Chapter 12: Language Pt.I

Question 1

What is language? What examtation allow language to develop in humans?

Answer 1

A set of rules for combining elements that are inherently meaningless into utterances that convey meaning. Larger pharynx and larger language areas in brain

Question 2

What is aphasia? What is the difference between Broca’s aphasia, Wernicke’s aphasia, and conduction aphasia?

Answer 2

Brocas: (Tan. A language production deficit involving agrammatism, anomia, and extreme difficulty with speech articulation. Expressive aphasia. Posterior left inferior frontal gyrus) Wenricks: (Problems understanding spoken language after having a stroke. Receptive aphasia. But, these patients could produce spoken language fluently. However, it was utter nonsense. Damage to posterior region of the superior temporal gyrus.) Conduction: (Problems producing spontaneous speech despite understanding the language of other people.

Question 3

What brain areas are damaged in each of these three types of aphasia?

Answer 3

Brocas: (Posterior left inferior frontal gyrus) Wenricks: (Damage to posterior region of the superior temporal gyrus). Conduction: (arcuate fasciculus. )

Question 4

To what extent does the right hemisphere understand language? What do studies of split-brain patients tell you about hemispheric specialization for language? Does this hemispheric difference in function extend to sign language?

Answer 4

L.hem for language. R.Hem does: analysis of l. visual field, left hand sterogenis, emotional colouring of language, spatial abilities, rudimentary speech. Musicality of language.

Question 5

What is an aprosodia?

Answer 5

Robot-like speech with no inflection (damage to r.hem?)

Question 6

What is the arcuate fasciculus?

Answer 6

Information travels from Wernicke’s area to Broca’s area (output site) via a white matter tract called the arcuate fasciculus.

Question 7

What is the mental lexicon?

Answer 7

a mental dictionary that contains information regarding a word’s meaning, pronunciation, syntactic characteristics, and so on.

Question 8

What is a phoneme? What type of word is retrieved faster: one in a dense or a sparse auditory neighbourhood?

Answer 8

The smallest unit of sound. Does not follow the alphabet perfectly more frequent words faster easier for dense neighbourhood

Question 9

How many phonemes are there? How many are used in the English language?

Answer 9

2000 (there are 40 phonemes in English).

Question 10

Be able to describe the lexeme, lemma, and conceptual levels of the mental lexicon.

Answer 10

Lexeme level: Sound information such as phonemes. Lemma level: Gramma-tical properties of words. Semantic information defines conditions where it is appropriate to use a certain word. Conceptual level: Semantic knowledge of words. Includes verbs related to nouns, and relationships between terms.

Question 11

What is expectancy-induced priming?

Answer 11

Activation of the conceptual level for one item increases the likelihood that related items will also be activated. Butter/bread.

Question 12

Explain the logic behind the Collins and Loftus (1975) neural network model of language.

Answer 12

Semantic priming explained by a network model of neural representations. Distance between nodes and strength of connections are determined by semantic or associative relations. Activation spreads from one node to the other.

Question 13

What does it mean when words are coarticulated? What is an example of this?

Answer 13

The end of one word runs into the beginning of the next (J’aime l’autobus; “y’all”).

Question 14

Poorly dubbed foreign films provide an example of which psychological effect?

Answer 14

McGurk effect

Question 15

What do the superior temporal gyrus and the superior temporal sulcus do during the perception of spoken language?

Answer 15

Frequency modulated tones activated posterior portions of the STG bilaterally, relative to Noise. Areas sensitive to speech sounds were located more ventrolaterally, in or near the superior temporal sulcus (STS). Sensitive to prosody, not the semantic elements of speech

Question 16

What is the critical period for language? Describe the perceptual magnet theory.

Answer 16

languages must be learned before the age of 7 (after that, it becomes much more difficult to distinguish between sounds). Perceptual magnet theory: US infants for US phonemes, swedish infants for swedish ones. Roughly speaking, the effect is characterized by a warping of perceptual space such that acoustic patterns near phonemic cate- gory centers are perceived as closer together than equally spaced acoustic patterns that are further away from phonemic category centers

Question 17

What are three factors that determine which phonemes will be produced?

Answer 17

Voicing: Whether or not we use vocal cords to produce a speech sound. All vowels are voiced, but only some consonants are (B and M are; S and T aren’t). •Point of Articulation: Which apparatus we use to produce the unique sound (e.g., the lips for “b”). •Manner of Articulation: The manner in which the air stream is changed. A P is produced by blocking the airflow; an L is not.

Question 18

According to models of reading, what are two routes from print to meaning?

Answer 18

There is a direct route from print to meaning. Orthographic, Ventral (fusiform gyrus). There is an indirect route involving associations between letters and the sounds of language. Phonological, Dorsal (angular gyrus)

Question 19

What is the visual-word-form area? Where is it located? When does it become activated?

Answer 19

Left occipitotemporal region centred on the mid-fusiform gyrus. Involved in the bottom-up perceptual encoding of orthographic properties. Supports perceptual expertise for word recognition and allows for the rapid perception of words in one’s own language via connections to linguistic areas. Correlated w reading skills.

Question 20

-Where in the brain is orthographic and phonological information integrated?

Answer 20

Portions of the left superior temporal cortex integrate orthographic and phonological inputs. Increased activation when visual and auditory stimuli “matched

Question 21

Briefly describe the study by Hashimoto and Sakai (2004).

Answer 21

taught participants new letter-sound associations. This led to increased connectivity between the left mid-fusiform gyrus and the angular gyrus (linguistic information). Many dyslexics show deficits in letter-sound integration