Psycholinguistics part 1

Question 1

Source-filter theory

Answer 1

Vocal tone (source) + resinatory cavities (filter) = speech

Question 2

Perceptual invariance

Answer 2

Phenomenon of variable acoustic input being mapped consistently onto stable units of representation

Question 3

Coarticulation effects

Answer 3

Variation in the pronunciation of phonemes caused by the articulatory properties of neighbouring sounds

Question 4

Parallel transmission

Answer 4

Acoustics of phonemes overlap on the speech spectrum

Question 5

Categorical perception (instead of continuous perception)

Answer 5

Phenomenon where we perceive a continuum of stimuli as being sharply divided into categories (i.e. Phoneme perception in VOT continuums)

Question 6

Voice onset time

Answer 6

The amount of time between the release of a stop consonant and the vibration of the vocal folds

Question 7

Forced choice identification task (Lieberman, 1957)

Answer 7

Ask participants to label equally spaced speech sounds on a VOT continuum

Question 8

ABX discrimination task

Answer 8

Present two stimuli (A & B) then a third (X) and ask if X is more similar to A or B

Question 9

McGurk effect

Answer 9

Visual stimuli (i.e. videos of articulation) affect how we perceive sound

Question 10

Ganong effect

Answer 10

Context affects how we perceive sound, i.e. Phonetically ambiguous sounds in words are likely to be perceived as whatever results in a lexical item

Question 11

Phoneme restoration effect

Answer 11

Context affects how we perceive sound, i.e. Non-speech sounds in the middle of lexical items are perceived (‘hallucinated’) as whatever sound would have fit

Question 12

Bottom-up effects

Answer 12

Sensory (visual and auditory) input being used to interpret speech

Question 13

Top-down effects

Answer 13

Knowledge (context + mental grammar) being used to interpret speech

Question 14

Lexicon

Answer 14

A speaker’s mental dictionary containing lexical entries (words and their associated phonological/semantic information)

Question 15

Lexical access

Answer 15

The process of retrieving a word from the lexicon

Question 16

Frequency (lexical property)

Answer 16

A property of words affecting how easily they’re retrieved from the lexicon

Question 17

Resting activation

Answer 17

How activated a lexical entry is at baseline – increases the more a word is accessed, decays over time

Question 18

Activation threshold

Answer 18

The threshold that must be reached for a word to be retrieved from the lexicon

Question 19

Decay function

Answer 19

The rate at which words fade from memory over time so as to return to a baseline level of activation

Question 20

Spreading activation

Answer 20

The transient activation of other adjacent (related) lexical items when one item is activated

Question 21

Semantic priming

Answer 21

How the activation of a target word is sped up by a semantically related prime

Question 22

Mediated semantic priming

Answer 22

How the activation of a target word is sped up by an indirectly semantically related prime

Question 23

Facilitatory vs. inhibitory effect

Answer 23

Speeding up lexical retrieval vs. slowing it down

Question 24

Lexical decision task

Answer 24

Participants identify whether a target is real word or not after viewing a prime and their reaction time is measured

Question 25

Yee & Sedivy (2006) experiment 1

Visual world eyetracking

Answer 25

Participants hear a prime (i.e. ‘hammer’) then are shown a square with equidistant images of the target object (a hammer), a semantically related object (i.e. a nail) and two unrelated objects

Eye movements are tracked and proportions of fixation on each object over the course of a trial are calculated

Result: Participants’ gazes are drawn to the semantically related object more than the unrelated objects

Question 26

Access and selection model vs. early selection model

Answer 26

Waiting to hear the ambiguous word before the correct meaning is selected vs. selecting its meaning early in the sentence (forming a hypothesis based on context) and confirming or reassessing upon hearing it

Question 27

Swinney (1979)

Cross-modal lexical decision task for semantically ambiguous words

Answer 27

Participants hear 1 of 2 primes, semantically ambiguous or unambiguous (i.e. ‘bug’ or ‘insect’), then, either immediately after or several syllables downstream, are presented with 3 target words, 1 related to intended meaning (i.e. ‘ant’), 1 related to unintended meaning (i.e. ‘spy’), and 1 completely unrelated

Question 28

Phonological neighbours

Answer 28

Words that differ in only one sound and are adjacent within the phonological network

Question 29

Cohort model of word recognition

Answer 29

Words are processed incrementally; onsets temporarily activate onset competitors

Question 30

TRACE model of word recognition (building on the Cohort model)

Answer 30

We continually process sounds as we hear them (continuous mapping) such that sounds in the middles and ends of words also activate rhyme competitors

Question 31

Cross modal lexical
decision for semantically
related cohorts

Answer 31

Participants hear a prime (i.e. ‘beaker’) then, either after the first half of the prime or the second half, 3 target words are flashed on screen that they must classify as a word or non-word, 1 semantically related to the prime (i.e. ‘glass’), 1 semantically related to an onset competitor (i.e. ‘insect’; beetle), and 1 semantically related to a rhyme competitor (i.e. ‘stereo’; speaker)

Question 32

Allopenna et al. (1998)

Visual world eye-tracking

Answer 32

Participants hear a word (i.e. ‘beaker) and must select the matching object in a display of 4 images: the target (a beaker), an onset competitor (a beetle), and 2 unrelated objects

Question 33

Dual-route model of reading

Answer 33

Direct route: recognize it as a word and access its meaning (i.e. sight reading)
Assembled phonology route: decode the word, recognize it, and access its meaning

Question 34

Yee & Sedivy (2006) experiment 2

Visual world eye-tracking