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DRPS : Course Catalogue : School of Philosophy, Psychology and Language Sciences : Psychology

Postgraduate Course: Language Behaviours, Brains and Cognition: Principles and Approaches (PSYL11073)

Course Outline
SchoolSchool of Philosophy, Psychology and Language Sciences CollegeCollege of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences
Credit level (Normal year taken)SCQF Level 11 (Postgraduate) AvailabilityNot available to visiting students
SCQF Credits10 ECTS Credits5
SummaryWe will consider speaking, listening, and reading in relation to brains and cognition.

In this course we will review the techniques and the approaches that are available for studying how brains underwrite language behaviours. We will look at the principles of all types of imaging, at response time experiments, at cognitive impairment, and computational cognitive modelling. These approaches will be discussed in the context of the latest empirical research.
Course description The goal is to reflect an Edinburgh view of language research.

Lecture 1 Reading, listening and speaking; the nature of the problem
Lecture 2 Language exotica; some of the wilder shores of language use
Lecture 3 Systematicity, the brain, and language
Lecture 4 Reading, listening and speaking; the nature of the brain's solution
Lecture 5 The nature of theorising and modelling; how we abstract
Lecture 6 What can all of the imaging techniques tell us?
Lecture 7 Connectionist modelling approaches
Lecture 8 Eye movements and reading
Lecture 9 Impaired readers, listeners and speakers
Lecture 10 Interfacing with formal linguistics; syntactic processing
Entry Requirements (not applicable to Visiting Students)
Pre-requisites Co-requisites
Prohibited Combinations Other requirements None
Additional Costs None
Course Delivery Information
Not being delivered
Learning Outcomes
On completion of this course, the student will be able to:
  1. understand how psychologists and other cognitive scientists confront the multidimensional nature of human language behaviours experimentally and theoretically
  2. understand the strengths and weaknesses of a particular approach, or cluster of approaches, with respect to the rest of the field
Reading List
There is no set textbook. The suggested readings will be a mix of influential older research papers and current research papers, and will be electronically available at the start of the course.
Additional Information
Graduate Attributes and Skills Students will acquire the capacity to find material in the research literature and to evaluate it with respect to the current goals of the field; they will gain practice in synthesising information and re-presenting it.

The student may use this course to select a research paradigm for further work at MSc project level or potentially at PhD level.
Additional Class Delivery Information Attend all lectures as scheduled
KeywordsNot entered
Contacts
Course organiserDr Richard Shillcock
Tel: (0131 6)50 4425
Email: R.Shillcock@ed.ac.uk
Course secretaryMiss Toni Noble
Tel: (0131 6)51 3188
Email: Toni.noble@ed.ac.uk
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