General

This course introduces students to psycholinguistics, the study of the psychological and neurological processes underlying human language. We will examine how people acquire, comprehend, produce, and represent language in the mind and brain. The main focus will be on the mental lexicon (or mental dictionary) - a language user’s cognitive storage of internalized knowledge of the properties of words. Lexical access refers to the retrieval of words from the mental lexicon, and this includes both word recognition as well as production processes. This course provides an introduction to how lexical memory works, how words are organized and how their semantic and formal knowledge is represented. The main focus will be on orthographic, phonological, and semantic aspects of words. In addition, we will discuss challenges posed by multiple languages memorized by a language user (the “bilingual/ multilingual mental lexicon”). Students will learn about various empirical techniques, which are used to investigate the organizational structure of the mental lexicon, ranging from experimental psychology to computer modeling. The aim of this course is to familiarize students with current issues and experimental approaches to the organization and function of the mental lexicon in first and second/foreign language users. 
In the summer semester of 2026, this course will be offered as a project-based course. This means that it will be a mix of regular classes, online classes, and empirical projects conducted by the participants. Please have a close look at the syllabus below to see when we will meet in class or online. 

Class Meetings

Tuesday, 9:10, room 111. 

Online classes will take place on Teams. 

Link to Teams channel "Psycholinguistics of English, Luef" 

Psycholinguistics of English, Luef | elearning - AJD | Microsoft Teams

If you are having trouble accessing the Teams channel (e.g., if you are an exchange student or from a different faculty), please send me an email before class, so I can forward an invitation to you. 

Go here to find the explanation of the experiment you participated in: 

Recap: Meeting in "Language Network Analysis, Luef" 11 May | Meeting | Microsoft Teams