Pioneers of psycholinguistics

Jean Piaget

her theory inspired the beginning of studies, inquiries, and research especially on the processes that are
they develop in language learning in general and writing in particular; starting from the schemes and
foundations of psychogenesis, since the legacy left by Piaget regarding the approach to the child is
it constitutes the obligatory reference point for any psychologist, educator, or linguist who is interested in
the development of knowledge in the field of writing, since to "understand a psychological process there
"to understand its genesis." Consequently, psycholinguistics originates when psychology tries to
analyze the functions of language, mainly the operation of the word (Ferreiro, 1999).

In this way, the revolutionary changes mentioned above led to the official creation of the
psycholinguistics, understood as 'the scientific discipline whose object of study is the acquisition and use of the
natural languages—understanding and production of oral and written statements—from the perspective of the
underlying mental processes.

During the 50s, OSGOOD, JENKINS, and PALERMO advanced a behaviorist conception of learning.
syntactic based on transition probabilities (or the statistical probability that a word will go to
continuation of another).

SKINNER Formulated a behavioral model of language functioning that aimed to predict the conditions
what provoked the use of a given word.

CHOMSKY, 1957 The first psycholinguistic models with a behavioral orientation were challenged by
rapid changes in linguistic theory. The emergence of the generative grammar framework altered in
irreversible the study of the structure of language and its mental representation.

Generative grammarians tried to include:

The intuitions of speakers about grammatical and ungrammatical expressions.

The relationships that seem to exist between types of sentences in a given language (relationships between sentences in
active and passive

The problem of language acquisition in children.

The new transformational framework was used by psychologists who were trying to determine if the new
approaches to describe the expressions of a language reflected the mental operations required by the
speakers and listeners when using the language.

Relationship between learning, cognition, and psycholinguistics

The relationship between learning and cognition is the way to acquire knowledge and apply it in future life.

Cognition is the process by which learning takes place, leading to the acquisition of new
knowledge

Evolution of psycholinguistics

BIRTH OF PSYCHOLINGUISTICS, BACKGROUND AND HISTORY

The term 'Psycholinguistics' was probably highlighted for the first time in an article by N.H.
Pronko7Although its official baptism took place in 1951, the date on which a summer seminar was held in the
Cornell University (United States), which was followed by the creation of a committee of psychologists (Ch. E.
Osgood, J. B. Carroll and G. A. Miller) and linguists (T. E. Sebeok and F. G. Lounsbury). In that same year, G. A.
Miller published a volume synthesizing linguistics and psychology, thus formally beginning the development of
psycholinguistics, which was definitively supported by the publication of the submitted proceedings in a
famous symposium held at Indiana University in 1953, edited by a psychologist and an anthropologist,
Ch. E. Osgood and T.E. Sebeok respectively, with the title of Psycholinguistics, in which is enclosed a
broad research program that we have already referred to.
Looking at the background, although not going too far back, the figure of Humboldt appears to us.
as the driving force behind a total change of perspective in language studies. Indeed, before
Humboldt considered language as an instrument of the human spirit, a static and closed product.
in itself with its own history. Language was conceived, moreover, as a system of signs subordinated to
pre-linguistic world is 'given' primarily and reproduces it without any distortion (an idea that, ultimately,
dates back to Ockham.

Humboldt, by considering that language, more than ergon, is energeia, represented an opening towards the
theorization of the psychological aspects of linguistic behavior. This turn in linguistics, which made
a modern Psycholinguistics, was encouraged by Durkheim and taken to its maximum
consequences according to Saussure. Durkheim was very close to considering language as a social phenomenon;
he was interested in social facts that possess their own independent manifestation from the manifestations
individuals and that exert 'an external constraint' on the individual. (Later, the development of
Humboldt's thought by Sapir and Whorf will show that language can not only exert coercion if
exterior, but also interior).

But the richness of the Humboldtian concept was largely ignored by linguists and psychologists, given that the
The approach between them was based not on philosophical premises, but on scientific demands.

Since the beginning of our century, the relationships between psychology and linguistics have offered two directions.
opposites

On the one hand, there is no doubt that psychology was in search of linguistics; Psychologists like W. Wundt and G. H.
Mead showed interest in the phenomena of language considering that, since it is a fact
specifically human, they could find in it the key to understanding the human psyche. According to
Wundt believed that the task of linguistic psychology should consist of discovering the psychological processes that are at work in
the modifications of language.

His Ethnopsychology aimed to highlight the evolutionary lines of different languages. There is no
Let us not forget that the authors of the historical method in linguistics, among whom Hermann Paul stands out.
with their Principles of Linguistic History, they had tried to justify their view of linguistic change by resorting to
to the psychological theories of the time, especially to the associationist theory, given the prevailing faith then, in the
Psychology as a promising newborn science. This same position was maintained by M. Lazarus and H.
Steinthal and a similar position to that of Wundt was upheld by J. Ivan Ginneken and
Otto Jespersen, but it was the synchronic descriptive orientation, which began with Saussure and the
structuralists (Sapir, Bloomfield), which made a fruitful encounter between Linguistics and Psychology possible
on a truly scientific basis. Paradoxically, as Peterfalvi rightly points out, the approach between the
the two disciplines only emerged at the moment when linguistics freed itself from a certain "psychologism"
with the emergence of structural linguistics and, in particular, thanks to phonology. In reality, the conceptions
The psychological approaches that established a dialogue with linguistics were diverse, and from that diversity come and
Two opposing currents have persisted until today: 'mentalism' on one side, characteristic of psychology.
European and today of generativism that was concerned with exploring thought (H. Delacroix, K. Buhler, F. Kainz
by A. Gamelli) and on the other hand, the behavioral or behaviorist orientation in the study of language, traditionally
favored by American psychologists (F. H. Allport, A. P. Weiss, J. R. Cantor, and B. F. Skinner).

