Originally published in 1990, this comprehensive volume addresses the central issues of sentence and discourse processes, with particular emphasis placed on reading and listening comprehension. The text material is accessible to both upper-level undergraduate and graduate students and informative for professionals and educators. In this regard, this uncommon volume identifies the logic of both the specific experimental manipulations that are described, and the more general on-line and memory measures frequently invoked. The principles presented in the text are supported by hundreds of numbered and unnumbered examples, and by precise tables and figures.

Originally published in 1970, this was Peter Herriot’s first book. In this objective, critical evaluation of a rapidly expanding field, Professor Herriot examines language as skilled behaviour, generative linguistics and psychology, behaviourist approaches to meaning, language acquisition and impairment, and language and thought. He stresses throughout the necessity for empirical research and for experimental verification of hypotheses; he also feels that language behaviour should be analysed in a comprehensive form, placing emphasis not only on structural aspects but also on the importance of meaning and context to any account of language. Today it can be read and enjoyed in its historical context.

Originally published in 1985, this title was an important new teaching text at the time. Alan Garnham focuses on current theories about the central cognitive aspects of language understanding, and attempts to reflect the emergence of cognitive science, an inter-disciplinary approach to the study of language and other cognitive processes. As well as describing psychological studies, the text includes ideas from linguistics, artificial intelligence, the philosophy of language and formal logic. Some introductory remarks on the study of language understanding precede a discussion of word recognition and the computation of the syntactic structure of sentences. The central part of the book is concerned with questions about meaning, the mental representation of word meanings, and text comprehension. The final two chapters address questions of how the parts of the language processing system operate together, and how language production is related to comprehension. Rather than attempting an exhaustive discussion of empirical research on his chosen topics, the author gives the reader the flavour of linguistic arguments. In particular, Psycholinguistics attempts to indicate the problems and also the possibilities of relating experimental data to theories of language processing. Psycholinguistics will still be useful reading on courses in psycholinguistics, language and thought, and cognitive psychology.

Originally published in 1979, this book represents an effort to bring together the two disciplines at the core of psycholinguistics, psychology and linguistics. It discusses a broad variety of theoretical approaches to psycholinguistics as well as covering a wide range of topics. At the time the book had four goals: to discuss many of the important contemporary issues in psycholinguistics; to explore the different views on major theoretical controversies; to provide an analysis of background literature as a framework in which to evaluate the issues and controversies; and to describe interesting high-quality research currently being done by the authors and some of their colleagues. Today it can be read and enjoyed in its historical context, with many of the chapters still relevant in psycholinguistic research today.

Originally published in 1990, this comprehensive volume addresses the central issues of sentence and discourse processes, with particular emphasis placed on reading and listening comprehension. The text material is accessible to both upper-level undergraduate and graduate students and informative for professionals and educators. In this regard, this uncommon volume identifies the logic of both the specific experimental manipulations that are described, and the more general on-line and memory measures frequently invoked. The principles presented in the text are supported by hundreds of numbered and unnumbered examples, and by precise tables and figures.

Originally published in 1974, this volume presents empirical and theoretical investigations of the role of meaning in psychological processes. A theory is proposed for the representation of the meaning of texts, employing ordered lists of propositions. The author explores the adequacy of this representation, with respect to the demands made upon such formulations by logicians and linguists. A sufficiently large number of problems are encompassed by the propositional theory to justify its use in psychological research into memory and language comprehension. A number of different experiments are reported on a wide variety of topics, and these test central portions of this theory, and any that purports to deal with how humans represent meaning. Among the topics discussed are the role of lexical decomposition in comprehension and memory, propositions as the units of recall, and the effects of the number of propositions in a text base upon reading rate and recall. New problems are explored, such as inferential processes during reading, differences in levels of memory for text, and retrieval speed for textual information. On the other hand, a study of retrieval from semantic memory focusses on a problem of much current research. The final review chapter relates the present work to other current research in the area at the time.

How is speech produced and understood in the context of everyday communication? First published in 1975, this book is considered one the best of the early books in this field. The task of psycholinguistics is to discover how people produce and comprehend speech. This encompasses virtually all aspects of psychology, including perceptual, conceptual, and social processes. The authors tried to capture the flavour of this approach to the psychology of language by describing the major contemporary issues, problems, and phenomena, of the time, being dealt with in laboratories and in field studies, and by trying to make sense of the data they had. Experimental Psycholinguistics: An Introduction does not try to deal exhaustively with any one issue in linguistics or in psychology. Rather it tries to integrate the authors’ knowledge of language and language behaviour so that someone entering the field has an intelligible framework with which to start.

Society is becoming increasingly multi-lingual and this presents monolingual professionals, particularly those in special education and speech pathology, with severe problems. Is the language delay in a child from a bilingual environment a result of this background or is there a specific speech problem? Is a child’s poor performance in school due to his problems of coping with two languages, or does he need remedial teaching? Originally published in 1984, this book is not concerned with second language learning, but with speech and learning difficulties in bilingual children as they are presented to remedial teachers, psychologists and speech therapists. To this end the first group of specially written articles deals with the patterns of language usage in bilingual communities and the social and psychological factors which shape these patterns; with processes in normal bilingual language acquisition; and with the relationship between cognitive development and growing up with two languages. Management issues and methods involved in helping children with language problems are also tackled: they include taking case histories, family liaison, counselling, bilingual programmes, mother tongue teaching, curriculum development and the training of personnel to work in the bilingual-bicultural field. This book provided a great deal of practical help, in a field that was relatively new at the time of writing, and helped to enlighten readers on the issues involved and assist in crystalising thought and directing future research.

In the ten years prior to its original publication in 1987, cognitive psychology uncovered the increasingly important role of knowledge stored in memory and the integrated nature of cognitive processes. In Memory, Thinking and Language the author takes these three traditional topics and places them within the new cognitive approach. Judith Greene’s 1975 book Thinking and Language, proved to be a highly successful student resource. This book provides an equally clear introduction to complex ideas. It also emphasises the practical applications of cognitive psychology for teaching and learning as well as for everyday life.

An understandable, clear overview of the psychology of language, where studying the psychology of language doesn't have to be confusing. In David Carroll's text, a topic that can sometimes seem bewildering to students is presented in a clear, interesting, and engaging style. Using a cognitive approach, Carroll brings the current developments and controversies in psycholinguistics to students in an engaging style and sets them in historical context. The book fills the need for an up-to-date and clearly written treatment of the field.