30.2770, Review: Psycholinguistics: Fernández, Smith Cairns (2017)
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LINGUIST List: Vol-30-2770. Tue Jul 16 2019. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.
Subject: 30.2770, Review: Psycholinguistics: Fernández, Smith Cairns (2017)
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Date: Tue, 16 Jul 2019 13:33:51
From: Maria Teresa Martinez-Garcia [mtmg87 at gmail.com]
Subject: The Handbook of Psycholinguistics
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Book announced at http://linguistlist.org/issues/29/29-4484.html
EDITOR: Eva M Fernández
EDITOR: Helen Smith Cairns
TITLE: The Handbook of Psycholinguistics
PUBLISHER: Wiley
YEAR: 2017
REVIEWER: Maria Teresa Martinez-Garcia, Hankuk University of Foreign Studies
SUMMARY
The book “The Handbook of Psycholinguistics”, edited by professors Eva M.
Fernández and Helen Smith Cairns, present a comprehensive and user-friendly
collection of chapters on critical topics in language production,
comprehension, and acquisition. This book includes book chapter contributions
from scholars well-established in the field, as well as new scholars starting
their work in the field of psycholinguistics. The book is structured in three
main subsections (production, comprehension, and acquisition), each of which
covers a wide range of topics on psycholinguistics (including topics on
phonetics, sentence processing, and lexical processing, among others). Each
chapter provides a detailed summary of the literature in the field, including
a detailed explanation of the latest findings, a description of research
questions that are still unanswered and an outline of future lines of
research. Interestingly, each section of the book is introduced by an
“overview” chapter, which provides a short, critical summary of the key points
to be discussed in the rest of the section.
The first part of the book (Chapters 1 to 7) focuses on the latest findings on
production studies. It covers topics ranging from syntactic encoding (chapter
written by professor Julie Franck) to signal reduction and linguistic encoding
(by Professors T. Florian Jaeger and Esteban Buz). This section also includes
studies focusing on signed utterances (by Professor Ronnie B. Wilbur) and the
specifics of conversational interaction (by Professor Jennifer S. Pardo).
Finally, it contrasts the production of bilingual and multilingual speakers
(by Professors Daniela Paolieri, Luis Morales, and Teresa Bajo), while
exploring the possible link between production and comprehension (by
Professors Chiara Gambi and Martin J. Pickering). In this first section, the
reader will learn more about the enormous progress made in the last 50 years
in uncovering the architecture of the production system and its interaction
with other systems. The reader will know more about the importance of the
level of representation, how planning units are at least phrasal and their
size depends mostly on the goals of the speaker, and the importance of
flexibility, predictability, and familiarity to understand how language is
produced (e.g., to understand the amount of vowel reduction or omission of
overt pronouns). Moreover, detailed studies on the production of bilinguals
show grammatical gender interactions in bilinguals and how immersion and
language experience are the more likely sources of the well-known as
“bilingual advantage”.
The second part of the book (Chapters 8 to 19) specifically focuses on
comprehension studies. Topics in this section of the book focus on speech
perception, both monolingual (by Professor David B. Pisoni) and cross-language
and second language (by Professor Ocke-Schwen Bohn). The section continues
with work done on lexical access and morphological processing (by Professors
Petar Milin, Eva Smolka, and Laurie Beth Feldman). Orthography, word
recognition, and reading (by Professors David Braze and Tao Gong), the
bilingual lexicon (by Professors Judith F. Kroll and Fengyang Ma), sentence
processing in monolinguals and bilinguals (by Professors Matthew J. Traxler,
Liv J. Hoversten, and Trevor A. Brothers), anaphoras and agreement (by
Professors Janet L. Nicol and Andrew Barss) and the processing of prosody (by
Professor Elizabeth Pratt) and semantic-pragmatic (by Professor Petra B.
Schumacher) are further explored within this section of the book. Moreover,
the role of age in comprehension is further explored by Professors Jet M. J.
