Chapter 9 - Speech perception and reading

Question 1

Categorial perception

Answer 1

A sound intermediate between two phonemes is perceived as being one or other of the phonemes; a similar phenomenon is found in vision with colour perception.

Question 2

Syllable

Answer 2

A unit of speech consisting of one vowel sound with or without one or more additional consonants (Water has two syllables; wa and ter).

Question 3

Allophones

Answer 3

Variant forms of a given phoneme; for example, the phoneme “p” is associated with various allophones (e.g., in Pit and Spit).

Question 4

Segmentation

Answer 4

Dividing the almost continuous sounds of speech into separate phonemes and words.

Question 5

Coarticulation

Answer 5

A speaker’s production of phoneme is influenced by their production of the previous sound and by preparations for the next sound.

Question 6

McGurk effect

Answer 6

A mismatch between spoken and visual (lip-based) information leads listeners to perceive a sound or word involving a blending of the auditory and visual information.

Question 7

Phonemic restoration effect

Answer 7

The finding that listeners are unaware that a phoneme has been deleted and replaced by a non-speech sound (e.g., cough) within a sentence.

Question 8

Ganong effect

Answer 8

The finding that perception of an ambiguous phoneme is biased towards a sound that produces a word rather than a non-word.

Question 9

Lexical Access

Answer 9

Accessing detailed information about a given word by entering the lexicon

Question 10

Uniqueness point

Answer 10

The point in time in spoken word recognition at which the available perceptual information is consistent with only one word.

Question 11

Pure word deafness

Answer 11

A condition involving severely impaired speech perception but intact speech production, reading, writing and perception of non-speech sounds.

Question 12

Word meaning deafness

Answer 12

A condition in which there is selective impairment of the ability to understand spoken (but not written) language.

Question 13

Transcortical sensory aphasia

Answer 13

A condition in which spoken words can be repeated but comprehension of spoken and written language is severely impaired.

Question 14

Deep dysphasia

Answer 14

A condition involving semantic errors when trying to repeat spoken words and a generally poor ability to repeat spoken words and non-words.

Question 15

Lexical decision task

Answer 15

Participants presented with a string of letters or auditory stimulus decide rapidly whether it forms a word.

Question 16

Naming task

Answer 16

A task in which visually presented words are pronounced aloud rapidly.

Question 17

Orthography

Answer 17

The study of letters and word spelling.

Question 18

Phonology

Answer 18

The study of sounds of words and parts of words.

Question 19

Semantics

Answer 19

The study of the meaning conveyed by words, phrases and sentences.

Question 20

Homophones

Answer 20

Words pronounced in the same way, but that differ in their spelling (pain/pane; rock/rug)

Question 21

Phonological neighbourhood

Answer 21

Words are phonological neighbours if they differ in only one phoneme (wipe, pipe and tap are phonological neighbours of type)

Question 22

Word superiority effect

Answer 22

A target letter is more readily detected in a letter string when the string forms a word than when it does not.

Question 23

Orthographic neighbours

Answer 23

With reference to a target word, the number of words that can be formed by changing one of its letters.

Question 24

Semantic priming

Answer 24

The fidning that word recognition is facilitated by the prior presentation of a semantically related word.

Question 25

Pseudowords

Answer 25

Non-words consisting of strings of letters that can be pronounced (mantiness, fass)

Question 26

Cascade processing

Answer 26

Later processing stages start before earlier processing stages have been completed when performing a task.

Question 27

Grapheme

Answer 27

A small unit of written language corresponding to a phoneme (e.g., the ph in photo)

Question 28

Phonemes

Answer 28

The smallest units of sound that distinguish one word from another and contribute to word meaning; the number and nature of phonemes varies across languages.

Question 29

Surface dyslexia

Answer 29

A condition in which regular words and non-words can be read but there is impaired ability to read irregular or exception words.

Question 30

Phonological dyslexia

Answer 30

A condition in which familiar words can be read but there is impaired ability to read unfamiliar words and non-words.

Question 31

Deep dyslexia

Answer 31

A condition in which reading unfamiliar words and non-words is impaired and there are semantic errors (e.g., reading missile as rocket).

Question 32

Saccades

Answer 32

Rapid eye movements separated by eye fixations lasting about 250 ms.

Question 33

Perceptual span

Answer 33

The effective field of view in reading (letters to the left and right of fixation that can be perceived).

Question 34

Parafovea

Answer 34

The area in the retina immediately surrounding the fovea.

Question 35

Spillover effect

Answer 35

Any given word is fixated longer during reading when preceded by a rare word rather than a common one.

Question 36

Lexical parafoveal-on-foveal effect

Answer 36

The finding that fixation duration on the current word (word n) is influenced by lexical properties of the next word (word n+1).