COGS Language test

Question 1

What is the special place of language in cognitive science?

Answer 1

Language is both a cognitive process to understand and an artifact of the human mind that exists independently.

Question 2

What does the field of linguistics study?

Answer 2

Linguistics studies language itself as a cognitive system.

Question 3

What does the field of psycholinguistics study?

Answer 3

Psycholinguistics studies how humans process and use language.

Question 4

How does language allow the transmission of thoughts from one mind to another?

Answer 4

Language uses a shared symbolic system to convert thoughts into transmittable forms like sounds or written symbols, which are then decoded back into thoughts by the receiver.

Question 5

What are the three main modalities of language?

Answer 5

The three main modalities of language are speech, written language, and sign languages.

Question 6

What are the five main levels of linguistic analysis?

Answer 6

The five main levels of linguistic analysis are phonetics/phonology (speech sounds), morphology (meaningful units), syntax (grammar), semantics (meaning), and pragmatics (language use in communication).

Question 7

What is the difference between prescriptive and descriptive grammar?

Answer 7

Prescriptive grammar refers to defined rules of a language, while descriptive grammar refers to patterns of actual language use.

Question 8

What are Hockett’s four key linguistic universals?

Answer 8

Hockett’s linguistic universals are semanticity (meaning), arbitrariness (symbols unrelated to meaning), displacement (referring beyond the present), and productivity/generativity (infinite combinations from finite units).

Question 9

What demonstrates the productivity of language?

Answer 9

The productivity of language is demonstrated by the ability to create an infinite number of sentences and narratives from a finite number of sounds and words.

Question 10

What is unique about most sentences longer than 8 words?

Answer 10

Most sentences longer than 8 words have likely never been said before, and sentences of 11+ words are almost certainly unique.

Question 11

What are the three main challenges in speech perception?

Answer 11

The three main challenges in speech perception are segmentation (pauses within words), coarticulation (sounds altered by surrounding phonemes), and individual differences (gender, age, emotion, accent).

Question 12

What are three solutions that help with speech perception?

Answer 12

Three solutions that help with speech perception are language experience (shaping perception), context (disambiguating meaning), and visual cues (showing speech is multi-sensory).

Question 13

How does the human ear respond to different frequencies?

Answer 13

Human ears are most sensitive to the frequency range that matches human voices, which is around 1-2 kHz.

Question 14

What information does a spectrogram show?

Answer 14

A spectrogram shows the energy at different frequencies over time, with vowels appearing as distinct bands called formants and consonants as bursts of noise.

Question 15

What are the three main challenges in speech perception?

Answer 15

The three main challenges in speech perception are segmentation, co-articulation, and individual differences in voices.

Question 16

How does context help in speech perception?

Answer 16

The brain uses surrounding words to interpret unclear sounds, which is known as top-down processing.

Question 17

What is the McGurk effect, and what does it demonstrate?

Answer 17

The McGurk effect shows that lip movements/ visual cues influence what we hear, demonstrating that speech perception is multisensory.

Question 18

What is categorical perception, and how does it help in speech perception?

Answer 18

Categorical perception allows the brain to group similar sounds into distinct phonemes, even when they are acoustically similar.

Question 19

How does language experience affect the brain’s ability to discriminate phonemes?

Answer 19

Exposure to a specific language shapes the brain’s ability to discriminate phonemes, as infants lose the ability to distinguish between sounds not present in their native language.

Question 20

What is phonemic restoration, and what does it show about the role of context in speech perception?

Answer 20

Phonemic restoration is when the brain “fills in” missing phonemes based on context, showing that context plays a crucial role in speech perception.

Question 21

How do infants use statistical learning to identify word boundaries?

Answer 21

Infants use statistical learning to identify word boundaries in continuous speech by detecting patterns and regularities in the input they receive.

Question 22

What did Saffran et al. (1996) demonstrate about infant word segmentation?

Answer 22

Saffran et al. (1996) demonstrated that 8-month-old infants could identify novel “words” after just 2 minutes of exposure to a continuous stream of syllables.

Question 23

What are some key aspects of language production in children?

Answer 23

Key aspects of language production in children include syntax (sentence structure), productivity (making up new words), over-regularization (applying grammatical rules too broadly), and displacement (talking about things not present).

