10 language

Question 1

What is the cohort model of spoken word recognition?

Answer 1

Initial Cohort Activation - Upon hearing the beginning of a word, a cohort of possible words is activated.

Narrowing Down - As more phonemic information becomes available, the cohort is progressively narrowed down until only one word remains.

Context Interaction - Both bottom-up phonemic information and top-down contextual cues are used to identify words.

Word Identification - Early parts of a word are more critical for identification than the later parts.

Question 2

What is the TRACE model of spoken word recognition?

Answer 2

Connectionist Approach - Uses a network of nodes representing features, phonemes, and words.

Bidirectional Influence -Nodes are interconnected with bidirectional,
excitatory links between different levels and inhibitory links within the same level.

Sequential Processing - Words are recognized through the interaction of top-down (contextual) and bottom-up (phonemic) processing.

Dynamic Interaction -Both levels of information influence each other
continuously throughout the recognition process.

Contextual Influence - High-level word information can alter perception of phonemes, supporting the role of top-down processes in shaping word recognition

Question 3

What is linguistic relativity?

Answer 3

Linguistic relativity is the idea that different languages can influence different ways of thinking.

Question 4

What are phonemes and morphenes?

Answer 4

Phonemes are the smallest units of sound in a language, and morphemes are the smallest units of meaning.

Question 5

What is Chomsky´s view of language?

Answer 5

Chomsky differentiates between
competence (knowledge of grammatical rules) and performance (actual language use).

Question 6

What is parsing?

Answer 6

The process of analyzing the grammatical structure of a sentence to understand its meaning.

Involves: Breaking down a sentence into its constituent parts (e.g., phrases, clauses).

Purpose: Helps determine how words in a sentence relate to each other, forming a coherent structure.

Example: Identifying the subject, verb, and object in “The cat (subject) sat (verb) on the mat (object).”

Parsing Strategies:
- Minimal Attachment: Prefer the simplest structure with the fewest branches.
- Late Closure: New words are assumed to belong to the current phrase or clause.
- Significance: Essential for sentence comprehension and resolving ambiguities in language.

Question 7

What is the concept of transformational grammar?

Answer 7

theory of grammar that was developed by linguist Noam Chomsky in the 1950s.

Deep Structure vs. Surface Structure:
- Deep Structure: Represents the core, underlying syntactic structure of a sentence, which holds the essential meaning.
- Surface Structure: The outward form of a sentence, which can vary in different expressions but still carry the same underlying meaning.

Transformations:
Rules that convert the deep structure into the surface structure. These transformations can include processes like moving elements (e.g., forming questions), adding elements (e.g., auxiliary verbs), or changing the order of words.
The deep structure “The man is eating the cake” can be transformed into the question “Is the man eating the cake?”

Generative Grammar:
- The theory supports the idea that a finite set of rules (transformations) can generate an infinite number of sentences in a language.
- This explains how humans can understand and produce sentences they have never heard before.

Universal Grammar:
all human languages share a common underlying structure (universal grammar), which is part of our innate biological endowment

Question 8

What is pragmatics?

Answer 8

Study of language use and comprehension, focusing on
intended rather than literal meanings and involving context-based inferences.

meaning minus semantics

dictionary fails to tell u about intended meaning → contextual
information

Question 9

How do figurative and literal speech processing differ in their brain activation?

Answer 9

involve essentially the same regions

inferior frontal gyrus (BA45/36/47/13) especially in left hemisphere were more activated during figurative

BA45 -> cognitive control to resolve semantic conflicts

Question 10

What are metaphors?

Answer 10

Phrases with separate literal and metaphorical meanings; understanding requires identifying the metaphorical meaning over the literal one (e.g., “Envy is rust”).

Question 11

What is the predication model of metaphor comprehension?

Answer 11

Two components:

Latent Semantic Analysis - Word meanings are based on their
relationships with other words; metaphor comprehension is easier
when both nouns in the metaphor have strong semantic links.

Construction-Integration - Selects relevant features of the predicate
(e.g., “sharks” in “Lawyers are sharks”) for the argument (e.g.,
“lawyers”) and inhibits irrelevant features (e.g., “have fins”).

Question 12

What can be said about metaphor comprehension?

Answer 12

non-reversibility

irrelevant literal meanings make it harder to understand the metaphor

irrelevant information is processed more slowly -> inhibition of metaphor-irrelevant information

similarity to other words makes it harder to understand the metaphor

Question 13

What is the Broca´s area responsible for?

Answer 13

Broca’s area is responsible for the generation of articulate speech and is linked to expressive aphasia when damaged.

gets info from Wernicke´s Area

Third frontal convolution, anterior to the face area of the motor cortex, above the Sylvian fissure.

Components
Made up of pars triangularis Brodmann area 45 and
pars opercularis Brodmann area 44.

Question 14

What is the Wernicke´s Area responsible for?

Answer 14

superior temporal gyrus
Posterior third of the upper temporal convolution of the left
hemisphere of the brain, close to the auditory cortex.

speech processing center

gets input from auditory and visual cortex

Question 15

What is the arcuate fasciculus?

Answer 15

connects W and B

bundle of nerve fibres

facilitates the coordination between understanding language (comprehension) and producing language (speech).

link the comprehension of language with the ability to articulate responses.

