Cognitive Psychology Chapter IX Language III

Question 1

Trasformational grammar involves …

Answer 1

… transformational rules.

Question 2

Wasow said: “Transformations are …

Answer 2

… rules that map tree structures onto other tree structures.”

Question 3

Two kinds of structures in transformational grammar:

Answer 3

• deep structure (syntactical structure linkingvarious phrase structures)
• surface structure (single phrase structures)

Question 4

What about Susie and the Crocodile in Phrase-Structure Grammar and in Transformational Grammar?

Answer 4

“Susie greedily ate the crocodile.” and
“The crocodile was eaten greedily by Susie.”
very different in Phrase-Structure
Transformational Grammar shows similarity

Question 5

What’s the positive aspect of storing a lot of syntactical information in our mental lexicon?

Answer 5

We can drastically reduce number and complexity of syntactical rules in our mental syntax.

Question 6

Who suggested that our mental lexicon contains more than just the meaning of words, but also syntactical information?

Answer 6

Chomsky (1965)

Question 7

How could syntax and semantic be linked in speech production?

Answer 7

Through “thematic roles”.
Each lexical entry also contains information of which kinds of slots the item can be placed in.
(e.g. instrument, agent, recipient, goal, location etc.)

Question 8

Moettoenen & Watkins (2009) study?

Answer 8

r(epetitive)TMS on lip area impaired understanding of lip involving sounds (ba vs. da), but not of not-lip-involving sounds (ga vs. ka) -> evidence for Motor Theory of Speech Perception

Question 9

What is dyslexia?

Answer 9

Difficulty in deciphering, reading and comprehending text.

Question 10

4 processes that might be impaired in dyslexia:

Answer 10

• Phonological awareness
• Phonological reading
• Phonological coding
• Lexical access

Question 11

Phonological awareness refers to …

Answer 11

… awareness of the sound structure of spoken language.

Question 12

Phonological reading entails …

Answer 12

… reading words in isolation.

Question 13

Phonological coding in …

Answer 13

… working memory.

Question 14

Lexical access refers to …

Answer 14

… one’s ability to retrieve phonemes from long-term memory.

Question 15

Two of several kinds of dyslexia:

Answer 15

• developmental dyslexia (starts as child, continues)

- acquired dyslexia (caused by traumatic brain damage)

Question 16

Two processes involved in reading:

Answer 16

• lexical processes (are used to identify letters and words)

- Comprehension processes (are used to make sense of the text as a whole)

Question 17

Also while reading the eye moves in saccades. The last word of a sentence receives an extra long fixation time, namely the …

Answer 17

… “sentence wrap-up time”.

Question 18

Lexical access is the …

Answer 18

… identification of a word that allows us to retrieve its meaning from memory.

Question 19

In lexical access the interactive-activation model distinguishes among the following three levels:

Answer 19

• feature level
• letter level
• word level

Question 20

What’s the “word-superiority effect”? (aka. configural-superiority or object-superiority effect)

Answer 20

letters are read more easily when embedded in words

Question 21

Task proposed by Posner and Mitchell to meassure “lexical-access speed”:

Answer 21

A-A , A-a and A-b.
Difference between two tasks:
do these pairs match physically (e.g. A-A)
do these pairs match in name (e.g. A-a)

Question 22

Semantic coding is the …

Answer 22

… process by which we translate sensory information into a meaningful representation.

Question 23

What we remember from a text often depends on …

Answer 23

… our point of view.

Question 24

After words are semantically encoded we usually form …

Answer 24

… mental models of the text / passage.

Question 25

What about mental models of a text?

Answer 25

• we can have more than one at a time, but less is easier
• they are mallible in relation to the next sentence
  “The loud bang scared Alice.” followed by
• “She tightend her grip pf the steering wheel.” vs.
• “She ducked to avoid being shot.”