Question 24

What is Hockett’s Linguistic Universal - Semanticity

Answer 24

Symbolic units combine to express meaning

Question 25

What is Hockett’s Linguistic Universal - Arbitrariness

Answer 25

Symbols bear no inherent relation to meaning

Question 26

What is Hockett’s Linguistic Universal - Displacement

Answer 26

Ability to refer to things beyond the here and now

Question 27

What is Hockett’s Linguistic Universal - Productivity/Generativity

Answer 27

Finite units combined in infinite ways

Question 28

What makes speech perception a challenging problem?

Answer 28

Speech perception is hard because pauses are within words, sounds change based on surrounding sounds, and people’s voices are different.

Question 29

What is the head-turn preference procedure, and how is it used to study speech perception in infants?

Answer 29

The head-turn preference procedure measures how long infants look towards a sound or visual cue to determine their ability to tell sounds apart or their preference for certain stimuli.

Question 30

How do researchers use the high-amplitude sucking paradigm to study speech perception in infants?

Answer 30

Researchers measure changes in infants’ sucking rate on a pacifier, with an increase in sucking indicating a response to a new sound.

Question 31

What did Kuhl et al. (2006) demonstrate about the development of phoneme discrimination in infants?

Answer 31

Kuhl et al. (2006) showed that infants’ ability to distinguish /r/ and /l/ sounds changes based on their language experience between 6-12 months of age.

Question 32

What is the typical order of acquisition for different aspects of language in children?

Answer 32

Children typically develop speech sounds first, then word formation, sentence structure, meaning, and finally, language use in context.

Question 33

What is over-regularization, and how does it demonstrate children’s language development?

Answer 33

Over-regularization is when children apply grammar rules too broadly, showing they understand language patterns even if not yet perfect.

Question 34

What is displacement, and how does it showcase children’s language abilities?

Answer 34

Displacement is the ability to talk about things not present, which is a key aspect of language development in children.

Question 35

What is the speech perception challenge of segmentation?

Answer 35

Pauses don’t appear between words but in the middle of words.

Question 36

What is the speech perception challenge of Co-articulation?

Answer 36

Phonemes are altered by surrounding phonemes

Question 37

What is the speech perception challenge of Individual difference?

Answer 37

Voices vary based on gender, age, emotion, and accent

Question 38

How do infants acquire the sounds of their native language?

Answer 38

Infants learn language sounds through exposure. They start by babbling many sounds, then narrow it down to only the phonemes of the language(s) they hear.

Question 39

Can adults learn a new language with native-like proficiency?

Answer 39

It’s challenging for adults to fully master a new language, especially the phonology. There may be critical periods in childhood for acquiring language innately.

Question 40

What are the key stages of language production in children?

Answer 40

Babbling (6 months), first words (1 year), vocabulary burst (18 months), word combinations (2 years), sentences (3 years), storytelling (4 years), near-adult speech (5 years).

Question 41

How do deaf children of hearing parents communicate without language exposure?

Answer 41

They may develop “home sign”, a system of gestures that has some language-like properties such as symbolism and limited displacement.

Question 42

What happened when deaf children with home signs were brought together in Nicaragua?

Answer 42

They created a new sign language (NSL) by combining their home signs. Successive generations of children developed NSL into a full, complex language.

Question 43

What does the emergence of NSL suggest about language acquisition?

Answer 43

Children have an innate capacity to create language through social interaction, even without a complete language model. Their minds are built for language learning.

Question 44

What were some attempts to teach human language to apes?

Answer 44

Washoe (chimpanzee) learned some sign language. Kanzi (bonobo) used lexigrams and understood some speech. Koko (gorilla) and Nim Chimpsky (chimp) also learned limited signing.

Question 45

How did apes’ language acquisition differ from human children?

Answer 45

Apes’ signing lacked complex grammar, extensive displacement (talking about absent things), and transmission of the language to others - key features of human language.

Question 46

What are honey bees able to communicate with their “waggle dance”?

Answer 46

Honey bees use the angle and intensity of their dance to tell hive mates the direction and distance of food sources. It shows displacement but limited semanticity.

Question 47

How do zebra finches learn their songs?

Answer 47

Male zebra finches learn a unique courtship song from their fathers. Females prefer more complex songs. It’s an innate learning capacity but not open-ended communication.

Question 48

What do studies of animal communication reveal about human language?

Answer 48

Human language stands apart in its complex grammar, open-ended expressivity, and cultural transmission. Animals have innate communication capacities but lack the full power of human language.

