Abstract
Introduction
Psycholinguistics presents a challenge to teaching and learning because of the many abstract models in the field. Language-related games provide a vehicle for students to ground and demonstrate their understanding of these models.
Statement of the problem
Models in psycholinguistics are challenging to teach and learn because they represent mental phenomena that have no physical counterpart.
Literature Review
Research on the teaching of models in other fields demonstrates that students have difficulty with models even when they represent physical phenomena. Little research has examined the teaching of cognitive models such as those in psycholinguistics.
Objective
This article demonstrates how using party games and board games is an active-learning approach that helps students ground their understanding of models in a concrete experience of producing and understanding language. Students learn through analyzing and reflecting on game play.
Teaching Implications
Using games helps make abstract models concrete and is a motivating tool. Written assignments using games clearly demonstrate students’ understanding of models.
Conclusion
Many popular party/board games have a language focus. These can easily be incorporated into existing courses to promote understanding of models in the field.
“Abe Hum Pen Thin Height.” So reads a clue from the party game MadGab. The goal of the game is for someone to read this seeming bit of nonsense aloud in such a way that they can recognize the common English phrase it represents. While the game is designed for having fun with a group, its design also raises interesting questions for psycholinguistics: Does the difficulty lie in segmenting the words? Linking sound and print? Why is it often easier for a listener who cannot see the written words to decipher the phrase than the speaker reading the clue? What other psycholinguistic processes are involved as the speaker attempts to decipher the phrase by reading it aloud?
Many group games such as MadGab involve language. While these games commonly focus on guessing or categorizing words (e.g., Taboo or Scattergories), there are also games that encompass other areas of language from speech production (e.g., Speak Out) to narrative (e.g., Once Upon a Time). When I teach psycholinguistics, students play and analyze games such as MadGab or Taboo as a final project to help them synthesize and apply models of psycholinguistic processing to a real-world situation. This final project, in addition to exams and quizzes, allows students to demonstrate their understanding of how different models in psycholinguistics work. In the next sections, I outline the problem that psycholinguistic models pose for learning, discuss an assignment using games that helps students link these models to game design and observed language behavior, and reflect on the development and implementation of this assignment.
Learning About Models
Models of language processing are at the core of psycholinguistics and present challenges to the teaching and learning of the subject. The models are abstract, conceptual, and are supported or challenged by a large number of experimental findings. For example, Traxler’s (2012) Introduction to Psycholinguistics covers six models of lexical access, from historically important serial models to current parallel distributed network models. As these models are presented, experimental effects such as priming, frequency, and degraded stimulus effects are discussed. Every subfield of psycholinguistics, from speech production to discourse and reading has several models and many experimental effects to be accounted for. This profusion of information can easily overwhelm students as they struggle to comprehend the models and the experimental results that support them.
It is not just the number of models and experimental findings that overwhelm students but the nature of the models themselves that presents a learning problem. Psycholinguistic models are conceptual models (Johnson-Laird, 1983) representing abstract processes that students can neither see nor touch. These models also cannot be easily demonstrated using manipulatives. For example, to understand current models of psycholinguistics such as the Constraint-based models of sentence processing (MacDonald & Seidenberg, 2006), students must understand the architecture of parallel distributed processing (PDP) models (patterns of activation spread over interconnected processing units). The concepts behind these PDP models are difficult to grasp, especially because these models are simulated mathematically and cannot be observed.
Based on evidence from other fields (Clement, 2000; Erikson & Erlandson, 2015; Harrison & Treagust, 2000), the abstract, conceptual nature of psycholinguistic models may make them difficult to teach and learn. Yet, surprisingly little literature has addressed the teaching of cognition and no literature has tackled the specific difficulties involved in teaching models of mental processes, including psycholinguistic models. Instead, research in the teaching of models has been focused on fields such as economics, discourse processing, informatics, medicine, geography, and STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Math) education (Seel, 2017). This paper addresses this gap in the teaching of psychology by presenting a method for helping students connect abstract psycholinguistic models to language behavior observed in games.
