Language

Question 1

Word superiority effect

Answer 1

Looks at how context can affect letter perception. The finding that letter processing is better in the context of a word than in a non-word or in isolation.

Question 2

Word frequency effect

Answer 2

Faster response time for high-frequency words than low-frequency words.

Word frequency: the relative usage of words in a particular language.
Ex; the word ‘home’ has higher frequency than ‘hike’ in the English language

Question 3

The universal need to communicate with language is so important that deaf children…

Answer 3

invent a sign language themselves when no one else around speaks or uses sign language

Question 4

Where is Broca’s area in the brain and what is it responsible for?

Answer 4

Frontal lobe, language production

Question 5

Where is Wernicke’s area in the brain and what is it responsible for?

Answer 5

Temporal lobe, language comprehension

Question 6

What did B.F Skinner say about language?

Answer 6

It is learned through reinforcements just like behaviour.

Question 7

What are the five key things that Chomsky said about language?

Answer 7

1) Human language is coded in the genes
2) Humans are programmed to acquire and use language
3) Language is a way to study the properties of the mind
4) Underlying basis of all language is similar
5) Disagreed with behaviourism - important event in the cognitive revolution

Question 8

What are the four major concerns of psycholinguistics?

Answer 8

1) Comprehension
2) Representation
3) Speech production
4) Acquisition

Question 9

Lexicon

Answer 9

A person’s knowledge of what words mean, how they sound, how they are used in relation to other words.
Aka “mental dictionary”

Question 10

Semantics

Answer 10

The meanings of words and sentences

Question 11

Lexical semantics

Answer 11

The meaning of words

Question 12

Our ability to hear and understand spoken words is affected by:

Answer 12

1) How frequently we have encountered a word in the past
2) The context in which words appear
3) Our knowledge of statistical regularities of our language
4) Our knowledge of word meanings

Question 13

Lexical ambiguity

Answer 13

When a word can have more than one meaning

Question 14

Accessing the meaning of ambiguous words when reading a sentence is determined by the word’s ______ and the ______ created by the sentence

Answer 14

dominance, context

Question 15

Biased dominance

Answer 15

Some meanings of words occur more frequently than others.

Ex; the most frequent meaning of ‘tin’ is a type of metal. Less frequent meaning is a small metal container

Question 16

Balanced dominance

Answer 16

When a word has more than one meaning and all meanings are equally likely

Question 17

No prior context provided in the sentence:

Answer 17

assess meanings by dominance

Question 18

Prior context provided in the sentence:

Answer 18

assess meanings by dominance and context

Question 19

To understand how we determine the meaning of a sentence we need to consider…

Answer 19

syntax, the rules for combining words into sentences

Question 20

Parsing

Answer 20

A person reads/ hears a string of words and groups these words into phrases in their mind. The way the words are grouped, indicates how the person interpreted the sentence.

Question 21

Garden path sentences

Answer 21

a sentence in which the meaning seems to be implied at the beginning of the sentence turns out to be incorrect, based on information presented later in the sentence

Question 22

Three key components of the garden path model of parsing

Answer 22

1) Explains parsing and garden path sentences
2) Emphasizes syntactic principles as a major determinant of parsing
3) As people read sentences their grouping of words into phrases is governed by heuristics

Question 23

The constraint-based approach to parsing

Answer 23

Parsing of a sentence is influenced by:

1) Word meaning
2) Story context
3) Scene context

Question 24

Although incorrect predictions can lead us down the garden path, most of the time our predictions can…

Answer 24

Help us deal with the rapid pace of language and help us understand language in times of poor connection, noisy environments, or accents.

Question 25

Concept of coherence

Answer 25

The representation of a text in a person’s mind that creates clear relations between information in one part of the text, to information in another part of the text

Question 26

How does inference help produce coherence?

Answer 26

Drawing inferences help us create connections that are essential for creating coherence in texts

Question 27

Three types of inferences and describe them

Answer 27

1) Anaphoric inference: connects an object/ person in one sentence to an object/person in another sentence
2) Instrument inference: inference about the tools or methods that occurs while reading a text
3) Casual inference: results in the conclusion that events described in one sentence were caused by events that occurred in a previous sentence

Question 28

Situation model

Answer 28

Mental representation of what the text is about

Question 29

Readers simulate the motor characteristics of the objects and actions in a story because…

Answer 29

Reading action words results in the same brain area activation as carrying out an action

Question 30

Event related potential is _____ when a word is unexpected

Answer 30

larger

Question 31

Syntactic coordination

Answer 31

Process by which people use similar grammatical constructions when having a conversation

Question 32

How has syntactic priming been used to support syntactic coordination?

Answer 32

Syntactic priming states that hearing a statement with a certain syntactic construction increases the chances that a statement that follows with contain the same construction.

People are sensitive to the linguistic behaviour of other speakers and adjust their behaviours (construction) to match.

Question 33

Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis

Answer 33

Strong version of this hypothesis is that language determines our thinking, so those who speak different languages, view the world differently. Therefore, your thoughts are limited to the categories available in your language.

Question 34

Empirical evidence to support Sapir-Whorf hypothesis

Answer 34

Russian and English colour category experiment - language affects category perception

Gilbert et al
When target square was presented in right visual field which is involved in language rather than left, it impacts how we perceive and categorize

Question 35

Compare the syntax-first approach and the interactionist approach to parsing.

Answer 35

Syntax-first approach claims that syntax plays the main part in parsing. The garden path model of parsing is an example of a syntax first approach.

The interactionist approach states that both syntax and semantics (meaning) work together to determine the meaning of a sentence. The constraint based approach to parsing is an example of a interactionist approach.

Question 36

Even though it has been shown with neuroimaging that certain brain areas are activated for both music and language,
patients who are born having problems with music perception (congenital amusia)…

Answer 36

often have normal language abilities. This shows that different neural networks are being activated for language and music although it may occur in similar areas of the brain.