Language Psychology Flashcards
Phonemes
The smallest significant sounds of language
Syntax
The rules for combining words into sentences (grammar)
Semantics
The meanings of words and sentences
How is sound produced?
People emit air from their lungs and manipulate it with larynx (voicebox) and mouth
Larynx
Voicebox
Phonemes make up…?
Syllables
Syllables make up…?
Words
Intonation can signal…?
Meaning
Examples of syntactic categories
Nouns, verbs, adjectives
Constituent Structure
A phrase that ‘goes together’ - E.g. English vs. Turkish structure
Morphemes
Smallest unit of meaning. E.g. “Unbreakable” comprises three morphemes: un- (a bound morpheme signifying “not”), -break- (the root, a free morpheme), and -able (a free morpheme signifying “can be done”).
Mental lexicon
Mental dictionary that contains information regarding a word’s meaning, pronunciation, syntactic characteristics, and so on.
Linguists vs Psychologists
Linguists study what the information represents
Psychologists study how the information is used
Areas of study in Language Psychology
- Language Production
- Comprehension
- Acquisition
- Disorders
- Neuroscience
Animal speech and comprehension
Check textbook - if not slides
What can (some) animals do?
- Learn symbols
- Combine symbols in limited way
- Can combine meanings
What can’t animals do?
- Use language to refer to abstract ideas
- Produce complex language structures
- Be creative with the use of their symbols/words/sounds
Lexicalization
Lexicalization is the process of adding words, set phrases, or word patterns to a language – that is, of adding items to a language’s lexicon.
Phonological rules
Rules that indicate how phonemes can be combined to produce speech sounds e.g. -ed to signify the past tense.
Grammar
Rules that specify how the units of language can be combined to produce a meaningful message.
Morphological rules
Rules that specify how morphemes can be combined to form words.
Syntactical rules
Rules that specify how words can be combined into phrases.
Fast mapping
Process whereby a new concept is learned based only on a single exposure to a given unit of information. Fast mapping is thought by some researchers to be particularly important during language acquisition in young children, and may serve to explain the prodigious rate at which children gain vocabulary.
Telegraphic Speech
Speech during the two-word stage of language acquisition in children, which is laconic and efficient. The name derives from the fact that someone sending a telegram was generally charged by the word. To save money, people typically wrote their telegrams in a very compressed style, without conjunctions or articles. As children develop language, they speak similarly: when a child says “Daddy here”, it is understood that the child means “Daddy is here”, omitting the copula.
Genetic Dysphasia
Language disorder marked by deficiency in the comprehension of grammatical structures, due to brain disease or damage.
Aphasia
inability (or impaired ability) to understand or produce speech, as a result of brain damage.
Grapheme
Unit of written language that corresponds to a phoneme.
Dual-route Models
Proposes that there are two pathways to the lexicon.
Direct Lexical Route
Where the grapheme maps directly onto the phoneme.
Indirect Sublexical Route
Maps the grapheme directly onto the pronunciation.
Dyslexia
Difficulty with reading and writing.
Surface Dyslexia
Unable to read irregular words
Phonological Dyslexia
Unable to read pronounceable non-words.
Semantic priming
refers to the observation that a response to a target (e.g., dog) is faster when it is preceded by a semantically related prime (e.g., cat) compared to an unrelated prime (e.g., car). Semantic priming may occur because the prime partially activates related words or concepts, facilitating their later processing or recognition.
Deep Dyslexia
Readers cannot retrieve the meaning of words.
Linguistic Determinism Hypothesis
Language shapes the nature of thoughts.
Linguistic Relativity Hypothesis
Language may influence the way we think and perceive.
Category-Specific Deficit
Neurological syndrome characterised by inability to recognise objects that belong to a certain category while leaving the ability to recognize objects outside the category undisturbed.
Family resemblance theory
Features that appear to be a characteristic of category members but are not possessed by every member.
Prototype theory
Prototype theory is a mode of graded categorization in cognitive science, where some members of a category are more central than others. For example, when asked to give an example of the concept furniture, chair is more frequently cited than, say, stool.
Exemplar theory
individuals make category judgments by comparing new stimuli with instances already stored in memory. The instance stored in memory is the “exemplar”. The new stimulus is assigned to a category based on the greatest number of similarities it holds with exemplars in that category.
Base rates
The actual likelihood of something occurring.
