New Bulgarian University >

Center for Cognitive Science >

Summer Schools >

2005 >

Course Description

 

 

Lexical access in language production: From words to phrases (to sentences)

 

 

Herbert Schriefers

University of Nijmegen, The Netherlands

 

The course will start with some general considerations concerning the psycholinguistics of language production (observational methods (e.g. speech errors) versus experimental methods etc). Then I will focus on experimental investigations of lexical access in simple word production. Finally, we will take a look at the processes playing a role in the production of (simple) phrases. If there is still some time left, we might also have a look at studies addressing language production at the level of the sentence.

 

With respect to all topics, the focus will be on experimental approaches (as opposed to observational data) and on the cognitive processes involved in language production. This also implies that the course will not cover language production from a "conversational perspective" or a "language-as-(cooperative)- action" perspective.

 

The general goal of the course is to provide basic knowledge of a psycholinguistic framework of language production, and a “feeling” for the experimental approaches that are used in the field (including critical discussion of the approaches and open questions).

 

In the following a short indication of what will be covered in the different sessions. For each session, two to three readings are given. The first of these readings for each session should be studied in any case. The other readings are optional, providing more in depth information.

 

 

 

Lecture 1. General overview    PowerPoint Presentation

 

 

- a framework for language production

- different views of language production

- the tension between experimental and observational methods

 

Required readings:

 

K. Bock & W. Levelt (1994): Language Production: Grammatical encoding. In M. Gernsbacher (ed.), Handbook of Psycholinguistics, Academic Press (pp. 945-984).

 

Optional readings:

 

K. Bock (1995). Language production: Methods and Methodologies. Psychonomic Bulletin and Review, 3, 395-421.

 

 

Lecture 2. Lexical access in language production   PowerPoint Presentation

 

 

- theories of lexical access (two-stage vs cascading vs feedback)

- experimental studies (picture naming, picture-word-interference etc)

- the case of bilinguals: lexical access in a second language

- production of pronouns

- context effects

 

Required readings:

 

Levelt, W. J. M., Schriefers, H., Vorberg, D., Meyer, A. S., Pechmann, T., & Havinga, J. (1991). The time course of lexical access in speech production: A study of picture naming. Psychological Review, 98, 122-142.

 

Optional readings:

 

Dell, G. S., & O'Seaghdha, P. G. (1991). Mediated and convergent lexical priming in language production: A comment on Levelt et al. (1991). Psychological Review, 98, 604-614.

 

Levelt, W.J.M., Schriefers, H., Vorberg, D., Meyer, A., Pechmann, Th. & Havinga, J. (1991). Normal and deviant processes in language production: Reply to Dell and O'Seaghdha (1991). Psychological Review, 98, 615-618.

 

 

Lecture 3. Lexical access in language production: Event related brain potentials   PowerPoint Presentation

 

 

- event related brain potentials

- studies using the lateralized readiness potential (LRP)

- N400 studies

 

Required readings:

 

van Turennout, M., Hagoort, P. & Brown, C. (1997). Electrophysiological evidence on the time course of semantic and phonological processes in speech production. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory and Cognition, 23, 787-806.

 

Optional readings:

 

Jescheniak, J.D., Schriefers, H., Garrett, M.F. & Friederici, A.D. (2002).  Exploring the activation of semantic and phonological codes during speech production with event-related  brain potentials. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 14, 951-964.

 

Abdel-Rahman, R. & Sommer, W. (2003). Does phonological encoding in speech production always follow the retrieval of semantic knowledge? Electrophysiological evidence for parallel processing. Cognitive Brain Research, 16, 372-382.

 

 

 

Lecture 4. From words to phrases   PowerPoint Presentation

 

 

- advance planning: how much of an utterance do we plan before we start    

  articulation?

- advance planning and verbal working memory

- advance planning at the phonological level

- the retrieval and use of lexical syntactic properties: the case of grammatical

  gender

 

Required readings:

 

Meyer, A.S. (1996). Lexical access in phrase and sentence production: Results from picture-word interference experiments. Journal of Memory and Language, 35, 477-496.

 

Optional readings:

 

Schriefers, H. & Jescheniak, J. (1999).  Representation and processing of grammatical gender in language production: A review. Journal of Psycholinguistic Research, 28, 575-600.

 

 

Lecture 5.   PowerPoint Presentation    PowerPoint Presentation

 

 

The contents of this session will depend on what we have been achieved so far. Given the present program, I think that we will need (at least part of) session 5 to cover material that we did not manage to cover during sessions 1 through 4. If there is some time left, we will turn to issues of sentence production, presumably focusing on studies addressing the factors affecting the computation of number agreement between subject and verb in a sentence. In this case, the suggested reading is:

 

 

Required readings:

 

Bock, K. & Miller, C.A. (1991). Broken agreement. Cognitive Psychology, 23, 45-91.