As Técnicas experimentais e a pesquisa sobre linguagem

Abstract

Experimental psycholinguistics, through a series of methodological procedures appropriate to the type of phenomenon studied, seeks to highlight hypotheses that explain how linguistic processing is structured in the minds of individuals, considering the various grammatical levels involved in such processing (phonological, morphological, syntactic and semantic). From this perspective, we carried out a bibliographical study about experimental techniques that are currently being used in research on language acquisition, development and processing in Brazilian linguistic studies. Thus, we present five experimental techniques (self-pased reading, priming, preferential looking, eye tracking and electroencephalogram) describing their main characteristics and contributions to the research area in question. To foster our debate, we present examples of research carried out using such techniques. Within the scope of linguistic studies carried out in Brazil, experimental research is still relatively new. However, an increasing number of linguists are adept at this new methodology for investigating language phenomena. Furthermore, we believe that there is still plenty of room for debate that can clarify the use of experimental techniques in language studies.