Lecture 10- Meaning

Question 1

What are some examples of different areas of the brain and what they do?

Answer 1

• Strip across top= Primary motor cortex
• Strip behind= Sensory cortex
• Occipital lobe= area that controls vision
• Temporal lobe= auditory region

Question 2

What is a theory surrounding how we understand the meaning of sentences and the organization of the brain?

Answer 2

The way to understand sentences about motion, vision, hearing etc. is by activating the areas of the brain that do the action.In other words neurons that do= neurons that understand meaning.

Question 3

Why is a large area of the motor cortex devoted to the lips/mouth?

Answer 3

Need fine control to produce language

Question 4

What does linguistic meaning rely on? What is the term for this?

Answer 4

• The relationship between brain and body.

- Simulation semantics.

Question 5

What is interference?

Answer 5

If your brain is doing one thing, your brain cannot do something else at the same time

Question 6

What is Facilitation?

Answer 6

If your brain is doing something, it can do that SAME thing faster when asked again

Question 7

What experiment is used to show that language activates the motor cortex?

Answer 7

• Yes X No experiment
• e.g. Theresa is pushing the trolley= should be faster going out to press yes as it’s an outward movement like pushing is
• Therefore, faster if meaning of sentence matches the required movement.

Question 8

What experiment us used to show that language activates the visual cortex?

Answer 8

• Read a sentence. After the sentence, an image may appear. If the item in the image was mentioned in the sentence, press YES. If the item was not in the sentence, press NO.
• E.g If say eagle in nest and then image is of eagle in nest will be faster to say yes than if eagle is shown flying
• This proves that the meaning (sentences) activated a performed image in the visual cortex

Question 9

What are the two possibilities for when simulation happens?

Answer 9

• Maybe simulation happens AFTER you’ve understood the sentence.
• Or maybe it happens continuously.

Question 10

How can we know when simulation occurs?

Answer 10

• Self-paced reading experiments

- We are understanding + updating our knowledge after every word (simulation happening as fast as possible)

Question 11

What was seen with knob experiment?

Answer 11

• Type of self paced reading task
• When the direction of the knob was compatible with the sentence, they read faster then when it was incompatible. However, ONLY at the verb.
• Shows that simulation is happening as you go