended their interests to experiments in nonhuman language learning (e.g., gorillas and chimpanzees) to discover if language as we know it is a uniquely human phenomenon.
Subdisciplines
1. Neurolinguistics
Neurolinguistics involves the studies of neural connections in the brain involved in the comprehension, production, and acquisition of language as well as how the brain uses these mechanisms in daily life. In neurolinguistics, scientists take the theories proposed by psycholinguists and evaluate them based on brain activity. From these observations, neurolinguists can make predictions about the organization and structure of language based on brain physiology.
2. Computational
psycholinguistics
Computational psycholinguistics is a sub discipline of psycholinguistics, which is the scientific discipline that studies how people acquire a language and how they comprehend and produce this language. The increasing complexity of the models of human language processing which have been evolved in this discipline makes the development and evaluation of computer implemented versions of these models more and more important to understand these models and to derive predictions from them. Computational psycholinguistics is the branch of psycholinguistics that develops and uses computational models of language processing to evaluate existing models with respect to consistency and adequacy as well as to generate new hypotheses.
3. Developmental psycholinguistics
Developmental psycholinguistics is the formal term for the branch of psycholinguistics that investigates language acquisition in children. In particular, various models of generative grammar have been used to explain and predict language acquisition in children and the production and comprehension of speech by adults. To this extent, psycholinguistics is a specific discipline, distinguishable from the more general area of psychology of language, which encompasses many other fields and approaches.
Why Study Psycholinguistics?
Studying psycholinguistics provides researchers with the processes that underlying linguistic information. Depending on whether the information comes from a linguistic or psychological perspective, the reasons for a particular study may differ, but the ultimate reason for such research, as noted by the University of Sheffield in England is to ultimately improve the human condition. Better methods of teaching language can be developed through psycholinguistics research, especially for individuals with impaired ability or for those who suffer brain injuries. The social environment is also crucial in determining how individuals learn language.
Psycholinguistics provides a valuable tool not only for scientific research but also for daily life as advancements will allow teachers to better educate children in schools while therapists will be able to help those whose language ability is impaired.
