language and comprehension

Question 1

challenges of comprehension: what are the different types of comprehension ambiguities?

Answer 1

ambiguity in the speech stream, ambiguity at the word level, ambiguity at the phoneme level

Question 2

explain ambiguity in the speech stream

Answer 2

difficult to know where one word ends and the other one starts when speaking, so word boundaries are tricky to define. gaps in speech don’t necessarily correspond to word boundaries

Question 3

give an example of an ambiguity in the speech stream

Answer 3

I scream or ice-cream

Question 4

explain ambiguity at the word level

Answer 4

words that sound the same but have different meanings, need to hear them in context in order to understand the meaning of the word

Question 5

explain ambiguity at the phoneme level

Answer 5

words that chance the way they sound depending on the environment e.g, who/how/where they were said (depends on context)

Question 6

words that sound and are spelt the same =

Answer 6

homonyms

Question 7

give an example of a homonym

Answer 7

BANK-BANK

Question 8

words that sound the same but are spelt differently =

Answer 8

homophones

Question 9

give an example of a homophone

Answer 9

MUSCLE-MUSSEL

Question 10

words that are spelt the same but sound differently =

Answer 10

homographs

Question 11

give an example of a homograph

Answer 11

BOW (bend over) - BOW (and arrow)

Question 12

give an example of misunderstood word boundaries (speech stream ambiguity)

Answer 12

fork handles misunderstood for four candles

Question 13

air is pushed up the vocal tract and hits points in the mouth that form an obstruction resulting in different types of consonants =

Answer 13

place of articulation

Question 14

sound changes in a sentence or context when followed by another sound that has a different place of articulation =

Answer 14

coarticulation

phonemes can change sounds within their own context

Question 15

give an example and explanation of coarticulation

Answer 15

n sound in 2 different sentences changes its sound because it is followed by a consonant that has a different place of articulation

Question 16

ability to distinguish between sounds by categorising them =

Answer 16

categorical perception

Question 17

/b/ and /p/ = what type of consonants?

Answer 17

bilabial

Question 18

point at which vocal chord vibrations start relative to the release of a closure =

Answer 18

Voice Onset Time (VOT)

Question 19

/p/ and /b/ use same point of articulation when saying these sounds. why can we perceive them as 2 different sounds?

Answer 19

due to our categorical perception.
/p/ = voiceless,
/b/ = voiced,
it is possible to measure the point at which people recognise /p/ or /b/ based on when voicing starts

Question 20

regional accents and foreign accents result in more _______

Answer 20

ambiguity

Question 21

how are we able to understand what is being said with foreign accents?

Answer 21

might have a mental representation for similar sounding words so we take a guess on what we think we might hear and the context

Question 22

not being able to define the categories of sounds =

Answer 22

invariance problem

Question 23

preventing ambiguity can happen by?

Answer 23

acoustic properties of phonemes, categorical perception (ability to filter out noise in the speech stream), top down processing (matching sounds to existing mental representations of words already heard)

Question 24

what is the process involved with top down processing of existing mental representations?

Answer 24

words stored in our mental lexicon can be used to work out what we are hearing by matching the ACOUSTIC INPUT to the existing activated mental representations

Question 25

what has been described to be like a dictionary?

Answer 25

mental lexicon

Question 26

thinking about frequency effects in lexical access, would 'gall' or 'ball' be quicker to activate and why?

Answer 26

finding 'ball' in lexicon would take less time because ball learnt at younger age and accessed all the time. stronger neuron connections as activated more frequently that gall

Question 27

words accessed more frequently are _____ and _____ to activate than words not accessed as frequently

Answer 27

easier and quicker

Question 28

what type of words will provide faster lexical access?

Answer 28

short and frequent words

Question 29

lexical access will be slower for words with lots of neighbours compared to words with fewer neighbours due to more competition. what principle is this?

Answer 29

neighbourhood density

Question 30

what classes as a neighbour?

Answer 30

words that sound similar or differ by 1 phoneme e.g. talk and walk

Question 31

neighbourhood density is due to _______ spreading activation

Answer 31

phonological

Question 32

lots of neighbours =

Answer 32

lots of activation = lots of word items competing = interferes with ability to target word access

Question 33

no neighbours =

Answer 33

easy access as no competition

Question 34

lexical access is facilitated by features of lexical access. these are what?

Answer 34

frequency, neighbourhood density, competition between related items

Question 35

evidence of reaction time differences suggests that lexical access is facilitated by what 3 things?

Answer 35

top down processing, spreading activation and the features of lexical items

Question 36

what are the methods use to assess language production?

Answer 36

lexical decision tasks, word monitoring, priming paradigms

Question 37

describe the lexical decision task and results found

Answer 37

ppts told to press a button if they recognise a word and another if they don't recognise. reaction times measured as time between the stimulus presentation and button press. slower reaction times for words with lots of neighbours. differences found were really small but meaningful > 30-80ms

Question 38

what other interactions are there with neighbourhood density that can be manipulated

Answer 38

length and frequency

Question 39

word: low frequency + few neighbours = _______ reaction time. word: high frequency + lots of neighbours = ________ reaction time.

Answer 39

slower, faster | frequency is likely to trump neighbourhood density

Question 40

what did studies looking at context with word monitoring find

Answer 40

found if the sentence made sense (had meaningful context) then ppts said the word more quickly than if sentence didn't make sense

Question 41

what did results from word monitoring suggest?

Answer 41

suggests that as you listen to a sentence you are already comprehending the meaning and context of it so activate all possible options in your lexicon when the sentence makes sense as expecting to hear a specific word

Question 42

the language system predicts which words might come up next and activates them in the lexicon =

Answer 42

word monitoring

Question 43

what would you typically find in a priming paradigm

Answer 43

when 2 things (prime and target) are related semantically there would be a faster reaction time in saying the target. shows the PRIMING EFFECT

Question 44

one item is an auditory modality and one is a visual modality = what type of priming?

Answer 44

cross modal priming

Question 45

describe Zwitserloods experiment and results using cross modal priming

Answer 45

prime word = auditory, target word = visual. ppts would hear the prime word and see the target word. (related prime-target pair) ppt then asked to make a lexical decision about that target word. lexical decision expected to be quicker for related pairs than unrelated pairs

Question 46

what is an advantage of cross modal priming?

Answer 46

can present full words, part words, sentences. can see what happens in the mental lexicon by presenting the target at different points through a word or sentence

Question 47

faster reaction times for related or unrelated targets?

Answer 47

related

Question 48

what features allows the system to access lexical items?

Answer 48

acoustic input, top down processing, lexical characteristics (frequency, neighbourhood density), activation of related items via spreading activation, context