What is Psycholinguistics?

Posted on July 6, 2016June 30, 2016 by APA Books in What Is... Wednesdays
RKelaher

by Chris Kelaher

Psycholinguistics is the scientific combination of psychology and linguistics.

According to the APA Dictionary of Psychology 2ed (Washington DC: American
Psychological Association, 2015):

Psycholinguistics n. a branch of psychology that employs formal linguistic models

to investigate language use and the cognitive processes that accompany it.
Developmental psycholinguistics is the formal term for the branch that investigates
LANGUAGE ACQUISITION in children. In particular, various models of GENERATIVE
GRAMMAR have been used to explain and predict language acquisition in children and
the production and comprehension of speech by adults. To this extent,
psycholinguistics is a specific discipline, distinguishable from the more general
area of psychology of language, which encompasses many other fields and approaches.
Other sources frame the term more broadly, however, locating it within the wider
scope of cognitive science. Dictionary.com defines psycholinguistics as the study
of the relationship between language and the cognitive or behavioral
characteristics of those who use it. And in the APA Encyclopedia of Psychology
(2000), Maria D. Sera tells us that:

Psycholinguistics is the study of human language processing, involving a range of

abilities, from cognition to sensorimotor activity, that are recruited to the
service of a complex set of communicative functions. It is related to the
traditional academic disciplines of linguistics, psychology, education,
anthropology, and philosophy, and particularly the cross-disciplinary areas of
speech science, cognitive science, artificial intelligence, neurolinguistics, and
language learning, teaching, and rehabilitation.
speech-bubblesIn his book Psycholinguistics 101 (Springer Publishing Co., 2011), H.
Wind Cowles writes: Psycholinguistics asks the question: How is it that people are
able, moment-by-moment, to produce and understand language? . How do children come
to have this ability? How and why is it sometimes impaired after brain damage?

How widely used is the term psycholinguistics? Well, typing the word into the
Google search engine produces about 500,000 results. To give you some context, the
term psychotherapy produces 35.5 million results while neuroscience produces
over 41 million. So while the term is certainly not a state secret, it does not
have the broad currency of many more established concepts within psychology. But it
is a field growing in interest and significance, and we are excited to increase our
offerings in the field of psycholinguistics.

To that effect, APA Books is collaborating with De Gruyter Mouton, a leading

international publisher of linguistics and communication science, on a new book
series. Language and the Human Lifespan will feature the best contemporary research
in psycholinguistics. This month marks the release of the first title in the
series, Bilingualism across the Lifespan: Factors Moderating Language Proficiency,
co-edited by University of Alberta psychologist Elena Nicoladis and Simona
Montanari, a linguist at Cal State, Los Angeles.

The Language and the Human Lifespan Series will be essential for all who work in or
are interested in the porous disciplinary boundaries of psychology and linguistics,
drawing on top-flight researchers from both fields. Future titles in the series
will cover such topics as autism and language, research methods for studying
language acquisition, and the concept of entrenchmentthe ongoing reorganization
and adaptation of communicative knowledge.