Cognition Chapter 13 (Language Comprehension)

Question 1

What is the invariance problem and its 3 aspects

Answer 1

We hear the same phoneme despite
1.) physicial differences in different words
2.) Difference between speakers (accents)
3.) difference within a speaker (coarticulation)
Speecg sounds appear to be constant but they are not

Question 2

What is the McGurk effect

Answer 2

When you are able to hear lips and see voices
Seeing Lips pronounce something different than said results in different perceptiom
BA and GA result in DA
Visual information is automatically integrated in the speech perception process

Question 3

What is the minds solution to the invariance problem

Answer 3

It uses categorical perception
It uses the context
-visual
-auditory (rest of word/sentence) and top down processing

Question 4

What happens when you let a human listen to a gradual change of speech sounds (BA to GA)

Answer 4

The change is noticed at one certain moment, even tho its changing gradualy

Question 5

What is the phonemic restoration effect and what does it prove

Answer 5

Its when you listen to a sentence where a phoneme is not said but still heard
This proves that there is top down processing
Similar in visual illusions

Question 6

What are regular and irregular letter-sound relation

Answer 6

When the written words are pronounced different that they are written it is irregular
A is car vs care

Question 7

Explain the dual route model

Answer 7

There are two routes from script to sound

1. ) graphemephoneme conversion (just speaking what you are reading)
2. ) Mental dicitonary (prior knowledge (semantic))

Question 8

What is Alexia and what are the 3 types of ot

Answer 8

It is acquired dyslexia (brain injury)

1. ) Surface dyslexia
2. ) Phonological (deep) dyslexia
3. ) Non-semantic reading

Question 9

What is Surface dyslexia

Answer 9

When a person has difficulties with reading and meaning (wrong pronounciation of irregular words
–> mental dictionary/lexicon is impared

Question 10

What is Phonological dyslexia

Answer 10

When a perosn cannot read nonwords
–> the grapheme phoneme conversion is impaired
readers have to guess

Question 11

What is Nonsemantic dyslexia

Answer 11

When a person cannot comprehend words that are written

–> route to semantic system is impaired

Question 12

What is innate dyslexia

Answer 12

When reading did not develop normally which may be caused by
- motivation
- intelligence
- sight
- social development
They then have problems turning letters into sounds

Question 13

What is the basic idea of auditory word recognition and what is the uniqueness point

Answer 13

Its idea is that all words which are compatible with the sounds heard are active
First there is bottom up information but then top down
The uniqueness point is the point where there is only one word possible to be understand

Question 14

Explain the Cohort model in auditory word recognition

Answer 14

When the words are sorted out the more phonemes are said (like autocorrection)

Question 15

Explain the Trace model in auditory word recognition

Answer 15

Features activate phonemes
phonemes activate and inhibit other words
Words inhibit other words, and inhibit/activate phonemes

Question 16

What is pure word deafness (pure auditory verbal agnosia

Answer 16

When patients cannot recognize speech sounds
They can still speak read and write
Here the auditory signal analysis is inhibited

Question 17

What is pure word meaning deafness

Answer 17

When people are able to hear repead and write down words (can still do auditory lexical decision task) but are unable to comprehend what is being said
Here the path to the semantic system is broken

Question 18

What are ear slips

Answer 18

When you hear words with meanings in names or other hard comprehendable stuff
(Mondegreens)
–> people look for word meanings

Question 19

How do you see that syntax determines roles in sentences

Answer 19

When there are reversible passives (the lion was killed by the leopard)
People with brocas aphasias cannot understand this

Question 20

What is parsing

Answer 20

When you analyse a sentence in a kind of tree diagramm

Question 21

What is a garden path sentences and what does it show

Answer 21

Its a grammatically correct sentence which is hard to understand at first
That there is semantic reinterpretation which means that not ony the syntax but also the interpretation matters when assigning meaning

Question 22

What is ambiguity

Answer 22

When a word can be interpretated in 2 ways
The police shot the rioters with guns.
These words are then homonyms as they have the same sound

Question 23

When reading a sentence, do we at first always deduct the syntactic structure?

Answer 23

No, we also look for meaning and choose the most simple structure

Question 24

What are ERPs and what is the N400 and the P600 effect

Answer 24

ERPs are Event related potentials
They are the brain signals that are registered AFTER a stimulus is presented
N400 is when there is a Semantic error (negative)
P600 is when there is a syntactic error (positive)

Question 25

What is the segmentation problem

Answer 25

How people are able to hear words in a continuous string of speech

Question 26

What is the foreign language syndrome

Answer 26

When people aquire accents because of brain injury (brocas aphasia)

Question 27

What is the underlying use of “ähm” or other speech dysfluency

Answer 27

They may signal that a unusual word is following and “prepare” the listener for this

Question 28

What is the right ear advantage

Answer 28

Speech sounds are better processed in a specific ear, mostly in the right one compared to the left

Question 29

What is a lexical decision task

Answer 29

its a task where participants are shown a letter string and must decide if its a word

Question 30

What is the lexical access

Answer 30

The process of finding knowledge about stored words

Question 31

*What are dogs better at than most other animals in language

Answer 31

They are considerably better at understanding what is wanted from them with gestures or vocalizations when finding something, which may have been developed when dogs were living with humans together

Question 32

Whats a grapheme

Answer 32

The written representation of a phoneme

Question 33

What is saccades and fixiation

Answer 33

Saccades is the eye movement when reading something

Fixiation is staying at one part for a bit