L1 - Language I, an introduction to computational models of speech production

Question 1

What is language?

Answer 1

An exchange of information

Question 2

Where does language processing occur?

Answer 2

Under the level of conscious awareness.

Question 3

Why do humanities lecturers have more hesitations in their speech compared to science lecturers?

Answer 3

Words in the lexicon compete for selection, and humanities lecturers have more words they can use whereas scientists don’t. There is more spreading activation due to more overlap in the humanities lexicon. Competition slows down speech.

Question 4

What is tip of the tongue state?

Answer 4

a state in which one cannot quite recall a familiar word but can recall words of similar form and meaning.

Question 5

What can we tell about speech processing from evidence of tip-of-the-tongue-state?

Answer 5

A concept is selected for production before the phonemes used to say it.

Question 6

What did Vigliocco et al 1997 find?

Answer 6

Found that Italian speakers in tip-of-the-tongue states know the grammatical gender of the word but cannot access the phonological form of the word. This suggests that sentences are planned and structured in a particular order.

Question 7

What are the three specific levels of processing which are required to plan and articulate an utterance?

Answer 7

1) Semantic processing
2) Syntactic and morphemic processing
3) Articulation (form processing)

Question 8

Where do speech errors tend to occur?

Answer 8

Within specific processes.

Question 9

What do speech errors allow us to do?

Answer 9

To make inferences about speech processing

Question 10

What happens with errors within semantic processing?

Answer 10

Conceptualisation blend errors - blending semantic related words together.

Question 11

What happens with errors within syntactic and morphemic processing?

Answer 11

Switching morphemes - e.g slicly thinned for thinly sliced.

Question 12

What happens with errors within form procssing?

Answer 12

Articulation Word and phoneme exchange - forks of a prong

Question 13

What have observations of speech errors highlighted?

Answer 13

The processes that are required to plan and execute speech

Question 14

Describe Fromkin’s model of utterance generation 1971

Answer 14

Box and arrow model, discrete model - each stage must happen in a particular order and they do not overlap.

Question 15

What is the first stage of Fromkin’s utterance generation?

Answer 15

Meaning is generated

Question 16

What is the second stage of Fromkin’s utterance generation?

Answer 16

Syntactic structure is generated and associated with semantic features.

Question 17

What is the 3rd stage of Fromkin’s model of utterance generation?

Answer 17

Position of intonation/stress is planned - stress on relevant sounds in sentence.

Question 18

What is the fourth stage of Fromkin’s utterance generation?

Answer 18

Lexicon look up - finds words and generates phonological segments - allow us to convey message

Question 19

What is the fifth stage of Fromkin’s model of utterance generation?

Answer 19

Morphophonemic constraints are added, and phonemes selected for utterance.

Question 20

How does Fromkin’s model accommodate word exchange errors?

Answer 20

Switching words around - accidentally putting one word in the wrong section. Utterance loses meaning.

Question 21

What does Dell’s model (a spreading activation theory of retrieval in sentence production) assume?

Answer 21

Assumes processes are fluid, information can go back and forth through the language production processes.

Question 22

What does Levelt’s model (A theory of lexical access in speech production) assume?

Answer 22

Assumes processes are serially organised and must complete 1 before the other begins - similar to Fromkin.

Question 23

What is Fromkin’s model known as and why?

Answer 23

Box and arrow model, because it was not implemented as a computational model

Question 24

What were Dell and Levelt’s models known as and why?

Answer 24

Computational models as they were implemented as functioning computational models.

Question 25

What do box and arrow models assume about processing?

Answer 25

That processing is occurring in a particular order for behaviour to occur in response to stimulus.

Question 26

What is a model?

Answer 26

A simplified representation of a thing

Question 27

What is a statistical model?

Answer 27

A mathematical relationship between variables, that hold under specific assumptions

Question 28

What are cognitive box and arrow models?

Answer 28

Models that describe the relationships between different mental processes, under the assumption that the mind operates like multi-staged information processing machines.

Question 29

What are formal cognitive models?

Answer 29

Input –> then usually a mathematical description of the relationship between mental processes usually expressed through computer code –> output (behaviour)

Question 30

What do nodes represent in neural networks?

Answer 30

Groups of neurons.

Question 31

Activation of nodes..?

Answer 31

Spreads activation across the network.

Question 32

Describe Dell’s spreading activation theory?

Answer 32

Interactive and cascading model - information is not restrained in the order in which it has to happen. Based on spreading activation.

Question 33

What are the three levels in Dell’s spreading activation theory?

Answer 33

Semantic level, Syntax + morphology level, phoneme level.

Question 34

How does spreading activation work in Dell’s model?

Answer 34

Occurs simultaneously - can go up and down via spreading activation. Some processes receive more activation than others.

Question 35

Describe spreading activation on a semantic level

Answer 35

Words that are similar

Question 36

Describe spreading activation on a phonemic level.

