Philippine Normal University

The National Center for Teacher Education

College of Graduate Studies
Taft Avenue, Manila

Written Report
In
Linguistics and Reading

PSYCHOLINGUISTIC
S

Prepared by:
 Yap, Christy Joy B.
MaEd Literature

Psycholinguistics

“Psycholinguistics is the study of the cognitive processes that support the acquisition and use of
language. The scope of psycholinguistics includes language performance under normal
circumstances and when it breaks down…”

It is a very remarkable fact that there are none … without even

excepting idiots, that they cannot arrange different words together,
forming of them a statement by which they make known their
thoughts; while on the other hand, there is no other animal,
however perfect and fortunately circumstanced it may be, which
can do the same.

Rene Descartes

Scope of Psycholinguistics

Acquisition Comprehension

Loss Production

Language Acquisition

 Language acquisition is the process by which humans acquire the capacity to perceive
and comprehend language, as well as to produce and use words and sentences to
communicate. Language acquisition usually refers to first-language acquisition, which
studies infants' acquisition of their native language. This is distinguished from second-
language acquisition, which deals with the acquisition (in both children and adults) of
additional languages. Language acquisition is just one strand of psycholinguistics which
is all about how people learn to speak and the mental processes involved.

Language Comprehension

 Understanding what other people say and write (i.e., language comprehension) is more
complicated than it might at first appear. Comprehending language involves a variety of
capacities, skills, processes, knowledge, and dispositions that are used to derive meaning
from spoken, written, and signed language. Comprehension is mainly thought to occur in
the Wernicke’s area of the brain which is located in the left temporal lobe. Language
comprehension is a complex process that occurs easily and effortlessly by humans. It
develops along with the brain and is able to be enhanced with the use of gesture. Though
 it is unknown exactly how early comprehension is fully developed in children, gestures
are undoubtedly useful for understanding the language around us.

Language Production

 Language production is the production of spoken or written language. It describes all of

the stages between having a concept, and translating that concept into linguistic form.

 Stages of production

The basic loop occurring in the creation of language consists of the following stages:

 Intended message

 Encode message into linguistic form

 Encode linguistic form into speech [motor system]

 Sound goes from speaker's mouth to hearer's ear [auditory system]

 Speech is decoded into linguistic form

 Linguistic form is decoded into meaning

Language Loss

o In linguistics, language death (also language extinction, linguistic extinction or

linguicide,[1] and rarely also glottophagy[2]) occurs when a language loses its last native
speaker. Language death is a process that affects speech communities where the level of
linguistic competence that speakers possess of a given language variety is decreased,
eventually resulting in no native or fluent speakers of the variety. Language death may
affect any language idiom, including dialects and languages. Language death should not
be confused with language attrition (also called language loss), which describes the loss
of proficiency in a language at the individual level.[3]

o A language dies when nobody speaks it anymore. (Crystal, 2003:1)

o When all the people who speak a language die, the language dies with them. (Holmes,
1992:61)

o Linguist David Crystal has estimated that “one language is dying out somewhere in the
world, in average, every two weeks”. (By Hook or by Crook: A Journey in Search of
English, 2008)

o Language death occurs in unstable bilingual or multilingual speech communities as a

result of language shift from a regressive minority language to a dominant majority
language. (Wolfgang Dressler, “Language Death, 1988)

Language Loss

-associated with oppression

-Etruscan language is a lost language, for example. They key may still be out there.
Egyptian hieroglyphs were a “lost language” until the discovery of Rosetta stone- that discovery
was profound.

Central themes in psycholinguistics:

1) What knowledge of language is needed for us to use language?

 Tacit (implicit) knowledge vs. Explicit knowledge.

 Tacit: knowledge of how to perform something, but not aware of full rules

 explicit: knowledge of the processes of mechanisms in performing that thing

When is psycholinguistics studied?

 Psycholinguistic research started as far back as Plato, who was interested in human
knowledge and language, however, it became a concern in linguistics during the second
half of the nineteenth century with linguists looking at language acquisition.

 In 1960, Charles Hockett published a list of 'design features of human language', where
he identified 13 different features, that the language we use to communicate as humans, is
characterised by.

 In the late twentieth century, Willem Levelt did a great deal of study on what he called
'the mental lexicon'. His work has become more prominent in recent years, especially his
research into speech production.

 Since the 1990s, the advances in brain scanning and mapping have provided new
information for psycholinguistics, meaning we can now see brain activity relating to
word processing, comprehension.

