Trevor Harley
Encyclopedia
Trevor Harley is a psychologist specializing in the psychology of language. He is currently Head of the School of Psychology at the University of Dundee
, Scotland, where he holds the Chair of Cognitive Psychology
. He is author of "The Psychology of Language", currently in its third edition, published by Psychology Press, and "Talking the talk", a book about the psychology of language (psycholinguistics
) aimed at a more general audience.
and grew up near Southampton
. He was educated at Price's Grammar School, Fareham
. His undergraduate degree was in Natural Sciences at St John's College
in the University of Cambridge
. He stayed at Cambridge to study for his PhD under the supervision of Brian Butterworth
. His PhD was on slips of the tongue and what they tell us about speech production, particularly about production is an interactive process.
For his PhD and later research he collected a corpus of several thousand naturally occurring speech errors, and focussed on one word substitutes for another (e.g. saying "pass the pepper" instead of "pass the salt"). He concluded that speech production is an interactive, parallel process, leading him to an interest in connectionist modeling.
After his PhD he took a temporary lectureship at the University of Dundee. He then moved to the University of Warwick
, where he stayed until 1996, then moving to a Senior Lectureship at Dundee. He was awarded a personal chair in 2003, and became Head of Department in the same year, and later Dean in 2006.
In addition to his academic work, he is an author of a novel, Dirty old rascal (ISBN 9781445226224), a fantasy about a cook set in the strange Castle where no misdeed goes unpunished.
He is also interested in the weather, and maintains a site about severe weather events in Britain and the British weather in general available from http://www.trevorharley.com. He also carries out psychological research about the weather, including why are people so interested in the weather? He maintains a weather station at Lundie
near Dundee
.
He wrote a famous article called Promises, Promises in which he argued that cognitive neuropsychologists have increasingly deviated from the original goals and methods of the subject.
University of Dundee
The University of Dundee is a university based in the city and Royal burgh of Dundee on eastern coast of the central Lowlands of Scotland and with a small number of institutions elsewhere....
, Scotland, where he holds the Chair of Cognitive Psychology
Cognitive psychology
Cognitive psychology is a subdiscipline of psychology exploring internal mental processes.It is the study of how people perceive, remember, think, speak, and solve problems.Cognitive psychology differs from previous psychological approaches in two key ways....
. He is author of "The Psychology of Language", currently in its third edition, published by Psychology Press, and "Talking the talk", a book about the psychology of language (psycholinguistics
Psycholinguistics
Psycholinguistics or psychology of language is the study of the psychological and neurobiological factors that enable humans to acquire, use, comprehend and produce language. Initial forays into psycholinguistics were largely philosophical ventures, due mainly to a lack of cohesive data on how the...
) aimed at a more general audience.
Career
Trevor Harley was born in 1958 in LondonLondon
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
and grew up near Southampton
Southampton
Southampton is the largest city in the county of Hampshire on the south coast of England, and is situated south-west of London and north-west of Portsmouth. Southampton is a major port and the closest city to the New Forest...
. He was educated at Price's Grammar School, Fareham
Fareham
The market town of Fareham lies in the south east of Hampshire, England, between the cities of Southampton and Portsmouth, roughly in the centre of the South Hampshire conurbation.It gives its name to the borough comprising the town and the surrounding area...
. His undergraduate degree was in Natural Sciences at St John's College
St John's College, Cambridge
St John's College is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge. The college's alumni include nine Nobel Prize winners, six Prime Ministers, three archbishops, at least two princes, and three Saints....
in the University of Cambridge
University of Cambridge
The University of Cambridge is a public research university located in Cambridge, United Kingdom. It is the second-oldest university in both the United Kingdom and the English-speaking world , and the seventh-oldest globally...
. He stayed at Cambridge to study for his PhD under the supervision of Brian Butterworth
Brian Butterworth
Brian Butterworth is a professor of cognitive neuropsychology in the Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience at University College London. His research has ranged from speech errors and pauses, short-term memory deficits, dyslexia, reading both in alphabetic scripts and logograms, and mathematics and...
. His PhD was on slips of the tongue and what they tell us about speech production, particularly about production is an interactive process.
For his PhD and later research he collected a corpus of several thousand naturally occurring speech errors, and focussed on one word substitutes for another (e.g. saying "pass the pepper" instead of "pass the salt"). He concluded that speech production is an interactive, parallel process, leading him to an interest in connectionist modeling.
After his PhD he took a temporary lectureship at the University of Dundee. He then moved to the University of Warwick
University of Warwick
The University of Warwick is a public research university located in Coventry, United Kingdom...
