Psychology of Language Page
Professor Will Langston

News/Notes Week of 12/12/11
  • Grades submitted, 12/15/11 7:01 PM
Exam 1 study guide
Exam 2 study guide
Final Study Guide

A note about dois: dois (digital object identifiers) link directly to articles. You can click the doi links on this page to go to a downloadable copy of the articles. However, you need to be on a computer in MTSU's domain to take advantage of the library's subscription to the journals. If you click dois at home, you will probably be asked to pay for each article. For more on the doi movement, check crossref.org. If you find a doi in the literature you can paste it into crossref.org to get the article. Or, putting "http://dx.doi.org/" in front of any doi will turn it into a link.

Sometimes the doi will not link to the library's subscription automatically. In those cases, search the article in PsycInfo and you can get it there.
Syllabus
Course Notes
Praat Praat will allow you to play with phonology on your computer.

You can download Praat from here.

To do the examples in notes 4 (I'm using the Mac version):
  • Click on the Praat objects window and choose new.
  • Choose "Record mono sound..."
  • Click record and say the syllable(s) (e.g., /di/ and /du/)
  • Click "Save to list"
  • Click the sound and click "Edit"
  • You will see the spectrogram.
Praat does a lot more than this.  You might be interested in playing around with it.
Links Speech related links:
  • Go crazy with speech analysis (it's related to ghost hunting, but it covers an amazing amount of speech recognition material).  Check out the EVP gallery as well.
  • Categorical perception example (lake to rake)
  • An example of the McGurk effect (listen with your eyes shut and watch the video)
  • Another example of the McGurk effect
  • Here's some top-down processing: Read about it here (listen to the audio file at the bottom first).
  • Here's a really good example of phonemic restoration. You might ask yourself why some work better than others and if there's a visual analog of the auditory one (you'll see in some of the videos)
Fonts:
Syntax:
Places to go:
Words:
Resources
Reaction Papers Here's a model paper.

Reaction papers should be one typed, double-spaced page. You should cite sources and include references as relevant, references will not count in your page total. All papers should be submitted electronically. Please title your paper "LastnameWRR#.doc" For example, my second paper would be "LangstonWRR2.doc" I can only email graded papers to MTSU email addresses, so please submit from your MTSU email addresss.

What will get me excited about a reaction paper: 
  • React based on something else you've learned in the class ("when we discussed language, you said...but this article said..." or "here's another example of...")
  • React based on something you've learned in another class ("in my abnormal class we discussed schizophrenia, and this topic reminds me of that because...")
  • Relate the research to your own experience ("Sometimes when I'm talking...")
What won't get me excited about a reaction paper: 
  • "This article was really easy/hard to read/understand."
  • "There were only five participants in the study which seems like too few" (if there's no reason given for why it's too few), etc.
  • Two pages of summary followed by "I really liked this article."
Remember:  If you choose an article that I decide to incorporate in the class notes in the future, I will give you extra points (at least two, maybe more if it's really good). 
Psychology of Language Page
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