language Flashcards
What is Language made up of?
- 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
Functions of Language
- 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
Define Phonology, Orthography, Morphology & Semantics
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
Is Language Universal?
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
Define Homophones
Words pronounced in same way but have different spellings (sale / sail)
Define Phonological Neighbourhood
Words are phonological neighbours if they differ in only one phoneme (bad / bat)
Interactive Activation Model:
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
Define Lexicon
A store of detailed info (e.g. orthographic, phonological, semantic, syntactic) about words
What is the Word Superiority Effect?
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
Word Superiority Effect in relation to the interactive Activation Model
The WSE is evidence for the IAM
* Research using this task found performace was better when the letter string forms a word
Define orthographic neighbours
Words formed by changing one of a target word’s letters
* e.g. seem, step, stew
Interactive Activation Model: Evaluation
+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
How do we Read?
- 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)
Define saccades
Rapid eye movements separated by eye fixations lasting about 250 ms
Broca’s Area
Brain area responsible for:
* speech production
* language processing
* language comprehension
* controlling facial neurons
Speech function is localised
Define Aphasia
Severe problems in the comprehension and/or production of language caused by brain damage
Broca’s Aphasia
- Form of aphasia involving non-fluent speech & grammatical errors
- also called non-fluent aphasia
Supporting Evidence for Broca’s Aphasia
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)
Wernicke’s Area
- Responsible for language comprehension
Wernicke’s Aphasia
- 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
Where are Broca and Wernicke’s areas located?
Left hemisphere (in most instances)
Criticism of Broca & Wernicke’s areas
Oversimplified
* patients with Broca’s aphasia often have damage to Wernicke’s area & vice versa (De Bleser, 1988)
Ways of Measuring Cog Processes in Language
- EEG
- PET
- MRI & fMRI
- MEG
- TMS
- Eye tracking
What is Spatial Resolution?
The capacity a technique has to tell you exactly which area of the brain is active
What is Temporal Resolution?
Its ability to tell you exactly when the activation happened
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
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
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
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)
MEG (magneto-encephalography)
- uses superconducting quantum interference device (SQUID)
- excellent temporal resolution
- spatial resolution is often very good
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
Factors Affecting Word Processing
- word frequency effects
- word length
- word predictability
- visual quality
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)
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
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
Visual Quality
- words that are visually degraded are more difficult to process
- e.g. this can manipulated by font difficulty
