Psychology Intro | Psycholinguistics | Have No Fear | I Witness | Arachnophobia

Psycholinguistics
By Guo Fang Hu

___At 10.25 am on April the 15th, Minh Nguyen-Hoan, a PhD student in Psycholinguistics at the University of New South Wales (UNSW), is in his office. Today is a typical day for Minh. It will largely consist of collecting and analysing experimental data for his PhD research project. He is currently investigating the English language and ability of bilingual subjects whose early years were spent speaking languages other than English. Excited and a little nervous, I open the door marked 'Experiment Room', where Minh conducts most of his research, to begin my interview.

___Minh initially enrolled in an Engineering program at UNSW. After 7 weeks, he realised that he did not enjoy this field of study. He dropped this course and deferred his studies, spending six months travelling around Europe. When he came back to Australia, he re-enrolled in a Psychology degree at the UNSW. While Minh is describing the events that led him to study Psychology, our interview is interrupted by a knocking at the door. It is 11am, and the participants for today's experiments have arrived.

___Minh leads the first test subject to a small room and sits her in front of a computer. He instructs her to put on the headphones and follow the instructions on the computer screen. Minh closes the door, leaving the girl alone in the room to complete the tasks he has assigned her. He returns to his office and opens the same program on his computer, from which he will monitor the girl’s responses. Minh wrote the software program he is using especially for this particular research project.

___Minh’s experiment consists of a series of simple tasks involving reading, listening, and spelling. The test subject completes a multiple choice non-verbal intelligence test and a brief language background questionnaire. After that, vocabulary tasks and naming tasks begin. The subject responds by providing a meaning for a word or saying aloud words that appear on the computer monitor. There is also a reading comprehension task and a listening comprehension task. The entire test takes approximately one hour, and Minh will spend the rest of the day analysing the data from today's tests.

___At 2 pm, the participants finish the tests, and Minh can take the time to discuss his research in more detail. There are currently three groups of participants involved, English/Cantonese and English/Vietnamese bilinguals who are compared to a monolingual English control group. From the results of this study, Minh hopes to understand the effect of being bilingual on the processing of the English language. At the moment, he is focusing only on subjects of Asian background. However, he hopes to broaden his research to include subjects of other nationalities.

___Although extremely busy with his PhD, Minh does not have difficulty in maintaining a balance between work and social life. He enjoys his career, football, basketball, and soccer in equal measure. He also loves enjoying the sunshine at beaches and having dinner with friends on a weekend.

___It is almost 5pm when I leave. Minh is still sitting on a chair in front of the computer, analysing the psycholinguistic data that he has collected over the course of his day. His research will contribute to the scientific understanding of how people learn and process language.

Psychology Intro | Psycholinguistics | Have No Fear | I Witness | Arachnophobia