PhD in Psycholinguistics

[themastermind]

Hi guys,

I'd like to do a PhD in psycholinguistics after completing my bachelor degree. Currently I'm trying to decide where I should send my applications to. Does anyone know which institutions provide a good program in psycholinguistics? Are there any leading professors in this field that you admire?

Thanks!

[fuzzylogician]

More info is needed. If you're looking to study psycholing at a top theory school, you'll want to study some problem from an experimental perspective, but you didn't tell us what subfieds/questions interest you. If you are on the applied side, you need to tell us that too. While we're at it: is there a particular methodology that appeals to you?

[themastermind]

Hi fuzzylogician, thanks for your reply.

Yes, a top theory school is what I'm looking for. I'm interested in the language & the brain, speech perception, the lexicon, sentence processing, discourse, speech production and language acquisition (both first and second)...so basically everything. Is it a must for me to narrow down my interests to one subfield only? I want to continue to do research after my PhD graduation, and I thought it would be better for me if I keep my options open so that I can get involved in a wider range of topics and research later in my life. At the moment behavioral tasks and neuroimaging seem pretty cool to me.

Sorry for being vague but you see I'm still in my first stage of planning, so I don't know much about the details yet, and please walk me through or correct me if I have any misconceptions. I hope I can gain some insights through this forum. Also, an extra piece of information: I still have 2 more years of undergrad to go, and the earliest application I'll be able to send out will be in the fall of 2019. 

[fuzzylogician]

14 hours ago, jasminenhc said:

Also, an extra piece of information: I still have 2 more years of undergrad to go, and the earliest application I'll be able to send out will be in the fall of 2019. 

Ah, in that case I suggest that you take a step back and simply take more classes and get involved in research. Find out what you like more specifically, because your list is very broad and very vague. A PhD is about depth, not breadth. You do take courses for two years and there is place to learn and grow (in fact, it's necessary!), but you need to have a much better idea of what you want so you can apply to the right schools and get the kind of education you need to pursue your research interests. 

14 hours ago, jasminenhc said:

At the moment behavioral tasks and neuroimaging seem pretty cool to me.

Yeah, did I mention you're vague? That's pretty much everything in experimental linguistics. But my point above is this: you use these tools to study a research question. What is the question (or set of questions) you are interested in? My perspective is that you pick the right tools to get at informed answers to research questions; you don't simply pick up tools and throw them against the wall and see what sticks without a purpose. Brain imaging, in particular, is very expensive. If you don't have a goal in mind for putting a bunch of people in the scanner, you'll be wasting a lot of time and money. So again, you start from the research interests, then you develop the tools to study them (both experimental and theoretical, by the way). You need to figure this part out before we can tell you what schools are right for you. 

[themastermind]

Any suggestions for language acquisition and language disorders? Thanks!