While there is no literature on teaching psycholinguistic models, research in fields that rely heavily on models (e.g., mathematics and sciences) notes that both students and teachers experience difficulties with teaching and learning models. These difficulties hold for tangible physical phenomena such as projectile motion and for less tangible phenomena such as the construction of an atom (Clement, 2000; Coll & Treagust, 2003; Gobert & Buckley, 2000; Justi & Gilbert, 2000; Seel, 2017). When working with models, for example, students often omit necessary elements in a model, or they view a model as copies of reality (e.g., Gilbert, 2004; Gobert, 2000). These difficulties occur even when students can use embodied experiences or manipulatives to understand a model.
Models such as those used in psycholinguistics present an additional challenge to students and teachers because they represent cognitive phenomena that have no physical counterpart and do not allow for contextualization in a direct manner. How can educators give students a context from which they can develop a conceptual schema for the plethora of models in the psychology of language?
The lack of research in teaching models for psycholinguistics also means there is a lack of pedagogical resources and strategies for teaching these models. This article addresses that gap by introducing a strategy that I have successfully implemented: Using party games to help students ground models in a concrete experience of producing and understanding language.
In the sections that follow, I describe the reasoning behind using games to help students understand psycholinguistic models, the assignment itself, and how the assignment helps students demonstrate their understanding. I then conclude with a discussion of the benefits and difficulties with this assignment and how this approach relates to larger issues of teaching and learning of models.
Incorporating Party Games Into a Psycholinguistics Class
Background
My inspiration for this assignment came while playing Taboo, a game where one person must describe a target word for their team. The challenge of the game arises because the card also contains five “taboo words” that the speaker is not allowed to use in their description. For example, the target word kangaroo has the taboo words: pouch, hop, animal, Australia, and Captain. My thought, upon seeing the structure of the game, was, “These taboo words are all frequent associates of kangaroo!”
After this insight, I explored the idea that games like this might be used to help students use active learning to ground their understanding of psycholinguistics. I compiled a list of party games that could illustrate cognitive and psycholinguistic phenomena, using resources such as boardgamegeek.com, local thrift stores, and suggestions from friends, students, and colleagues. To be included, the games had to be primarily language-based, intended for adults to play, and interactive. I was not looking to illustrate specific models, instead I focused on games that could provide context where some of the known psycholinguistic effects could be seen. My goal was to find at least one game that could address each of the major areas of language I cover in psycholinguistics: speech perception (e.g., MadGab), speech production (e.g., Speak Out), the mental lexicon (e.g., Password, Taboo) and lexical access (e.g., Scattergories), sentence processing (e.g., Talkin’ Tango), non-literal language processing (Dirty Minds), and narrative (e.g., Gloom). Having found relevant games (Santelmann, 2022), I developed an assignment for students to apply their understanding of psycholinguistics to such games, as described below.
Pedagogical Rationale
The pedagogical rationale for this assignment is based in a general constructivist theory of learning (Merriam & Bierema, 2013; Pritchard, 2017, Chapter 3). Specifically, this game review assignment is grounded in active learning (Bonwell & Eison, 1991) as students actively construct knowledge when they play language-related games, reflect on their experience through the lens of psycholinguistics, and apply models to the lived gameplay experience. As such, it is also a form of game-based learning, which is defined as using games to help learners achieve specific learning outcomes (Plass et al., 2015, 2020). While most game-based learning is focused on using games to help students learn course content, in this activity existing games are used as a vehicle for helping students apply models of psycholinguistics. The assignment is not gamification, or “the use of game design elements in non-game contexts” (Deterding et al., 2011, p. 10) as the games themselves are the object of study, not the organizing schema for instruction.
Game Review Assignment
The game review assignment I developed has students explore how psycholinguistic models can apply to a specific game (see Santelmann, 2022 for details). The assignment can be incorporated as a paper for a psycholinguistics class or used as an in-class activity. I use game reviews for final papers. The game review requires little in-class time and can be used for both large and small classes.
The Games
For the paper, students choose a game that uses language or semantic concepts in its design. I provide a list of possible games for students to review (Santelmann, 2022) with the name of the game and the area of language, or students can review other games they know after discussing them with me. Before writing the paper, students play the game and take notes on language production and thought processes while playing the game. Students can use games they own, games from game shops, public libraries, or my personal library of games.
Scaffolding the Assignment
The assignment is scaffolded for students in several ways (Walqui, 2006; Wood et al., 1976). Students submit a brief proposal for the final paper about two-thirds of the way through the term where they describe the game they have chosen, the area of psycholinguistics this game relates to, and the models they plan to apply. I provide feedback and suggestions for models and effects to explore.
