Chapter 11-Language Pt. 2 Flashcards
Interactionist approach to parsing
-semantics and syntax both influence processing as one reads a sentence
Understanding Sentences: Story Context (Tanenhaus and Trueswell)
- the context of a scene
- linguistic and non linguistic information used simultaneously
- measured eye movement
Tanenhaus and Trueswell experimental results
Ambiguous sentence: place the apple on the towel in the box
Don’t know whether to follow the syntax of the sentence or their own knowledge-results in more eye movement
Unambiguous sentence: place the apple that’s on the towel in the box
Resulted in less eye movement because it is not ambiguous. Two apples are present and the sentence specifies which one
Coherence
Representation of the text in one’s mind so that information from one part of the text can be related to information in another part of the text
Most coherence is created by inference
Inference
Readers create information during reading that is not explicitly stated in the text
Anaphoric inference
Connecting objects/people
- inferences that connect an object or person in one sentence to an object or person in another sentence
- using name then referring in second sentence as “she”
Instrumental inference
Inferences about tools or methods
Causal inference
Events in one clause caused by events in previous sentence
E.g. Sharon took an aspirin. Her headache went away
Situation model
Mental representation of what a text is about
- represent events as if experiencing the situation
- point of view of protagonist
Morrow et al
Situation model
Reported that verifying whether two objects were in the same room was easier when the two objects were in the room where the protagonist was
Gave participants a story where they had to read sentence then push a button. Test is you have two objects: are they in the same room or different rooms as protagonist?
Goal room-room where protagonist is
Source room-room of objects
Morrow et al conclusions
Increase in distance of objects from goal room results in increase in RT
Blocked versus unblocked story
Reader takes the viewpoint of the protagonist so the blocked story results in higher RT because it prevents you from seeing the situation clearly
Standfield and Zwann’s orientation experiment
Subject heard sentences and were asked to indicate whether the picture was the object mentioned in the sentence (didn’t care about orientation)
- He hammered the nail into the wall
- He hammered the nail into the floor
Subjects responded “yes” more rapidly for the orientation that was more consistent with the sentence. Suggests we create representations of situations in addition to using syntax
Physiology of simulations
Approximately the same areas of the cortex are activated by actual movements and by reading related action words
The activation is more extensive for actual movements (Hauks experiment)
Metusalem et al experiment for concert scenario
The key result is that N400 response to an event related word like guitar is smaller than the response to an event unrelated word like barn. This suggests that even though guitar doesn’t fit the sentence, up the worsens knowledge that guitars are associated with concerts is activated. Gives more evidence that when people read sentences they create a situational representation
Recall N400 is inconsistency in meaning
Conversations
Two or more people talking together
Dynamic and rapid
Semantic coordination
Improves conversation
Uses Given-New contract: speaker constructs sentences so they include:
- given information
- new information
- new can then become given information
Syntactic coordination
Improves conversation
Involves using similar grammatical constructions
Syntactic priming
Production of a specific grammatical construction by one person increases chances other person will use that construction
Reduces computational load in conversation
Syntactical priming example
The subject (right) picks from the cards on the table, a card that matches the statement read by the confederate (left). The subject then takes a card from the pile of response cards and describes the picture on the response card to the confederate. Key part of experiment is whether the subject on the right will match the syntactic construction used by the subject on the left
Other skills necessary for people to engage in effective conversation:
Theory of mind: being able to understand what others feel, think or believe
Non verbal communication: being able to interpret and react to the person’s gestures, facial expressions, tones of voice or other cues to meaning
Sapir-Whorf hypothesis
Language influences thought
Roberson and coworkers
Two cultures had differences in how participants assigned names (categories) to colour chips
Results in categorical perception
Categorical perception
Stimuli in same categories are more difficult to discriminate from one another than stimuli in two different categories
Winawer and coworkers
Two cultures had differences in how participants responses to blue squares based on how they were categorized
Russian speakers: difference between “different categories” and “same categories” is large
English speakers: difference between the categories is small because they generalize both categories just as blue
Music and language
Music creates emotion through sounds that have no meaning
Language creates emotions using meaningful words
Language combines words and music combines tones to create structured sequences that unfold over time
Prosody
The pattern of intonation and rhythm in spoken language
Often creates emotion in spoken language
Patel and coworkers
Studied a group of stroke patients who had Broca’s aphasia-difficulty in understanding sentences with complex syntax
Had language syntax and musical syntax tasks
Musical syntax task: “In key” chord replaced with either the “nearby” key or “distant” key conditions
Aphasic participants did better for musical syntax than for language syntax whereas normal control did better for language syntax