Vonk, Eve Hiby, and Loraine K. Obler. The section ends with a review of the
latest neurolinguistic studies of sentence comprehension (by Professors
Michael A. Skeide and Angela D. Friederici). This second section of the book
provides the reader with some invaluable information, not found in other,
similar books. This is one of the only handbooks that discusses impaired
populations (specifically participants who use cochlear implants) and their
perception and comprehension of speech. Moreover, this section of the book
provides the information required to evaluate L1-L2 phonological mapping,
indicating how speech perception seems to remain malleable over the life span,
as well as valuable methodological information (e.g., lexical decision and
priming tasks). Moreover, in this section the reader will learn more bilingual
activation and how it seems to be independent of proficiency and L1-L2
similarities, as well as more information about the brain regions associated
with lexical, syntactic, and semantic information, and their temporal
relationships.
Finally, the third part of the book, acquisition, can be found in Chapters 20
to 30. In this section of the book, the reader can find studies on speech
perception in infants (by Professor Catherine T. Best), language production
(by Professors Cecile McKee, Dana McDaniel, and Merrill Garret, as well as by
Professors Dani Levine, Kristina Strother-Garcia, Kathy Hirsh-Pasek, and
Roberta Michnick Golinkoff) and language comprehension (by Professors Krista
Byers-Heinlein and Casey Lew-Williams). The section continues with a review of
the latest findings on the acquisition of morphology (by Professor Kamil Ud
Deen) and of syntax (by Professors Nina Hyams and Robyn Orfitelli). This
section of the book further explores the neurobiological aspects related to
language acquisition (by Professors Sarah Roseberry Lytle and Patricia K.
Kuhl) and the role of age in the acquisition of a second language, by
comparing simultaneous and early successive learners (by Professor Jürgen M.
Meisel) or child and adult second language learners (by Professors Gita
Martohardjono and Elaine C. Klein). Finally, the book ends with a review of
the role of input in signed language acquisition (by Professor Judy Kegl).
This section of the book covers in great detail the key questions in language
acquisition, that is, what type of linguistic concepts can be found in child’s
learning mechanisms, the role of linguistic experience and the procedures
employed by different populations to develop their language(s). The book also
discusses how factors such as age, context, quality/quantity/type of input,
variability in the signal, etc. have a direct impact not only in the ultimate
acquisition of pronunciation, but also of vocabulary learning in different
populations (children, simultaneous and successive bilinguals, among others).
Finally, some of the latest information on the abilities of neonatos are
discussed, as it has been shown that they start shaping their phonetic
inventory while still in the womb (indicating that learning is spontaneous and
already abstract at this early stage in the acquisition process).
Each one of these chapters follow a similar structure (while all the chapters
provide the same type of information regarding each topic, there is some
freedom in the way in which the authors outline their work). All the chapters
specifically focus on introducing the topic to the speakers (including
detailed descriptions of the different models tested), outline the current
research questions addressed in the literature, and discuss some of the work
that still needs to be done to fully understand this specific aspect of
psycholinguistics. Thus, each chapter provides all the necessary information
to learn more about the current state of the field, specifically for each
topic. More information regarding the different authors included in the
handbook is also provided (consisting of their affiliation, field of expertise
and current line of research), which can give a sense to the reader of how
well-versed each author may be in the topics discussed on the corresponding
chapter.
EVALUATION
This book is very rich both theoretically and experimentally. Each chapter
provides a detailed overview of one of the latest lines of research in the
field of psycholinguistics, which is presented, outlined and discussed by the
authors. It is important to highlight how each one of the topics presented is
explained from different points of view (e.g., pointing out both pros and cons
of the different theories and models discussed). Moreover, each chapter
provides a more detailed perspective on how each phenomenon is understood and
discussed by different scholars (e.g., by comparing the different models and
theories proposed up to this moment). That is, this book is not limited to
understanding how one group (e.g., monolingual speakers) comprehends,
produces, and acquires a language but compares different language backgrounds,
different age groups, and different methodological approaches to get a broader
understanding on how language works. Not only is the variability found in the
samples from which the conclusions are drawn, but also the variability of
theories, models, methods and linguistic phenomena is employed and discussed.
All this variability provides a broader, more comprehensive perspective on our
understanding on how the language works among different populations.
