Language Flashcards

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1
Q

What is language?

A

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

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2
Q

What did Hockett proposed?

A

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

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3
Q

What are the basic assumptions about language?

A
  • 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?
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4
Q

Universal grammar challenge

A
  • Unclear which rules are included
  • Language develops fast
  • Differences between languages
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5
Q

Evolutionary challenge

A

The emergence of language in one single step instead of in successive, slight modification is unlikely

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6
Q

Competence

A

Internalized knowledge of language and its rules that fluent speakers of a language have
Ideal knowledge

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7
Q

Performance

A

Actual language behaviour a speaker generates
Includes errors and irregularities
- Effect on others
- What psychologist focus on
- Dysfluencies

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8
Q

How do you study cognitive functions of language?*

A
  • You manipulate aspects of language to see its effect on performance
  • Conclusions about the underlying cognitive processes based on the performance measures
  • Systematic approach
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9
Q

Linguistic relativity hypothesis

A

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

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10
Q

Categorization studies*

A
  • 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
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11
Q

What is syntax?

A

Words to meaningful strings
- To figure out meaning
- Focus on descriptiveness
- Arrangements of words matters
- Phrase order
When something happened

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12
Q

Is there a relevance between sounds and meaning?

A
  • Video from the lecture
  • Context matters
  • Dialects influence what you here
  • Competence vs Performance
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13
Q

How is language organized?

A
  • Phonemes
    Basic level
  • Morphemes
    Smallest unit that has meaning
  • Words
  • Phrases
  • Sentences
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14
Q

Polysemy

A

Many words can have several meanings and not all are equal
- Which meaning is the intended one?

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15
Q

How do we form sentences?

A

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

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16
Q

What are some different ways we can manipulate aspects of language?*

A
  • Word frequency
    Processing speed
  • Homophones
    Role of phonology
  • Homographs
    Role of context
    Polysemy
  • Pseudo words
  • Non-words
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17
Q

What are some tasks you can have in studies of language cognitive psychology?*

A

Naming task
- Name the presented word
Lexical decision task
Priming task
- Naming or lexical decision preceded by other (un)-related word

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18
Q

Priming within trials - Language*

A
  • Making a lexical decision between two words
  • Faster responses when words are semantically related than when not
  • Meaning and words has a close relationship
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19
Q

Stroop color word task*

A

Name print color of words while ignoring the meaning of the words
1. Control
2. Congruent
3. Incongruent
“Mind-fuck”

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20
Q

Classical Stroop Effect

A
  • The response time between congruent and incongruent task
    Interference
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21
Q

Proposition

A

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

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22
Q

Priming in item recognition

A
  1. Presented with a study list of a few sentences
  2. Primed to one word - Trial 1
  3. 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
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23
Q

Semantic processing in the brain - Study

A
  • Presented one word at a time, to see ERP
  • What did not fit in semantically gave had an effect
24
Q

Case grammar

A

Language processing - knowing what role a word has in a sentence

25
Q

Syntactic processing in the brain

A

P600 elicited by words that are incongruent with the expected syntactic structure in the sentence, syntactic agreement violations and word order violations

26
Q

Aphasia

A

Lost ability to use language as caused by brain-related disorder

27
Q

Broca’s Aphasia

A

Issues producing language
- Severe hesitant to say words
- Agrammatical
- Word finding difficulty caused by production difficulties

28
Q

Wernicke’s Aphasia

A
  • Little impairment on quality of speech
  • Alot of invented words
  • Impairment to comprehension
29
Q

Conductive Aphasia

A

Unable to repeat what they have just heard

30
Q

Anomia

A

Impairment in the normal ability to retrieve a semantic concept and say its name

31
Q

Inference

A

Deriving conclusions that were not explicitly in the text
“Reading between the lines”

32
Q

What can influence comprehension of stories?

A

Conceptual knowledge
- What are the assumptions we can take from this text?
Belief
- Do I believe that mountains can fly?

33
Q

What methods are used in understanding comprehensions of texts?*

A
  • Often intuitions
  • Online comprehension
    Task that measures comprehension as it happens
    Reading times
    Sentences - Probe words
  • Thinking aloud - Verbal protocol
  • Neuroscience
34
Q

Metacomprehension

A

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

35
Q

Labor in vain effect

A

Spend too much time on difficult information and learns barely anything new

36
Q

Region of proximal learning

A

Learning something that is slightly too difficult
- Use of scaffolding
- Often used in classroom settings

37
Q

Structure Building Framwork

A
  1. Laying foundation
    Start of a sentence
  2. Mapping information
    Adding new information
  3. 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

38
Q

Can eye gazes give any intel on mental processing?

A
  • Eye trackers can see fixations when reading the words
    Differences between good reader and poor reader
  • Moment to moment reaction
39
Q

Immediacy assumption

A

Readers try to interpret each word in sequent order

40
Q

Eye-mind Assumption

A

Pattern of eye movements directly reflects the complexity of mental processes

41
Q

What can influence reading?

A
  • Word count and length
  • Context
  • Ambiguity
  • Existing knowledge
  • Phonology
    When youre reading out loud
42
Q

Advantage of first mentioned

A

First mentioned in a sentence or a text retain its significance

43
Q

Advantage of clause recency

A

Last name has an advantage

44
Q

Bridging inference

A

Constructing a connection between two concepts - two parts of the text

45
Q

What are the processes we can consider with comprehension of language?

A
  • 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
46
Q

Schema Theories

A

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

47
Q

Rationalization

A

Adding info, from semantic memory, that was not in the story to make the story more normal or reasonable
- Culture influences
- Knowledge
- Expectations

48
Q

A classic study based on schema theories

A

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

49
Q

Situation models

A

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

50
Q

Situation models - Research*

A

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

51
Q

The cooperative principle

A

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

52
Q

Audience design

A

Being aware of the need to design your speech to the characteristics of your audience

53
Q

Optimal design principle

A

Speakers design their utterances so that their audience has sufficient info to understand them

54
Q

Perspective - Taking in Conversation Study

A

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

55
Q

Perspective - Taking in Conversation Study

A

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?”

56
Q

What are some non-verbal aspects of communication?

A

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