Additionally, I have found that students are more successful with the paper if the review process is modeled in class (Bandura, 1986; Loughran & Berry, 2005). The in-class demonstration takes place with 4–6 students playing a game in a fish-bowl format in the center of the room. The remaining students watch from the outside and take notes. After the gameplay, the players describe their experience and answer questions from the observers. We then discuss, as a class, the steps the players might go through to produce or understand language during the game and how psycholinguistic models might apply. This demonstration works best shortly after models of the mental lexicon are covered, usually week four of the 10-week term. This timing works well because word games are common and there are several models covered for both semantic and lexical access. Having several models to apply helps students practice relating the parts of a model to the context.
The Assignment
In the paper, students describe the game, how it is played, and what area(s) of psycholinguistics apply to how the game works (e.g., semantic access, discourse processing). They then describe what is known about language processing in this area from experimental studies and two major models or theories of language processing that account for these experimental findings. In the next section, they bring together the description of the game and the description of the models by discussing how the models can or cannot account for the language processes of the game. Students next examine how the game exploits facets of language processing or known experimental effects to make it difficult or fun. They conclude by discussing how the game could be improved or altered by incorporating additional information or insights from psycholinguistics. The papers run between seven and eight pages.
Students’ Understanding of Models From the Game Review Assignment
The students’ application of psycholinguistic concepts to the game allows them to demonstrate their understanding of models by using concrete examples. For example, in the following excerpt from a student paper about the game Anomia, the student discussed speech errors that occur during gameplay and concluded that interactive models accounted for the gameplay results they had seen better than serial models: Players engaged in Anomia create blends often at the word and syllabic level. For instance, in response to the card Super Hero, a player might make a word-level error by saying “Captain Man,” a blend of Captain America and Iron Man. An example of a syllabic-level blend might be responding to the card Male Tennis Player by saying “Fedal,” a combination of Fetterer and Nadal. Because of Cascading Information in Dell’s model, it is possible to have two concepts that go on to receive phonetic encoding and get merged together into a blend. The Principle of Cascading Information in Dell’s model gives it more explanatory power for a frequent error made in the game of Anomia.
This student demonstrated a clear understanding of how a specific model could account for blends and the features of the model that made such an explanation possible.
Students’ papers address not only models but also the experimental effects that provide support for models. For example, with the game Taboo, one student discussed how the design of the game exploits the difference between semantic and associative priming, e.g., “…the majority of taboo words are words that co-occur, as opposed to words with shared [semantic] nodes. For example, MOUSE has only one taboo word with the shared meaning – “rodent”. The rest are associative – “computer”, “quiet”, “pad”, and “Mickey”.” The difference between semantic and associative priming is not part of a model, but an effect that models need to account for. Students who understand the relationship between the experimental effects and models can use this understanding to evaluate the games.
An additional benefit of viewing the models through the lens of a game is that students can see gaps which may not be obvious if they had only read about the models and experimental results. For instance, many students note that the models do not account for the added pressure of producing or processing language within a time limit. Moreover, their understanding of gaps goes beyond the constraints of time built into most games. For example, one student’s description of the play of an alternate version of Bananagrams, noted, “Something both models do not predict is the outcome of invented words when faced with a group of letters that cannot produce an English word.” Another student’s description of a family version of Balderdash, noted, In one particular round where my friend was the judge, he tasked us to compose a movie plot based off of the following movie title: Hi, mom! With no context, we were tasked with coming up with a plausible movie plot. Unfortunately, both discourse analysis models do not account for the invention of a situation model based off of only a few words with little or no given context.
In sum, this assignment gives students an opportunity to apply what they understand about abstract models in psycholinguistics to a concrete situation. In this application, students demonstrate their understanding in a novel context. A further measure of the success of this assignment is that I receive fewer requests for extensions than for more traditional exams and papers. Finally, playing games for a course motivates students and the resulting papers are interesting and fun to read.
