Introduction and syllabus

Human Language and Interaction; Dr. Marisa Casillas�

https://chatterlab.uchicago.edu/courses/hli2023/casillas-hli-spring2023-syllabus/

Marisa Casillas

Assistant professor Comparative Human Development

Research domains: Psycholinguistics, developmental psychology, cross-cultural comparison

Broad research interests: How everyday conversation and affects language learning and real-time language processing, how children learn language

Places I’ve lived: California (SoCal>NorCal>SoCal>NorCal), Nijmegen (The Netherlands), and Chicago!

Hobbies: Cooking and baking, running, hanging out with my family and friends

Looking forward to: Class experiment! Sunshine! 😎

Peeling taro on Rossel Island, PNG

Mount Diablo in Northern CA

River’s edge, Nijmegen, NL

Jenny Bo

Instructional Assistant

Research domains: Cultural psychology, cross-cultural comparison, higher education experience/outcome

Broad research interests: How language and acculturation practices influence international students’ overall education experience

Courses I have TA/Assisted: Intro to CHD, Cultural Psychology, Animal Behavior, Language and Technology, From Data to Manuscript in R; Methods in Child Development Research

Hobbies: Walking my cat, putting puzzles together and making candles!

Looking forward to: Working with everyone and summer ☀️

Ben Morris

PhD Student in Developmental Psychology

Research domains: Developmental psychology, social cognition, interaction

Broad research interests: How do language cues guide children’s social reasoning? And how might social reasoning shape language learning?

Places I’ve lived: Massachusetts (born), Oregon (undergrad), UK (master’s), Chicago (6 years!)

Hobbies: Swimming, reading graphic novels, and learning about cetacean cognition

Looking forward to: Herb Clark! A class replication!

Building Stories, by Chris Ware

History of this course

Based on Herb Clark’s “Psychology of Language” course at Stanford University, which ran for decades

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This theoretical framework has been foundational to interactional psycholinguistics, a thriving research area

Course goals—some questions

1. What is the difference between language and communication?
2. How do we make ourselves understood and show our own understanding?
3. Where do gestures fit into language use?
4. How do we organize who does what, when in our interactions?
5. Why don’t we say what we mean, and why is that not more of a problem?

Course goals—some skills

1. Find real-life examples of phenomena we discuss in class
2. Run an experiment and (together) analyze the results

Course website

1. Reading assignments and submission deadlines
2. Grading scheme
3. Links to the slides (and any recordings)
4. Links to the readings

Mini papers

1. Find your own example: Complex joint activity
2. Run a mini experiment: Schelling game
3. Find your own example: Signal meaning vs. speaker meaning
4. Find your own example: Multimodal conversation

Scientific report

1. Class replication of a classic study
2. Propose an original, but incremental follow-up study

Schober & Clark (1989)

Participation

1. Show up (excused absence is fine—send your TA an email)
2. Ask questions and make comments when present

Office hours

Dr. Casillas: Book online here in Rosenwald 318A or Zoom (please indicate in your online booking)

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Jenny Haizhao Bo: Wednesdays 1–2pm in Rosenwald 318E or Zoom (email, or by appointment at Calendly)

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Ben Morris: Mondays 2–3pm in Kelly 206 or Zoom (email), or by appointment (email)

Abbott and Costello

Who’s on First?

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We’ll be re-examining clips from this routine and other recordings during the course to illustrate some of the concepts we cover, but I would *love* to see and share the examples you come across this quarter!