Aya Meltzer-Asscher

 

Performing successful psycholinguistic experiments requires critical thinking and careful planning of all aspects of the design. In this class we’ll acquire theoretical knowledge and practical skills required to carry out psycholinguistic research. The class will focus mainly on sentence processing, but the methodological aspects covered are relevant to any psycholinguistic experiment.

 

The class covers the following topics:

 

Week 1: Fundamentals of quantitative analysis – short review of statistics for linguists

 

Weeks 2: Hypothesis formation and testing

 

Week 3-5: Different experimental techniques and how to select among them. Some techniques that will be discussed:

o   Accuracy measures

o   Rating tasks

o   Reaction time measures (e.g. self-paced reading)

o   Indirect and concurrent tasks

 

Weeks 6-10: Constructing experimental materials

o   Avoiding noise

o   Avoiding confounds

o   Avoiding repetition effects

 

Week 11: Running an experiment

 

Weeks 12-13: Data processing and statistical analysis

 

 

Prerequisites: Introduction to Linguistics, Beginner's Statistics, Beginners Syntax

 

Course requirements: assignments, midterm and final exam

 

Note: the course requires working with the SPSS program, which is available in the university’s computer labs

 

 

Stowe, L. & Kaan, E. (2001). Developing an Experiment: Techniques and Design. Unpublished manuscript.