911±¬ÁÏÍø

Content: This module explores how the human mind and brain is able to understand and produce language in order to communicate. In addition to looking at the language abilities of healthy adults, we also look at language processing within bilinguals and within patients with language deficits and at the theories and models that have been developed to explain these remarkable abilities. We explore how these linguistic abilities relate to our other cognitive and social abilities and examine topics such as how concepts and categories are represented, both within language studies and from a more general perspective.

Teaching delivery: This module is taught via 20 hours of in-person lectures over 10 teaching weeks.

Indicative Topics: Indicative topics – based on module content in 2023/24, subject to possible changes: Introduction to the module; what is human communication and why is it important? Spoken word recognition, The science of reading, Language production, Sign language, Multimodal language, Neuroscience of speech, Reading and multimodal language in the brain, Aphasia, The impact of multilingualism on brain and behaviour, Language & social interaction.

Module Aims:

The module aims to convey the results and implications of recent research on central cognitive processes involving language and thinking and the brain systems involved;Ìý and to describe and to discuss the relevant methodologies. By the end of the module you should:

- understand the key processes involved in comprehending and producing language

- understand the neural systems involved in different aspects of language processing

- be able to describe and compare current theoretical perspectives in each domain, and evaluate the relevant evidence

- understand the relationship between language and context, including multimodal communication; multilingual contexts and social interaction