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PSYCHOLINGUISTICS SINCE THE TURN OF THE CENTURY *

I will continue where Dr. Rieber left off, and describe some of the highlights of psycholinguistics since the turn of the century. Since that time there have been two major theoretical approaches, and methodological approaches closely coupled with them, which were often at odds: empiricism and rationalism. At times one of these approaches attracted psychologists and the other attracted linguists. More frequently, however, interdisciplinary subgroups engaged in philosophical battles against each other. The empiricists postulated molecular components comprising language and thought. Their research was concerned with associations between verbal units, and with the translations of sensations of the enviornment into the muscular responses involved in speech. They ingeniously developed some of the most important experimental apparatus and methods, such as tachistoscopes to present linguistic segments, which were believed to be “molecules,” for brief slices of time; and eye-movement recording equipment to provide indices of elemental processes during reading. The rationalists, on the other hand, were concerned with the innate properties giving rise to global events, with holistic ideas comprising entire sentences, and with internal mental states and processes. Their research tools were more generally those of logic and introspection, and they developed some of the more important theoretical ideas. The leader of the rationalists from about 1880 to 1920 was Wilhelm Wundt. He might easily be called the father of the interdisciplinary study of language, as he himself contributed as a psychologist, linguist, philosopher, physiologist, philologist, and anthropologist. Although many consider him the father of modern experimental psychology, his tools for the study of language were mainly logic and intuition. He felt that language and other higher mental processes could not be studied by the experimental procedures of the natural sciences, but that knowledge of the mind must be inferred from theory. His theoretical ideas concerning higher mental processes are actively discussed today, and included concepts such as preattentive processes, attention span, creative synthesis, and rhythmical grouping. Complementing Wundt’s research on the structure of language was his less-known work on congition and affect, which resulted in a three-dimensional classification of fundamental feelings: pleasantness-unpleasantness, stain-relaxation, and activity-passivity. This approach is strikingly similar to recent work of Osgood and his colleagues, who used the “semantic differential” to measure meaning. Regarding language development, Wundt stated that the infant is born with psychological and physical traits favorable to the reception of language. Based on daily observations of his own two children for sixteen months, and on his studies of untrained deaf-mutes, he concluded that language acquistion involved a good deal of spontaneity and creativity within the child. Imitation and habit under environmental influence played a secondary role. In addition to his contributions in psychology, Wundt also initiated many of the ideas found in today’s linguistic journals. For example, in 1880,