Rational Choice Theory
We make decisions based on how likely an event is to happen then multiply that by the value of the outcome.
Availability bias
Mental shortcut that relies on immediate examples that come to a given person’s mind when evaluating a specific topic, concept, method or decision.
Heuristics
Mental shortcuts that ease the cognitive load of making a decision. Examples of this method include using a rule of thumb, an educated guess, an intuitive judgment, stereotyping, profiling, or common sense.
Algorithm
A well-defined sequence of procedures that guarantees a solution to a problem.
Conjunction Fallacy
When it is assumed that specific conditions are more probable than a single general one. e.g. Linda is a bank teller. VS. Linda is a bank teller and is active in the feminist movement.
Representativeness heuristic
Involves making a probability judgement by comparing an object/event to a prototype of the object/event.
Framing effects
People give different answers to the same problems depending on how it is phrased.
Sunk-Cost Fallacy
Making choices based on what you have previously invested in the situation.
Prospect Theory
People make decisions based on the potential value of losses (take on risk) and gains (avoid risk) rather than the final outcome.
Frequency Format Hypothesis
The brain understands and processes information better when presented in frequency formats rather than a numerical or probability format.
System 1 & System 2
System 1 = automatic process.
System 2 = performs the more slow and sequential thinking.
Means-Ends Analysis
Searching for the means to reduce the difference between the current situation and the desired goal.
Analogical Problem Solving
Solving a problem by finding a similar problem and applying that problem’s solution to your current one.
Functional Fixedness
Cognitive bias that limits a person to using an object only in the way it is traditionally used.
Practical reasoning
Reasoning directed towards action.
Theoretical reasoning
Reasoning directed towards arriving at a belief.
Belief Bias
We accept conclusions based on how believable they are not how logically valid they are.
Syllogistic reasoning
Determining whether a conclusion follows from two statements that are assumed to be true.
Terrace et al. (1979)
Nim???
Premack (1971)
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Is it easier to access low or high frequency words?
High frequency e.g. coin vs. awry
Swinney (1979)
bugs study???
Event-related potentials (ERP’s)
- ???
- Brain responds differently to semantic versus syntactic anomaly
Altmann and Kamide (1999)
Participants were more likely to look at the cake in the selective (eat) condition than the nonselective (make) condition – The boy will eat … –> look at “cake”
Bock & Huitema (1999)
Speech errors?
What do speech errors tell us about language production?
Speakers might deal with meaning-related aspects of utterances before sound-related aspects
Bock, J.K., & Cutting, J.C. (1992)
were???
Brown & McNeill (1966)
Participants reported a tip-of-the-tongue state on 8.5% of trials – i.e., when they were thinking of the correct word. Participants got the first letter right 57% of the time
What happens with patients who have anomia
Patients show more extreme patterns of word-finding difficulty.
Schwartz, B.L. (1999)
Found that most countries use tongue to describe the tip of the tongue phenomenon
Schriefers, Meyer, and Levelt (1990)
Early semantic distractor slows down processing (inhibition)
- E.g. Seeing the word cat with a picture of a dog.
Later phonological distractor speeds up processing (facilitation)
- E.g. Seeing the word dot with a dog.
Suggests that speakers select meaning before sound
Hampton, 1982
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Two-stage verification hypothesis - Smith, Shoben, and Rips (1974)
People make decisions about concepts in two stages:
- All attributes are compared
- If this doesn’t produce a clear result, only the defining attributes are compared
Prototype vs. Concept
Prototypes don’t have defining attributes. (Rosch and Mervis, 1975)
Concepts organized around central prototype, with unclear boundaries.
Concepts are a way of categorizing (and managing) the world.
Smith et al. (1974)
Typicality is a good predictor of classification times: – A robin is a bird faster than An ostrich is a bird.
Rosch et al. (1976)
Participants listed attributes at three levels.
– Superordinate: very few attributes
– Subordinate: many attributes but many were similar for different members
– e.g., for kitchen chair vs. armchair
– Basic: best balance between economy and in formativeness
Evidence for examplars + what are they?
- Variability
- Concept “instability”
- Anderson & Ortony, 1975
- Barsalou (1982) found that “frog” doesn’t normally activate “eaten by humans”, but does in a context of a French restaurant
Biblical categories of clean & unclean animals (Murphy & Medin, 1985)
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