What is

psycholinguistics?
M. En C. Héctor Contreras Sandoval
What is Psycholinguistics?

▪ History is marked by the human urge to explore and venture. It is within the last century that
researchers have dared to explore the most proximal portion of the universe: the human
mind.
▪ How to study the human mind? – Language reflects patterns of thought. By using evidence
from speech and language it is possible to study patterns of conceptualization. The use of
them is a window to the nature and structure of the human mind. That is called
Psycholinguistics.
▪ Psycholinguistics is the study of the cognitive processes that support the acquisition, loss,
production and comprehension of language.
▪ Its scope includes:
– Language performance under normal circumstances
– Language performance when it breaks down.

▪ Its focus has been on first language (L1), in studies of acquisition in children and in research
on adult comprehension and production.
▪ Like all disciplines, psycholinguistics has evolved into a
conglomeration of sub-fields. However these divisions provide a
mean whereby a large body of information can be introduced in
smaller pieces.
▪ In this course, we will examine research questions in four sub-fields:
– How are language and speech acquired?
– How are language and speech produced?
– How are language and speech comprehended?
– How are language and speech lost?

Diachronic Synchronic
Synthesis Acquisition Production
Analysis dissolution comprehension
Diachronism and Synchronism

▪ Viewed diacronically, over time, acquisition and dissolution are the

beginning and the end of the story of speech in an individual human being.
The former requires the skills of putting a new language together, while the
latter reflects the unwanted and unintentional process of a language falling
apart.
▪ Seen synchronically, at any one point in time, however, production and
comprehension can be considered as comparable psycholinguistic tasks;
the former involves the synthesis of language structures while the latter
involves their analysis. The production demands the synthetic talents of an
immaginary mental chef. The comprehension requires the analytic skills of
a cognitive chemist, who takes whatever is served up and meticulously
breaks it down into its individual compunds and elements in order to
understand it completely.
Studies in bilingualism

▪ Recently psycholinguistics have extended the study of language processing to

individuals who are acquiring or actively using more than one language.
(Bilinguals)
▪ The use of two or more languages provides a powerful tool for investigating
issues of cognitive representation and processing that are otherwise hidden from
view.
▪ Specific questions with respecto to bilinguals are:
– Is L2 acquisition different from L1 acquisition?
– To what extent does the L1 play a role in using the L2?
– Are there rules governing code-switching (the use of more than one language in an utterance)?
– How do speakers of more than one language keep the two languages apart?
– How are languages acquired at some point in time lost or maintained over time?
– How are multiple languages processed in the brain?
Language and cognition

▪ The cognitive processes that are revealed as individuals acquire

proficiency in a second language share a common basis with the
processes that are in place for competent bilinguals.
– L2 learners and proficient bilinguals rely on similar cognitive mechanisms.
– It is assumed that these mechanisms are generally universal across languages,
although the relative importance of some factors may differ depending on the
structural properties of the languages involved.
– the same cognitive resources are universally available to all learners, although
individuals will differ in some respects that may have specific implications for
success in L2 learning.
Cognitive Models:
Language Production in
Bilinguals
Introduction

▪ The goal of researchers is to develop models to describe and

preferably predict specific linguistic behavior.
▪ The aim is to capture all aspects of language use. The goal is to have
a model that describes how language is processed in our brains
 William Levelt – Blueprint model

▪ This is probably the structure of the system as it really works in the brain, but
where and how it is located in the brain is an active area of investigation.
▪ Levelt’s ‘Speaking’ model (1989, 1999) aims at describing the process of
language production from the development of communicative intentions to
the articulation of the sounds. For this incredibly complex process a number of
sub-components, each performing specific tasks, are proposed.
– Conceptualizer.- communicative intentions are turned into something that can be expressed
in human language. At this level utterances are planned on the basis of the meanings to be
expressed.
– Formulator.- Isolated words and meanings are turned into sentences.
– Articulator.- Sentences are translated into sounds.

▪ Levelt’s Speaking model is a model of the fully competent monolingual

speaker.
Poulisse (1997)

▪ He mentions the factors that have to be taken into account if we want to turn a monolingual
model into a bilingual model:
▪ L2 knowledge is typically incomplete. L2 speakers generally have fewer words and rules at their
disposal than L1 speakers. This may keep them from expressing messages they had originally
intended to convey, lead them to use compensatory strategies, or to avoid words or structures
about which they feel uncertain.
▪ • L2 speech is more hesitant, and contains more errors and slips, depending on the level of
proficiency of the learners. Cognitive skill theories stress the importance of the development of
automatic processes that are difficult to acquire and hard to unlearn. Less automaticity means
that more attention has to be paid to the execution of specific lower-level tasks, which leads to a
slowing down of the production process and to a greater number of slips.
▪ • L2 speech often carries traces of the L1. L2 speakers have a fully developed L1 system at their
disposal, and may switch to their L1 either deliberately (‘motivated’ switches) or unintentionally
(‘performance’ switches). Poulisse and Bongaerts argue that such accidental switches to the L1
are very similar to substitutions and slips in monolingual speech. In addition to such code
switches, L2 speech also contains traces of the L1 which are due to transfer or cross-linguistic
influence.
Keeping languages apart.

