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Psychology 1B > Psychology of Language > Flashcards

Psychology of Language Flashcards

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1
Q

What is language generally described as that has limitations in its application?

A

A system of communication - Animals use non-verbal cues to communicate so language isn’t the defining feature of communication

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2
Q

To what extent can chimps understand language/mental states?

A

Chimps can learn certain words and understand mental states but lack knowledge about intent to share mental states = Language is the intent to make ones mental state known

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3
Q

What are some features of language among humans?

A

Skill of language is universal, not restricted to verbal language, language takes different forms/modalities

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4
Q

What is meant by language being combinatorial?

A

There are a few common speech sounds and letters that make up the language

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5
Q

Why are linguistic symbols/Iconicity important?

A

More iconic (visually stereotypical) the sign in sign language = The more memorable.

Iconicity bridges experience to linguistic symbols which are abstracted = Abstraction increases communicative capacity

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6
Q

Why is language not completely arbitrary?

A

Certain sounds occur in certain words in different languages (e.g. R in red)

Subtle differences in sounds of nouns & verbs impact processing times

Concrete words tend to be shorter whereas abstract words are identified by being longer

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7
Q

What is the neurobiology of language?

A

Grey matter = Neuronal cell bodies
White matter = Axons, myelin & glia cells

Each lobe has a characteristic set of gyri & sulci which identifies the area

Broadmann areas = Regions defined by layered composition of cells (cytoarchitecture)

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8
Q

Give a language-centric overview of functional neuroanatomy (the four main landmarks)

A

Language = Left hemisphere
Four main landmarks:
- Audition (Posterior, superior temporal lobe)
- Action & Motor control (Inferior frontal & parietal)
- Planning/cognitive control (Frontal lobe)
- Visual object recognition (Inferior temporal)

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9
Q

What are the two main methods to examine the brain?

A
  1. The lesion method - Association between location of brain damage & deficits (can use virtual lesions using non-invasive brain stimulation)
  2. Neuroimaging - Structural scans (MRI), Functional scans (FMRI), EEG, Intercranial EEG
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10
Q

Why are platonic and symbolic definitions of a concept not applicable to humans/psychology?

A

Platonic (concepts are metaphysical and exist outside the human mind)
- Psychology is more focused on empiricism & real-life
representations
Symbolic (List of necessary and specific features) - Humans don’t have this rigid structure

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11
Q

What is a good definition of a ‘concept’?

A

Concepts = Perceptual symbol system/embodied semantics

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12
Q

What are the features of a concept?

A

Defined by perception and action features (link ideas)

Features are probabilistic (people see certain things differently)

Simulation/re-enactment is necessary to a concept (visualisation)

Brain regions involved in processing objects are also involved in representing object concepts (e.g. face region of brain lights up if we think about the face)

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13
Q

How do category-specific semantic deficits occur?

A

Normally occur due to a stroke

Specific parts of the brain are damaged preventing knowledge about them

Sensory-functional distinction - Unable to separate specific categories (such as that inanimate objects are define by their functions& associated actions)

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14
Q

When do children experience a ‘vocabulary explosion’?

A

14-18 months = Rapidly produce more words

Word learning is difficult for children as they have to associate certain sounds with meanings

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15
Q

What are the types of biases that help children learn words?

A
  1. Whole object bias
    Labels are assigned to the whole object rather than to just a part
  2. Mutual Exclusivity
    Some part of the situation is known so deduce the unknown (e.g. If that
    is a fork, other is a knife)
  3. Basic-level
    Have a bias that what is being talked about is not too specific & is more generally applicable to all
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16
Q

How does verb learning occur in infants?

A

Syntactic bootstrapping - Sentence structure gives some clues to verb meaning

Verbs have suffixes that identify them & is more difficult than object naming

Word learning also occurs by intention (so if the action label seems intentional)

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17
Q

What role does infant directed speech have?

A

Infant-directed speech = How adults talk to babies

  • Spoken at slower rate, longer pauses & intonational structures which promotes infant attention to language & fosters social interaction
  • Helps infants learn their native language
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18
Q

What is phonology? Phonemes? Allophones?

A

The study of patterns & sounds in a language (and across cultures)

  • Phonemes are abstract units of speech (small unit change will alter word meaning
  • Allophone is a variation that does not change meaning
    e. g. tam and taam in english would mean the same thing
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19
Q

How do infants develop speech perception?

A

Develop sensitivity to native-language phenomena contrasts at 6-12 months

New-borns prefer their mother’s voice and native language - Distinguish emotion and intonation speech

8 to 12 months focus only on native contrasts

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20
Q

How do infants use distributional learning to develop language?

A

Infants use the distribution of sound to work out the phoneme categories in their language

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21
Q

How do infants use categorical perception to develop language?