At the same time, it can be said that linguistics was in search of psychology, driven by a belief,
common at the time, in the value of the emerging psychology as a science. In Bloomfield, Sapir, Bally and,
implicitly, at the Prague School, we find a new appreciation of expressive-affective factors. Not
Let's forget that K. Bühler, the introducer of the Gestalt principle in language theory, was a member of the circle.
Prague linguistic. On the other hand, the German university tradition, which housed in the same Faculty the
Philosophy, Psychology and Linguistics led to the creation of works in which psychology was mixed with the
linguistics; thus arose the works of E. Cassirer8E. Husserl9, K. Bühler10, J. Stenzel11y F. Kainz12No
however, these relationships were sporadic and due to chance in many cases.

There was a decisive factor in creating a study environment conducive to psycholinguistic research: the
dissemination, in the United States, of the first works of information theory.

More recently, the importance of generativism has been decisive as a driver of current studies on
Psycholinguistics13It has even been stated that the displacement of behaviorism by generativism
It has marked the beginning of the development of Psycholinguistics. While not agreeing with this last statement,
which seems exaggerated to us, in addition to being inaccurate (since, although it is true that Skinner's work has flaws, it does not
it is less than the famous criticism of Chomsky lacks foundation in some points)14we believe, nevertheless,
that, although it is true that the number and diversity of contents that the term 'Psycholinguistics' encompasses is,
after thirty years of existence, encompassing, as successive reviews have made evident
themes made by Diebold, Ervin, Tripp and Slobin, Miller and McNeil, Fillenbaum15at the bottom of most of the
basic problems of this new branch of knowledge lie in the psychological issues left by Chomsky.

From everything said so far, we deduce that it was not, therefore, a coincidence that Psycholinguistics, in its current form,
it was born around 1950 and it did so under the reflection of information theory, structural linguistics, of the
renewed psychology after Gestaltism (but without forgetting it), after the criticisms directed at
conductism, following the development of materialist psychology (based on psychological and experimental foundations, of matrix
Pavlovian) and, ultimately, benefiting from the flourishing of a certain interdisciplinary spirit and the emergence of
border disciplines.

Many great works of Psycholinguistics have emerged in the United States in the period from 1954-
1968. Among them, the collective works compiled by Sh. Rosenberg stand out.16U. Belluggi and R.
Brown17F. Smith and G. Miller18, F. Dance19, L. Jakobovits and M. Miron20Amidst all of this, the publication, in
1957, from Chomsky's revolutionary book Syntactic Structures, announced the beginning of the challenge that the
generative-transformational grammar imposed on traditional linguistics and psychology. Therefore, to the
Psychology refers to, it was the beginning of the debate of a problem, on the other hand as old as that of
innatism. Starting from the 1960s, George A. Miller and his disciples from Harvard's Center for
Cognitive Studies began testing transformational grammar in the field of psychological laboratory.
At the same time, the development of language in the child became the focus of psycholinguistic research.
in the precursor studies of R. Brown and his colleagues at Harvard, of Susan Ervin-Tripp and Wick Miller in
Berkeley and Martin Braine and Walter Reed in Maryland. For his part, Eric Lenneberg, also at Harvard,
I was investigating the biological foundations of human language.

The common goal of all these efforts was the overthrow of behaviorism, which Chomsky dealt a hard blow to.
strike with his criticism of Skinner's Verbal Behavior, giving rise to what has been called the Chomsky controversy
Skinner21.
As for Europe, taking the example put forward by the North American interdisciplinary collaboration of
In the 1950s, the annual symposium of the Association of Scientific Psychology of Language was established.
French, celebrated in Neuchatel in 1962, to the psychology of language, but his works were published in
1963, in a volume extended by P. Fraisse and titled Problems of Psycholinguistics22, and that, besides
his own contributions included those of F. Bresson, F. Jodelet, G. Noizet, P. Oléron, J. Piaget, etc. A
From this moment on, interest in Psycholinguistics in Europe has not ceased.23.
In Italy, the Universities of Padua and Turin have become centers for psycholinguistic research.
Bologna and Rome, where the names of A. Massuco-Costa, R. Titone, and M. Battacchi stand out. In the Union
Soviet, where the Psychology of language had a long and rich tradition (represented by L. S. Vygotsky, A.
R. Luria, V. A. Artemov, N. I. Zinkin, N. Natadze, etc.), has been A. A. Leontiev the linguist who has positioned himself
within the framework of Psycholinguistics. Norway has the valuable works of R. Rommetveit. In
In England we found the names of D. J. Bruce, M. Donaldson, F. Goldman-Eisler, P. N. Jonson-Laird, R.
Lovell, J. C. Marshall, R. C. Oldfield, P. Wright, R. J. Wales, etc. In Holland, A. Cohen, W. J. M. Levelt, J.
Merloo, B. Tervoot. In Federal Germany, H. Hormann. In Romania, T. Slama - Cazacu. In Spain, they are
translating numerous works of Psycholinguistics in recent years and the beginning of is starting to become clear
certain dedication to this field, although it is still very scarce, mainly due, we believe, to the little
existing permeability between psychology and linguistics. It is worth mentioning the names of J. L. Pinillos and Sánchez de
Zavala, among others.

It can be concluded that psycholinguistics is a science in full expansion and performance, whose fruits have not
not yet reached the levels that we can expect for the coming years.