Postgraduate Course: Discourse Comprehension (PSYL11002)
Course Outline
| School | School of Philosophy, Psychology and Language Sciences |
College | College of Humanities and Social Science |
| Credit level (Normal year taken) | SCQF Level 11 (Postgraduate) |
Availability | Available to all students |
| SCQF Credits | 10 |
ECTS Credits | 5 |
| Summary | This course will cover a range of issues concerned with how humans interpret multi-sentence text. We will begin the course by considering the factors that affect the salience of entities in the mental representation of the discourse, exploring how these factors interact with the choice of referring expression to affect anaphoric reference. |
| Course description |
The course will go on to consider the level of detail with which semantic information is encoded in the discourse representation, and how it can be modulated by linguistic and contextual information. We will then go on to consider how, and under what conditions, people infer information that is not explicitly mentioned in the text, and we will explore the relation between inference and recent evidence for embodied cognition. Throughout the course, emphasis will be placed on how experimental techniques can be used to address these questions.
Where relevant, we will discuss the interaction between discourse processing other levels of processing, such as syntactic parsing.
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Entry Requirements (not applicable to Visiting Students)
| Pre-requisites |
|
Co-requisites | |
| Prohibited Combinations | |
Other requirements | None |
Information for Visiting Students
| Pre-requisites | None |
| High Demand Course? |
Yes |
Course Delivery Information
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| Academic year 2015/16, Available to all students (SV1)
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Quota: None |
| Course Start |
Block 3 (Sem 2) |
Timetable |
Timetable |
| Learning and Teaching activities (Further Info) |
Total Hours:
100
(
Lecture Hours 10,
Feedback/Feedforward Hours 1,
Programme Level Learning and Teaching Hours 2,
Directed Learning and Independent Learning Hours
87 )
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| Assessment (Further Info) |
Written Exam
0 %,
Coursework
100 %,
Practical Exam
0 %
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| Additional Information (Assessment) |
One 2500 word assignment and satisfactory course presentation
Assessment Deadline: Thursday 3rd March 2016, 12 noon
Return Date: 25th March 2016 |
| Feedback |
Student presentations in each lecture and comments on submitted assessments. |
| No Exam Information |
Learning Outcomes
On completion of this course, the student will be able to:
- obtain an advanced understanding of the core issues in current research on discourse comprehension.
- understand some of the key findings relating to anaphoric reference, depth of processing, and inference, and they will appreciate the main experimental techniques that are used in the field.
- evaluate the primary scientific literature, critically and independently.
- These skills are essential for students to be able to design their own research projects and to write clear and persuasive scholarly reports.
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Additional Information
| Graduate Attributes and Skills |
Not entered |
| Additional Class Delivery Information |
Attend all lectures as scheduled |
| Keywords | Not entered |
Contacts
| Course organiser | Dr Patrick Sturt
Tel: (0131 6)51 1712
Email: patrick.sturt@ed.ac.uk |
Course secretary | Miss Toni Noble
Tel: (0131 6)51 3188
Email: Toni.noble@ed.ac.uk |
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