A

Categorical perception - Perceive speech sounds in terms of their categories without acoustic details or continuous physical differences

Sharp boundaries between speech sound categories so can easily be distinguished

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22
Q

How does visual context of the McGurk effect impact speech perception?

A

When we hear the same sound but the person says it with a different mouth shape of another sound - We will hear it as the mouth perceives it

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23
Q

How does lexical context/feedback impact speech perception?

A

Word superiority effect: Phonemes are recognised faster in words than in non-words

Ganong effect: Ambiguous speech sounds tend to be heard in a word consistent way (e.g. ‘iss’ as Kiss)

Phoneme restoration: Replacing a phoneme with a noise produces perception of noise and phoneme (activity in left superior temporal gyrus)

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24
Q

How does world knowledge tune speech sound categories?

A

When PPT read Wizard of Oz, with ‘Witch’ pronounced ‘Wetch’ they identified wetch as a word - key mechanism in adapting to accents

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25
Q

What is meant by syntax?

A

How sentence structure conveys meaning

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26
Q

What is the syntax paradox?

A

Primary school - Most children are fairly close to mastery of their own native syntax but even professional linguists have a hard time establishing all the rules of English

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27
Q

How does the syntax develop?

A

15 months to 2.5 yrs - Kids mostly produce content words & start combining them into two word phrases - Not much syntactic structure

2.5 yrs to 4yrs - Gradually start using markings like plurals and past tense + start to use prepositions

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28
Q

How are grammatical categories learnt?

A

Learn the context of how the words are used

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29
Q

What are frequent frames and how do they help using certain nouns as verbs?

A

Word sequences can provide information about word type. Frequent frames provide accurate categorization for about 50% of words a child hears

E.g. - you _____ it (can be filled with ‘hit’ etc.)

Distributional information is too noisy but frequent frames make it accurate

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30
Q

What did Mintz find when testing Frequent Frames in experimental conditions?

A

Among children, when taught novel words in frequent frames, shown new sentences - Looked longer at ungrammatical ones = Surprised

Same with adults when faced with a new language - could identify the novel vs repeated sentences

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31
Q

What does Quasi-compositional mean?

A

The role of syntax is to specify the patterns of form to meaning

32
Q

How is language compositional in maths & computer programming languages?

A

A function can be applied to any argument and will always do whatever the function does regardless of argument value

33
Q

Is human language compositional?

A

No, it is quasi-compositional/quasi-irregular

E.g. Compound words - House can mean houseboat, house guest etc.
Adjective + Noun can mean different things (Red wine, Red Apple)
Compositional regularities allow comprehension of novel combinations in context

34
Q

What is sentence parsing?

A

Sentence describes an event/situation with a hierarchical structure. In order to comprehend the sentence we convert the sentence into hierarchical structure - ‘Sentence parsing’

35
Q

What is the slight issue with sentence parsing?

A

Mapping hierarchy is difficult. There can be multiple interpretations of a sentence that are ‘syntactically legal’.

Occurs in newspapers, when relative clauses are used - causes ambiguity & misinterpretation

This is avoided in verbal situations due to intonation and gestures.

36
Q

How can syntactic ambiguities be resolved?

A

Sentence parsing = interactive & incremental - constraints are integrated as soon as they become available & used to predict

Incremental: As soon as words come in, start to build representation of what’s going to come

Interactive: Influenced by context & constraints from different levels are all used

Parallel: Multiple parses (sentence interpretations) are considered in parallel

Competitive: Takes time & cognitive resources to resolve grammatical ambiguities

37
Q

What is syntactic priming?

A

Structural priming is a form of positive priming, in that it induces a tendency to repeat or more easily process a current sentence that is similar in structure to a previously presented prime

38
Q

How does syntactic priming work?

A

General paradigm: Person hears & repeats a sentence, then they get a different picture of the sentence and have to describe it

E.g. Active vs Passive syntax = One of the fans punched the referee or the referee was punched

The prime sentence syntax impacts the persons response (so if hear passive sentence, will describe it in a passive way)

Suggests multiple syntactic structures are activated in parallel when thinking about how to describe an event = Priming selects the one for production

39
Q

What implications does syntactic priming have?

A

Creates feedback loop between two speakers (you speak passively, they speak passively)

Using the same syntactic structures = Easier for people to understand one another

Syntactic priming helps connect language processing with other cognitive processes

40
Q

What did Gleitman et al. (2007) find about syntactic priming?

A

Used a brief cue to draw attention to one side of the screen which either active/passive screen, chase/flee scene & others = Found cue biased the description of the scene

41
Q

What does the source-filter model of vowel production propose?

