Brainscape's Knowledge GenomeTM

Browse over 1 million classes created by top students, professors, publishers, and experts.


See full index

Cognition > language > Flashcards

language Flashcards

1
Q

language

A

a shared symbolic system for purposeful communications

symbolic: units to reference something else

shared: common among a group of people

purposeful: to communicate and translate thoughts

How well did you know this?
1
Not at all
2
3
4
5
Perfectly
2
Q

is human language unique

A

some animals communicate very basically - ants use chemical signals through antenna, bees use body movements, some monkeys have basic vocalization styles

however, human language can generate an infinite variety of sequences in novel ways

How well did you know this?
1
Not at all
2
3
4
5
Perfectly
3
Q

environment and language

A

vocabulary is shaped by the environment

morphology decreases with languages spoken by more people

lexical tones are partly determined by climate

How well did you know this?
1
Not at all
2
3
4
5
Perfectly
4
Q

gender inequality and language

A

countries with gendered languages experience higher average gender inequality

changing language = making changes in society

How well did you know this?
1
Not at all
2
3
4
5
Perfectly
5
Q

language differences men and women

A

women use more adjectives and first person plurals than men (we need to hurry) and use a ‘reverse accent’ more than men (end statements like questions)

How well did you know this?
1
Not at all
2
3
4
5
Perfectly
6
Q

aphasia

A

impaired language function from brain injury

includes:
brocas aphasia
wernickes aphasia
conduction aphasia

How well did you know this?
1
Not at all
2
3
4
5
Perfectly
7
Q

broca’s aphasia

A

non fluent/expressive aphasia
- intact language comprehension
- impaired speech production and articulation

speech is halting and difficult to produce (mostly nouns and verbs)

writing is typically also affected in a similar way

depending on the damage, impairments can range from deficits in producing certain words to problems with generating all forms of language

How well did you know this?
1
Not at all
2
3
4
5
Perfectly
8
Q

patient Tan

A

first example of Broca’s aphasia
could only speak one syllable (tan)
still tried to communicate via gestures, tone, inflection

large lesion in the left inferior frontal gyrus (broca’s area)

How well did you know this?
1
Not at all
2
3
4
5
Perfectly
9
Q

broca’s area

A

large lesion in the left inferior frontal gyrus

How well did you know this?
1
Not at all
2
3
4
5
Perfectly
10
Q

wernicke’s area

A

posterior superior temporal lobe - wernicke’s aphasia usually happens in the left hemisphere

How well did you know this?
1
Not at all
2
3
4
5
Perfectly
11
Q

wernicke’s aphasia

A

damage to the posterior superior temporal lobe, usually in the left hemisphere

affects both written and spoken language comprehension

ability to produce language, but the content is neither meaningful nor comrehensible - “word salad”

How well did you know this?
1
Not at all
2
3
4
5
Perfectly
12
Q

paraphasias (3 types)

A

verbal: substituting a word with something semantically related (something that shares meaning with intended word - ex. swapping terms brother and sister (both mean sibling))

phonemic (literal): swapping or adding speech sounds - shares sounds with intended word

neologisms: using a made up word

How well did you know this?
1
Not at all
2
3
4
5
Perfectly
13
Q

conduction aphasia

A

damage to the neural pathway between Broca’s and Wernicke’s area

production and comprehension intact

repetition is impaired - load dependent

How well did you know this?
1
Not at all
2
3
4
5
Perfectly
14
Q

lateralization and language

A

aphasias indicate that language is left lateralized

lateralization is not fully understood and isn’t linked to handedness - data shows that up to 70% of left handed people demonstrate left hemisphere language dominance

How well did you know this?
1
Not at all
2
3
4
5
Perfectly
15
Q

what type of language does the right hemisphere support?

A

broader aspects of language like prosody and pitch to convey intonation, mood, attitude, gestural communication

How well did you know this?
1
Not at all
2
3
4
5
Perfectly
16
Q

what do aphasias show us

A

laterlization of language and division in language capacities

  • acquisition and comphrehension
How well did you know this?
1
Not at all
2
3
4
5
Perfectly
17
Q

nuturists vs naturists view of language aquisition

A

nuturist view: no, we acquire language through the same mechanisms as skill learning

naturist view: yes, we are born with the innate capacity to learn language

How well did you know this?
1
Not at all
2
3
4
5
Perfectly
18
Q

behaviourist view of language acquisition

A

language acquisition is skill or associative learning

language is explicitly trained through trial and error reinforcement and modelling other people

How well did you know this?
1
Not at all
2
3
4
5
Perfectly
19
Q

chomsky’s opinion on behaviourism

A
  • language is too complex and acquired too rapidly for a behaviourist view of language learning
  • not stimulus dependent
  • not determined by reinforcement
  • learned rapidly
  • we can understand and speak sentences we have not heard before
How well did you know this?
1
Not at all
2
3
4
5
Perfectly
20
Q

the innateness hypothesis

A

grammar and syntactic structure is separate from semantic meaning and we are born with principles of grammar

How well did you know this?
1
Not at all
2
3
4
5
Perfectly
21
Q

chomsky’s three examples for how we are born with principles of grammar

A

Language Acquisition Device (LAD): abstracted entity that supports language

Universal grammar: a part of the LAD that includes rules for all languages

children only need to learn language specific aspects to put “on top” of universal grammar

