Psycholinguistics

Question 1

What is the definition of psycholinguistics?

Answer 1

It’s the study of language processing.

It’s the system of representation i.e. listening, reading and talking… how we do it all

Question 2

What are spoonerisms?

Answer 2

These are slips of the tongue (metathesis) across words

i.e. you Hissed all the Mystery classes

Question 3

What do slips of the tongue/spoonerisms tell us (2 things)?

Answer 3

1. We build sentences before we produce them, otherwise we wouldn’t have the slip-ups .
2. Shows that we must store some sounds and words together. Sometimes, when we use to the wrong word, it’s because it’s stored near the one we are actually looking for.

Question 4

What is a mental lexicon?

Answer 4

This is the storage (in our brains) of a mental dictionary

Question 5

What 2 things do we look at when we are studying psycholinguistics and the mental lexicon?

Answer 5

1. Accuracy

2. Latency

Question 6

What are 2 ways that we can study the accuracy and latency of one’s mental lexicon?

Answer 6

1. Lexicon Decision

2. Lexical Priming

Question 7

Describe the steps and goals of a lexicon decision experiment

Answer 7

1. Participants sit in front of a computer
2. They’re shown words, infrequent words and nonwords
3. The goal is to record the accuracy and latency in saying if the word is or isn’t a real word.

Question 8

What is the difference in latency for frequent words vs infrequent words and what does this tell us about the mental lexicon

Answer 8

Frequent words are accessed in .5 seconds verses infrequent words accessed in .75 seconds.
This show us that words must (at least in part) be organized by frequency

Question 9

What does the lexicon decision experiment show us about non-words and what does this tell us about organization?

Answer 9

Non-words that lineup with english phonotactics take longer to reject than non-words that cannot be possible.
This shows us that phonology is also a part of organization.

Question 10

What is the purpose of lexical priming and how does it complete this?

Answer 10

The purpose is to determine the relationship between words by measuring the response time between the primer word and the target.

Question 11

What is the purpose of time reading?

Answer 11

It is to find our where we focus while reading and for how long.

Question 12

What were some discoveries in the analysis of time reading (3)?

Answer 12

1. We read sentences one word or chunk at a time

2. Nouns and verbs take longer to process

Question 13

Why do words at the end of clause boundaries take longer to process?

Answer 13

You must take into account all the other lexical and grammatical information preceding it before you can move forward.

Question 14

What are the 3 steps in experimental methodology?

Answer 14

1. Create a test hypothesis
2. Use a stimulus to create a response
3. Reproduce results

Question 15

True or false, eyes move left to right.

Answer 15

False, there are frequent, never jumps (backwards and forwards) while reading.

Question 16

What are the eye jumps called.

Answer 16

• Saccades

- Regressive saccades occur when your eyes move left again (re-reading something).

Question 17

During a .25 second period, how many words do we focus on at a time?

Answer 17

2-3 words

Question 18

When we move our eyes while reading, how many words do we jump (approx.)

Answer 18

8 words to the right

Question 19

What types of sentences produce more regressive saccades?

Answer 19

difficult ones. We need to jump backwards in order to help process the sentence.

Question 20

What does ERP stand for?

Answer 20

• These are Event Related Potentials

Question 21

How do we measure ERPs?

Answer 21

By attaching electrodes to the scalp, brain activity (electrical activity) is measured while reading.

Question 22

What is N400 and why does it happen?

Answer 22

At 400 milliseconds into reading an unexpected lexical item, you see a negative voltage spike. The more unexpected, the more intense the negative voltage is.
Your brain is bothered by the incorrect/unexpected sentence.

Question 23

What does N400 tell su about how we read sentences?

Answer 23

We don’t wait until the entire string is completed. We constantly build interpretations as the sentence unfolds.

Question 24

What is P600 and why does it happen?

Answer 24

At 600 milliseconds into reading an incorrect/unexpected grammatical anomaly, there is a positive voltage spike with the word involved.

Question 25

What is bottom up processing?

Answer 25

This is the processing of individual units building up one by one until you reach a whole.

Question 26

What is top-down processing?

Answer 26

The is the processing based upon expectations. You consider the overall meanings and then make predictions on what we’ve already seen/heard.

Question 27

What is a feature?

Answer 27

This is voicing and articulation (manner and place)

Question 28

What is the cohort model?

Answer 28

This is a form of bottom up processing.
When we hear a part of a word, we consider all the possibilities and then shrink the cohort as more phoneme s are revealed until you’re left with one.

Question 29

What is pre-lexical decomposition what is an example evidence that supports this?

Answer 29

This is when you look at the whole word first and then break it up into morphemes.
The negative priming of tree from barking shows that we analyze the whole of barking before we break it down to bark-ing.

Question 30

What is post -lexical decomposition?

Answer 30

This is the building up of words from their individual morphemes.

Question 31

What does the parser do?

Answer 31

This tells a person what words go together, looks for default syntactic structures as well as which words are nouns, verbs or subject predicates.

Question 32

What do garden path sentences reveal?

Answer 32

They reveal parsing preferences… Our parsers lead us down the patch that they expect us to see.

Question 33

What are the 2 main assumptions what the parser makes?

Answer 33

1. Minimal attachments

2. Late closer

Question 34

What is minimal attachment?

Answer 34

This is the assumption that there is no embedding within noun phrases (there are no new nodes).

Question 35

What is late closer?

Answer 35

This is the assumption that sentences attaches the noun to the current clause, rather than the next one. This also assumes that the first noun is the direct object and goes with the preceding verb.

Question 36

When there is syntactic or lexical ambiguity, both are consider then one gets _____ if it’s not accepted.

Answer 36

Pruned.