Another important addition of this book is the importance given to both
existing theoretical discussion and to future research questions, two points
addressed in every chapter. The fact that this book includes not only the
existing theory but many and diverse types of ideas for future studies clearly
promotes critical and creative thinking and it could be particularly
beneficial for younger scholars who are starting to get interested in the
field of psycholinguistics. Personally, I feel that this type of book promotes
not only replication studies, that is, studies that could address the topics
already discussed in the literature (Rákosi, 2017), but it also provides a
detailed account of new ways in which future researchers can take the lead to
further understand how language is processed and stored in the brain. For
example, someone interested in speech perception may be familiar with the
different models regarding the limitations in second language (L2) speech
perception and how the native language (L1) and age of acquisition may
function as a filter (among other factors). However, this same researcher may
not be aware of the latest findings indicating, for example, how the effect of
“age” on speech perception and production does not seem as strong (or
limitating) as originally thought. This handbook thus provides the reader with
a detailed account of the latest findings in the field. Learning about these
new findings and the need for more work to be done with regard to the effect
of age (to continue with the same example) may open new doors for future
research. After reading the latest theoretical approaches to each one of the
individual topics discussed in the book, the reader can decide what aspects
still need to be further explored in the literature, and they can get ideas on
how to address them themselves.
Of special interest is the existence of within-book references, that is, the
authors quote the work of their colleagues included in the same handbook. This
can be considered a particularly useful addition to the chapters, because of
two main reasons. On the one hand, it avoids excessive repetition within the
book itself. For example, a given topic (such as speech processing) can be
studied from different perspectives (that is, as part of the Production,
Comprehension, and Acquisition Sections). Some of the models that can be
described in the Production section can also (at least, in most of the cases)
make predictions on speech comprehension and acquisition. By quoting the work
discussed in other chapters within the handbook, the authors can focus on the
specific points that are relevant to understand the importance of each model
in the specific subfield they are discussing, instead of having to repeat all
the details that may be more relevant for other sections/chapters of the book.
On the other hand, these within-book references will allow the readers to make
sure they do not miss any of the chapters dealing with the work in which they
are interested. While each one of the main parts of the book includes an
overview of the work that will be discussed in the section, the chapters
themselves do not include individual abstracts. Thus, readers have to decide,
primarily based on the title, whether a given chapter is going to address the
issues in which they are interested or not. By including these within-book
references, the readers can know about the other chapters that address similar
topics and that may be of their interest.
This lack of overlapping review makes this book a cohesive compendium of the
different models, methodologies, samples of participants and languages which
have been covered and studied in the vast field of psycholinguistics, without
“too much” repetition. It is true that some of the studies are reviewed in
different chapters. However, the authors clearly had different purposes when
doing so, and they focus on different aspects of the same paper in each case,
thus making the readers feel that, while reading each one of the descriptions
of a given paper, they can fully grasp all the nuances of that specific paper.
Moreover, each one of the chapters focuses on a specific phenomenon, thus,
making it interesting, challenging, and appropriate for a broad range of
readers and experts in the field. While broadening their knowledge of their
own field, this book would allow these researchers to get better acquainted
with what has been done in other fields and what it is still to be done in the
field of psycholinguistics. This is of particular interest for those
researchers facing the challenge to teach (for example) an introductory class
in Linguistics, in which they need to discuss more than just their own field
of research.
Apart from providing a detailed account of some of the latest findings in the
field, this book represents a useful manual for young scholars and even the
general public who want to open their perspectives on psycholinguistics. It
not only provides a general overview of the field, but it discusses potential
open research questions and it provides a detailed literature review on each
of the models, methodologies, samples of participants and languages that have
already been studied. This detailed literature review may be a suitable
resource for those new researchers that need to find the references necessary
to motivate and undertake their own research. This handbook is a more than
appropriate way to get introduced to the basics of this discipline, as it
provides the reader with the necessary tools to understand the past, present,
and future of the vast field of psycholinguistics.
REFERENCES
Rákosi, C. (2017). Replication of psycholinguistic experiments and the
resolution of inconsistencies. Journal of psycholinguistic research, 46(5),
1249-1271.
ABOUT THE REVIEWER
Maria Teresa Martinez-Garcia completed her PhD in Linguistics at the
University of Kansas in August 2016. Her dissertation presented a
psycholinguistic approach to understanding bilingual activation, by exploring
how differences in stress placement between English-Spanish identical cognates
affect how adult learners of Spanish use stress as a cue for word recognition.
She continues her research on bilingualism and second language speech
perception and production while working as an assistant professor in the
Spanish and Linguistic departments at Hankuk University of Foreign Studies.
Her main research interests include bilingualism, second language acquisition,
and speech perception and production.
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