▪ Psycholinguistically, code-switching and keeping languages apart are different aspects of the
same phenomenon.
▪ Paradis (1981) - Sub-set hypothesis.
– Words (or syntactic rules or phonemes) from a given language form a sub-set of the total inventory. Each sub-
set can be activated independently.
– The sub-sets are formed and maintained by the use of words in specific settings.
– A major advantage of the sub-set hypothesis is that the set of lexical elements from which a selection has to
be made is reduced dramatically as a result of the fact that a particular language or sub-set has been chosen.
– The sub-set hypothesis may explain how languages in bilinguals may be kept apart, but not how the choice for
a given language is made.
– Bilingual speakers have stores for lemmas, lexemes, syntactic rules, morpho-phonological rules and elements,
and articulatory elements that are not fundamentally different from those of monolingual speakers.
– Within each of these stores there will be sub-sets for different languages, but also for different varieties, styles
and registers.
– There are relations between sub-sets in different stores, that is, lemmas forming a sub-set in a given language
will be related to both lexemes and syntactical rules from that same language.
Language choice

▪ The most crucial step is the matching of chunks from the pre-verbal message with
the meaning part of lemmas. Here is where the transition from conceptualization to
language-specific coding takes place.
▪ Lemma according to Levelt.
– Semantic specification.- Set of conceptual conditions under which the lemma can be used.
– Syntactic information. Syntactic structure of a lemma and it grammatical functions.
– Pointer to a lexeme.

▪ There are a number of steps in the process of lexical access where choices have to be
made. When choosing lemmas, language is one of the features used in the selection
process.
▪ A lemma will not only include semantic features, but it will also need to contain
information about which language it belongs to and this information will have to
match the language cue in the pre-verbal message.
Language Production in L1 and L2.

▪ There is not that much experimental research in language production.

▪ In a simple picture-naming task, participants are shown a picture of a drawing and asked to
speak the name of the picture aloud as quickly and as accurately as possible.
▪ By measuring the time to begin to speak the picture’s name in L1 or L2 it is possible to infer the
bilingual’s relative proficiency in the two languages.
▪ Even proficient bilinguals are faster to name pictures in L1 than L2.
▪ The main empirical approach to language production in monolinguals has been to examine the
pattern and timecourse of interference effects in a variant of the picture-naming task known as
picture–word interference.
▪ By varying the time at which the word is presented relative to the picture (before, during or after
the picture) and the relation of the word to the picture’s name (whether the word is identical to
the picture’s name, phonologically or semantically related to the name, or completely unrelated),
it is possible to infer the nature of the processes that must have been operating at different
moments in time prior to speaking.
Code switching

▪ Code Switching (CS) is defined as the use of more than one language in an
utterance.
▪ The focus has gradually moved from a primarily linguistic approach to a
more psycholinguistic approach that focuses in the machanisms of
language processing involved.
– Switching costs.- Switching costs time, it takes more time to switch from the weaker
language into a stronger language than the other way around. More effort is needed
to inhibit the stronger language and that it takes accordingly more time and effort to
reactivate again.

– The study of CS in interaction. In this model, dialogue is taken as the basic unit of
analysis. CS typically takes place in interaction and that the study of CS in dialogue is
ecologically more valid than taking a monologue perspective.
Gestures in a second language

▪ One of the recent trends in psycholinguistics is an enhanced interest in

the link between verbal and non-verbal aspects of communication. In
particular speech- related gestures (hand movements) have been
studied extensively.
▪ We know very little about the genesis of gestures as part of the
communicative system and as part of the language production system.
▪ De Ruijter (2000) presents a version of the Levelt model discussed
earlier, to which he adds a gesture component by suggesting that just
as verbal production is done on the basis of a limited set of syllables
(‘the syllabary’), a similar set can be postulated for gestures (‘the
gestuary’).
The cognitive consequences of
bilingualism

▪ A life as a bilingual confers a set of benefits to cognition within the real of executive
function.
▪ Some studies suggest that bilinguals suffer relative to monolingual in the real of verbal
fluency and in the speed of lexical access.
▪ There are benefits of bilingualismo on attentional control that extend from young bilingual
children to Young adult bilinguals and to elderly bilinguals.
▪ These benefits are observed in simple cognitive tasks that do no explicitly involve
language.
▪ Bilingualism appears to provide a measure of protection against the normal effects of
cogntive aging.
▪ The hypothesis is that a life spent negotiating cross-language competition fine tunes a set
of cognitive skills that benefit the ability to select targeted information, regardless of
whether the context is linguistic or not.
Forgetting and Relearning

▪ The level of acquisition of linguistic knowledge is crucial in production

and perception. Through non-use of a language, the level of activation
of knowledge in that language decreases, even to the point that that
knowledge is considered lost. An important point for foreign language
teaching is how such knowledge can be reactivated again using our
knowledge of the mechanics of language production and perception.
▪ Words, once learned, are never really lost, and that even for words
that cannot be recognized using traditional test procedures there are
residues of knowledge that possibly can be used in reactivating these
words.
▪ Motivation is also important, as it leads to learners actively seeking
opportunities to use the foreign language in different settings.
Implications

▪ For both language production and language perception two factors

determine accessibility of linguistic elements, in particular in non-
balanced bilinguals and language learners: the information must have
been acquired and stored, and it must be accessible in time.
▪ Both production and perception are incredibly fast processes, and
information that is not readily available will hamper processing of input
and output.
▪ Psycholinguistic insights also can inform some of the discussions and
controversies on bilingual education and bilingual upbringing. The most
important one is that there is no support for the hypothesis that
bilingualism or learning an additional language at any age will have
negative consequences on cognitive processing.