Course Description
Introduction to experimental methods in linguistics, including experimental design and stimulus creation. Methods include informal vs. formal acceptability judgments, psycholinguistic methods, and neurolinguistic techniques. Students will develop and run in-class behavioral experiments in small groups. This will include formulating hypotheses, designing stimuli, running participants, and analyzing and reporting results.
Additional Requirements for Graduate Students:
Graduate students will be held to higher standards on research skills and review of primary research to demonstrate the application of concepts learned in this class. Specifically, graduate students:
a) Will be expected to write a longer and more thorough final paper, including a relevant theoretical literature review.
b) Will write a critical evaluation of the Methods section of one experimental journal article that is relevant to their interests, identifying strengths and areas for improvement.
Athena Title
Experimental Methods in Ling
Prerequisite
LING 3060 or LING 3150 or LING 3150W
Grading System
A - F (Traditional)
Course Objectives
In almost all subdisciplines of linguistics, understanding and using experimental methodologies have become crucial skill sets. In this class, we will discuss the basics of experimental design and data analysis. Students will design a novel behavioral experiment in groups under the supervision of the professor and will conduct, analyze, and report on the study. By the end of the course, students will be able to: - Understand ethical considerations of experimental work and the procedures for applying for institutional approval. - Become familiar with common experimental paradigms and analysis techniques. - Be able to critique and evaluate experimental findings, including Methods sections of published papers. - Be able to formulate novel hypotheses and explain how they can be tested using experimental techniques. Students will be evaluated on the basis of class participation, regular written group updates on their group’s progress, and a written final report (a full paper including a literature review for graduate students; a lab report for undergraduate students). Graduate students will also be graded on an additional Methods critique of a journal article of their choosing, in collaboration with the instructor.
Topical Outline
1. Theory vs. Experiment: a. Why do experiments? 2. Experimental ethics and participants a. Privacy and consent b. Applying for IRB approval c. Subject recruitment 3. Data management and lab notebooks 4. Experimental design a. Factorial designs b. Power 5. Specific methods a. Lexical decision, ABX, and other categorization tasks b. Self-paced reading and eye-tracking while reading c. Visual world and head-turn preference paradigms d. Electrophysiology and hemodynamic methods 6. Statistics overview a. ANOVAs, linear regressions, mixed effects models b. Significance testing and power analysis 7. Writing an experimental poster and paper Practicum Components: 1. Selecting a question and a paradigm 2. Choosing a design 3. Stimulus creation 4. Programming the experiment a. PsychoPy in Python b. (PC)Ibex and Linger c. Gorilla 5. Visualizing data 6. Communicating results in a poster/paper figure