How well did you know this?
1
Not at all
2
3
4
5
Perfectly
22
Q

convergence

A

support for noam chomsky’s innateness hypothesis

  • children are exposed to different learning situations yet converge on the same grammar
How well did you know this?
1
Not at all
2
3
4
5
Perfectly
23
Q

uniformity

A

support for noam chomsky’s innateness hypothesis

  • children follow generally the same stages of language development
How well did you know this?
1
Not at all
2
3
4
5
Perfectly
24
Q

poverty of stimulus argument

A

support for noam chomsky’s innateness hypothesis

the linguistic environment of a child is not sufficient enough to allow that child to learn a language via reinforcement, rules or imitation

a child doesn’t hear enough language samples to acquire all language, doesn’t have enough opportunities to learn from mistakes

means there must be something innate about language

25
Q

critiques of the poverty of stimulus argument

A
  • cannot address the questions:
  • what information is innate?
  • how can you disprove this argument?
  • how do you provide a complete account of all the linguistic data available to a child

there are actually lots of things in the environment that support language learning:
- adult reformulations of children’s speech that target the structure but not the meaning
- children extract regularities from experiences to form rules
- not all rules are innate

26
Q

support of chomsky’s innateness hypothesis:

A

convergence
uniformity
poverty of stimulus

27
Q

parentese

A

baby talk
- helps babies learn the basic building blocks of language

exposure to parenthese linked to more complex language use later in life

28
Q

phonemes

A

smallest linguistic unit
english has a few dozen phonemes to prodyce morphemes

29
Q

morphemes and words

A

the smallest meaningful units of language - ex. dog

30
Q

syntax

A

rules that govern how words are arranged in a sentence

31
Q

semantics

A

the meaning

32
Q

language comprehension

A

understanding the message - semantics - from language

requires resolving many types of linguistic ambiguity using context and top down processing

33
Q

three types of language comprehension

A

phonological - within a sound
lexical - within a word
syntactic or parsing - within a sentence

34
Q

phonemes

A

small unit of speech that can change the meaning of a word

35
Q

phonological ambuiguity

A

determining phonemes depends on audio signal, often noisy

we use context and internal knowledge of speech sounds to ‘hear’

36
Q

lexical ambiguity

A

a single word form can refer to more than one different concept

over 80% of common English words have more than one dictionary entre

37
Q

homophones

A

words that sound the same but have different meanings

38
Q

cross modal priming task

A

ps presented with a homophone and must make a lexical decision (bug: ant or spyware?) at the same time as they are listening to the word

some trials included words that were semantically related to either one meaning of the homophone or the other (homophone presented in a little blurb)

measured response times for the decision for all words (ant and spyware and random word) - response times are faster when related words are presented together

also
in short time frames for decision making both meanings were activated (ant and spyware both had fast reactions0 - after awhile, only the meaning activated by context speeds up

shows that the brain briefly entertains multiple meanings of a word before settling on one based on the rest of the sentence

39
Q

parsing a sentence

A

dividing a sentence into parts and identifying them as elements - (nouns, articles, verbs)

40
Q

syntatic ambiguity

A

we hear sentences incrementally, partial information

there is often more than one way to parse a sentence

41
Q

garden path sentence

A

grammatic sentences with multiple syntax structures

shows how we parse incrementally

42
Q

syntax first approach

A

we read via grammar principles alone, in one direction

43
Q

constraint based models

A

constraints used to resolve ambiguity
- semantic and thematic context
- expectation
- frequency

44
Q

how many years old is reading as a form of language

A

5500 years old

45
Q

two forms of dyslexia

A

surface and phonological

46
Q

surface dyslexia

A

impaired at producing irregular words (25% of english words), like comb or thought
- reading happens letter by letter
- difficulty matching words to mental dictionary

47
Q

phonological dyslexia

A

impaired at reading non words or new words

readings happen by comparing whole words to mental dictionary(lexicon)
difficulty reading letter by letter

48
Q

dual route model of reading

A

mental dictionary for whole words

grapheme phoneme conversion for letter by letter

49
Q

nativism vs linguistic relativity

A

nativism: language and thought are independent

linguistic relativity: language and thought are interconnected

50
Q

mentalese

A

concept created by nativists

an innate, non spoken language to represent all conceptual content and propositions to create thought

explains why children (and animals) without a spoken language can have thoughts

51
Q

gasoline drums and linguistic relativity

A

gasoline fire caused by people flicking cigs towards empty drums

people presume empty means safe

52
Q

sapir whorf hypothesis

A

linguistic determinism states a person’s thoughts are determined by language

maybe a person’s thoughts are just influenced by language

53
Q

color language studies

A

tested peoples memory for colors they had seen

compared the berinmo tribe, which don’t use words blue and green

and english speakers who don’t use words nol and wor

tested them in their language and the other language
presented with colour, and them two colours with words on them

their memories were impaired when the words presented weren’t in their language

language shapes colour memory

54
Q

color language

A

different languages have different numbers of names for colors

accessing color categories with out language labels doesn’t change across languages in tests

55
Q

intrinstic frame

A

spatial relations described in terms of objects

56
Q

relative frame

A

spatial relations described from an observer’s viewpoint

57
Q

absolute frame

A

spatial relations described as map coordinates

58
Q

three spatial frames of reference

A

intrinsic, relative and absolute

59
Q

does a languages method of describing space affect though and behaviour

A

asked different language speakers to pick a card matching on relative and absolute frames of reference

  • the card they picked depended on the frame of reference used in their language

Cognition (20 decks)

Brainscape helps you reach your goals faster, through stronger study habits.
© 2024 Bold Learning Solutions. Terms and Conditions