Where is psycholinguistics studied?

 Psycholinguistic research is not limited to a particular area in the world, but there is more
evidence of psycholinguistic study in the Western world due to advanced science and
technology.

Origins of Contemporary Psycholinguistics

 The modern era of psycholinguistics started with the two seminars sponsored by the
Social Science Research Councils (1951,1953) and then the subsequent publishing of
Osgood and Sebeek’s Psycholinguistics (1965).

 Taxonomic analysis was dominating where their method of analysis was to listen to the
speaker of the language, figure out the phonological units, and then classify them into
higher –level categories.

 This was adopted by the behaviourist psychologists who believed that all behaviours
(language is one of them) could be associated linked chains of smaller behaviours.

 The thread that bound linguists and psychologists was the view that everything
interesting about language is directly observable in the physical speech signal.

 Sapir (1949) didn’t satisfied with this traditional view stating, in his paper The
Psychological Reality of Phonemes, that the mental representation of language should be
addressed rather than its physical representation.

 Chomsky opened the door for a new way to study the human language stating that speech
shouldn’t be the object of the study, instead the rules in the mind that create sentences
and underlie observable speech.

 George Miller (1965) supported this Chomskyan view, and their papers published in the
second book of the Social Science Research Council (Saporta1965).

 The adaptation of Chomsky’s ideas in this 2010 book indicates clear their domination
nature.
 Reading Models & Schema Theory

What is a Reading Model?

In the last 40 years reading researchers have been studying the link between the reading
process (what goes on in the brain) and how to teach reading. Depending on their
interpretation of the reading process, they have developed a model of reading

 Definition

A reading model is a graphic attempt “to depict how an individual perceives a word,
processes a clause, and comprehends a text.” (Singer and Ruddell 1985)

 Kinds

Here are some kinds of reading models.

Although there are many models of reading, reading researchers tend to classify
them into three kinds.

A. Top-down

 Introduction

Top-down reading models suggest that processing of a text begins in the mind of the
readers with:

*meaning-driven processes, or

*an assumption about the meaning of a text.

From this perspective, readers identify letters and words only to confirm their
assumptions about the meaning of the text. (Dechant 1991)

 Proponents

Here are some proponents of the top-down reading model:

 Goodman, K. 1985

 Smith, F. 1994

The proponents generally agree that :

*comprehension is the basis for decoding skills, not a

singular result, and

*meaning is brought to print, not derived from print.

 Definition

A top-down reading model is a reading model that:

 *emphasizes what the reader brings to the text

*says reading is driven by meaning, and

*proceeds from whole to part.

Also known as:

*inside-out model

*concept-driven model

*whole to part model

 Discussion

Here are the views of some researchers about the top-down reading model:

Frank Smith, a journalist turned reading researcher:

*Reading is not decoding written language to spoken language.

*Reading does not involve the processing of each letter and each word.

*Reading is a matter of bringing meaning to print, not extracting meaning from

print. (McCormick, T. 1988)

Kenneth S. Goodman, reading specialist at the University of Arizona:

* “...the goal of reading is constructing meaning in response to text...It requires

interactive use of grapho-phonic, syntactic, and semantic cues to construct meaning.”
(Goodman, K. 1981).

* Although Goodman is often referred to as a leading advocate of the top-down

approach, his model by his own admission is interactive, “...it is one which uses print as
input and has meaning as output. But the reader provides input too, and the reader,
interacting with text, is selective in using just as little of the cues from text as necessary to
construct meaning.” (Goodman, K. 1981)

DID YOU KNOW?

A widely accepted educational philosophy that utilizes a top-down approach to reading is

called whole language.

 Features

Here are some features of a top-down approach to reading (Gove 1983):

 Readers can comprehend a selection even though they do not recognize each word.

 Readers should use meaning and grammatical cues to identify unrecognized words.

 Reading for meaning is the primary objective of reading rather than mastery of letters,
letter/sound relationships, and words.

 Reading requires the use of meaning activities rather than the mastery of a series of word-
recognition skills.

 The primary focus of instruction should be the reading of sentences, paragraphs, and whole
selections.

 The most important aspect about reading is the amount and kind of information gained
through reading.

B. Bottom-up
 Introduction

A bottom-up reading model emphasizes a single-direction, part-to-whole processing

of a text.

In the beginning stages it gives little emphasis to the influences of the reader's world
knowledge, contextual information, and other higher-order processing strategies. (Dechant
1991).

