LIN102H1 Lecture Notes - Lecture 5: Psycholinguistics, Garden Path Sentence, Animacy
Document Summary
Psycholinguists plan to answer key questions by use of experiments specifically designed. Psycholinguists use experiments to measure observable behaviour to test a certain hypothesis. Processing time is measured for specific tasks such as the length of time taken to read a sentence or to give a response to a question. This data shows approximately how fast one is able to recognize an incoming string of words. Eye-gaze patterns are monitored by special equipment. Psycholinguists can also use experiments to measure neurological behaviour. Meg detects magnetic fields produced by electrical currents in the brain. Eeg detects electric activity taking place within the brain. Fmri detects a change in the blood flow of the brain. Shadow task experiments ask participants to repeat a string of words said by the speaker as fast as the speaker does. Shadow tasks tell us that parsers are able to access their mental representation of a word within just hundreds of milliseconds.