Question 49

What is the main benefit of having an arbitrary relationship between words and their meanings?

Answer 49

Arbitrariness allows for flexibility, change, and the ability to combine units to create new words in language.

Question 50

What is onomatopoeia?

Answer 50

Onomatopoeia refers to words that sound like what they mean, such as “bang,” “crash,” “hiss,” and “cough.”

Question 51

What is sound symbolism?

Answer 51

Sound symbolism is the resemblance between sound and meaning in language, influenced by the physical shape of articulators or properties of sound.

Question 52

What did Ferdinand de Saussure argue about the nature of language?

Answer 52

Ferdinand de Saussure argued for the arbitrary nature of the sign, which became the orthodox view in linguistics in the early 20th century.

Question 53

What are ideophones?

Answer 53

Ideophones are words in some languages (mainly in Asia, Africa, and the Americas) that have a strong resemblance between sound and meaning.

Question 54

What is iconicity in language?

Answer 54

Iconicity is the resemblance-based mapping between aspects of form and meaning in language.

Question 55

How is sound symbolism related to vowel sounds?

Answer 55

High front vowels (e.g., “ee”) are associated with small size, while low back vowels (e.g., “oo,” “ah”) are associated with large size in many languages.

Question 56

How is sound symbolism used in product names?

Answer 56

Sound symbolism is exploited in product names and can influence perception and preference, such as in beer names and logos.

Question 57

What did a study find about the relationship between US presidential candidate names and election outcomes?

Answer 57

The study found that candidates with names having a higher “comfort index” based on sound symbolism were more likely to win elections.

Question 58

What is an example of iconicity in grammar?

Answer 58

In most languages, the subject comes before the object in the default word order, which matches our perceptual experience and understanding of causality.

Question 59

How do signed languages incorporate iconicity?

Answer 59

Signed languages have a greater degree of visual iconicity, with signs often resembling the things they represent, combined with conventionalization.

Question 60

How does iconicity play a role in language development?

Answer 60

Children are sensitive to sound symbolism, which may help them learn words and generalize concepts.

Question 61

What role might sound symbolism and iconicity have played in language evolution?

Answer 61

Sound symbolism and iconicity may have been important in the evolution of language, starting with role-play, mime, and gesture, and gradually becoming more arbitrary over time.

Question 62

Is iconicity universal across all languages and cultures?

Answer 62

No, while iconic associations are based on physical resemblances, they are not the same across all languages and cultures.

Question 63

How does the relationship between pitch and politeness differ between English and Korean?

Answer 63

In English, high pitch is associated with politeness, while in Korean, low pitch is associated with politeness due to cultural differences in the concept of politeness.

Question 64

What factors influence the implicit associations between voice pitch, body size, and gender?

Answer 64

Current research suggests that listener gender, age, and voice gender influence the strength of these associations, possibly linked to cultural conceptions of gender.

Question 65

What is Mātauranga Māori?

Answer 65

Mātauranga Māori refers to Māori ways of knowing that are derived from their ancestors. It is an evolutionary branch of human philosophy.

Question 66

How are Mātauranga Māori and te reo Māori related?

Answer 66

Mātauranga Māori and te reo Māori are interconnected, similar to how family history, community, and kinship are linked. Tikanga, the code of ethical behaviours, is connected to mātauranga and enacted through te reo Māori in various forms like songs and speech.

Question 67

What is the “language instinct” theory?

Answer 67

The “language instinct” theory, proposed by Pinker, suggests that language is independent of cognition. It holds that powerful abstract thinking can occur without language and that babies have concepts before language.

Question 68

What is the mainstream cognitive science view on language and cognition?

Answer 68

The mainstream cognitive science view is that a common language connects community members into an information-sharing network.

Question 69

What did Berlin and Kay propose about colour terms in languages?

Answer 69

Berlin and Kay proposed that all languages have basic colour terms that split the colour spectrum into categories like reds, greens, and blues. They suggested that languages have between 2-11 basic colour categories introduced in a specific sequence.

Question 70

How can cultural exchange influence colour categorization in languages?

Answer 70

Cultural exchange, such as early European contact with Māori, can influence how a language categorizes colour by introducing new colour terms or concepts.

Question 71

What is the “focal colour” in Berlin and Kay’s theory?

