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PSYC 301L > Chapter Eleven - Language > Flashcards

Chapter Eleven - Language Flashcards

1
Q

What is language?

A

-system of communication using sounds/symbols

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2
Q

What does language enable us to do?

A
  • express feelings, thoughts, ideas, experiences

- provide way of arranging a sequence of signals to transmit info from one person to another

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3
Q

What is the hierarchical system?

A

-components that can be combined to form larger units

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4
Q

How is language governed?

A
  • by rules

- specific ways components can be arranged

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5
Q

Why is language called “universal?”

A

-occurs wherever there are people

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6
Q

What does it mean that languages are “unique but the same?”

A
  • different words, sounds, rules

- all have nouns, verbs, negatives, questions, past/present tense etc.

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7
Q

What are general characteristics of language?

A
  1. deaf children invent sign language that is all their own
  2. all humans develop a language
  3. language is universal across cultures
  4. language development is similar across cultures
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8
Q

What are Broca + Wernicke?

A

-areas in frontal + temporal lobes related to different aspects of langauge

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9
Q

What did BF Skinner believe about language?

A

-language learned through reinforcement

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10
Q

What did Noam Chomsky argue about language?

A
  • human language coded in genes
  • underlying basis of all language is similar
  • studying language as way to study properties of the mind
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11
Q

What is support that language is inherent?

A

-children produce sentences that they have never heard/never been been reinforced

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12
Q

What field Noam Chomsky’s studies start?

A

psycholinguists

-language as bridge to properties of the mind

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13
Q

What are psycholinguists?

A

-discover psychological process by which humans acquire + process language

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14
Q

What is comprehension?

A

-how people understand spoken + written language

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15
Q

What is speech production?

A

-how do people produce language

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16
Q

What is representation?

A

-how is language represented in mind and in brain?

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17
Q

what is aquisition?

A

-how do people learn language?

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18
Q

What are 4 things that psycholinguisitcs are concerned about?

A
  1. comprehension
  2. speech production
  3. representation
  4. acquisition
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19
Q

What is a lexicon?

A
  • our knowledge of words

- how they sound + what they mean

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20
Q

What are the 2 smallest units of language?

A
  1. phonemes

2. morphemes

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21
Q

What are Phonemes?

A

-shortest segments of speech that, if changed, changes the meaning of the word

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22
Q

What are morphemes?

A

-smallest units of language that have meaning/grammatical function

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23
Q

When does the phonemic restoration effect occur?

A

-occurs when phonemes are perceived in speech when sounds of phoneme is covered up

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24
Q

Phonemic restoration effect

A

-“fill in” missing phonemes based on context of sentence/portion of word presented

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25
Q

What were the results of the experiment testing the phonemic restoration effect?

A
  • subjects can’t tell when cough takes place

- able to fill in

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26
Q

What kind of processing is phonemic restoration effect?

A

top down processing

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27
Q

What is speech segmentation?

A

perceiving individual words in a sentence

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28
Q

What is context?

A
  • when taken out of context, presented alone

- words become must more difficult to understand

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29
Q

What happens when subjects are presented with their own speech but segmented?

A

-they could only identify half of the words

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30
Q

What does it mean to understand sound and syntactic rules?

A

-certain sounds are more likely to be separated by space between two words

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31
Q

What is the Word Superiority Effect experiment?

A
  • stimulus that is either a word, letter, or non-word is flashed briefly
  • followed by a mask
  • two letter are represented rapidly
  • s task is to pick flashed letter that is presented
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32
Q

What is the result of the Word Superiority Effect experiment?

A
  • letters are easier to recognize when they are contained in a word
  • rather than when they appear alone/contained in a nonword
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33
Q

How are words used in a particular language?

A

-create a large representative sample of utterances or written text (corpus)

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34
Q

What is the purpose of a corpus?

A

-indicates frequency of:

words, different meanings, grammatical constructions

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35
Q

Why are corpuses useful?