Question 16

What happens in Wernicke´s aphasia?

Answer 16

In Wernicke’s aphasia, patients have difficulty understanding language, and their speech is fluent but lacks meaningful content.

Question 17

What does the Dual Stream Model of language processing propose?

Answer 17

The Dual Stream Model suggests language is processed through two pathways: the dorsal stream for speech production and the ventral stream for speech comprehension.

Question 18

What does the dorsal stream of language processing do?

Answer 18

SPEECH

Maps auditory sensory representations onto articulatory motor representations.

ear
spectrotemporal analysis
phonological network
sensorimotor interface
articulatory networks

Information moves to the articulatory network 1 (motor syllable programs) in the left posterior inferior temporal gyrus and Brodmannʼs area 44 (pIFG-BA44).
Articulatory network 2 (motor phoneme programs) is located in the left M1-vBA6.

Question 19

what does the ventral stream of language processing do?

Answer 19

UNDERSTANDING

Sound waves enter the ear and are transduced into an unanalyzed
auditory object.

Information is relayed to the auditory cortex in the dorsal superior temporal gyrus (dSTG) and divided into constituent phones.

Phones are recognized into phonetic words in the superior temporal sulcus (STS).

Auditory words are converted into semantic words in the posterior
middle temporal gyrus and posterior inferior temporal sulcus
(p(MTG+ITS)).

Words are converted into a semantic phrase in the anterior middle temporal lobe and then into a syntactic noun phrase in the anterior inferior temporal gyrus.

Question 20

What is Dell´s (1986) spreading activation theory?

Answer 20

Parallel and Interactive Processing: Different levels of language (meaning, grammar, sounds) work simultaneously and influence each other.

Spreading Activation: Activation spreads from one concept or word to related ones, influencing word and sound selection.

Cascade Processing: Later stages of processing (like sound selection) can start before earlier stages (like word selection) are complete.

Speech Errors:

Mixed Errors: Errors that are both meaning- and sound-related.
Lexical Bias Effect: Errors often result in real words rather than non-words.
Anticipatory Errors: Sounds or words from later in a sentence appear too early.
Exchange Errors: Two elements are swapped in a sentence.
Interactive Nature: Activation can flow both ways, from meaning to sounds and vice versa, leading to speech errors.

Question 21

What kind of speech errors exist?

Answer 21

Spoonerisms - Initial letters of two words are switched (e.g., “You have
hissed all my mystery lectures”).

Freudian Slips - Errors revealing true desires; more spoonerisms when male participants were inflamed by an attractive female experimenter (Motley, 1980).

Semantic Substitution Errors - Correct word replaced by one with similar meaning (e.g., “Where is my tennis bat?” instead of “tennis racquet”).

Morpheme-Exchange Errors - Inflections attached to the wrong word (e.g., “He has already trunked two packs”).

Subject-Verb Agreement Errors - Singular verbs used with plural
subjects or vice versa (e.g., “The government have made a mess of
things”).

Question 22

What is perceptual loop theory (Levelt, 1983)?

Answer 22

Speakers detect errors by monitoring their utterances at
two levels: inner speech and overt speech.

before words are spoken, after words are spoken out loud

limited use of auditory feedback, loud noise doesn’t affect speech error detection

Question 23

What is conflict based monitoring theory? (Nozari et al., 2011)

Answer 23

Error detection depends on information from the speech
production system, involving conflict monitoring and cognitive control mechanisms.

Aphasia patients’ error detection related to their speech-production
ability rather than comprehension.

Rapid error detection in radio callers Blackmer & Mitton, 1991 and speakers Nooteboom & Quene, 2017.

Brain regions associated with error detection align more with this
theory Gauvin et al., 2016.

Question 24

What is the recent evidence regarding Dells spreading activation theory?

Answer 24

Studies have consistently shown that speech errors, such as the mixed-error effect (where errors are semantically and phonemically related to the intended word), align with the theoryʼs predictions of interactive processing

tongue twisters -> ancitipatory and exchange errors occur due to parallel activation of words
-> more frequently the more sentences are activated

Question 25

What are strengths of SAT?

Answer 25

Explains mixed-error and lexical bias effects.

Accounts for various speech errors.

Links between speech production and other cognitive activities.

Flexibility allows for the production of novel sentences.

Improved by incorporating error monitoring and editing mechanisms.

Question 26

What are limitations of SAT?

Answer 26

De-emphasizes message construction and audience design.

Does not predict time taken to produce correct and incorrect words.

Interactive processes less apparent in error-free speech.

Insufficient emphasis on factors influencing interactive processes.

Question 27

What is the WEAVER++ model of speech production?

Answer 27

Processing - Serial processing; one process at a time.
Feedforward System - Processing from meaning to sound in a strictly
forward direction.

supporting findings:

reaction time data - feedforward process from conceptualisation to articulation

syllable frequency effect - common syllables are produced more quickly than rare ones

Question 28

What is Goldricks compromise theory of speech production?

Answer 28

Suggests limited interaction to balance error avoidance and novel sentence production.

It acknowledges that while some feedback and interaction occur, the system also maintains a certain level of control to ensure accurate speech production.