Reasoning and Language

Recommended Prerequisites

NA

Teaching Methods

(1) Lecturing (2) Hands-on research praticum

Learning Outcomes

Teaching Reasoning and Language as cognitive psychology themes focuses on the process of answering two questions, one pertaing to the psychology of language (1), the other to the psychology of reasoning (2). The student is expected to proficiently articulate answers to those questions, from the triple point of view of their history, the state of the art explanatory theories, and research methodology:

1. What type of representations and what processes does the human cognitive system use to establish symbols of external entities and events for the purpose of being transmited and interpreted by other human cognitive systems?

2. What type of representations and what processes does the human cognitive system use to, on the basis of knowledge of the truth values (T/F) of a set of assertions about the world, create new assertions about that world, while knowing (or estimating the probability) of the truth value of the new assertions whithout recourse to external observations?

Work Placement(s)

No

Syllabus

Language

1. Theories and methods in the study of language: Historical notes

1.1  Taxonomic linguistics and the technical vocabulary of contemporary linguistics

1.2  Generative linguitsics and the founding concepts of contemporary syntactic theory

1.3  Semantics: Key concepts

2. Relation between linguistics and psycholinguistics

3.  Language comprehension

3.1  The perception of speech

3.2  The mental lexicum

3.3  Syntactic processing

3.4  Semantic composition at the sentential level

3.5  Discourse comprehension

4. Language production

5. Language acquisition

Reasoning

1. Taxonomies of human thought

2. Theories and methods ein the study of human inference: Historical notes

3. Deductive reasoning

3.1 Fundamentals of formal logic

3.2 Psychological theories of deduction

4. Inductive reasoning

4.1 Inductive "force" vs. validade deductive validity

4.2 Normative models of probabilistic inference

4.3 Psychological theories of inductive inference

Head Lecturer(s)

José Augusto Simões Gonçalves Leitão

Assessment Methods

Assessment
Exam: 50.0%
Project: 50.0%

Bibliography

Carroll, D. (2006). Psicologia del lenguaje. Madrid: International Thomson Editores.Dronkers, N. F., & Menn, L. (2015). Psycholinguistics: Introduction and Applications. San Diego: Plural Publishing Inc.

Corballis, M. C. (2017). The truth about language. Auckland: Auckland University Press.

Fernández, E., & Cairns, H. (2011). Fundamentals of psycholinguistics. Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell.

Friederici, A. D. (2017). Language in our brain: The origins of a uniquely human capacity. Cambridge, MA: MIT Pres

Holyoak, K. J., & Morrison, R. G. (2013). The Oxford handbook of thinking and reasoning. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.

Manktelow, K. (2012). Thinking and reasoning. Hove: Psychology Press.

Markovits, H. (2013) The developmental psychology of reasoning and decision-making. Hove: Psychology Press.

Sedivy, J (2014). Language in mind: An introduction to psycholinguistics. Sunderland, MA: Sinauer.

Traxler, M (2011). Introduction to psycholinguistics. Chichester:Wiley-Blackwell.