Intro to Cognitive Science - Unit 4

Question 1

What happens when visual and auditory cues are incongruent?

Answer 1

Listeners typically report a third, different input: consider the McGurk effect (R322)

Question 2

Why is there a crossmodal binding problem when processing modality-specific signals?

Answer 2

Because the neural pathways involved are usually anatomically distinct (R322)

Question 3

What tentative explanation is there for crossmodal binding?

Answer 3

Synchronized firing: when the input to two modalities is synchronized, they are bound together into the same perception (R323)

Question 4

What is one of the problems with using fMRI to study multisensory synthesis?

Answer 4

Often, multisensory regions not only contain multisensory neurons, but patches of various unimodally responsive neurons: can’t differentiate between multiples “ones” or single “manys” (R323)

Question 5

What does it mean for neurons to exhibit “multisensory facilitation” when presented with two or more stimuli of different modality?

Answer 5

The total response evoked can be greater than the sum of the responses evoked by the different stimuli presented in isolation (R323)

Question 6

What is it about speech perception that suggests a dedicated separate module?

Answer 6

The ability of speech perception to be fast and automatic, and to cope with varying circumstances (53)

Question 7

What is coarticulation?

Answer 7

When the different phonemes have overlap in their articulation: example; if you’re articulating /b/ in beg you’re already starting to form /ae/

Question 8

True of false: phonemes have invariant distinctive features

Answer 8

False: consider “top” and “stop”

Question 9

What two features of speech imply that listeners process acoustic signals in context?

Answer 9

Coarticulation and lack of invariance

Question 10

What is categorical perception?

Answer 10

The categorization of speech input at the phonemic level: VOT in 0.15 second increments can be categorized as the same phoneme up until a sharply defined boundary, for example (Lisker and Abramson 1970) (58)

Question 11

What is language, at heart?

Answer 11

The use of symbols to convey meaning (211)

Question 12

How do researchers believe that language evolved earlier than did speech?

Answer 12

Homo habilis skulls may feature a Broca’s speech area, but the unusual human vocal tract only emerged in Homo sapiens sapiens (212)

Question 13

What is a morpheme?

Answer 13

A minimal unit of speech used repeatedly in a language to code a specific meaning: kill, -ed, pre-, post-

Question 14

Approximately how many phonemes are used in the English language?

Answer 14

Around 40 different phonemes (214)

Question 15

What is syntax?

Answer 15

The rules that specify how words and other morphemes are arranged to yield grammatically acceptable sentences

Question 16

What is pragmatics?

Answer 16

The manner in which speakers communicate their intentions depending on the social context

Question 17

What is a speech act?

Answer 17

A sentence uttered to express a speaker’s intention in a way that the listener will recognize (Grice 1975) (217)

Question 18

What is Broca’s aphasia?

Answer 18

Inability to speak fluently without effort and with correct grammar

Question 19

Wernicke’s aphasia?

Answer 19

Comprehension dysfunction: effortless and fluent speech, often semantically meaningless

Question 20

What negative component voltage is seen after semantically unpredictable words?

Answer 20

N400

Question 21

What does it mean for a paragraph to be referentially coherent?

Answer 21

That the words and phrases of one sentence refer unambiguously to those of the other sentences

Question 22

What is the immediacy assumption?

Answer 22

Holds that the reader assigns an interpretation to each word as it is fixated; reader may need to review the interpretation based on a subsequent fixation

Question 23

What is the eye-mind assumption?

Answer 23

Holds that the duration of fixation varies with the amount of information that must be processed in working memory at that instant: the work of comprehension takes place during the fixation; next saccadic eye movement is suppressed until the reader is ready