PSY374: Psychology of Language
Research Report Instructions
Guidelines:
• Make sure you address your topic from the perspective of the comprehension or production
of language in adults (not language acquisition, not memory systems, etc.)
• Your paper should include references to at least 8 peer-reviewed journal articles, the majority
of which should have publication dates within the past 5 years. Studies discussed in class will
not count towards the 8-article minimum.
• All selected articles must present original research findings (no case studies involving less than
5 participants), and cannot be overview papers that summarize previously-reported studies.
• The paper must be well-organized and coherent. Headings can be used to help organize
subsections. Pay attention to grammar and spelling. Marks will be deducted for poor writing.
• The target length is 6 double-spaced pages (not including the reference list), with a plus or
minus 1/2 page allowance. Use one-inch margins and a font size equivalent to Times 12 point.
Do not include a cover page. Place your name and the course code at the top of the first page
efore the beginning of the body of your text.
• Papers must be typed. A hard copy version must be submitted to the PUMP room. An
electronic copy must be submitted to TurnItIn.com (see separate instructions). Do not email
your paper to the instructor or the course TA.
• Your paper should reflect your own thoughtful comments
eflections/evaluations about your
selected topic. Do your own work, and cite sources appropriately. Plagiarism will be dealt with
in accordance with university guidelines. Note that, although an occasional direct quotation
from a source may be helpful, an extended number of quotations will be taken to reflect a lack of
effort on the student's part when it comes to understanding and drawing connections within the
selected studies.
Topics:
Select one of the following topics. You are free to focus your theme more na
owly within any of
these topics if you wish.
1. Listeners' perception of reduced forms in natural speech
2. Changes in the ability to produce words that occur in the course of adult aging.
3. The ability to use "common ground" (conversational perspective-taking) in dialogue
4. One or more language disorders thought to affect syntactic processing in adults
Additional notes
1. Finding and selecting articles
(i) Bibliographic databases
Make sure you are using bibliographic databases (e.g. PsycInfo, LLBA) to your best advantage.
Databases contain sophisticated search tools allowing a wide range of criteria to be
simultaneously included or excluded from your search. If you are unfamiliar with the use of
databases, it is your responsibility to spend the time required to learn the necessary skills. (This
may involve contacting li
ary staff about available learning opportunities.) Claiming that you
could not find articles can result in a reduced grade if it appears your search was cursory or
incomplete.
(ii) Keywords and technical terms
It is often the case that you will not know the best terms to use for your bibliographic searches
efore reading an article or two. By familiarizing yourself with the language different authors
use to refer to various phenomena, you will be better equipped for conducting a successful
search.
(iii) Reference lists in published studies
The studies cited in a relevant article will lead you to other relevant studies that may or may not
e picked up in a database search. Again, this shows that starting out by reading one or two
targeted articles will help you to find a coherent set of studies for your report.
(iv) Make sure your report is coherent!
It is not impossible for a set of eight articles on the same topic to be “scattered” in the sense that
it is difficult to relate them to one another. It is pretty much certain that you will need to look at
more than 8 articles before deciding on the final set that you will refer to in your report. Try to
adopt the perspective of an investigative journalist—some “leads” will prove useful, others may
turn out not to be relevant. The careful and diligent exploration and sorting of information is half
the battle, and will dramatically streamline the amount of work you need to do to organize and
write a coherent report.
Also, make sure you maintain a BALANCED view of the issues if you are select a topic where
there is clearly a debate
ewing. In other words, make sure each side of the issue gets some
airtime, even if the literature is heavily biased towards one side of the debate.
(v) Think, don't just summarize!
Make sure you're thinking about the issues and the 'big picture' that motivate the studies (rather
than simply understanding your selected articles), and work on creating some thoughtful
eflections about the ideas, assumptions, methodologies that are similar or different in the
articles. What you should try to avoid is a paper that consists of eight paragraphs (each
describing an individual study), with a summary paragraph at the end. Let the issues drive the
way you talk about papers. (This will dictate how much space and depth you devote to
discussing any individual article.)