, where he stayed until 1996, then moving to a Senior Lectureship at Dundee. He was awarded a personal chair in 2003, and became Head of Department in the same year, and later Dean in 2006.
In addition to his academic work, he is an author of a novel, Dirty old rascal (ISBN 9781445226224), a fantasy about a cook set in the strange Castle where no misdeed goes unpunished.
Research Interests
His main research interest is still in how we produce language, although he now studies this in the wider context of how we represent meaning, how language is affected by brain damage, and by normal and pathological ageing (e.g. Alzheimer's and Parkinson's diseases). He also works on how we control our own cognition, and how this ability changes with age. Underlying all his research is a belief that the mind is a parallel, interactive computer, best studied by experimentation and computational modeling.He is also interested in the weather, and maintains a site about severe weather events in Britain and the British weather in general available from http://www.trevorharley.com. He also carries out psychological research about the weather, including why are people so interested in the weather? He maintains a weather station at Lundie
Lundie
Lundie is a parish and small hamlet in Angus, Scotland, northwest of Dundee, situated at the head of the Dighty valley in the Sidlaws, off the A923 Dundee to Coupar Angus road. The name Lundie probably derives from the Gaelic "lunnd" or "lunndann", meaning "little marsh", although "lon dubh"...
near Dundee
Dundee
Dundee is the fourth-largest city in Scotland and the 39th most populous settlement in the United Kingdom. It lies within the eastern central Lowlands on the north bank of the Firth of Tay, which feeds into the North Sea...
.
He wrote a famous article called Promises, Promises in which he argued that cognitive neuropsychologists have increasingly deviated from the original goals and methods of the subject.
Selected publications
- Harley, T.A. (2009). Talking the talk: Language, Psychology and Science. Hove: Psychology press.
- Harley, T. A. (2008). The Psychology of Language: From data to theory (3rd. ed.) Hove: Psychology Press. (Earlier editions 2001, 1995.)
- Harley, T. (2006). Speech errors: Psycholinguistic approach. K. Brown (Ed.), The Encyclopaedia of Language and Linguistics (2nd. Ed., Vol. 11: pp. 739-744), Oxford: Elsevier.
- Harley, T.A., Jessiman, L.J., MacAndrew, S.B.G., & Astell, A.J. (2008). I don't know what I know: Evidence of preserved semantic knowledge but impaired metalinguistic knowledge in adults with probable Alzheimer's disease. Aphasiology, 22, 321-335.
- Harley, T. A., & O'Mara, D. A. (2006). Hyphenation can improve reading in acquired phonological dyslexia. Aphasiology, 20, 744-761.
- Harley, T. A., & Grant, F. (2004). The role of functional and perceptual attributes: Evidence from picture naming in dementia. Brain and Language, 91, 223-234.
- Harley, T. A. (2004). Does cognitive neuropsychology have a future? Lead article in a special issue of Cognitive Neuropsychology, 21, 3-16.
- Astell, A. J. & Harley, T. A. (2002). Accessing semantic knowledge in dementia: Evidence from a word definition task. Brain and Language, 82, 312-326.
- Harley, T. A. (2003). Nice weather for the time of year: The British obsession with the weather. In S. Strauss & B. Orlove (Eds.), Weather, climate, culture (pp. 103-118). Oxford: Berg Publishers.
- Harley, T. A., & MacAndrew, S. B. G. (2001). Constraints upon word substitution speech errors. Journal of Psycholinguistic Research, 30, 395-418.
- Vousden, J., Brown, G. D. A., & Harley, T. A. (2000). Oscillator-based control of the serial ordering of phonology in speech production. Cognitive Psychology, 41, 101-175.
- Harley, T. A., & Bown, H. (1998). What causes tip-of-the-tongue states? British Journal of Psychology, 89, 151-174.
- Astell, A. J., & Harley, T. A. (1998). Naming problems in dementia: Semantic or lexical? Aphasiology, 12, 357-374.
- Harley, T. A. (1993). Phonological activation of semantic competitors during lexical access in speech production. Language and Cognitive Processes, 8, 291-309.
- Harley, T. A. (1990). Environmental contamination of normal speech. Applied Psycholinguistics, 11, 45-72.
- Harley, T. A. (1984). A critique of top-down independent levels models of speech production: Evidence from non-plan-internal speech errors. Cognitive Science, 8, 191-219.
External links
- www.trevorharley.com for home page.
- Academic Homepage at the School of Psychology, University of Dundee, retrieved July 15, 2008
- http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/low/scotland/tayside_and_central/7521264.stm for information on research into memory loss in Alzheimer's disease.