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PSYC 309 > Chapter 11: Language > Flashcards

Chapter 11: Language Flashcards

1
Q

Language

A

a system of communication using sounds or symbols that enable us to express our feelings, thoughts, ideas, and experiences

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2
Q

Unique property of human language that makes it exclusive

A

creativity to create new and unique sentences due to its hierarchical and rule-based nature, unlike animals

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3
Q

Hierarchical nature of language

A

it consists of a series of small components that can be combined to form larger units

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4
Q

Basic components of language

A

phonemes, morphemes, prosody

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5
Q

Phonemes

A

smallest possible sound component

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6
Q

Morphemes

A

smallest possible meaningful component

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7
Q

Prosody

A

the pattern of intonation and rhythm in spoken language

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8
Q

Rule-based nature of language

A

components are arranged in certain ways and follow syntactic rules (grammatical and phonological)

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9
Q

Psycholinguistics

A

field concerned with the psychological study of how humans acquire and process language

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10
Q

4 major concerns of psycholinguistics

A

comprehension, representation in the mind, speech production, acquisition

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11
Q

Why are birds and chimpanzees considered to have no language?

A

chimpanzees can memorize a few hundred symbols but cannot perform syntax; birds vocalize more than humans but meaning is limited to specific calls

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12
Q

Lexicon

A

all of the words we know; “mental dictionary”

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13
Q

Semantics

A

the meaning of language

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14
Q

Lexical semantics

A

the meaning of words

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15
Q

Word frequency

A

the frequency with which a word appears in a language

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16
Q

Word frequency effect

A

we respond more rapidly to high-frequency words like home than low-frequency words like hike; our past experience with words influences our ability to access their meaning

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17
Q

Lexical decision task

A

decide as quickly as possible whether a string of words are words or nonwords

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18
Q

Speech segmentation

A

perception of individual words even though there are often no pauses between them

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19
Q

4 factors affecting our ability to hear and understand spoken words

A

(1) how frequently we have encountered a word, (2) the context in which words appear, (3) our knowledge of statistical regularities of language, (4) our knowledge of word meanings

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20
Q

Lexical ambiguity

A

words often have more than one meaning

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21
Q

Hypoglossal nerve

A

controls the tongue and exits the skull through the hypoglossal canal, which is the same size for pre-linguistic and modern humans

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22
Q

What is the earliest evidence of symbolic language?

A

ochre plaque made in South Africa ~75000 years ago; also earliest evidence of trade and flint mining

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23
Q

Tattersall’s theory on how humans acquired symbolic representation

A

acquired suddenly as a byproduct of another process or epiphenomenon (e.g. fine motor control, musical ability) rather than through incremental development

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24
Q

Support for musilanguage hypothesis

A

(1) syntax of music is simpler/it has less rules, (2) modern language itself is musical, has prosody and rhythm, (3) newborn infants respond to baby talk or prosody before syntax, prefer rhythm and tone of mother’s language

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25
Q

Gesture communication (McNeil)

A

suggests gesture is more primary than speaking as restricting hand movements reduced fluency of speech (more pauses)

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26
Q

Origin of language vs music

A

capacity for music predates language in historical/phylogenetic terms and developmental/ontogenetic terms; language began to be used 40-80k years ago but early evolution is still unknown

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27
Q

Left vs right hemisphere functions in language

A

left is involved with labels, abstraction, categories while right is involved with ambiguity, context, metaphor, humor; left talks over the meaning known by the right

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28
Q

Lexical priming

A

seeing a word makes it easier to respond to another word with a similar meaning that is presented after

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29
Q

Tanenhaus et al. findings on lexical priming

A

people briefly access all meanings of ambiguous words before context clarifies meaning; priming is suppressed after 200 ms delay

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30
Q

Meaning dominance

A

relative frequency of the meanings of ambiguous words

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31
Q

Biased dominance

A

one meaning of an ambiguous word occurs more than others

32
Q

Balanced dominance

A

meanings of an ambiguous word are equally likely and compete for activation, resulting in longer fixation

33
Q

Effect of prior context on a dominant meaning vs nondominant meaning

A

prior context facilitates activation of dominant meaning (less fixation and read quickly) but prolongs activation of nondominant meaning

34
Q

How is lexical ambiguity resolved?

A

by context and meaning dominance

35
Q

Syntax

A

the structure of a sentence; how words in a sentence relate to one another

36
Q

Parsing

A

process of creating meaning by grouping of words into phrases and determining deep structure from surface structure

37
Q

Garden path sentences

A

sentences that begin appearing to mean one thing but then end up meaning something else; illustrates temporary ambiguity before parsing is corrected

38
Q

Surface structure vs deep structure of a sentence

A

the words we see and the underlying syntactic structure, linked by the application of transformation rules

39
Q

Garden path model of parsing (Frazier)

A

as people read a sentence, their grouping of words into phrases is governed by a number of processing mechanisms called heuristics; syntactic rules are the ONLY thing influencing parsing

40
Q

Heuristic

A

a rule that can be applied rapidly to make a decision; shortcut decision-making

41
Q

What are the heuristics involved in parsing?

