The world’s linguistic map is rapidly changing because of demographic trends, new technologies, and international communication. One of the consequences is that the majority of people now speak more than one language. The recognition that more of the world’s speakers are bilingual rather than monolingual has led to a dramatic increase in research on second language learning and bilingual language processing. This course will focus on the use of different methods for investigating these topics in the field of experimental (psycho)linguistics. Two renowned and experienced researchers within the field will present opportunities and challenges of different experimental methods such as eye-tracking and Event-Related brain Potentials (ERPs), with examples from their own empirical research.
Professor Barbara Mertins will start by addressing more general questions related to empirical research such as what pitfalls one may come across when designing an experimental study or what makes an empirical study ecologically valid. She will also introduce a system for classifying empirical methods and look into their overall advantages and disadvantages. Finally, she will also have a more informal workshop in which the participants can bring up their own practical questions concerning their own empirical work.
Professor Janet van Hell will discuss experimental methods to study second language (L2) learning and bilingual/multilingual language processing. She will specifically focus on the use of electrophysiological techniques, such as ERPs, and how these techniques are used to study the timing and degree of neural activation associated with vocabulary learning, lexical processing, sentence processing, and codeswitching in L2 learners and bilinguals/multilinguals.
