Language Flashcards
What does mental lexicon mean?
Mental store of information about words
What does orthographic mean?
Visual representation of word
What does phonological mean?
Sound-based representation of word
What does morpheme mean?
Smallest unit of language that has meaning (root words, prefixes, suffixes)
What does phoneme mean?
Smallest unit of sound that makes a difference to meaning
What does semantic mean?
Meaning of words
What does syntactic mean?
How words are combined to form sentences (syntax)
What does grammar mean?
Structural rules of particular language
What does prosody mean?
Rhythm, pitch, intonation of speech (how we say stuff)
What is a challenge for speakers?
How to produce different sounds
What is a challenge for listeners?
How to segment sounds into words
What is the segmentation problem?
How to segment sounds into words
What is parsing?
How to segment sentences in meaningful way
How do we recognize words?
Visual features –> letters/word forms
What is the word superiority effect?
When participants do better when a real world is presented as the stimulus
When does the word superiority effect occur?
When the word later influences earlier steps (letter and feature layer)
What is another way we recognize words?
Orthographic –> phonetic –> word meaning
You can also go straight from orthographic to word meaning and skip phonetic
What are aphasias?
- Deficit in language comprehension/production
- Neurological damage
- Affects both spoken and written language
What are the 4 different types of aphasias?
Non-fluent Aphasia
Fluent Aphasia
Conduction Aphasia
Anomia
What is non-fluent aphasia?
- Deficit in producing words
- Choppy, single-utterance speech
Where is the damage that causes non-fluent aphasia?
Damage to left inferior frontal lobe
Broca’s Area
What is fluent aphasia?
- Deficit in understanding language
- Fluent speech, normal syntax, but nonsensical
- Word salad
Where is the damage that causes fluent aphasia?
Damage to more posterior region
Wernicke’s Area
What does the difference between Broca’s and Wernicke’s aphasia tell us?
Different components of language can be selectively impaired
What is the difference between Broca’s and Wernicke’s?
Broca:
- Non-fluent speech
- Poor sentence construction
- Few function words
- Awareness of condition but comprehension varies
Wernicke
- Fluent speech
- Little meaning
- Made-up content words
- No awareness of condition
What are the 3 main tests to classify aphasias?
Spontaneously speaking
Repeating
Listening for comprehension
What is anomia?
- Form of aphasia
- Inability to recall words/name things
- Speech: fluent, circumlocution
What is conduction aphasia?
- Intact comprehension
- Can produce fluent speech but have trouble with producing spontaneous speech
- Often errors in speech
- Problems repeating speech
Where is the damage that causes conduction aphasia?
Damage to arcuate fascicules (pathway from Wernicke’s to Broca’s)
What does the Lichtheim Model tell us about models of language?
Damage at different places in pathway causes different deficits
