Cognitive Psychology - Speech and Language Flashcards
Define language
A system of visual/vocal symbols that have meaning to user and recipient
Define linguistics
The study of the rules of language
Define psycholinguistics
The study of the role of cognition in language acquisition, production and comprehension, including how verbal behaviour develops
Which model looks at turning ideas into air and back again?
Communication model
What produces speech?
A set of muscles in the face, mouth and throat
What’s a phoneme?
The smallest unit of speech sound (not letters) e.g., pin (p+i+n) and ship (sh+i+p)
What’s a group of phonemes?
The smallest unit of speech that influences meaning e.g., bet > bit, dig > gig
What are the 3 parts to making consonants?
Voice, place, manner
What is voice? (making consonants)
Whether/when vocal cords vibrate
What is place? (making consonants)
Where in the vocal tract the constriction takes place
What is manner? (making consonants)
How the air moves out of the vocal tract/what sort of constriction takes place
Give examples of voice
Zip/Sip, Bat/Pat, Dip/Tip
Give examples of place
Pat/Tat/Cat, Bot/Dot/Got
Give examples of manner
Nose/Doze (nasal/stop), Dip/Zip (stop/fricative)
What is Voice Onset Time (VOT)
When lips open relative to when vocal chords start vibrating
Do ‘Pa’ and ;Ba’ differ in Voice Onset Time (VOT)?
Yes
How do ‘Pa’ and ‘Ba’ differ in VOT?
‘Pa’ VOT tends to be about 50 ms slower than ‘Ba’
What is the hypothesised and actual perception of phonemes ‘ba’ and ‘pa’
-Hypothetically, we would expect a gradual shift from ‘ba’ to ‘pa’. Actual perception is categorical.
-Hypothetically, adults should be able to discriminate between each VOT. There is actually an abrupt shift typically at about 20-25 ms.
What are the 2 consequences of categorical perception?
1) We are good at perceiving changes across category boundaries
2) We are bad at perceiving changes within category boundaries
What are the 3 parts to making vowels?
1) Height
2) Backness
3) Roundedness
What is height? (making vowels)
The vertical position of tongue in the mouth
What is backness? (making vowels) Give 2 examples
How far back in the mouth the tongue is.
1) “ee” = front
2) “oo” = back
What is roundedness? (making vowels)
The shape of the lips. Correlated with tongue position in many languages.
What are formants?
Peaks of the acoustic signal/distinctive frequency components we need to distinguish vowels
What formants are needed to identify a vowel?
The first 2 formants (F1 and F2) are often sufficient to identify a vowel