Answer 71

The “focal colour” is the most representative shade of each colour category, as identified by Berlin and Kay in their research.

Question 72

How many stages of colour category introduction did Berlin and Kay propose?

Answer 72

Berlin and Kay proposed five stages of colour category introduction: light/warm and dark/cool; reds; greens/yellows; blues; and other colours.

Question 73

What is a criticism of Berlin and Kay’s theory?

Answer 73

A criticism of Berlin and Kay’s theory is that it prioritizes a Western European view of colour categories and doesn’t account for languages that don’t have a concept of “colour” as understood in Western cultures.

Question 74

How many basic colour terms did Proto-Eastern Polynesian have in the 13th century?

Answer 74

Proto-Eastern Polynesian, the ancestral language of Polynesian cultures, had five basic colour categories in the 13th century.

Question 75

How did te reo Māori adapt to English colour categories after European contact?

Answer 75

After European contact, te reo Māori adopted English loanwords for colours. By the 21st century, it had expanded to match the 11 English colour categories using compound words.

Question 76

How do children typically learn colour names?

Answer 76

Children learn colour names as part of early language development, often using familiar objects like red apples or blue skies as examples.

Question 77

In which of Piaget’s stages of cognitive development does colour naming typically occur?

Answer 77

Colour naming typically develops in the preoperational stage of Piaget’s cognitive development theory, which occurs between ages 2-7.

Question 78

What are some aspects of early language acquisition?

Answer 78

Early language acquisition includes “motherese” (simpler speech), imitation, babbling, gestures, 1 and 2-word utterances, and simple sentences.

Question 79

How do context and culture influence children’s colour learning?

Answer 79

Children learn colours in their environmental context, with cultural objects playing a key role. Different cultures may categorize colours differently, and Western colour categories are often taught in schools.

Question 80

What are some differences between independent and interdependent cultures?

Answer 80

Independent cultures prioritize internal attributes, personal goals, and a self-concept separate from the group. Interdependent cultures prioritize social roles, group goals, and a self-concept embedded in the group, with relationships being crucial.

Question 81

How do Western and non-Western cultures differ in attributing behaviour?

Answer 81

In Western contexts, behaviour is attributed more to individual dispositions, while in non-Western contexts, behaviour is attributed more to situations.

Question 82

What are some characteristics of Western and Māori thinking styles?

Answer 82

Western thinking tends to be more analytical, focusing on objects and avoiding contradictions. Māori thinking tends to be more holistic and relational, focusing on contexts and connections between situations.

Question 83

How do Americans and Japanese perform on tasks involving context?

Answer 83

Americans perform better on tasks requiring ignoring context, while Japanese do better incorporating contextual information.

Question 84

What is alignment in the context of large language models (LLMs)?

Answer 84

Alignment is the process of fine-tuning LLMs after training to ensure they generate polite, appropriate, and helpful responses. This involves supervised learning and reinforcement learning.

Question 85

How is AI transforming the study of animal languages, specifically dolphin communication?

Answer 85

Researchers like Denise Herzing are using AI and deep learning to categorize and analyse dolphin sounds, which could potentially lead to the development of a “dolphin Rosetta Stone” and two-way communication between humans and dolphins.

Question 86

What is the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis?

Answer 86

The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis proposes that language influences (linguistic relativity) or determines (linguistic determinism) thought.

Question 87

What is the difference between linguistic determinism and linguistic relativity?

Answer 87

Linguistic determinism is the strong form of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, stating that language determines thought. Linguistic relativity is the weak form, suggesting that language influences thought.

Question 88

What did the emotion semantics study by Jackson et al. (2019) find?

Answer 88

The study analysed emotion words across 2,474 spoken languages and found cultural variations and universal structures in emotion semantics. For example, Persian uses the same word for grief and regret, while Sirkhi uses the same word for grief and anxiety.

Question 89

How do children acquire language?

Answer 89

Children’s brains are adapted to acquire language, and culture provides input for children to learn from.

Question 90

What is the relationship between language models (LLMs) and memory?

Answer 90

LLMs can be understood using a simple model of memory, where the chat window acts as short-term working memory and the LLM itself is like long-term memory. Attention plays a role in encoding and retrieving information.

Question 91

What are the main steps involved in language production?

Answer 91

Language production involves conceptualizing the intended message, selecting appropriate words, arranging them grammatically, and physically producing the sounds or signs.

