16.1216, Review: Psycholinguistics: Field (2004)

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LINGUIST List: Vol-16-1216. Mon Apr 18 2005. ISSN: 1068 - 4875.

Subject: 16.1216, Review: Psycholinguistics: Field (2004)

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1)
Date: 18-Apr-2005
From: Sonja Folker < SoFoX at web.de >
Subject: Psycholinguistics: The Key Concepts 

	
-------------------------Message 1 ---------------------------------- 
Date: Mon, 18 Apr 2005 04:16:38
From: Sonja Folker < SoFoX at web.de >
Subject: Psycholinguistics: The Key Concepts 
 

AUTHOR: Field, John 
TITLE: Psycholinguistics 
SUBTITLE: The Key Concepts 
SERIES: Routledge Key Guides 
YEAR: 2004 
PUBLISHER: Routledge (Taylor and Francis) 
Announced at http://linguistlist.org/issues/15/15-2635.html


Sonja Folker, Faculty of Technology, University of Bielefeld

[For a review of "Psycholinguistics: A Resource Book for Students", also 
by John Field, see  http://linguistlist.org/issues/14/14-2820.html  --Eds.]

"Psycholinguistics: The key concepts" by John Field, offers a succinct 
though comprehensive A-Z survey of the major issues, terms, and theories 
in psycholinguistics, following the concept of the Routledge Key Guides 
series. It is a reference book written for undergraduate or graduate 
students at the Master's level in language, linguistics, and psychology 
looking for an introduction to the key concepts in this field of 
linguistics. Its clear structure and language avoiding technical terms 
makes it just as suitable for all interested non-specialist readers. It 
can also prove useful to prepare introductory courses in psycholinguistics 
or to provide theoretical background knowledge to first and second 
language teachers. 

While there are a number of textbooks and introductions to 
psycholinguistics, Field rightly holds that they are mostly aimed at 
Master's students or require a considerable degree of prior knowledge in 
psychology. An exception to this is the textbook by Rickheit, 
Sichelschmidt and Strohner (2002). Unfortunately, it is only published in 
German; it displays a high degree of accessibility most other 
introductions lack. The book under review successfully sticks to the 
policy of not taking for granted any previous knowledge of the field. A 
dictionary, however, cannot be meant to replace a textbook; it rather 
serves as an additional reference when reading a textbook or attending an 
introductory course. Therefore a (reasonably short) review of the standard 
textbooks as to the degree of expertise they require might provide a 
valuable orientation for the students and might be a useful supplementary 
paragraph to add to the introduction of this book.

Apart from the introduction, the book has an encyclopedic format; it 
contains 358 entries with helpful cross references providing additional 
knowledge and orientation. Each entry includes a short definition of - or 
a brief introduction to - the respective concept followed by a more 
detailed explanation including controversial and related issues. For 
example the entry on "Phonological development: Production" offers a 
concise definition of productive phonological development. Then the 
development of phonological production is described in greater detail, 
including phonetically transcribed examples and an overview of the debate 
on the existence of a universal order of phoneme acquisition. The entry is 
cross-referenced to "Phonological development: Perception". 

Bold face in the entry text indicates references to further entries in the 
book, in the cited example to "Babbling". This cross-reference to terms 
used in the explanations makes the book self-contained, that is, no 
further reference books have to be consulted. As the example illustrates, 
the book deals with the most common and basic terminology that is used in 
the study of psycholinguistics; however, it also clarifies "everyday 
terms" whose common understanding deviates from their use in 
psycholinguistics (like for example "Noise").

What I find highly useful are the suggestions for further reading given 
for most part of the entries. The choice of these reading recommendations 
surely was one of the most difficult the author had to make. His decision 
to limit himself to literature easily accessible clearly is in the 
interest of undergraduate students. Moreover, the recommendations are 
restricted to 1-5 per entry (2-3 in most cases). Instead of referring to 
entire books, Field often explicitly mentions specific chapters that 
should be read. Considering that one of the most difficult tasks of a 
student is to make a choice in the wealth of literature existent on each 
of the concepts, the "feasibility" of this restricted choice will 
encourage students to actually check for further information. 

Many recommendations refer to handbooks; this is suitable for the purpose 
of students, but might fall short of academic interest. Important primary 
sources, however, are mentioned in the course of the text and can be 
looked up in the complete reference list at the end of the book. Most of 
the reading recommendations refer to literature from the 90s; for some 
entries, more up-to-date recommendations might have been chosen, as this 
generally has the advantage of including references to previously 
published literature. 

While I do not feel entitled to comment on the author's expert choice 
apart from this very general remark, I'd however like to illustrate my 
point by giving an example for an entry closely related to my current 
field of research: for the entry on "Eye-movements" Field recommends Just 
& Carpenter (1987) and Rayner and Pollatsek (1989), undeniably two of the 
standard works on the psychology of reading. A reference to the handbook 
on "Eye tracking methodology: theory and practice" by Duchowski (2003) 
might have been a possible alternative covering the basic phenomena as 
well as biological and technical background of this methodology. In 
addition to this, the review article by Rayner (1998) could provide 
information on more recent empirical findings. 

As already mentioned, the entries cover a wide range of key aspects in 
psycholinguistics. The main fields of interest are language processing, 
first language acquisition, central concepts of second language 
acquisition as well as language disorders. At the end of the book the 
reader finds a full index that proves especially helpful if the notion 
that is looked up has not received an entry of its own. 

In a nutshell, "Psycholinguistics: The key concepts" is indeed a valuable 
resource book, that lives up to its promise to put psycholinguistics 
within the grasp of novices.

REFERENCES

Duchowski, A. T. (2003). Eye tracking methodology: theory and practice. 
London et al., Springer.

Rayner, K. (1998). Eye movements in reading and information processing: 20 
years of research. Psychological Bulletin 124, 372-422.

Rickheit, G., Sichelschmidt, L. and Strohner, H. (2002). Psycholinguistik: 
die Wissenschaft vom sprachlichen Verhalten und Erleben. Tübingen, 
Stauffenburg-Verlag. 

ABOUT THE REVIEWER

Sonja Folker is a Ph.D. student in linguistics at the Faculty of 
Technology at the University of Bielefeld, Germany and member of the 
graduate program "Task-oriented Communication." She has a Master's degree 
in Romance languages, biology and philosophy as well as the corresponding 
teaching certificates. She teaches courses on academic writing for 
undergraduate and postgraduate students. Her research interests include 
human cognition, especially language, learning and memory processes. 
Methodologically, she concentrates on doing eye movement studies to 
explore the integration of linguistic and pictorial information.





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