 Definition

A bottom-up reading model is a reading model that

*emphasizes the written or printed text

*says reading is driven by a process that results in meaning (or, in other words,
reading is driven by text), and

*proceeds from part to whole.

Also known as:

*part to whole model

 Proponents

Here are some proponents of the bottom-up reading model:

 Flesch 1955

 Gough 1985

 LaBerge and Samuels 1985

 Discussion

Emerald Dechant:

 “Bottom-up models operate on the principle that the written text is hierarchically
organized (i.e., on the grapho-phonic, phonemic, syllabic, morphemic, word, and
sentence levels) and that the reader first processes the smallest linguistic unit,
gradually compiling the smaller units to decipher and comprehend the higher units
(e.g., sentence syntax).” (Dechant 1991)

Charles Fries:

 The reader must learn to transfer from the auditory signs for language signals...to a
set of visual signs for the same signals. (Fries 1962)

 The reader must learn to automatically respond to the visual patterns. The
cumulative comprehension of the meanings signaled then enable the reader to
supply those portions of the signals which are not in the graphic representations
themselves. (Fries 1962)

 Learning to read...means developing a considerable range of habitual responses to a

specific set of patterns of graphic shapes. (Fries 1962)

 DID YOU KNOW?

A widely accepted instructional program that incorporates several bottom-up principles is

the phonic approach to reading.

 Features

Here are some features of a bottom-up approach to reading:

 Bottom-up advocates believe the reader needs to

 identify letter features

 link these features to recognize letters

 combine letters to recognize spelling patterns

 link spelling patterns to recognize words, and

 then proceed to sentence, paragraph and text-level processing.

C. Interactive

 Introduction

An interactive reading model attempts to combine the valid insights of bottom-up

and top-down models. It attempts to take into account the strong points of the bottom-up
and top-down models, and tries to avoid the criticisms leveled against each, making it one of
the most promising approaches to the theory of reading today. (McCormick, T. 1988)

 Definition

An interactive reading model is a reading model that recognizes the interaction of

bottom-up and top-down processes simultaneously throughout the reading process.

 Proponents

Here are some proponents of the interactive reading model:

 Rumelhart, D. 1985

 Barr, Sadow, and Blachowicz 1990

 Ruddell and Speaker 1985

 Discussion

Here are the views of some researchers about the interactive reading model:

Emerald Dechant:

 The interactive model suggests that the reader constructs meaning by the selective
use of information from all sources of meaning (graphemic, phonemic, morphemic,
syntax, semantics) without adherence to any one set order. The reader
simultaneously uses all levels of processing even though one source of meaning can
be primary at a given time. (Dechant 1991)

 Kenneth Goodman:

 An interactive model is one which uses print as input and has meaning as output.
But the reader provides input, too, and the reader, interacting with the text, is
selective in using just as little of the cues from text as necessary to construct
meaning. (Goodman, K. 1981)

 David E. Rumelhart:

 Reading is at once a perceptual and a cognitive process. It is a process which bridges

and blurs these two traditional distinctions. Moreover, a skilled reader must be able
to make use of sensory, syntactic, semantic, and pragmatic information to
accomplish the task. These various sources of information appear to interact in
many complex ways during the process of reading (Rumelhart, D. 1985).

What is Schema Theory?

  Linguists, cognitive psychologists, and psycholinguists have used the concept of schema
(plural: schemata) to understand the interaction of key factors affecting the comprehension
process.

 Simply put, schema theory states that all knowledge is organized into units. Within these
units of knowledge, or schemata, is stored information.

 A schema, then, is a generalized description or a conceptual system for understanding

knowledge-how knowledge is represented and how it is used.

 Schemas clearly affect our recall of events.

 Schemas also affect our ability to learn things.

 According to this theory, schemata represent knowledge about concepts: objects and the
relationships they have with other objects, situations, events, sequences of events, actions,
and sequences of actions.

 The importance of schema theory to reading comprehension also lies in how the reader uses
schemata. This issue has not yet been resolved by research, although investigators agree
that some mechanism activates just those schemata most relevant to the reader's task.

References:

De Bot, Kees and Judith F. Kroll. 2010. Psycholinguistics. In Norbert Schmitt, editor, An
Introduction to Applied Linguistics, 2nd edition, Chapter 8, pp. 124-142. London: Hodder
Education, p. 124.

Scovel, Thomas. 1998. Psycholinguistics. Oxford: Oxford University Press, p. 5.