chapter 9 Flashcards
language
functions as airborn synapses, contributes to inter-human coordination, allowing us to be smarter, more creative and more flexible
- uniquely human
- highly productive
- complex
how is language uniquely human
- able to produce new utterances by changing the way you use words
- humans are active info processors
how is language highly productive
- productivity of language is unlimited
phonemes
example
- smallest unit of sound in language
- dont necessarily correspond to alphabet
- english=40 phonemes
- change on phoneme in word, change whole meaning (ex: kiss and this)
- Phonology
morphemes
example
- smallest unit of meaning
- each segment has meaning
- many morphemes cant stand on own (ex: giraffe), some attached to convey meaning
ex: Help-ed (2 morphemes)
Morphology= study of morphemes, examines how we create words by creating morphemes
syntax
example
word order
- grammatical rules that govern how we organize words into sentences
(order matters)
ex: did you see my keys?
keys did you my see?
grammar
encompasses morphology and syntax
- examines word structure and sentence structure
meaning
- from grammatical rules
- semantics: examines meaning of words/sentences
- semantic memory: organized knowledge of the world
pragmatics
example
knowledge of social rules that underlie language use- takes into account listeners perspective
- influences comprehension
ex: describe word syntax (12 yr old VS college student– different)
5 abilities to understand spoken sentence
1) encoding the sound of the speakers voice
2) encoding the visual features of printed language
3) accessing the meaning of words
4) understanding the rules that determine word order
5) appreciating whether a sentence is a question or a statement, based only on the speakers intonation
psycholinguistics
interdisciplinary field that examines how people use language to communicate ideas
- estimate 7000 languages spoken in world
psycholinguistic theory
english is outlier language
- more irregular pronunciations
- word meaning does not depend on relative pitch
brain processing differs as function of persons language
- ex: english speakers- one region of frontal lobe activated when listening, same region doesnt correspond for other languages
transformation grammar (Chomsky)
- your impressive language abilities must be explained in terms of a complex system of rules and principles that are represented in your mind
- humans have innate language skills, inborn understanding of the abstract principles of language- ability allows them to produce and understand sentences they have never heard before
- we come pre-equipped to use language
- language is modular
- underlying structure
language is modular (chomsky- transformation grammar )
functions are separate, and independent of other cognitive processes
(ex; memory and decision making)
- speech and language are special
- language depends on specific language structures and functions
underlying structure of language (chomsky-transformation grammar )
all grammatical sentences have noun phrase and verb phrase
- all have structure whether it makes sense or not
- all have innate understanding of structure- able to determine if grammatically correct
3 forms of structure of language (transformation grammar - chomsky)
surface structure deep structure
- surface structure: represented by words that are actually spoken/written
- deep structure: underlying, more abstract meaning of sentence
- transformational structure- used to convert deep into surface that they can speak/write
example if different structure of language
Sarah threw the ball
the ball was thrown by Sarah
- different surface structure, same deep structure
change punctuation
ambiguous sentences
2 sentences may have identical surface structures but different deep structures
cognitive-functional approach of language
- focus on function of language
- structure language to focus attention
- not modular, interconnected with other cognitive processes
how do we structure language to focus attention (cognitive functional approach)
- arrange sentences to serve as function, choose to say things in certain way to focus listener on relevant parts
4 factors affecting comprehension
negatives
passive voice
nested structure
ambiguity
what are negatives (2 types)
actual VS implied
actual= no, dont, not, isnt implied= deny
ex: the world is not flat (slower than the world is round)
- takes longer to respond with negative, more processing time
- make fewer errors with affirmative
passive voice
example
ex: It is being loved by me VS Im lovin’ it
- active voice processed more quickly than passive (Active= more basic, easy to understand)
- Rather than passively listening to language we actively consult our previous knowledge, use various strategies, created expectations, and draw conclusions
nested structures
- more nesting= worse at comprehending, takes longer
- nest structure is embedded within another phrase
- complex syntax harder to understand
- readers experience memory overload when try to read sentence with nested structure
ambiguity
- can be interpreted multiple ways, slow down to read, reread, activate both concepts at same time
activate and supress
- typically pause longer when processing ambiguous word
Good-Enough approach to language
example
- frequently process only part of sentence
- people dont work hard to create most accurate, detailed interpretation of every sentence
- knowledge typically leads to accurate interpretation, sometimes errors
ex: the authorities needed to decide where to bury survivors
- missing meaning of word “Survivors”
neurolinguistics
- greater activation where
how the brain processes language
- greater activation in LG than RH (some people it is processed in both parts)
individuals with aphasia
- have difficulty communicating, caused by damage to speech areas of brain (damage caused by stroke/tumour)
2 types of aphasia
brocas
wernickes
broca’s area
- located toward front of brain, damage leads to hesitant speech that primarily uses isolated words and short phrases
- manages motor movement
aphasia: expressive language deficit, trouble producing language (might have problem with language comprehension- difficulty knowing differences between 2 sentences)
wernickes area
located toward back of brain, damage produces difficulty understanding language
