Chapter 11-Language Pt. 1

Question 1

What is language?

Answer 1

System of communication using sounds or symbols

Express feelings, thoughts, ideas, and experiences

Question 2

Creativity of human language

Answer 2

Language makes it possible to create new and unique sentences

Question 3

Hierarchical system

Answer 3

Components that can be combined to form larger units

Letter to word to sentence to text

Question 4

Language is governed by

Answer 4

Rules

Question 5

The universality of language

Answer 5

• deaf children invent sign language
• humans develop a language and learn to follow its complex rules
• language is universal across cultures
• language development is similar across cultures
• languages are “unique but the same”
  
  • different words, sounds, and rules
  • all have nouns, verbs, questions, past/present tense

Question 6

B.F Skinner

Answer 6

• 1957
• Behaviourist
• book called Verbal Behaviour
• language learned through reinforcement

Question 7

Noam Chomsky

Answer 7

• book called Syntactic Structures
• human language coded in the genes
• underlying basis of all language is similar
• children produce sentences they have never heard and that have never been reinforced

Question 8

What led to the development of psycholinguistics

Answer 8

Noam Chomsky’s 1959 theory

Question 9

Psycholinguistics

Answer 9

-psychological process by which humans acquire and process language.

1. Comprehension: understand spoken and written language
2. Speech production: psychological processes of speech production
3. Representation
4. Acquisition: learning language including a second language

Question 10

Lexicon

Answer 10

All words a person understands

The components of words include Phonemes and Morphemes

Question 11

Phoneme

Answer 11

-the shortest segment of speech that, if changed, changes the meaning of the word

Bit contains the phonemes /b/ /I/ /t/
Can change to /p/ /I/ /t/

Different from letters: one letter can have two phonemes (e.g. “e” in we and wet)

Question 12

Morphemes

Answer 12

Smallest unit of language that has meaning or grammatical function

“Table” contains a single morpheme

“Bedroom” contains two

Endings such as “s” and “ed” are morphemes

Question 13

Word Superiority Effect

Answer 13

People perceive a letter better when the letter is in a word than when the letter is presented alone or in a non-word

Question 14

Coglab: Word Superiority Effect Experiment

Answer 14

An isolated letter like K or a word like WORK is shown for 40 ms and then immediately replaced by a mask of X’s or O’s

The observer has to choose between whether a D or K was presented at that location

Key component: the choices at the end of WOR could create a valid word (control)

Question 15

Coglab: Word Superiority Effect results

Answer 15

Percentage is larger for the detection of a letter in a word than in isolation

If you are guessing on each trial, then your percentages should be close to 50%

Question 16

Recognizing letter within a word (Feedback Activation)

Answer 16

• feedback activation is sent from word units to each letter units for that word
• feedback activation does not occur when the letter is presented alone and sometimes occurs with a non word

Question 17

Phonemic Restoration Effect

Answer 17

• “fill” in missing phonemes based on context of sentence and portion of word presented
• Warren replaced the first /s/ in “Legislatures” with the sound of a cough
• No participants can notice it even if they are informed /s/ was missing

Sentence provides context which allows you to restore the sound

Question 18

Speech Segmentation

Answer 18

Context-participants could identify only half of the words of their own conversation when single words were presented

Understanding meaning-an unfamiliar language sounds like an unbroken string of sounds

Understanding of sound and syntactic rules

Statistical learning (can learn to separate words from other words)

Question 19

Saffran and Colleagues

Answer 19

Learning:

• 8 month old infants heard string of 4 artificial words in random order
• Then hear pair of words “whole” (padoti) and “part” (tibida)
• Transitional probabilities of pa followed by doti is 1 but of ti followed by bida is 0.33

Test:

• listening to pairs of words “whole” and “part”
• listening time greater for part word

Question 20

Word Frequency Effect

Answer 20

• respond faster to high-frequency words in a lexical decision task
• fixate low frequency words longer than high frequency words

Question 21

Eye movement while reading

Answer 21

Look at low frequency words longer

Question 22

Context effects

Answer 22

The meaning of a sentence affects our ability to access words in a sentence

Question 23

Lexical ambiguity

Answer 23

• words have more than one meaning
• context removes ambiguity after all meanings of a word have been briefly accessed

E.g. bug could be insects or hidden listening devices

Question 24

Meaning dominance

Answer 24

The fact that some words are used more frequently than others

Biased dominance: when words have two or more meanings with different dominance (e.g. tin)

Balanced dominance: when words have two or more meanings with about the same dominance (e.g. cast)

Question 25

No prior context for accessing the meaning of ambiguous words while reading a sentence

Answer 25

Speed determined by dominance For balanced dominance both meanings are activated which results in slow access For biased dominance, only the most frequent meaning is activated which results in fast access

Question 26

With prior context for accessing the meaning of ambiguous words while reading a sentence

Answer 26

If less biased word is indicated by context, it is activated, but so is the more dominant meaning, even though it doesn’t fit the context. This slows down access If the more dominant meaning is indicated by the context, it is the only meaning activated, and access is fast

Question 27

Swinney

Answer 27

Demonstrated that although the context clears the ambiguity, participants accessed both meanings right after hearing the word

Question 28

Lexical priming Effect

Answer 28

- used by Swinney - heard ambiguous word had priming effect for the words relevant to both meanings E.g. listen to statement “...and other bugs..” and word ANT flashes on screen. Have to say whether it is a word or not Should only see priming effect for ant if you only accessed one meaning for bug However, both ant and spy are primed because both meanings of bug are activated

Question 29

What did Swinney propose to vanish the lexical prime effect

Answer 29

He reported that the lexical prime effect (for the context impropriate word) vanished if the test word was presented two or three syllables after the presentation of the prime (people only assess one meaning)

Question 30

Are components of language processed in isolation

Answer 30

No they are not processed in isolation. All occur simultaneously: - phonemic restoration effect - speech segmentation - word Superiority Effect - lexical ambiguity (short term) and then elimination of lexical ambiguity via context - word frequency effect - context provided by the sentence

Question 31

Semantics and syntax

Answer 31

Semantics: meanings of words and sentences Syntax: rules for combining words into sentences

Question 32

Broca’s aphasia

Answer 32

The apple was eaten by the girl (No trouble) The boy was pushed by the girl (trouble) Damage to Broca’s area (frontal lobe) causes problems in syntax (creating meaning based on word order)

Question 33

Wernicke’s aphasia

Answer 33

Produced speech that was fluent and grammatically correct but tended to be incoherent Wernicke’s area is in the temporal lobe and is involved in semantics- understanding meaning Wouldn’t be able to understand both sentences

Question 34

What type of studies have shown syntax and semantics are associated with different mechanisms

Answer 34

-event related potential and brain imaging studies in novel, normal patients The cat won’t eat versus the cat won’t bake (N400 is marker that indicates issues in meaning) The cat won’t eat versus that cat won’t eating (P600 is marker that indicated issues in syntax)

Question 35

Parsing

Answer 35

Mental grouping of words in a sentence into phrases

Question 36

Syntactic ambiguity

Answer 36

More than one possible structure=more than one meaning Parsing mechanism (two proposals): - syntax first approach - interactionist approach

Question 37

Syntax-first approach to parsing

Answer 37

-grammatical structure of sentence determines parsing - late closure: parser assumes new word is part of the current phrase - also called Garden path model Review slide chart