The Psychology of Language

Section A: Introduction

http://www.trevorharley.com/trevorharley/Welcome.html Trevor Harley’s website.

http://www.chomsky.info/ The Noam Chomsky website.

http://www.chomsky.info/articles/1967----.htm Chomsky’s review of B.F. Skinner’s book Verbal Behavior.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2v6XFkSwVys A lecture by Noam Chomsky: What is special about language?

http://www.ra.cs.uni-tuebingen.de/software/JavaNNS/welcome_e.html A Java-based Neural Network Simulation software release.

http://www.natcorp.ox.ac.uk/ The British National Corpus: A 100 million word collection of samples of written and spoken language from a wide range of sources, designed to represent a wide cross-section of current British English, both spoken and written.

http://www.bl.uk/learning/langlit/sounds/index.html The British Library collection of accents and dialects of the UK with audio samples.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3gU-B0-DCKI&feature=related Noam Chomsky provides a brief introduction to his views on language development.

http://www.fonetiks.org/foniks/ A clickable table of English phonemes.

Section B: The Biological and Developmental Bases of Language

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=266FV--FmGo&feature=related Video demonstrating the reading and writing abilities of chimps.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wRM7vTrIIis Video about Kanzi.

http://www.greatapetrust.org/about-the-trust/meet-our-apes/kanzi The Great Ape Trust’s page about Kanzi.

http://www.friendsofwashoe.org/ Friends of Washoe website.

http://www.talkingbrains.org/2010/05/syntax-found-in-brain-not-in-brocas.html A blog covering “news and views on the neural organisation of language”.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f2IiMEbMnPM Video of a patient with Broca's aphasia.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1aplTvEQ6ew Another (more recent) video of Broca’s aphasia.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kNdM9JhTPJw Video on noted neurologist and brain surgeon Dr. Wilder Penfield.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6zNKz7YoUao&feature=related Another video on Broca’s aphasia.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=67HMx-TdAZI Interview concerning Wernicke’s and Broca’s aphasia.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dKTdMV6cOZw&feature=related Video on Wernicke’s aphasia.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x3kfxz6oLjQ&feature=related Video about Genie – the famous childhood deprivation case.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=thIDCL3NClQ Another video about Genie.

http://www.sharpbrains.com/blog/2009/02/25/does-cognitive-training-work-for-whom-for-what/ Article on whether cognitive training is effective, especially in combatting neurological diseases – argues that it can help adults improve cognitive skills but cannot provably delay onset of dementia.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dtf2btmfPgw An interview with Professor Michael Tomasello about his research on language acquisition and the basic difference between human and apes.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O7X9AAeDCr4 Hawaii Pidgin: a video about the history of Hawai’i Creole.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pjtioIFuNf8 Clip from the documentary “Evolution” showing how Nicaraguan deaf children developed a sign language of their own.

http://www.francoisgrosjean.ch/blog_en.html Selection of blog posts from esteemed psycholinguist Francois Grosjean.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jK91HUcPWuQ Cognates: “Gorilas” – A Spanish lesson

http://www.berlitz.co.uk/about_us/tradition/berlitz_method/ The Berlitz Method of language learning.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pz0TPDUz3FU The audiolingual method of language teaching.

Section 3: Word Recognition

http://faculty.washington.edu/chudler/java/ready.htmlAn interactive Stroop effect experiment.

http://www.homophone.com/index.phpA complete list of English homophones.

http://www.francoisgrosjean.ch/blog_en.html Francois Grosjean’s Psychology Today blog: Life as a bilingual.

http://thesciencenetwork.org/programs/cogsci-2010/david-rumelhart-1A lecture by David Rumelhart on his work on connectionist learning.

http://crr.ugent.be/archives/806 Age-of-acquisition (AoA) ratings for 30,121 English content words (nouns, verbs, and adjectives).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KERQv9FIxkw The Writer Who Couldn’t Read: An interview with Howard Engel.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zQmf5TkJrJ8Dr. Keith Rayner talking about eye movements during reading reveal about processing

http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL2A78BA76FF5699E8A series of videos by Elizabeth Warrington on the history of neuropsychology.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/06/120607105712.htm A Science Daily article about Ziegler et al.’s finding that wider letter spacing helps dyslexic children.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-18493436A BBC article about the phonic system for learning to read.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-18493436A BBC article about the phonic system for learning to read.

http://www.frontlinephonics.com/glossary.html The Reading Coherence Initiative (RCI) at the Southwest Educational Development Laboratory has put together this glossary of terms related to reading and reading instruction so that people can quickly and easily check terms as they encounter them.

http://www.succeedtoread.com/phonics.html Succeed to Read: Phonics vs. Whole Language.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZyvyGMkzNQcA demonstration of the phonemic restoration effect.

http://www.sharpbrains.com/blog/2009/02/25/does-cognitive-training-work-for-whom-for-what/ Article on whether cognitive training is effective, especially in combatting neurological diseases – argues that it can help adults improve cognitive skills but cannot provably delay onset of dementia.

http://www.psy.cmu.edu/~lholt/php/gallery_lexical.php Carnegie Mellon University’s gallery of sound demonstrating lexical context effects in speech perception.

Section 4: Meaning and Using Language

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VFIZDZwdf-0 A video of a child being eye tracked while reading a text.

http://www.fun-with-words.com/ambiguous_garden_path.html Some examples of garden path sentences.

http://examples.yourdictionary.com/examples-of-figurative-language.html Examples of figurative language.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SP8kJ5A5xU8&list=TLBEWLulK4rn8 A video about Elizabeth Loftus’ research on how the wording of questions can affect eyewitness testimony.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=evj6q0eCdd8&feature=channel Video on the neurological impact of witnessing 9/11.

http://www.philtulga.com/Riddles.html Inference riddles, clue by clue.

http://www.ted.com/talks/jill_bolte_taylor_s_powerful_stroke_of_insight.html A talk by Jill Bolte Taylor, a brain researcher, who studied her own stroke as it happened.

Section 5: Production and Other Aspects of Language

http://www.alphadictionary.com/fun/spoonerisms.html A few original Spoonerisms.

http://faculty.mercer.edu/spears_a/studentpages/tipofthetongue/TipoftheTongue.html Tip-of-the-Tongue Phenomenon (TOT): a demo, plus links to more information.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f2IiMEbMnPM Video of a patient with Broca's aphasia.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1aplTvEQ6ew Another (more recent) video of Broca’s aphasia.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T36I8Coiz64 Video on “tip-of-the-tongue” learning.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6zNKz7YoUao&feature=related Another video on Broca’s aphasia.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=67HMx-TdAZI Interview concerning Wernicke’s and Broca’s aphasia

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dKTdMV6cOZw&feature=related Video on Wernicke’s aphasia.

http://www.nidcd.nih.gov/health/voice/Pages/aphasia.aspxl National Institutes of Health information on aphasia.

http://www.wittycomics.com/comic/58719 Cartoons illustrating violations of Gricean maxims, some interactivity.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G-lN8vWm3m0A video demonstrating the McGurk Effect.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oI9tFOcVnV4Four video clips showing each of Grice’s Maxims being violated.

http://www.gocognitive.net/interviews/alan-baddeley-working-memoryVideo interviews with Alan Baddeley on various aspects of the working memory model.

http://www.chomsky.info/articles/1967----.htmChomsky’s review of B.F. Skinner’s book Verbal Behavior.