aphasia: often severe problems with language comprehension that they cannot understand basic instructions (ex: point to phone), might have problems with language production (spoken language often wordy and confused, relatively few pauses)
lateralization
each hemisphere of brain has somewhat different functions
left hemisphere specialization
- perceives speech (quickly selects the most likely interpretation of a sound)
- analyzes morphemes (left brain understands there is a difference)
- reads (high-imager sentences activate LH)
- dominant meaning (activates LH)
- 95% right hangers, 50% left handers (left lateralized language)
- speech disorders typically have more sever damage in LH
right hemisphere specialization
- emotional tone (pragmatics of speech)
- metaphor (helps interpret)
- non-dominant meaning
- role in appreciating humour
- responsible for more abstract language tasks
LH and RH specialization
- work together on tasks such as interpreting subtle word meanings, resolving ambiguities, combining meaning of several sentences
disadvantage to fMRI
- values can be inaccurate when participants move head slightly
fMRI= detect changes that occur quickly, safer than PET (no radioactive material)
fMRI shows left hemispheric specialization
- specific region responsible for face recognition= inferotemporal cortex
language localizer task
- compensates for problem if individual differences
- create linguistic map
- identified specific regiosn of left frontal lobe that responded only to language tasks
fMRI shows right hemispheric specialization
example
- plays role in language comprehension
- RH respond differently to connected language than to disconnected
1st set sentences- start with “A”
2nd set start with “The”
- The= cohesive story (Connected)
PET scan and graded cognitive reading task
1) fixate
2a) See (hammer)
2b) hear
3) read aloud “hammer”
4) semantic (hammer)-“pound”
use different conditions, subtract different conditions to isolate parts of language
graded cognitive reading task
- occipital cortex
See (hammer) - fixate
(2a-1)
- remains is activity associated with seeing word
- activity in occipital cortex
graded cognitive reading task
- temporal cortex
hear- fixate
(2b-1)
- remain is activity associated with hearing words= temporal cortex
graded cognitive reading task
- motor cortex
read-see-hear-fixate
(3-2a-2b-1)
- isolate part of cortex involved with producing word (motor cortex)
graded cognitive reading task
- frontal and temporal
semantic - read
(4-3)
- remain is activity involved in interpreting words meaning (knowing hammer pounds)
- activity in frontal and temporal cortex
what is a mirror system
- network of neurons in brains motor cortex, neurons activated when watch someone perform action
- especially active when trying to listen to someone in noisy setting
3 characteristics of reading
1) cognitively complex
2) letter-sound correspondance
3) non-evolutionary
reading is cognitively complex
- takes years to master
- language spread out over time, reading spread out over space
- lot of perceptual info
reading involved letter-sound correspondance
example
- in english- do not have letter-sound correspondance (letters and combinations frequently change their sounds)
ex: bear, beauty, bread, clear, deal (the “ea” sound changes)
reading is non-evolutionary
- learned skill over many years
dual route hypothesis of reading (2 components)
2 ways of reading words- need both routes
1) direct access route
2) phonological mediation route
what is the direct access route of reading
example
exception words
- recognize the word directly through vision, without sounding-out/paying attention to sound
- ex: island, yacht, ghost, aisle
what is phonological mediation route of reading
example
new words
- translate ink marks on page into form of sound before access a word and its meaning (sound it out)
- more likely to use if regular spelling and word can be sounded out
- indirect b/c go through intermediate step of converting the visual stimulus into phonological (sound) stimulus first
- ex: Bave, kave, jave, lave
what is whole word approach (to reading)
readers can direcetly connect the written word (as entire unit) with meaning that his word represents
what is phonics approach (to reading)
readers recognize words trying to pronounce the individual letters in the word
- speech sound is necessary intermediate step in reading
- develops young children’s awareness of phonemes
whole language approach to reading
reading instruction should emphasize meaning
- should be enjoyable to increase childrens enthusiasm about learnign to read
written vs spoken language comprension (2)
1) Reading is visual and is spread out across space, whereas speech is auditory and is spread out over time
2) Readers can control the rate of input VS listeners usually cannot
3) Readers re-can the written input VS listeners must rely much more on their WM
4) Readers usually encounter standardized, error-free input VS listeners often need to cope with variability, grammatical errors, sloppy pronunciation, inferring stimuli
5) Readers see discrete boundaries between words VS listeners often encounter unclear boundaries in spoken language
6) Readers encounter only the stimuli on the page VS listeners encounter both nonverbal cues and auditory cues (ex: emphasized words, variations in pace)
7) Children acquire elaborate teaching to master some written languages (Ex: written English) VS learn spoken languages more easily
8) Adult readers learn new words quickly when appear in written form VS spoken form
discourse
example
interrelated units of language that are larger than a sentence
ex: friend telling story, news on radio, instructions to assembly furniture
inferences
conclusion that go beyond isolate phrase/sentence
5 parts of understand discourse
1) forming integrated representation of text
2) drawing inferences during reading
3) teaching metacomprehension skills
4) individual differences in test anxiety and discourse comprehension
5) technique that can access the semantic content of discourse
forming integrated representation of text (understanding discourse)
- Theory of mind: everyday life, try to figure out the mental state of other people in our lives
- Listeners and readers form integrated representations when they hear spoken language, also remember information and draw inferences when they are listening
