Course details

8.3455

EEG in Empirical Linguistics

 S
SS 2020 Maria Spychalska
4h/wk
8 ECTS 		B.Sc modules:
CS-BWP-CL - (Computational) Linguistics
CS-BWP-NS - Neuroscience
KOGW-WPM-CL - Computational Linguistics
KOGW-WPM-NW - Neuroscience
M.Sc modules:
CC-MWP-CL - Computational Linguistics
CC-MWP-NS - Neuroscience
CS-MWP-CL - (Computational) Linguistics
CS-MWP-NS - Neuroscience
KOGW-MWPM-CL - Major subject Linguistics and Computational Linguistics
KOGW-MWPM-NW - Major subject Neuroscience

Doctorate program 		Tue: 12-16

Electroencephalography (EEG) – a method to record electrical activity of the brain along the scalp – has become a very popular tool used to investigate various aspects of language processing. Its main advantage is high temporal resolution, i.e. EEG allows to record the electrical activity with a millisecond precision. In the research on language, EEG has mainly been used to measure event-related brain potentials (ERPs), i.e. direct brain responses time-locked to triggering events such as, for instance, linguistic stimuli. Some ERP components have been considered particularly relevant for language and regarded to reflect specific neural processes underlying linguistic comprehension. Still, the precise functional role of these components remains debated, as well as their relevance for the theoretical debates in semantics or pragmatics. In this course, I provide a thorough introduction to EEG, including methodological aspects of experimental design, data pre-processing and statistical analysis. In the class, we will also discuss a number of journal articles focusing on the application of EEG in the psycholinguistic research.