In this course, we want to review and discuss relevant literature for a currently ongoing research project within our new SFB. The goal of the project is to design the natural language generation component for a spoken dialog system which can adapt to the user (young versus older adults) and the situation (using the system while being able to fully concentrate on it versus using it while driving a car at the same time). We here want to focus on the aging aspect.

Aging affects the brain's cognitive functioning, and therefore also affects older human's ability to process language. From the perspective of dialog system design, it is important to understand which aspects of language processing are affected to what extent. From a perspective of psycholinguistics, a better understanding of the effects of aging on language comprehension can inform us regarding general language cognition, and from the perspective of psychology, the effect of aging on language comprehension is particularly interesting as language is one of the very high-level cognitive functions, which nevertheless remain relatively well-preserved during aging.

The course is open to students with background in linguistics as well as students with background in psychology. The intention is for students to profit from the diversity of backgrounds and knowledge, through active discussion following the paper presentations.

We will form groups of 2-3 students, ideally mixing students with background in linguistics and students who have a background in psychology. Each of the small groups will pick a topic or question, that they will try to answer by doing a literature search and giving a presentation (20-25 min each presenter) to the rest of the group. The groups can decide themselves on the focus of the presentation, based on the original research question and their interests. Each group will choose one or two papers that the rest of the course can read to prepare for their presentation. During the first few weeks we will hold regular meetings in the form of lectures, to lay the foundations that will help you understand the papers, and bring students with different backgrounds up to a common level of understanding.
MSc students can choose between a 4CP and 7CP version of the course. For the 7CP version, students additionally need to write a term paper. BSc students have to write the term paper.