psycholinguistics: an introduction to the psychology of language

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Page 1: Psycholinguistics: an introduction to the psychology of language

%‘nthin the last Iifttsen years, psycholinguistics has become a recognised subject

within she lield of psychology . I%.: earlier preoccupation v:ith linguist.!:: theories slsch as those of Chorn!:ky (I!: 65’), which sought to describe and explain speech

brZhaviour, is no longer th. p rer tral tcus of investigAor1. Ir:s:ead. psycholing .Cstlcs h?S bWors;i itirr4.t:~ IICU I ,;~asi~sgly witlil ?.cueu c Of l?.lncricn a> well as of s~ll!cture,

atld this has led to a renewal 07 interest in speccli a’~ an as?~ct of the comm Jnica- ti0n process.

With thin; change, the study of psychohnguistics has d!:veloped beyond the rf:a!ms of cognitive psi chologlr to include aspects of soci& devei0pmenta.i and clinical behaviour.

UntortLmatelly, ~s.l.)LntroZira~-elI:Jrr’cs by Foss and F&&X.; does not do justice to &is broadening of emphasis The authors are Fsrgely conventiona! in their treatment of I’:I.l/ciiolineuisrics as L b-snch 01’ cognitive psych Aogy. althotigh they do include a section on developmenta psycilolinguistics, ant a chapter L.QI ‘Language and the hl Art’.

Although it is HOI clear f or who~r~ this rext ~3% mten+ : it is sad, particularly in

\rit!w of the wealth of research in this are?, that 10 mc :z i: made of thrb context iii which the conamunicatron is uttered, or rPai: rule of. :!._ ItII:.:d t’acto~~ in the COIII-

mImication process. With these con:;iderations in mind. however, the topic: covered in this bo,ok are, one the whole:, weIll discussed and clea *ly presented.

As the auth0rs indicate, the book addresses its4f TV !F,.r:z ;;:al? question;.

Whilst they are ~\lt novel, thzse dre nevertheless ansbi~ous ques ions to ask, and the authors are quick to disslel our expectations thar the bra& will 1’1 .C xt arss~ er them. Instead, ml ia true psychrAogic~? tradition, the book provide:; partial arswers to these questi HIS * whilst at the same time raisllrag many new Ones.

818 fact, rhe str,:rq,th of the book Yres in its abili:y to prese.-. t ~he~ont rove&s that charsctMse the fieM of psycholinguistics in 3 clear - MVI! h?N?St~!Ig nlX FH?F. FOF

Enstmce, in ch. 4, the authors ana%ysc the effect of word Irc~~]u~:~~y tin perception.

Page 2: Psycholinguistics: an introduction to the psychology of language
Page 3: Psycholinguistics: an introduction to the psychology of language

In the SW~-MJ half of this section, thr: transformational grammars are discussed and evaluated.

hbing on from competence to performance, the second section is devoted to the behavioural aspects of language processing and, in pa&Aar, to the behaviour of the listener in perceiving, understanding and remembering speech.

This is arguably the most interesting section of the book, not surprisingly as this is the area in which both authors have already established their reputation as researc&rs (FOSS 1970; Hakes and IFoss 1970). The categoricid nature of the spexh perception process is discussed, and the active quality of the mech,anism is stressed. Cn t.he whole. the authors achieve a comfortable balance between presentation of the data and discussion of theoretical models.

However, one issue that deserve: greater coverage in this section is the question of the unit of analysis in ~~:Y-L: Y .arnding. Having learnt about the perception of various aspect:; of speech an in a vljriety of contexts, the reader may wonder how we perceive speech in real life situations. Is the lrnit of analysis the phoneme, the word oi the clause?