A
  • a lot of what goes on during language comprehension can be traced to prediction
  • our ability to perceive written words depends on how frequently they appear in our lexicon
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36
Q

What is the word frequency effect?

A

-respond more rapidly to high-frequency words

EX: respond more rapidly to “home” vs. “hike”

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37
Q

What is the lexical decision task?

A
  • read list of words and non-words silently
  • say “yes” when you read a word
  • faster for words that are more frequent
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38
Q

What happens to eye movements during reading?

A

-look at low-frequency words longer

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39
Q

What is lexical ambiguity?

A

-words have more than one meaning
EX: duck
-some meanings of words are more likely

40
Q

How is the ambiguity of words resolved?

A

-context clears up ambiguity after all meanings of a word have been briefly accessed

41
Q

What is meaning dominance?

A

some meanings of words are used more frequently than others

42
Q

What is biased dominance?

A

-when words have two or more meanings with different dominance

43
Q

What is balanced dominance?

A

-when words have two or meanings with about the same dominace

44
Q

Why are biased and balanced dominance significant?

A

-influences the wya people access the meanings of words

45
Q

How did the understanding words task work?

A

balanced dominance word = CAST, CAST
biased dominance word = TIN, tin
-no prior context, speed determined by dominance

46
Q

Are components of language processed in isolation?

A

no

47
Q

What are 2 things we must distinguish between in order to understand how words create meaning in a sentence?

A
  1. semantics

2. syntax

48
Q

What are semantics?

A

-meanings of words and sentences

49
Q

What is syntax?

A

rules for combining words into sentences

50
Q

What are the two areas of the brain that syntax and semantics are processed?

A
  1. Broca’s area (frontal lobe)

2. Wernicke’s area (temporal lobe)

51
Q

What is Broca’s aphasia?

A
  • slow, labored, ungrammatical speech, have problem understanding some types of sentences
  • problems with syntax
52
Q

What is Wernicke’s aphasia?

A
  • produce meaningless speech
  • unable to understand speech + writing
  • problems with semantics
53
Q

What have Event-related potential studies shown about syntax + semantics?

A

-associated with different mechanisms

54
Q

What is ERP?

A
  • rapid response
  • occurring on a time scale of a fraction of a second
  • consists of a number of waves that occur at different delays after a stimulus is presented which can be linked to different functions
55
Q

What is the N400 response associated with? (4)

A
  1. semantic manipulation
  2. meaning
  3. structures in temporal lobe
  4. damage to temporal lobe reduces N400
56
Q

What is the P600 response associated with?

A
  1. syntactic manipulation
  2. form of a sentence
  3. structures in the frontal lobe
  4. damage to frontal lobe reduces P600
57
Q

What are garden path sentences?

A
  • sentences that begin by appearing to mean one thing

- then end up meaning something else

58
Q

What is temporary ambiguity?

A
  • when initial words are ambiguous

- meaning is made clear by the end of the sentence

59
Q

What is the syntax-first approach to parsing?

A
  • as people read a sentence, their grouping of words into phrases is governed by number of rules that are based on syntax
  • if reader realizes something wrong with parsing, they take other info into account to interpret sentence
60
Q

What is late closure?

A

-parser assumes new word is part of the current phrase

61
Q

interactionist approach to parsing

A

-semantics + syntax both influence processing as one reads a sentence

62
Q

What does semantics influence

A

the way we interpret the relationship between the words in a sentence

63
Q

What else might our interpretation of a sentence be influenced by?

A

the meaning of a scene we are observing

64
Q

What was Tanenhaus and coworkers’s experiment?

A

visual world paradigm

65
Q

What is the visual word paradigm

A

involves determining how S processes infomation as they are observing a visual scene

66
Q

What is the result of Tanenhaus and coworkers’s experiment?

