The psychological validity of collocation : evidence from event-related brain potentials
Previous studies have used psycholinguistic techniques such as eye-tracking and selfpaced reading in order to investigate the psychological validity of corpus-derived collocations (e.g. Conklin & Schmitt 2008; McDonald & Shillcock 2003a; 2003b; Underwood et al. 2004; Huang et al. 2012). The results of these studies reveal that sequences of words which form collocations are read more quickly and receive fewer fixations than sequences of words which do not form collocations. However, behavioural data and eye-tracking data can only ever provide an indirect measure of what is going on in the brain during language processing. In this thesis, I therefore investigate the psychological validity of corpus-derived collocations using a direct measure of neural activity, namely electroencephalography (EEG). More specifically, I use the event-related potential (ERP) technique of analysing brainwave data. Very few ERP studies focus on collocation, and those that do focus on collocation conceptualize and operationalize the notion differently from how it is conceptualized and operationalized in this thesis, or indeed in most corpus linguistics work. For example, although Molinaro and Carreiras (2010:179-180) use corpus-derived
Hughes, Jennifer Joy
The psychological validity of collocation : evidence from event-related brain potentials. Previous studies have used psycholinguistic techniques such as eye-tracking and selfpaced reading in order to investigate the psychological validity of corpus-derived collocations (e.g. Conklin & Schmitt 2008; McDonald & Shillcock 2003a; 2003b; Underwood et al. 2004; Huang et al. 2012). The results of these studies reveal that sequences of words which form collocations are read more quickly and receive fewer fixations than sequences of words which do not form collocations. However, behavioural data and eye-tracking data can only ever provide an indirect measure of what is going on in the brain during language processing. In this thesis, I therefore investigate the psychological validity of corpus-derived collocations using a direct measure of neural activity, namely electroencephalography (EEG). More specifically, I use the event-related potential (ERP) technique of analysing brainwave data. Very few ERP studies focus on collocation, and those that do focus on collocation conceptualize and operationalize the notion differently from how it is conceptualized and operationalized in this thesis, or indeed in most corpus linguistics work. For example, although Molinaro and Carreiras (2010:179-180) use corpus-derived
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