A

decisions about the structure of a sentence as it unfolds in time

42
Q

Positive and negative of using heuristics

A

they are fast (200 words per minute) but can result in the wrong decision

43
Q

Principle of late closure

A

when a person encounters a new word, a person’s parsing mechanism assumes it is part of the current phrase

44
Q

Constraint-based approach to parsing

A

information other than syntax participates in processing as a person reads or hears a sentence

45
Q

What are the constraints on parsing (apart from syntax)?

A

word meaning, story context, scene context

46
Q

Visual world paradigm (Tanenhaus et al.)

A

determining how non-linguistic information in a scene can influence how a sentence is processed

47
Q

Subject-relative construction

A

both the main clause (“the senator shouted”) and the embedded clause (“who spotted the reporter”) have the same subject

48
Q

Object-relative construction

A

the subject in the main clause (“the senator shouted”) becomes the object of the embedded clause (“who the reporter spotted)

49
Q

Why does object-relative construction result in slower processing?

A

it demands more of the reader’s memory and has more complex construction (pronoun “who” isn’t followed by a verb)

50
Q

Inferences

A

determining what the text means by using our knowledge to go beyond information provided by the text

51
Q

Situation model

A

imagined simulation of the perceptual and motor characteristics of objects and actions in a story; images are created while reading

52
Q

What is an important property of any narrative?

A

coherence, the representation of text in a person’s mind that creates clear relations between parts of the text and the main topic of the story

53
Q

Anaphoric inference

A

inferring that pronouns in following sentences refer to the same subject in the first sentence

54
Q

Instrument inference

A

inferring what objects are used by subjects in a sentence through our knowledge of their functions

55
Q

Causal inference

A

inferring that events described in one clause or sentence were caused by events that occurred in a previous sentence

56
Q

N400 wave

A

an ERP component; a negative response in the central parietal lobe that occurs 400 ms after a word is heard or read; gets larger as word becomes more unrelated

57
Q

Given-new contract

A

a speaker should construct sentences to include: (1) given information or information the listener knows and (2) new information

58
Q

Common ground

A

the mental knowledge and beliefs shared among conversational parties; as a conversation continues, the amount of common ground increases

59
Q

Referential communication task

A

two people (the director and the matcher) are exchanging information involving references in a conversation

60
Q

Reference

A

identifying something by naming or describing it

61
Q

Entertainment

A

process of creating common ground or synchronization between two partners through naming objects, similar gestures, speaking rate, body positions, pronunciation

62
Q

Syntactic coordination

A

conversational partners can end up coordinating their grammatical constructions

63
Q

Syntactic priming

A

hearing a statement with a particular syntactic construction increases the chances that a sentence will be produced with the same construction

64
Q

Advantage of syntactic coordination

A

makes speaking easier as it frees up resources needed to deal with both understanding and producing messages

65
Q

Theory of mind

A

the ability to understand what others feel, think, or believe, to interpret and react to others’ gestures, facial expressions, tone of voice, etc.

66
Q

Turn taking

A

anticipating when it is appropriate to enter the conversation

67
Q

Similarity between music and language

A

they both combine elements with syntax to create structured sequences; tones for music and words for language

68
Q

Differences between music and language

A

(1) notes are combined based on sound while words are combined based on meaning, (2) music creates emotion through meaningless sounds while language creates emotion through meaningful words

69
Q

Return to the tonic

A

a songs that begins with the tonic (the note associated with a composition’s key) will end on the tonic

70
Q

P600 wave

A

an ERP component; a positive response that occurs 600 ms after the onset of a word; gets larger in response to violations of syntax (musical or language)

71
Q

Congenital amusia

A

patients who are born with problems in music perception, have difficulty discriminating between melodies and recognizing common tunes but still have normal language abilities

72
Q

Phonotactics

A

rules on phoneme combination

73
Q

DeCasper and Fifer findings on newborn babies’ suckling behavior

A

babies could learn to produce different voices based on their interburst interval (IBI) and discriminate among them; they preferred their mother’s voice

74
Q

DeCasper and Spence findings on babies during pregnancy

A

babies attend and listen to stories even before birth because, after birth, they preferred the story that was read by their mother

75
Q

Babies ability for phonotactic contrast

A

in their first few months, infants can discriminate sounds that are not in their native language and dialects within the same language

76
Q

Advantages of bilingualism

A

associated with the maintenance of broad phonotactic discrimination, improved memory and executive attention control

PSYC 309 (13 decks)

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