Another impclrrant and reiared issue that was overiooked by the authors is the rate and stage a! which the information is analysed. Do we ,analyse speech as it is spoken in a coni. nuous manner, or is there a delay between presentation and analy- sis? Aaronson (I 968), Goldman Eisler (1972) and others hbve contributed sub- stantially to prol:ide an understanding of these questions. It appear:; that ‘deners

have a variety of strategies from which to choose in analysing the mal.erial. Further- rrdore, these srrat#t:gies may be interchanged as a function of the nature of the mate- rial and the time Sb:onstraints imposed on us.

in view ,of ihese data, we might questior tht relevance OI‘ models of speech perception which operate at the level of dlstipctivc features or phonemes. Up- fortunately, the effects of clontextual and pregmatic 1 :jm 8, vs cm sentence processing are largely wnd~scussed in the text. However, as in *: 1 recognition, the physical properties oi‘ the stsmulus are on;y one of the factors that determine hew a sen- tence is undzastood. Peter Wason and I have recent1.j established that in sentences of the type ‘John is too old to be interviewed’ pragma;ric factor; are critical in com- puting the meaning. In fact, when the al.ntual meaning of thm: sentence IS ar. VarihllLc- with the expected :neaning as derived fl.om ->ur knowledge of the world. ir is the expected meaning that is understoocn. The ac iual mexling oi the sentence is almost totally overhooked. Thus, in the sznterlce ‘No head inJur y is tot’ serious to be ignored’, this meaIling is understood as ‘NI head injuries must bfl treated’. Thr literal meaning of the s’entence is VU load injuries rnllst be igr-lurtd’. Perceptioil A rarely veridical, md those occasions on wnich it is, are ;x-obably th<- result of realitv coinciding with our expectations, rather lth.an due to thl: precision of our perceptual faculties.

The last chapter in thiix section is on ‘Memory and comprehension’; and includes a discussion of the semmtic r”cature theodes as HL~ as the prolpositional and procedural mod& of sentence processing. The rule of inference in speech pro-

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Page 5: Psycholinguistics: an introduction to the psychology of language

Book reviews 293

There are h~~:vever, iwa major shortcomings. &ittle attempt is n-r& io htegrate

the findings from dnfffrent sections within the field. MOrttid speech procf2xes m-e

rarely discussed and relbted to the pathological, snd in the domain of the healthy organism, speech perception is regarded as an activity that is largely unre;are,i to reading.

Secondly, much of this book has been devoted to an examination of the content of speech, how it is formulated, and how it is understnn? 51 IZ WE, acknov&Uge the importance of contextual factors in the communication process, more atten- tion could have been directed towards the manner in which the communcation is presented. As Sapir pointed out in 1927, when a man talks, “we are not c.+ar as to whether it is his voice which most powerfully contributes towards the impression or the ideas which are conveyed” [1927: 896). Conceivably, f;ictors ruch as voice quality and sp:ecE rate may turn ou: to be as critical to the I& namics of’ speech processing as the content of the utterance itself.

c1...1: @ n-:-1 311u11 3. ILClUI

DepLrtnrent of Psychiatry Zliddlesex Hospir; al Medical School

London, England

References

Aaronson, D. 1965. lernporal course of perception in an immediate rec4.l r;~sk. Journal of ExperimentaJ Psycl 10;ogy 76 : 129 - 140.

C~OITI&~, N. 1965. A!i>ects of the theory of y.*ntas. The Hague: Mouth. Dooling, D.J and R. 1 .dmm. i37 1. F.fffects of comprehrrnsi, :n retention 01’ prose. Jour.~ai

of Experimental Ps ~h@Logy 88: 216-232. Foss, D.J. 1970. Son e effects of ambiguity on sentence CW:,~’ c rchcnsion. Jotirnxl of Vtxwl

Learning anti Veib:d Hehavior 9: 699-705. Goldman Eialer, F. 1972. Segmentation of input in simultaneous translation. Journal of Psyc IO-

linguistic Research 1 : 127 -. 140. l-lakes, D.T. and D.J. l;ojs. 1970. Decisllon plpocesses during sentence comprehension: effects of

surface structure rel:ornsidwed. Per~c~tion and Psyzhophysics 8: 413-416. Sapir, E. 192’:‘. Speech ,IS a personality trait. . !mericslr Journal of Sociology 32: 892 -905.

Wason, PC and S.S. Reich 1979. A verbal ibusion. Quarterly Icwrlal of Experimental Psychol- LIgy 3 1: 591497.

Shuli S RekA received her Ph.D. in psycholinguistics from University College London, and is resc~lrch associate in pq~hology at the Middlesex Nospita’i Medjical School, University 01’ London. She has lectured ou and published. articles in .;peech perl:eption, re&+, reasoning :And neurolinguistics, aud is ~~r~‘ently rcsearchLtg into the mechanisms underlying acquired :lys- phasiir.