Chapter 11: Language

Question 1

A system of communication using sounds or symbols that enables us to express our feelings, thoughts, ideas, and experiences. It is hierarchical and rule-based.

Answer 1

Language

Question 2

The _____ means that it consists of a series of small components that can be combined to form larger units. For example, words can be combined to create phrases, which in turn can create sentences, which themselves can become components of a story.

Answer 2

Hierarchical nature of language

Question 3

The _____ means that these components can be arranged in certain ways (“What is my cat saying?” is permissible in English), but not in other ways (“Cat my saying is what?” is not).

Answer 3

Rule-based nature of language

Question 4

The field concerned with the psychological study of language.

Answer 4

Psycholinquistics

Question 5

All the words a person knows (mental dictionary) are his or her _____.

Answer 5

Lexicon

Question 6

The meaning of language is called _____.

Answer 6

Semantics

Question 7

The meaning of words is called _____.

Answer 7

Lexical semantics

Question 8

The frequency with which a word appears in a language.

Answer 8

Word frequency

Question 9

This effect refers to the fact that we respond more rapidly to high-frequency words like “home” than to low-frequency words like “hike.” The reason this is important is because a word’s frequency influences how we process the word.

Answer 9

Word frequency effect

Question 10

The ability to understand words in a sentence is influenced by word frequency. This has been demonstrated using the _____ task (in which the task is to decide as quickly as possible whether strings of letters are words or nonwords) and by measuring eye movements (how long a person fixates on a word; low-frequency words (not often used) result in longer fixation).

Answer 10

Lexical decision task

Question 11

The pronunciation of words is _____, which can make it difficult to perceive words when they are heard out of context.

a) fixed
b) variable

Answer 11

Variable

Question 12

Refers to the fact that a word can have more than one meaning (“My mom is bugging me”).

Answer 12

Lexical ambiguity

Question 13

Tanenhaus used the _____ technique (priming that involves the meaning of words. For example, rose would prime flower, because their meanings are related) to show that:

1. multiple meanings of ambiguous words are accessed immediately after they are heard, and
2. the “correct” meaning for the sentence’s context is identified within 200 msec.

Answer 13

Lexical priming technique

Question 14

The relative frequency of the meanings of ambiguous words is described in terms of _____ dominance. Some words have _____ dominance, some have _____ dominance.

Answer 14

Meaning dominance; biased dominance; balanced dominance

Question 15

Some meanings of words occur more frequently than others.

Answer 15

Meaning dominance

Question 16

When a word has more than one meaning, and one meaning is more likely.

Answer 16

Biased dominance

Question 17

When a word has more than one meaning and all meanings are equally likely.

Answer 17

Balanced dominance

Question 18

_____ is the structure of a sentence. _____ is the process by which words in a sentence are grouped into phrases.

Answer 18

Syntax; parsing

Question 19

A mechanism proposed to explain parsing. Emphasizes how syntactic principles such as late closure (in parsing, when a person encounters a new word, the parser assumes that this word is part of the current phrase) determine how a sentence is parsed.

Answer 19

Garden path model

Question 20

A mechanism proposed to explain parsing. States that semantics, syntax, and other factors operate simultaneously to determine parsing.

Answer 20

Constraint-based approach

Question 21

In experiments on language processing, determining how subjects are processing information in a scene as they respond to specific instructions related to the scene.

Answer 21

Visual world paradigm

Question 22

The process by which readers create information that is not explicitly stated in the text.

Answer 22

Inference

Question 23

a. An inference that connects an object or person in one sentence to an object or person in another sentence.
b. “John and the birdhouse” example, knowing that He in the second sentence refers to John.

Answer 23

Anaphoric inference

Question 24

a. An inference about tools or methods that occurs while reading text or listening to speech.
b. “John pounded nails” example, inferring that he is using a hammer.

Answer 24

Instrumental inference

Question 25

a. An inference that results in the conclusion that the events described in one clause or sentence were caused by events that occurred in a previous clause or sentence.
b. “Sharon took an aspirin. Her headache went away.” Inferring that taking the aspirin made her headache go away.

Answer 25

Causal inference

Question 26

The _____ approach to text comprehension states that people form a mental representation of the situation in a story in terms of the people, objects, locations, and events that are being described in the story.

• This approach to how we understand sentences proposes that as people read or hear a story, they create this model, which simulates the perceptual and motor (movement) characteristics of the objects and actions in a story.

Answer 26

Situation model

Question 27

States that a speaker should construct sentences so that they include two kinds of information:

o information that the listener already knows, and
o information that the listener is hearing for the first time.

Answer 27

• Given-new contract

Question 28

Conversations, which involve give-and-take between two or more people, are made easier by procedures that involve cooperation between participants in a conversation. These procedures include the _____ and _____.

Answer 28

given–new contract; establishing common ground

Question 29

A way of studying how common ground is established is through the _____ task, a task in which two people are exchanging information in a conversation, when this information involves identifying something by naming or describing it.

Answer 29

referential communication task

Question 30

The process of creating common ground results in _____, the synchronization between the people in the conversation. One demonstration of this is provided by syntactic coordination—how people’s grammatical constructions become coordinated.

Answer 30

entrainment

Question 31

One demonstration of entrainment is provided by _____, how people’s grammatical constructions become coordinated.

Answer 31

syntactic coordination

Question 32

In syntactic coordination, this copying of form reflects a phenomenon called _____ in which hearing a statement with a particular syntactic construction increases the chances that a sentence will be produced with the same construction. This phenomenon is important because it can lead people to coordinate the grammatical form of their statements during a conversation.

Answer 32

syntactic priming

Question 33

Part of understanding what the other person means involves _____, the ability to understand what others feel, think, or believe (Corballis, 2017), and also the ability to interpret and react to the person’s gestures, facial expressions, tone of voice, and other things that provide cues to meaning.

Answer 33

theory of mind

Question 34

_____ and _____ are similar in a number of ways. There is a close relation between song and speech, both cause emotion, and both consist of organized sequences.

There are important differences though. They create emotions in different ways, and rules for combining tones and words are different. The most important difference is based on the fact that words have meanings.

Answer 34

Music; language