Question 92

What is the common misconception about Eskimo words for snow?

Answer 92

It’s a misconception that Eskimo languages have many more words for snow than English. Both languages have several ways to describe snow.

Question 93

How does the movie “Arrival” explore linguistic determinism?

Answer 93

In “Arrival,” learning an alien language changes the protagonist’s perception of time and causality, demonstrating the concept of linguistic determinism.

Question 94

What did the World Colour Survey reveal about colour categorization across languages?

Answer 94

The World Colour Survey showed that different languages categorize colours differently.

Question 95

How do Russian and English differ in their categorization of blue?

Answer 95

Russian has two distinct words for blue: “siniy” (darker blue) and “goluboy” (lighter blue), while English does not make this distinction.

Question 96

What did Winawer et al. (2007) find in their study on colour discrimination?

Answer 96

Russian speakers were faster at discriminating between shades of blue that crossed the siniy/goluboy boundary compared to English speakers. This effect disappeared with verbal interference, suggesting a linguistic rather than perceptual difference.

Question 97

What role does culture play in language acquisition and cognition?

Answer 97

Culture provides the input for children and AIs to learn language. It shapes cognition through language.

Question 98

What is the relationship between language and thought?

Answer 98

Language supports and reflects thought. Most modern researchers lean towards linguistic relativity, acknowledging that language influences thought but does not solely determine cognitive processes.

Question 99

What are the basic components of a biological brain, and how do they enable learning?

Answer 99

The brain consists of neurons connected by synapses. Learning occurs by adjusting the strength of these synaptic connections.

Question 100

How do neural networks try to mimic the brain’s computational principles?

Answer 100

Neural networks use many small, interconnected processing units (similar to neurons) that communicate with each other to perform computations.

Question 101

How can the output of a neural network be interpreted as a probability distribution?

Answer 101

By scaling the activities of the output units to sum to 1, the output layer can be seen as a probability distribution over all possible categories.

Question 102

What is the purpose of a classifier network, and how is it trained?

Answer 102

A classifier network learns to map inputs to categories or classes. It is trained using supervised learning, where each input is paired with the correct output category.

Question 103

What is the main goal of a language processing network?

Answer 103

A language processing network aims to predict the next word in a sequence of words (the prompt).

Question 104

How can language networks be trained in a self-supervised manner?

Answer 104

Language networks can be trained using large text corpora, where the next word in a sequence is used as the target output, eliminating the need for manual labelling.

Question 105

Why do language models like ChatGPT produce different responses to the same prompt?

Answer 105

Language models sample from a probability distribution over all words in the language when generating text, which can lead to different responses for the same prompt.

Question 106

What is the difference between one-hot encoding and distributed word representations (embeddings)?

Answer 106

One-hot encoding represents each word with its own unit, while distributed representations use dense vectors that capture semantic similarities between words.

Question 107

How do distributed word representations help language networks generalize to unseen word sequences?

Answer 107

By representing words with similar meanings using similar vectors (numerical representations), the network can make educated guesses about the meaning of new word combinations based on their similarity to the word combinations it was trained on. This allows the network to generalize its understanding to new, but related, phrases and sentences.

Question 108

What is the main challenge in processing sequences of words in language tasks?

Answer 108

Mapping between sequences of words, such as in machine translation, while handling long-range dependencies between words.

Question 109

How did early language processing networks handle word sequences?

Answer 109

Early networks processed words one at a time, maintaining a running context representation that was updated after each word.

Question 110

How did early language processing networks handle word sequences?

Answer 110

Early networks processed words one at a time, maintaining a running context representation that was updated after each word.

Question 111

What is the attention mechanism, and how does it improve sequence processing in language networks?

Answer 111

Attention enables the network to learn which input words are most relevant for predicting each output word.

Question 112

What are transformers, and how do they relate to modern large language models (LLMs)?

Answer 112

Transformers, developed by Google, extensively use the attention mechanism and form the basis for modern LLMs like ChatGPT and GPT-4.

Question 113

What can transformer-based language models potentially learn from training data?

Answer 113

Transformers can learn complex patterns and relationships in the training data, potentially capturing the grammar of the language(s) they are trained on.

Question 114

Are transformers a perfect model of how the human brain acquires and processes language?

Answer 114

While transformers have achieved impressive results, it is still an open question whether they accurately model how the human brain acquires and processes language.