Reviewed by Engin Arik, Isik University

This volume is part of the Psych 101 series, which offers very short introductions to interesting topics in psychology. Psycholinguistics 101 consists of eight chapters and an index. In Ch. 1, ‘Introduction: What is psycholinguistics’ (1–16), the author defines linguistics and psycholinguistics, gives a brief history of the field, and introduces some of its major themes, e.g. top-down versus bottom-up processing, serial versus parallel processing, automatic and controlled processing, and modularity. This chapter ends with an overview of the remaining chapters.

In Ch. 2, ‘Language as an object of (psychological) study’ (17–33), the author presents basic features of language, from sound systems (phonetics and phonology) and word structure to sentence structure, meaning, and real-world use. In Ch. 3, ‘How we know what we know: Methods in psycholinguistics’ (35–60), the author starts with the types of measures used in psycholinguistic studies, then explains the most important psycholinguistic experimental tasks, such as questionnaires, button presses, vocal responses, eye-tracking, measurement of event-related brain potentials, and functional magnetic resonance imaging. Finally, this chapter briefly suggests how to avoid problems in using those tasks and methods.

In Ch. 4, ‘Information flow and language ambiguity’ (61–91), the author discusses how contextual ambiguity is resolved and ambiguous sentences are interpreted during language processing. In Ch. 5, ‘(Multiple) Language representation and the brain’ (93–120), the author offers a brief account of language areas in the monolingual and bilingual brain and psycholinguistic studies on phonological, lexical, and syntactic representations of language in bilinguals. Ch. 6, ‘Language in the real world: Dialogue and (co)reference’ (121–52), focuses on language use in conversation and deals primarily with the interaction between speaker and listener, discussing such topics as common ground, intelligibility, avoiding ambiguity, priming and alignment, co-reference, and factors that influence the interpretation of reference.

In Ch. 7, ‘Using your hands: Sign languages’ (153–74), the author moves from spoken to sign language. After dispelling common misconceptions about sign languages, it touches upon such issues in sign languages as structure (phonology and syntax), language processing, iconicity and arbitrariness, lexical access, grammatical space and spatial representations, and co-reference. Ch. 8, ‘How good is “good enough”?’ (175–91), shows how language processing is more complicated than previously thought.

In sum, this book provides a very concise introduction to psycholinguistics. It is well-written and touches upon a wide range of important psycholinguistic issues, such as the structure of language, methods, language processing, language representation, and sign languages. I believe that it can easily be used as an additional reading in an undergraduate psycholinguistic course.