Our ability to speak, write, understand speech, and read is critical to our ability to function in today's society. As such, psycholinguistics, or the study of how humans learn and use language, is a central topic in cognitive science. This comprehensive handbook is a collection of chapters written not by practitioners in the field, who can summarize the work going on around them, but by trailblazers from a wide array of subfields, who have been shaping the field of psycholinguistics over the last decade. Some topics discussed include how children learn language, how average adults understand and produce language, how language is represented in the brain, how brain-damaged individuals perform in terms of their language abilities, and computer-based models of language and meaning. This is required reading for advanced researchers, graduate students, and upper-level undergraduates who are interested in the recent developments and the future of psycholinguistics. Michael J. Spivey was on the faculty of Cornell University for twelve years before moving to the Cognitive and Information Sciences unit at the University of California, Merced in 2008. His research uses dense-sampling methods (such as eye tracking and reach tracking) to explore the real-time interaction between language and vision. He has published in a variety of top-tier journals, including Science, Cognitive Science, Trends in Cognitive Sciences, Psychological Science and Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Spivey is the recipient of Sigma Xi's William Procter Prize for Scientific Achievement and multiple teaching awards from Cornell University. The dynamical cognition framework that guides his research is described in his book The Continuity of Mind (2007). |