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language Flashcards

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1
Q

What is Language made up of?

A
  • Symbols: something that stands for something else (e.g. written/spoken words)
  • Rules: specify how words are ordered to form sentences (e.g. grammar, syntax (word order) )
  • Several cog processes: e.g. working memory, semantic processing, phonological processing attention
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2
Q

Functions of Language

A
  • Communication (primary function)
  • Social interaction
  • Cultural identity
  • Education
  • Thought & conceptualisation
  • express emotion
  • record info
  • to help think
  • acquisition of new words; storage of words; reading; orthography, phonology, communicaton, etc
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3
Q

Define Phonology, Orthography, Morphology & Semantics

A

Phonology: study of sounds & parts of words
Orthography: study of letters & word spellings
Morphology: study of form & structure of words
Semantics: study of meaning in language

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4
Q

Is Language Universal?

A

Humans: Yes - Language abilities rely on the same underlying brain processes regardless of culture, race & expression
Animals: Clever Hans Effect:
* when an animal or a person senses what someone wants them to do, even though they are not deliberately being given signals
* initially thought: animal can understand & process human language
* later disproved: can respond directly to involuntary cues in body language of human
* later animal cog testing removes face-to-face contact

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5
Q

Define Homophones

A

Words pronounced in same way but have different spellings (sale / sail)

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6
Q

Define Phonological Neighbourhood

A

Words are phonological neighbours if they differ in only one phoneme (bad / bat)

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7
Q

Interactive Activation Model:

A

McClelland & Rumelhart (1981):
-Model of visual word recognition
Recognition units at 3 levels:
1. feature level (visual features)
2. letter level (letter representations)
3. word level (orthographic lexicon)
-model accounts for WSE by assuming there are top-down processes from the word level to the letter level
* WSE (word superiority effect): people have better recognition of letters presented within words as compared to isolated letters and to letters presented within nonword strings

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8
Q

Define Lexicon

A

A store of detailed info (e.g. orthographic, phonological, semantic, syntactic) about words

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9
Q

What is the Word Superiority Effect?

A

Reicher (1969); Wheeler (1970):
A target letter is more readily detected in a letter string when the string forms a word than when it does not

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10
Q

Word Superiority Effect in relation to the interactive Activation Model

A

The WSE is evidence for the IAM
* Research using this task found performace was better when the letter string forms a word

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11
Q

Define orthographic neighbours

A

Words formed by changing one of a target word’s letters
* e.g. seem, step, stew

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12
Q

Interactive Activation Model: Evaluation

A

+influential: can account for the word superiority effect & the effects of orthographic neighbours on word recognition
-provides no account of the role of meaning in visual word recognition
-doesn’t consider phonological processing (which is involved in word recognition)
-designed for only 4-letter words can’t apply to word recognition for longer words

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13
Q

How do we Read?

A
  • Involves both top-down & bottom-up processing
  • Fovea - part of eye that’s densely saturated with photo receptors (cones) - responsible for high-acuity vision (ability to detect detailed visual info such as letters)
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14
Q

Define saccades

A

Rapid eye movements separated by eye fixations lasting about 250 ms

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15
Q

Broca’s Area

A

Brain area responsible for:
* speech production
* language processing
* language comprehension
* controlling facial neurons

Speech function is localised

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16
Q

Define Aphasia

A

Severe problems in the comprehension and/or production of language caused by brain damage

17
Q

Broca’s Aphasia

A
  • Form of aphasia involving non-fluent speech & grammatical errors
  • also called non-fluent aphasia
18
Q

Supporting Evidence for Broca’s Aphasia

A

Case study of Tan (1861):
* lesion in posterior third of the left inferior frontal gyrus (frontal lobe)
* loss of articulated speech, only single syllable remaining
* rest of intelligence intact (e.g. numerical skills)

19
Q

Wernicke’s Area

A
  • Responsible for language comprehension
20
Q

Wernicke’s Aphasia

A
  • can produce speech (unlike Tan), but can’t understand speech
  • fluent but disordered speech, impaired understanding of speech, and impaired silent reading
  • also called fluent aphasia
21
Q

Where are Broca and Wernicke’s areas located?

A

Left hemisphere (in most instances)

22
Q

Criticism of Broca & Wernicke’s areas

A

Oversimplified
* patients with Broca’s aphasia often have damage to Wernicke’s area & vice versa (De Bleser, 1988)

23
Q

Ways of Measuring Cog Processes in Language

A
  • EEG
  • PET
  • MRI & fMRI
  • MEG
  • TMS
  • Eye tracking
24
Q

What is Spatial Resolution?

A

The capacity a technique has to tell you exactly which area of the brain is active

25
Q

What is Temporal Resolution?

A

Its ability to tell you exactly when the activation happened

26
Q

EEG (electroencephalography)

A
  • measures electrical activity in brain in response to stimuli presentation
  • ERP - event-related potentials
  • N400 - peak in activity time locked to 400ms (typical response to linguistic manipulations
  • excellent temporal resolution, poor spatial resolution
27
Q

PET Scans (positron emission tomography)

A
  • can study the brain (or any other living tissue) without surgery
  • uses radioactive glucose (instead of a strong magnetic field) to help study activity and structures in the brain
  • good spatial resolution, poor temporal resolution
28
Q

Eye Tracking Research

A
  • eyes & brain are connected via same central nervous tissue
  • When reading, eyes move across words in short saccades, then make brief pauses called fixations
  • when we see changes to eye movement behaviour, we can infer there is something happening cognitively
29
Q

MRI & fMRI Scans - (functional) magnetic resonance imaging

A
  • MRI measures protons
  • fMRI measures blood oxygen level-dependent contrast
  • temporal resolution is about 2 or 3 secs
  • spatial resolution is very good (approx. 1mm)
30
Q

MEG (magneto-encephalography)

A
  • uses superconducting quantum interference device (SQUID)
  • excellent temporal resolution
  • spatial resolution is often very good
31
Q

TMS & rTMS - (repetitive) transcranial magnetic stimulation

A
  • magnetic pulse of current runs through coil close to head
  • creates magnetic field whcih leads to electrical stimulation in brain
32
Q

Factors Affecting Word Processing

A
  • word frequency effects
  • word length
  • word predictability
  • visual quality
33
Q

Word Frequency Effects

A
  • words that are more commonly used in language have been found to be processed more quickly, and with greater ease than words that are uncommon
  • e.g. She tried to open the little game that she had bought for her niece (218 ms)
  • eg. She tried to open the little clam that she had bought for her niece (285 ms)
34
Q

Word Length

A
  • shorter words e.g. function words such as ‘the’ are processed with little effort
  • often skipped (i.e. the eyes do not fixate on short words in a line of text)
  • shorter words are also more likely to be high frequency
35
Q

Word Predictability

A
  • words that are highly predictable given the previous sentence context are processed with greater ease than those that are unpredictable
  • high predictability (230 ms)
  • e.g. Since the wedding was today, the baker rushed the wedding cake to the reception
  • low predictability (252 ms)
  • e.g. since the wedding was today, the baker rushed the wedding pies to the reception
36
Q

Visual Quality

A
  • words that are visually degraded are more difficult to process
  • e.g. this can manipulated by font difficulty

cognitive psychology (10 decks)

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