Language Flashcards
What is language?
A shared system of symbols and rules that enable us to communicate
Through semantics and syntax
Language is involved in thinking, storage of information, expression of emotions etc
- Big influence on cognitive psychology
What did Hockett proposed?
13 linguistic universals thats common to all languages
- Have to learn, no built in connections between words and what they refer
- Communicate with time
- Novel activity
What are the basic assumptions about language?
- Humans have inborn, unique capability to develop language
- Humans have the ability to process an infinite number of sentences on the basis of limited set of grammatical rules that are universal
- Animals dont communicate?
Universal grammar challenge
- Unclear which rules are included
- Language develops fast
- Differences between languages
Evolutionary challenge
The emergence of language in one single step instead of in successive, slight modification is unlikely
Competence
Internalized knowledge of language and its rules that fluent speakers of a language have
Ideal knowledge
Performance
Actual language behaviour a speaker generates
Includes errors and irregularities
- Effect on others
- What psychologist focus on
- Dysfluencies
How do you study cognitive functions of language?*
- You manipulate aspects of language to see its effect on performance
- Conclusions about the underlying cognitive processes based on the performance measures
- Systematic approach
Linguistic relativity hypothesis
The language you know shapes the way you think about events in the world around you
- Language, perception and culture influences thoughts about the world
- There are different hypothesis on how language might affect thought
Categorization studies*
- How language affects thoughts
- Higher accuracy in differentiating and remembering stimuli if language has different words for the stimuli than if not
Dani people: Only dark and light, could distinguish focal colors
What is syntax?
Words to meaningful strings
- To figure out meaning
- Focus on descriptiveness
- Arrangements of words matters
- Phrase order
When something happened
Is there a relevance between sounds and meaning?
- Video from the lecture
- Context matters
- Dialects influence what you here
- Competence vs Performance
How is language organized?
- Phonemes
Basic level - Morphemes
Smallest unit that has meaning - Words
- Phrases
- Sentences
Polysemy
Many words can have several meanings and not all are equal
- Which meaning is the intended one?
How do we form sentences?
We plan and execute sentences through interaction of a set of processes
- Tailor our sentences
- Influenced by memory , knowledge and previous sentences
- More complex sentences, more taxing on WM
- We pause, delay and rearrange while we are taking
What are some different ways we can manipulate aspects of language?*
- Word frequency
Processing speed - Homophones
Role of phonology - Homographs
Role of context
Polysemy - Pseudo words
- Non-words
What are some tasks you can have in studies of language cognitive psychology?*
Naming task
- Name the presented word
Lexical decision task
Priming task
- Naming or lexical decision preceded by other (un)-related word
Priming within trials - Language*
- Making a lexical decision between two words
- Faster responses when words are semantically related than when not
- Meaning and words has a close relationship
Stroop color word task*
Name print color of words while ignoring the meaning of the words
1. Control
2. Congruent
3. Incongruent
“Mind-fuck”
Classical Stroop Effect
- The response time between congruent and incongruent task
Interference
Proposition
Representation of the meaning that can be stored and retrieved from memory
- Not only semantic meanings
- There are 5 dimensions of propositions
- Connectionist model
Robin Has Wings
Priming in item recognition
- Presented with a study list of a few sentences
- Primed to one word - Trial 1
- Target word with recognition task - Trial 2
- Faster responses if prime and target from same proposition than from other propositions
- Faster responses if prime and target from same sentence than from other sentences
- Indirect evidence that we store sentences together
Seems to have structure as well
Semantic processing in the brain - Study
- Presented one word at a time, to see ERP
- What did not fit in semantically gave had an effect
Case grammar
Language processing - knowing what role a word has in a sentence
Syntactic processing in the brain
P600 elicited by words that are incongruent with the expected syntactic structure in the sentence, syntactic agreement violations and word order violations
Aphasia
Lost ability to use language as caused by brain-related disorder
Broca’s Aphasia
Issues producing language
- Severe hesitant to say words
- Agrammatical
- Word finding difficulty caused by production difficulties
Wernicke’s Aphasia
- Little impairment on quality of speech
- Alot of invented words
- Impairment to comprehension
Conductive Aphasia
Unable to repeat what they have just heard
Anomia
Impairment in the normal ability to retrieve a semantic concept and say its name
Inference
Deriving conclusions that were not explicitly in the text
“Reading between the lines”
What can influence comprehension of stories?