- skilled readers frequently organize and integrate information into cohesive story
- Readers are attuned to subtle linguistic evidence, readers realize that a series of sentences form a cohesive store if all sentences begin with “the” but not begin with “a”
- When we form cohesive representation, often construct a mental model of the material we are reading
- Readers construct internal representations that include descriptions of the characters in the story
Drawing inferences during reading (understanding discourse)
- Activate important mental processes by making inferences that go beyond the information presented on the printed page
- Constructivist view of inferences: readers usually draw inferences about the causes of events and the relationships between events (actively construct cohesive explanations)
- People more likely to draw inferences if they have large WM capacity, and excellent metacomprehension skills, also when expertise of subject (Not likely to draw inferences when reading scientific texts)
- Some cases, remember inferences as often as the statements that actually occurred in the text, forming a cohesive story, often retain the gist or general meaning of a passage, forgetting that we constructed some elements that did not actually appear in the story
Teaching metacomprehension skills (understanding discourse)
Metacognition= knowledge about your cognitive processes and control of these cognitive processes
Metacomprehension= thoughts about comprehension
Individual differences in test anxiety and discourse comprehension (understanding discourse)
- People who test high in anxiety often perform poorly on examinations
- Worry intrudes on peoples consciousness, blocking them from retrieving the correct answers on a test
- Test anxiety also decreases students skills in understanding the information in their textbooks
Technique that can access the semantic content of discourse (undestanding discourse)
- Designed computer programs to understand language
- LSA= Latent semantic analysis
o Perform many fairly sophisticated language tasks (ex: assess creative writing)
o Assess amount of semantic similarity between 2 discourse segments
The interdisciplinary field that studies how people use language to communicate ideas is called:
psycholinguistics
Which of the following is the basic unit for spoken language?
phoneme
Which of the following is the basic unit for meaning of language?
Morpheme
It is still not known exactly which linguistic principles apply universally and which do not, mainly because:
Most research has been focused only on the English language.
The grammatical rules of language are known as
syntax
According to the most famous linguist (Chomsky, 1957, 2003, 2006):
All humans have an innate understanding of the abstract principles of language.
Issues concerning the deep structure (or core meaning) of language relate most closely to:
The underlying, abstract meaning of the sentence.
People are able to process the meaning of a sentence best if it is:
(neg, positive, active, passive, nested)
An affirmatively worded sentence in the active voice.
When a reader encounters a potentially ambiguous word in a sentence:
- Neural activation initially increases all common meanings of the word.
- The reader usually pauses before moving his or her eyes to the next word.
- People resolve the correct meaning by using contextual information (i.e., the rest of the sentence.
In ________, the patient has difficulty with verbal communication.
aphasia
In which type of aphasia does the patient have difficulty producing fluent speech?
Brocas
In which type of aphasia does the patient have difficulty comprehending speech?
wernicke;s
In the 1800s, researchers discovered that language involves localized brain areas that perform different functions. This early evidence came from:
Observations that people may suffer from at least two different kinds of aphasia.
The typical result of damage to an area in the left cerebral hemisphere called Broca’s area is speech that is:
Hesitant, effortful, and grammatically simple.
The typical result of damage to an area in the left cerebral hemisphere called Wernicke’s area is impairment in:
Producing unconfused speech, as well as in understanding speech.
Although the left hemisphere of the brain performs most of the work in language processing for the vast majority of people, the right hemisphere plays an important role in:
linguistic tasks such as interpreting the emotional tone of a message
During the last decade, neurolinguistics researchers have increasingly studied the localization of language-comprehension areas in the brain using a technique called:
fMRI
The “language-localizing task” identifies
RH/LH, group/individual
The left hemisphere language areas for an individual
Experiments investigating reading skill reveal that it depends heavily on ..
other cognitive abilities, such as working memory.
The most appropriate approach to explaining how readers recognize printed words when they read to themselves is the:
dual route (direct/indirect access) approach
Which language has the least-predictable pronunciation?
english
What is currently thought to be the best approach to teach children to read English
combination of
- whole word approach
- phonics
- whole language approach
When someone is reading discourse, such as a novel, according to the constructionist view of inferences he or she is:
- Inferring motivations, personalities, and emotions of the characters.
- Developing expectations of new plot developments
- Forming expectations about the writer’s point of view.
Recent research (Cassady, 2004) reveals that compared to people who score low, people who score high on test anxiety (as measured by a Cognitive Test Anxiety scale, for example):
Perform relatively poorly on multiple-choice tests
consider following sentence “chris, who is a college sophomore, has decided to declare a psychology major” is an example of..
nested structure
suppose that you ask stranger what time it is, he produces several wordy sentences that dont make sense, you suspect he has..
wernickes aphasia
research on word recognition suggests that..
can use either direct or indirect route, depending on factors such as the skill level of the reader
the constructivist view of discourse comprehension is most likely to emphasize..
a characters emotions and motiviatons