A
  • eye movements change when info suggests revision of interpretation of sentence is necessary
  • syntactic + semantic information used simultaneously
67
Q

Besides syntax and semantics, what else do we use to understand/make predictions about language?

A

-knowledge about the environment
EX: “Getting himself and his car to work on the neighboring island was time consuming. Every morning he drove for a few minutes, and then boarded the …”

68
Q

What did Fine et al. study?

A
  • investigated whether readers can learn to change their predictions based on experience with new constructions
  • used moving window paradigm
69
Q

What is the moving window paradigm?

A
  • S reads one word at a time on computer screen

- pushed space bar to view next word

70
Q

What is an important part of the process of creating a coherent/creative story?

A

-making inferences

71
Q

How do we make inferences?

A
  • determining what the text means by using our own knowledge

- unconscious inference, constructive nature of memory

72
Q

What is one role of inference?

A

-create connections between parts of a story

73
Q

What is coherence?

A

representation of the text in one’s mind so that info from one part can be related to info in another part

74
Q

What are 3 types of inference

A
  1. anaphoric
  2. instrumental
  3. causal
75
Q

anaphoric inference

A

connecting objects/people in one sentence to objects/people in other sentences

76
Q

instrumental inferences

A

-inferences about tools or methods

77
Q

causal inferences

A

events in one clause caused by events in previous sentence

78
Q

What is the situation model?

A
  • mental representation of what text is about
  • represent events as if experiencing the situation
  • POV of protagonist
  • does not consist of info about phrases, sentences, or par.
79
Q

mental representation sas simulations

A

we simulate the perceptual and motor characteristics of the objects/actions in a story

80
Q

What does physiology have to do with simulations?

A
  • approximately same areas of cortex activated by actual movements + by reading related action words
  • activation more extensive for actual movements
81
Q

What did Ross Metusalem’s experiment test?

A
  • ERP experiments as people read short passages

- looked at amplitude of N400 response (semantic response)

82
Q

What did Ross Metusalmen’s experiment result in?

A

-“guitar” generates smaller N400 tha barn: guitar is least slightly activated by scenario

  • barn is unrelated
  • guitar is related
  • stage is expected
83
Q

What is the most common form of language production/

A

conversations

84
Q

What are conversations?

A
  • 2 or more people talking to each other
  • dynamic + rapid
  • involves shared knowledge
  • need to take into account what other person is saying
85
Q

What is the given-new contract?

A
  • speaker constructs sentences so they include:
  • given info
  • new info
  • new can then become given
86
Q

What is common ground?

A
  • the speakers’ mutual knowledge, beliefs, and assumptions

- each person needs to understand the knowledge that the other person brings to the conversation

87
Q

How is common ground established?

A

-back and forth exchanges in the conversation

88
Q

What is syntactic coordination/

A

using similar grammatical constructions

89
Q

What is syntactic priming?

A

-production of a specific grammatical construction by one person increases chances that other person will use that construction

90
Q

What is the benefit of syntactic priming?

A

-reduces computational load in conversation

91
Q

Explain syntactic priming experiments

A
  • 2 people engage in convo about some task
  • experimenter determines whether spec. grammatical construction used by one person causes another to use it
  • one of the 2 S could be a conferderate to prime construct
  • S picks matching card, S describes card to other person
92
Q

What are the results of syntactic priming experiments?

A
  • 78% of trials, form of S description matches for of confederate’s priming statement
  • supports idea that speakers are sensitive to linguistic behavior of other speakers
93
Q

What is the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis?

A
  • language influences thought

- nature of a culture’s language can affect the way poeple think

94
Q

What is the Winawer experiment?

A

-two cultures had differences in how particpants respnoded to blue squares based on how they were categorized

95
Q

What is the Gilbert experiment?

A

-looked for a difference between how colors are processed in left and right hemispheres of the brain
(language processed in left)
EX: if language affects color perception, more likely to do so when colors are viewed in right visual field

PSYC 301L (10 decks)

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