Conceptual knowledge
- What are the assumptions we can take from this text?
Belief
- Do I believe that mountains can fly?
What methods are used in understanding comprehensions of texts?*
- Often intuitions
- Online comprehension
Task that measures comprehension as it happens
Reading times
Sentences - Probe words - Thinking aloud - Verbal protocol
- Neuroscience
Metacomprehension
Monitor how well we understand and will remember that info later
Influences how we may study info later and what info we pay attention to
Labor in vain effect
Spend too much time on difficult information and learns barely anything new
Region of proximal learning
Learning something that is slightly too difficult
- Use of scaffolding
- Often used in classroom settings
Structure Building Framwork
- Laying foundation
Start of a sentence - Mapping information
Adding new information - Shifting to a different idea when new info is presented
Enchantment - concepts are now boosted in their level of activation
Suppression is the opposite to enchantment
Can eye gazes give any intel on mental processing?
- Eye trackers can see fixations when reading the words
Differences between good reader and poor reader - Moment to moment reaction
Immediacy assumption
Readers try to interpret each word in sequent order
Eye-mind Assumption
Pattern of eye movements directly reflects the complexity of mental processes
What can influence reading?
- Word count and length
- Context
- Ambiguity
- Existing knowledge
- Phonology
When youre reading out loud
Advantage of first mentioned
First mentioned in a sentence or a text retain its significance
Advantage of clause recency
Last name has an advantage
Bridging inference
Constructing a connection between two concepts - two parts of the text
What are the processes we can consider with comprehension of language?
- Activation of the key concepts in long-term memory gives an automatic associations between concepts
- Formation of mental representation based on one concept leads to expectations and how next part is interpreted
Schema Theories
Integrating new information with knowledge in long-term memory
- Schema theories are well-organized chunks of knowledge about world, events, humans, actions
- Retelling stories can conflict with the background knowledge of the participant
The war of ghost story
Rationalization
Adding info, from semantic memory, that was not in the story to make the story more normal or reasonable
- Culture influences
- Knowledge
- Expectations
A classic study based on schema theories
Doolings research
- One group read a story about a cruel dictator with a fictional name
- Another group read the same story but with Adolf Hitler as MC
- Recognition test 5 minutes after or 1 week after reading
Correct answer
False positives
- Results
Group who read the story about Hitler rated those sentences more frequently as the same 1 week after reading
- Shows how we process information
Situation models
Are mental representations that serve as a simulation of a real possible world as described by a text
-A coherent and non-linguistic mental representation of the ‘state-of-affairs’ described in a text, rather than a mental representation of the text itself
- New information leads to updating the situation model
- Use inferences to elaborate on the information provided by the text
Situation models - Research*
Actively monitor multiple event dimensions during reading to asses whether a meaningful change along any of them and update situation model if change happens
- Reading times
Slower reading times when change in these dimensions as compared to when no change
- There are 5 dimensions of situations
Space - location
Time
Entity - Central character
Intentionality - Goals of a character and current event
Causality
- Can work with watching movies or videos as well
The cooperative principle
The effective way of communicating where the base is that speakers and listeners cooperate to understand each other
- Relevance
- Quantity
- Quality
- Manner and tone
- Relations between conversational partner
Infer and respond to partners knowledge and beliefs - Adjust
- Rule violation
Audience design
Being aware of the need to design your speech to the characteristics of your audience
Optimal design principle
Speakers design their utterances so that their audience has sufficient info to understand them
Perspective - Taking in Conversation Study
Perspective of the adult speaker
Trial 1.
Listener and speaker sees the same clue. Speaker has the target stimuli.
Trial 2.
Listener have no clue, only speakers does.
- No time constraint
Perspective of the listeners common ground taken into account
- Time-constraint
Egocentric speech - Speakers refer often to the reference object even when this object is not available to listener
Perspective - Taking in Conversation Study
Perspective of the adult listener
- Bookcase with things, some covered for the speaker.
- With time- constraint listeners appear to be egocentric
“Whats the smallest candle from my point of view?”
What are some non-verbal aspects of communication?
Taking turns
- Adjacency pair: A pair of turns that sets the stage for another part of the conversation
Gesture
- To facilitate communication to listeners
- Can help learning
Prosody
- Intonation, tone, stress and rhythm
