Psycholinguistics

Question 1

What is psycholinguistics?

Answer 1

study of language storage and processing, study of language and the mind

Question 2

Lexical Access

Answer 2

searching your mental lexicon for the meaning of a certain combination of sounds

Question 3

Full Listing hypothesis (for lexical storage)

Answer 3

every word (e.g. free roots and roots+affixes) is stored
-would speed up the search because the exact form of the word we need would have an entry

Question 4

Affix-Stripping hypothesis (for lexical storage)

Answer 4

complex words are broken down into morphemes with each morpheme stored individually
-reduces storage space
-highlights nature of relationships between words
-slows lexical access

Question 5

Intermediary hypothesis (for lexical storage)

Answer 5

hybrid of the other two hypotheses, in between the other two
depends on: changes to root (ex. hopeless and clueless vr severity and serenity), frequency, language

Question 6

What is the Cohort Model? (lexical access)

Answer 6

a modern commonsense theory of lexical access
-lexical access begins as soon as the first sound is heard
-initial cohort: starting to narrow down words
-cohort: narrowed down options

Question 7

Uniqueness Point (cohort model)

Answer 7

when there is one word left out of the narrowed down list

Question 8

Shadowing (repetition) task

Answer 8

participants are asked to repeat the word they heard as fast as they can
-many participants respond before the word theyre hearing is finished
-mind starts recognizing the word as soon as it hears the first sound

Question 9

Eye-tracking experiments

Answer 9

camera tracks eye movements while participant is reading
assumes: direction of gaze shows what is currently being processed, length of gaze shows the “easiness” of processing

Question 10

Lexical Decision Task

Answer 10

in which reaction time is measured
assumes: the longer it takes to respond, the more processing is involved
-rxn time is faster with high frequency/recent/real/short/unambiguous words

Question 11

Semantic Priming

Answer 11

participants are presented with one stimulus (prime) right before the stimulus of interest (target)

Question 12

Semantic Neighbours

Answer 12

words that are semantically similar
-can represent the relationship using a semantic association network
ex. baby>cradle>bed>hospital>doctor, nurse, dentist

Question 13

Phonological Priming

Answer 13

words that sound similar can also be primes
ex. cattle/camera/cap/can/candle/candy

Question 14

Center embedding

Answer 14

the process of embedding a phrase in the middle of another phrase of the same type; this often leads to difficulty with parsing

Question 15

Garden Path sentences

Answer 15

sentences that seem to be ambiguous; temporary ambiguity; often lead readers to the wrong interpretation
ex. *[The Brazilian women]np [loved]v sang
[[The Brazilian (that) women loved]np sangV]

Question 16

Global ambiguities

Answer 16

affect the whole sentence; requires info outside the sentence
ex. I once shot an elephant in my pajamas.
The boy saw the man with the telescope.

Question 17

What do ambiguities tell us about processing?

Answer 17

process sentences as we hear them; don’t wait until sentence is finished; try to determine the relationship between words before we hear everything

Question 18

What can we assume about language processing?

Answer 18

language processing depends on more than just linguistic competence; we use ling. comp. to understand center-embedded sentences; sentence processing skills are limited by our working memory