Discussion
Benefits of Using Games
Having students analyze games and the language behavior exhibited during gameplay incorporates active learning which can lead to greater understanding (Chi, 2009; Freeman et al., 2014; Prince, 2004), though not all studies have found quantifiable benefits with active learning (Freeman et al., 2014). While some literature on the teaching of psychology also reports positive effects for active learning, these studies have been conducted with introductory psychology (Bridges et al., 2012; Karafantis & LaPadula, 2011) or statistics and laboratory research (Dunn, 2010; McIntyre, 2020). Only one article has examined active learning for psycholinguistics (Carroll, 2004), which discusses how using online experiments promoted learning and increased enthusiasm for the subject. The present article thus adds to the literature on active learning in cognitive psychology and expands it to an understudied area, psycholinguistics.
While this assignment has been positively received by my students and may help students demonstrate their understanding of psycholinguistic models, more research is needed on the teaching of psycholinguistics and cognitive psychology. There is little data in this area that can help develop effective techniques for teaching the abstract, complex models in this field.
Connections to Research on Learning Models
While there is no current research on teaching and learning about models in psycholinguistics, the assignment described in this paper coheres with the advice in Greca and Moreira (2000) where they argue that students should be explicitly taught the procedures for constructing mental models to help them better understand conceptual models. By playing a game in class, jointly articulating the steps that players must go through to produce language, and then linking these steps to a model from psycholinguistics, students socially construct the procedures for building mental models and apply concepts from psycholinguistics to them (Bandura, 1986; Vygostsky, 1978). The follow-up independent assignment also involves active learning as learners create their own understanding of psycholinguistic models by using multiple resources (lectures, class readings, the games) and applying this understanding to their experience of gameplay. Such hands-on, grounded experience has been argued to increase engagement with and understanding of abstract models (Hayes & Kraemer, 2017; Parrill, 2020).
Concluding Reflections
This assignment has the potential to increase comprehension for students because it involves active learning with a concrete grounded experience that students use to develop their own understanding of psycholinguistic models. This single paper assignment can easily be incorporated into a course in psycholinguistics, either as one assignment or as a final paper. It provides a way to include elements of solid pedagogical practice and ground students’ understanding of psycholinguistic models.
When I first used this assignment, students wrote a brief proposal and described the game they would be using so I could give them feedback, but I did not demonstrate the process in class. Most students were able to make the connection between the game play and the psycholinguistic models without much scaffolding, but their papers provided only surface connections. Adding the classroom play and discussion of how the models apply to the game design and the language used during the game added needed scaffolding for the students. After this demonstration, the process became clearer for students and helped many of them not only apply the models but begin to evaluate whether the models could account for the data they saw.
Having students use a concrete gameplay experience to explore the models does have some drawbacks, however. Many of the experimental effects that the models need to account for are not easily seen in the gameplay. Some students can extrapolate from the experimental data they have read about and explore how these effects might appear in the game. Others remain bounded by their experiences and do not consider whether laboratory findings might be applicable to this experience.
In my teaching, I have also expanded the connection between psycholinguistics and games to a quarter-long seminar. In this version, students explored both psycholinguistics and game design principles. Their work involved two major types of assignments: papers applying information from psycholinguistic models to language-related games and game reviews that examined games from both a psycholinguistics and a game design perspective. This seminar, in turn, helped me develop and refine the psycholinguistics assignment described here. Before teaching the seminar, I had not demonstrated the gameplay in class. For the seminar, I developed the fish-bowl technique of gameplay and the cooperative discussion of how a psycholinguistic model could apply to the games. The seminar also encouraged extension of psycholinguistic knowledge to new contexts as one option for the final paper was for students to use the information that they had learned to design their own game.
In conclusion, language-based party games can be a vehicle for students to first experience and then conceptualize the steps necessary for language processing. Majuri et al. (2018) note that the use of existing games in higher educational contexts is uncommon. This is not surprising given that existing games are rarely designed for specific subjects or learning targets. However, board games and party games that use language as a fundamental design element are quite common and can be used to produce language data. Furthermore, the games themselves can demonstrate the steps involved in psycholinguistic processing and be analyzed for how they exploit psycholinguistic processes in their design. The use of existing games could be extended to other areas of psychology as well to elicit behavior for students to analyze and reflect on. For example, cooperative games such as Pandemic or Betrayal at the House on the Hill could demonstrate both linguistic and social behaviors related to cooperation. Games for children could be used to illustrate developmental assumptions or explore children’s cognitive behavior during game play. Games that require players to use cognitive or social processes are an underutilized resource in the classroom, yet they can form the basis for engaging assignments and activities that help students apply what they have learned.
Footnotes
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