2. Do your own work, and cite authors appropriately.
The research report is an independent project, and collaboration with other students is not
appropriate. Make sure you cite authors appropriately, including making references to ideas and
theories, not just ve
atim language. Check the following links on Quercus for important
information.
• Academic Honest and Plagiarism
• Writing Tips
• Using Sources
One of the main forms of communication is the human language, which consists of meaningless sounds called phonemes that when combined could produce meaningful elements (morphemes/words). When morphemes are combined, endless number of sentences (syntax) could be generated the meaningful units acquires through their lifetime is stored via lexicon (vocabulary). Language production can be examined through two systems; feedforward and modular systems. Feedforward module of spoken word production is a unidirectional and serial flow of information; from lexical selectin to phonological production. (textbook). Modular system on the other hand is when the flow of information happens simultaneously with both lexical selection and phonological production. Language has proven to be dominated in the left hemisphere of the
ain with a region associated with language comprehension (Wernicke’s area) and a region for language production (Broca’s area). As individuals age, their ability in accessing information in their lexicon decreases starting from the age of approximately 50 onward (poncelet) (ardila). This causes failure in finding words and retrieving the sound of words like the state of tip-of-the-tongue, which further causes problems in the production of language.
The activation of the right hemisphere; which is seen to be dominant in the spatial skills rather than language, is seen to be more active in older adults, proving a decrease in language lateralization (wingfield and grossman) ([78], for instance, examined the effect of age on language lateralization in 170 healthy, right-handed children and adults aged 5–67 years using functional MRI (fMRI) and a ve
-generation task. They found that language lateralization towards the left hemisphere increases between the ages of 5 and 20 years, levels off between 20 and 25, and slowly declines from 25 to 70.
In order to study this decline in spoken language ability, many studies compare results of simple naming object experiments between young and older adults. Language dysfluencies include wrong word naming, pauses like “um, er, uh”, slip of the tongue, and tip of the tongue.
Articles
· Language Deficits in Poor L2 Comprehenders: The Simple View
Sparks, Richard L.Foreign Language Annals; Alexandria Vol. 48, Iss. 4, (Winter 2015): XXXXXXXXXXDOI:10.1111/flan.12163
· Conflicting Evidence for Mental Schemas in Language Production and Processing
Schmitt, Eleonore.Yea
ook of the German Cognitive Linguistics Association; Berlin Vol. 7, Iss. 1, (2019): XXXXXXXXXXDOI:10.1515/gcla XXXXXXXXXX
· Normal aging increases cognitive heterogeneity: Analysis of dispersion in WAIS-III scores across age. Alfredo Ardila∗
Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders, Florida International University, HLS139, Miami, FL 33199, USA Accepted 12 August 2007
· Changes in Naming and Semantic Abilities With Aging From 50 to 90 years Journal of the International Neuropsychological Society (2013), 19, 119–126. Copyright E INS. Published by Cam
idge University Press, 2012. doi:10.1017/S XXXXXXXXXX
· Language and the Aging Brain: Patterns of Neural Compensation Revealed by Functional Brain Imaging
Arthur Wingfield, and
Mu
ay Grossman 01 DEC 2006https:
doi org.myaccess.li
ary.utoronto.ca/10.1152/jn XXXXXXXXXX
· Adults of all ages experience increased tip-of-the-tongue states under ostensible evaluative observation
Doi: XXXXXXXXXX/ XXXXXXXXXX1641177
· Language Development across the Life Span: A Neuropsychological/Neuroimaging Perspective
https:
doi.org/10.1155/2014/585237
· Aging and Language Production
doi: 10.1111/j XXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXXx
· New Perspectives on the Aging Lexicon
https:
doi.org/10.1016/j.tics XXXXXXXXXX
· Aging and Language: Maintenance of Morphological Representations in Older Adults
https:
doi.org/10.3389/fcomm XXXXXXXXXX
· Language in the aging
ain: The network dynamics of cognitive decline and preservation
Science 31 Oct 2014:
Vol. 346, Issue 6209, pp XXXXXXXXXX
DOI: XXXXXXXXXX/science XXXXXXXXXX