Chapter 9 Flashcards
Phoneme
A phoneme (pronounced “foe-neem”) is the basic unit of spoken language, such as the sounds a, k, and th. The English language has about 40 different phonemes
morpheme
(pronounced “more-feem”) is the basic unit of meaning. For example, the word reactivated actually contains four morphemes: re-, active, -ate, and -ed. Each of those segments conveys meaning. Many morphemes can stand on their own (like giraffe). In contrast, some morphemes must be attached to other
morphology
the term morphology refers to the study of morphemes; morphology, therefore, examines how we create words by combining morphemes.
Syntax
Another major component of psycholinguistics is syntax. Syntax refers to the grammatical rules that govern how we organize words into sentences.
Grammar
A more inclusive and familiar term, grammar, encompasses both morphology and syntax; it, therefore, examines both word structure and sentence structure
Semantics
Semantics is the area of psycholinguistics that examines the meanings of words and sentences
semantic memory
refers to our organized knowledge about the world. We have discussed semantic memory throughout earlier chapters of this book, but especially in Chapter 8. Language allows us to access information stored in our semantic memories. Indeed, this stored knowledge is a driving force in our ability to use language.
Psycholinguistics
is an interdisciplinary field that examines how people use language to communicate ideas. Psycholinguists focus not only on the pro- cesses that allow us to produce or comprehend language, but also on the key principles
Pragmatics
Pragmatics—another important term—refers to our knowledge of the social rules that underlie language use; pragmatics takes into account the listener’s perspective. For example, think about how you would define the word syntax to a 12-year-old child, as opposed to a college classmate. Pragmatics is the discipline within linguistics that focuses most on social interactions.
The surface structure.
The surface structure is represented by the words that are actually spoken or written, Chomsky (1957, 2006).
Deep structure
is the underlying, more abstract meaning of a sentence. Chomsky
transformational rules
People use transformational rules to convert deep structure into a surface structure that they can speak or write. Chomsky
ambiguous sentences
Chomsky (1957, 2006) also pointed out that two sentences may have identical surface structures but very different deep structures; these are called ambiguous sentences. For example, I live near the small town of York in rural upstate New York. One day I drove past the announcement board outside the York Town Hall, and the message said: “POP CAN DRIVE.” I was puzzled: Whose father is now allowed to drive, and why had he previously been prohibited from driving? To be honest, the alternate meaning (focusing on a community fundraiser) did not occur to me until the next day.
The Cognitive functional approach
Emphasizes that the function of human language in everyday life is to communicate meaning to other individuals. As this name suggests, the cognitive–functional approach also emphasizes that our cognitive processes—such as attention and memory— are intertwined with language comprehension and language production.
Negation and the Passive Voice
We retain more passive words easily, instead of negative words (no, not or similar).
Incremental interpretation
refers to the observation that when processing language, we do not wait until an entire sentence is spoken (or read) before making judgments about what it means. Language unfolds bit-by-bit over time. Thus, the systems responsible for language comprehension provide you with the ability to continuously update your interpretation of an incoming message as it unfolds.
On-line measures of sentence processing
designed to gauge the amount of dificulty one experiences as the linguistic signal unfolds unit-by-unit over time. Thus, researchers can assess which components of a sentence are more difficult to process than others.
The self paced reading task
One example of an online language processing measure. In this task, participants see a series of dashes on a screen that mask each word of the sentence, as in (1) below. The sentence unfolds word by word as participants press the spacebar on a keyboard (as in 2–10 below).
Lateralization
Each hemisphere of the brain has somewhat different functions.
The mirror system
A network involving the brain’s motor cortex.
dual-route approach to reading
specifies that:
skilled readers employ both (1) a direct-access route and (2) an indirect-access
A direct-access route
You recognize words
directly through vision, without “sounding out” the words.
indirect-access route
as soon as you see a
word, you translate the ink marks on the page into some form of sound, before
you can access a word and its meaning
The Indirect-Access Route.
we can make mistakes with two words that sound the same (Bear-Bare)
Whole-word approach
Argues that readers can directly connect the written word as an entire unit with the meaning that this word represents
The phonics approach
states that readers recognize words by trying to pronounce the individual letters in the word. If your grade school teachers told you to “sound it out” when you stumbled on a new word, they championed the phonics approach.
whole-language approach
reading instruction should emphasize meaning, and it should be enjoyable, to increase children’s enthusiasm about learning to read
discourse
that is, inter- related units of language that are larger than a sentence. Used daily.
inferences
are conclusions that go beyond the isolated phrase or sentence
theory of mind
In everyday life, we try to igure out the mental state of other people in our lives
constructionist view of inferences
readers usually draw inferences about the causes of events and the rela- tionships between events.
metacognition
which is your knowledge about your cognitive processes, as well as your control of these cognitive processes
metacomprehension
a term that refers to your thoughts about comprehension
People are able to process the meaning of a sentence best if it is
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 which type of aphasia does the patient have difficulty producing fluent speech?
Broca’s aphasia
In which type of aphasia does the patient have difficulty comprehending speech?
Wernicke’s 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.
The “language-localizing task” identifies
The left hemisphere language areas for an individual.
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.
The famous sentence “Colorless green ideas sleep furiously”:
provides evidence that knowledge about grammatical rules is innate, not learned.
) When a reader encounters a potentially ambiguous word in a sentence:
sentence context (or the rest of the sentence) does not change the way the word is processed.
On-line language processing measures:
a) provide information about how long it takes for people to process a new word
given previous words in a sentence.
b) rely on reaction time data to provide an index of processing difficulty.
c) can provide information about where in a sentence readers experienced
difficulty.
The results of the Tanenhaus and his colleagues. (1995) experiment suggest that:
even visual context can change how people understand a sentence that contains
a syntactic ambiguity.
Which of the following statements accurately characterizes the functioning of
Broca’s area?
a) There is no evidence that it is actually involved in language processing.
b) It is active during the Stroop task, mental imagery, and music processing.
c) It may be part of the executive attention network.
The mirror system could be relevant in neurolinguistics because mirror neurons:
may be especially active when we listen to speech in a noisy setting.
The indirect-access route in reading emphasizes that:
readers translate a printed word into sound before they can locate information
about its meaning.
When someone is reading discourse, such as a novel, according to the constructionist
view of inferences he or she is:
a) inferring motivations, personalities, and emotions of the characters.
b) developing expectations of new plot developments.
c) forming expectations about the writer’s point of view.
You would be most likely to draw an inference during reading:
if you have strong metacomprehension skills, rather than weak ones.
