COGS 200, Winter 2013
Methods in Language Research
Ben Bergen
Friday, 2:00 - 4:50

CSB 003

Overview

This course is a survey of cognitive science methods in language research, including behavioral measures, brain imaging, electrophysiology, gesture analysis, corpus methods, statistical and computational modeling, and ethnography. The goal is not so much to learn about specific research using these methods as to learn about the methods themselves. Speakers will be experts from the UCSD community and beyond, and will be asked to address the following questions about the methodology they're expert in:

- Exactly what types of questions can this methodology answer? What types of questions can't it?

- What assumptions does it make, and what theoretical positions does it commit the researcher to?

- What are the principle design requirements and challenges?

- What makes interpretation of results difficult, and what are the typical sorts of interpretation errors (by experts and non-experts)

- What are some of the key, stable, important findings that use this method?

- What are the costs and benefits of this method compared to others?

- What are the ethical considerations (if any) that apply specifically to this method?

Requirements

Students enrolled for credit will participate in discussions Fridays 2p-2:50p and open lectures Fridays 3p-4:30p, and will submit a final paper on a topic related to the class content. They will also be expected to come having read assigned materials for each meeting (distributed in the week prior to the meeting). By default, grading is on a S/U basis.

Provisional class schedule and speaker list

1/11 Introduction to methods in language research; Ben Bergen (UCSD Cognitive Science)

1/18 Language production; Vic Ferreira (UCSD Psychology) [Bock, 1996]

1/25 Gesture production; Rafael Nunez (UCSD Cognitive Science) [Nunez et al., 2012], ,[McNeill, 1996, Ch. 3]

2/1 Corpus linguistics; Stefan Gries (UCSB Linguistics) [Gries & Newman, To Appear]; Supplemental: [McEnery & Hardie, 2011, ch. 8]

2/8 Ethnography; John Haviland (UCSD Anthropology) and Ed Hutchins (UCSD Cognitive Science) [Weibel et al., 2012], [Haviland, 2006], [Haviland, 2007]

2/15 Eye-tracking; Keith Rayner (UCSD Psychology) [Rayner, 2009]

2/22 Statistical and computational modeling; Roger Levy (UCSD Linguistics) [Chater & Manning, 2006], [Levy, in prep.]

3/1 ERPs; Marta Kutas (UCSD Cognitive Science) and Phil Holcomb (Tufts Psychology) [Kutas et al., 2007], [Federmeier et al., 2002], [Kutas & Schmitt, 2003], [Luck, 2005]

3/8 fMRI; Steve Small (UCI Neurology) Read this: [Small & Nusbaum, 2004] and whichever of these are most relevant to your work: [Skipper et al., 2007], [Hasson et al., 2009], [Skipper et al., 2009], [Dick et al., 2012]

3/15 Neuropsychology; Ayse Saygin (UCSD Cognitive Science) [Bates et al., 2003], [Saygin et al., 2003], [Wilson & Saygin, 2004]

Mailing list

To subscribe (or unsubscribe), to the cs200 mailing list send email to

majordomo@cogsci.ucsd.edu <mailto:majordomo@cogsci.ucsd.edu>

and put in the body of the message:

subscribe cs200 ADDRESS
end

where ADDRESS is the email address that you want to have the cs200 mail sent to; e.g., johndoe@ucsd.edu <mailto:johndoe@ucsd.edu>

"end" stops majordomo from trying to parse your signature as another
command.

To unsubscribe to cs200, just do the same thing, but write unsubscribe instead of subscribe.

If you have difficulties doing this (email addresses outside of ucsd may not be subscribed automatically), Beverley (bwalton@ucsd.edu) can assist you.

Instructor

Best way to contact me: bkbergen@cogsci.ucsd.edu

I won't have scheduled office hours this quarter, but am available by appointment in my lab office (SSRB 206).