Answer 36

Words that sound similar

Question 37

Describe the assumption about processing levels in Dell’s spreading activation theory

Answer 37

Semantic level information is processed at the same time as phonemic level

Question 38

Describe Dell’s spreading activation theory

Answer 38

Spreading activation activates concepts related to the item, the concept with the most relevance receives most activation.

Competition between words and concepts.

Processing items that overlap in semantics and/or phonology will result in higher error rates than processing items that do not overlap.

Question 39

What did participants have to do in Ferreira and Griffin’s experiment?

Answer 39

Participants named target pictures after first reading sentences that primed a semantic competitor, a semantic and phonological competitor or an unrelated word.

Question 40

What does Ferreira and Griffin’s experiment test?

Answer 40

Semantic and phonological competitors.

We have words that sound the same but have different meaning. Use these to test how we process it. If levels interact then the press flows from meaning and sound up and down.
Primed with sentence in competition with picture they are naming.
Primed to think about ‘nun’ when presented semantic competitor sentence.
Presented with a picture of a priest but then the sentence I thought there would be some cookies left, but there were ______ semantically not related to the image.
Results in more errors as both semantic and phonological errors occur at once.

Question 41

Results of FERREIRA and Griffin

Answer 41

When attempting to name the target picture “priest”
participants were more likely to mistakenly produce the semantic or phonological + semantic competitor /nʌn/ than they were to produce an unrelated word (e.g., match)

20% of errors when represented with semantic alone. Tells us predictions of Dell’s models. Both of these occur simultaneously and they are active at the same time.

Question 42

What does the evidence from F&G demonstrate??

Answer 42

Evidence from Ferreira and Griffin (2003) demonstrates that semantic and phonological similarity can result in speech errors suggesting that processing is fluid and interactive.
There is communications between different levels of speech processing.

Question 43

Dell interim conclusion

Answer 43

The model provides a convincing account of speech errors
Evidence from lab induced speech errors supports the suggestion that processing is interactive.

However some suggest that the parallel processing in the Dell model would predict that we make far more speech errors than we actually do

Question 44

What is a lemma?

Answer 44

The word form and the syntactic information that links with the word form

Question 45

What is Levelt et al’s model?

Answer 45

The WEAVER++ model. It contains an extra level called the lemma

Question 46

What is a lemma?

Answer 46

The word form and the syntactic information that links with the word form.

It contains semantic (meaning) and syntactic (grammatical) information about a word but not its phonological (sound) form.

In models of language production, such as those proposed by Levelt, a lemma is activated during the stage of grammatical encoding. Once the speaker has chosen the concept they want to express, they select the corresponding lemma, which helps in determining the word’s grammatical features (e.g., tense, number, gender) without yet specifying its sounds. After the lemma is selected, the phonological form of the word is retrieved, allowing the speaker to articulate it.
If you want to say “run” in a sentence like “I run every day,” the lemma for “run” would include the concept of the action and its grammatical features (present tense, verb), but not yet the phonological representation (/rʌn/).

Question 47

What is different about spreading activation in Levelt’s model as opposed to Dell’s?

Answer 47

Spreading activation still occurs, but once the concept has been selected, inhibitory signals are sent out from the node to other relevant concepts and semantics are deactivated, preventing them from being carried forward. This level of inhibition is not present in Dell’s model.

Question 48

Describe the theory and predictions for both Levelt et al and Dell.

Answer 48

Levelt et al - Processing items which are semantically similar will be inhibitve
Dell - due to the lack of inhibitory connections processing items which are semantically similar will not be inhibitive.

Question 49

What did the Wheeldon and Monsell experiment make participants do?

Answer 49

To make sure the experiments tested speech production, participants were asked to
1) answer a question out loud
2) name a picture
The answer to the question was either semantically elated to the picture or unrelated. If related to the previous concept, activation of the word would be slower.

Question 50

What were the results of Wheeldon and Monsell’s experiment?

Answer 50

Graph shows it takes much longer to recall a word semantically related to an image as it has been inhibited, than a semantically unrelated item. Suggest speech production is discrete.

Question 51

Speech errors in Levelt et al’s model

Answer 51

WEAVER++ assumes speech errors are very rare. Doesn’t account for errors. But errors may occur if the wrong concept is selected and processed to the phonological level.

Question 52

Evidence to support existence of te lemma -

Answer 52

Tip of the tongue state. In the lemma is the grammatical gender of the word. Have syntactic info in lemma but not the rest.

Question 53

How did Dell test spreading activation and interaction occurring at all levels? (Producing the word doll)

Answer 53

Tested by having two items on a screen. Target item outline in green, distractor outline in red. Instructed to name green and ignore red.
In Dell’s model, predicts both dog and dol became activated at the same time, down to level of phonology. Both share initial starting phoneme - shared activation. But with bat there is no semantic or phonological overlap,

Question 54

What did Meyer and Damian find out about Semantic interference?

Answer 54

We see naming is quicker when phonology overlaps - as it is activated twice meaning we have faster access to it. Activating the same phonology means we have access to them quicker.
Under WEAVER++ this shouldn’t happen and phonological relatedness shouldn’t have an impact.