language Flashcards

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
What is Temporal Resolution?
Its ability to tell you exactly when the activation happened
26
EEG (electroencephalography)
* 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
PET Scans (positron emission tomography)
* 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
Eye Tracking Research
* 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
MRI & fMRI Scans - (functional) magnetic resonance imaging
* 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
MEG (magneto-encephalography)
* uses superconducting quantum interference device (SQUID) * excellent temporal resolution * spatial resolution is often very good
31
TMS & rTMS - (repetitive) transcranial magnetic stimulation
* magnetic pulse of current runs through coil close to head * creates magnetic field whcih leads to electrical stimulation in brain
32
Factors Affecting Word Processing
* word frequency effects * word length * word predictability * visual quality
33
Word Frequency Effects
* 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
Word Length
* 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
Word Predictability
* 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
Visual Quality
* words that are visually degraded are more difficult to process * e.g. this can manipulated by font difficulty