The five-day course, organized by Minna Lehtonen and Jan Svennevig, consisted of both lectures, workshops, and the students' presentations of their own projects. Barbara Mertins (external link) focused on the use of different methods in the field of experimental (psycho)linguistics: how does one design an experimental study, and what are potential pitfalls one might come across when doing so? What are the benefits and disadvantages of different empirical methods? Mertins presented several different empirical methods, from offline methods such as elicitation and judgement tasks, to online methods such as Eye-tracking and Speech Onset Times. The students were also invited to bring up practical questions concerning their own empirical work during a workshop held by Mertins on the last day of the summer school.
Janet van Hell (external link) presented neurocognitive methods in language science, with a focus on the use of EEG (Electroencephalography)/ERPs (Event-Related brain Potentials). Van Hell presented both advantages and disadvantages of ERPs, and showed how this method may be used in research on lexical and sentence processing in multilingual speakers, and in research on codeswitching and foreign-accented speech processing.
Minna Lehtonen, Associate Professor at MultiLing, also gave a lecture on methodological issues in studies on bilingualism and executive functions. What are problematic issues in such studies, and what future directions should be taken to avoid these?
A big thank you you both the lecturers, and to all the PhD students who attended the course, for making this year's Summer School such a great, inspiring event!
More photos from the MultiLing Summer School 2018
All photos by Nadia Frantsen / UiO