A

Source produces a sound via air through the larynx - Filter shapes the sound - Produces specific phoneme

Tongue positions can influence what the sound produced is

Source controls the periodicity, pitch, intensity, duration & phonation quality
Filter controls the vowel height and vowel advancement
Physical size affects the resonant frequencies of the vocal tract

42
Q

What are the two important loops in action control of speech production?

A
  1. Motor Plan
  2. Forward Model

(explained in next flashcard)

43
Q

What happens in the motor plan of speech production?

A

Sends plan to effectors to execute the plan - Monitors the execution via sensors - Adjust as needed

If there is an error in the plan, other mechanism needed to alter while in progress, otherwise could only react afterwards = Too slow

44
Q

How does the forward model help counter errors in the motor plan?

A

Stimulates a plan and generates a correction signal before the action is completed

Occurs before you hear what you said (e.g. verti- I mean horizontal)

45
Q

What are the mechanisms that help with planning and monitoring of speech production?

A

Articulatory-phonological - Responsible for articulating the actual sounds coming out of your mouth

  • Source - The air coming from your lungs
  • Filter is the configuration of the articulators (tongue, lips, jaw)
  • By changing the configuration of articulators can produce different speech sounds

Lexical-syntactic - The sequence of words you’re using to communicate the meaning of your sentence

46
Q

What is the two-step model for word production?

A
  1. Identify the concept you want to name & select appropriate name (e.g. Cat)
  2. Plan out the sequence of phonemes and articulatory movements needed to produce it
47
Q

What is key evidence for the two-step model of speech production for a single word?

A

If errors were just random they would be non-words but this is very rare

Semantic errors are more common than would be expected by chance

Mixed errors - Semantically and phonologically similar

48
Q

What are “Spoonerisms”?

A

Errors in multi-word utterances (sentences)

Occur when exchange a word in a sentence (e.g. low the lawn), perseveration (e.g. rule of rum), Anticipation (e.g. reading list to leading list)

49
Q

Why are spoonerisms important from a psychological perspective?

A

Reveal how speech planning works - Can only make an anticipatory error if you’ve planned a few words ahead

E.g. “I appled a pack”

  • Grammatical frame is preserved but determiner is adjusted
50
Q

What are dysfluencies?

A

Pauses in speech (e.g. “uh”, “um”, “er”)

Common in non-scripted speech & suggest planning is not complete

51
Q

How are dysfluencies related to disorders such as Broca’s aphasia & agrammatism?

A

Dysfluencies are often a common symptom, along with reduced speech rate & short sentences etc.

52
Q

How are people tested for dysfluencies?

A

Asked to tell a fairy tale and listen to see if speech is semi-structured = Transcript analysed and converted into quantitative measure

OR

Asked to describe the events in a sequence of pictures

53
Q

What processes does fluent speech production depend on?

A

Syntax, Sentence planning, Lexical-semantic knowledge & articulatory/phonological planning

54
Q

What is the cortical organisation of sentence processing?

A

Syntax comprehension deficits are associated with posterior damage

Syntax production deficits are associated with the frontal damage

Posterior temporal-parietal area is thought to be responsible for sentence parsing

Anterior frontal area = Responsible for action planning (sequence of words & sounds right) - Damage will produce non-fluent speech but won’t necessarily impair syntax processing

55
Q

What two opposing forces cause the change & evolution over time?

A
  1. Learnability (simplicity) - Language learners fail to learn difficult parts of language so they start to disappear from the language
  2. Expressive power (precision) - If we want to express lots of different information, language structures that allow that expression need to be learnt
56
Q

What did Simon Kirby find about how language structure emerges from the opposing forces?

A

Languages learnt by more people had a simpler inflectional morphology

Languages that have a lower complexity tend to be like English & is spoken by many people

57
Q

How is learnability a factor in language change?

A

Written language changes how we use language

Spoken language is transient but written is slower. However, texting re-introduced pressure

Emojis are gradually replacing slang & is a new form of expression

Language should change to make it easier for us to express outselves

58
Q

What is a type of planning that helps in dialogue, in a social capacity, to keep the conversation going?

A

People can predict when someone is nearly done talking & planning the onset of their own speech

59
Q

What did Stivers et al. find about overlapping speech/stereotypes about interruptions?

A

Turn-taking overlaps - Similar to timing errors
Backchannel overlaps - Proper interruptions

Women interrupted more than men but women were interrupted more than men

60
Q

What is meant by “common ground” in social processes of language?

A

Common ground - Mutual knowledge, beliefs and assumptions that simplify communication

It facilitates making inferences and resolving ambiguous referents

61
Q

What are examples of how common ground can be used in social situations?

A

E.g. In a task refer to a certain object as a certain word

Establishing a precedent allows faster comprehension & people expect that the same speaker will keep precedent but new speaker will change precedent

62
Q

How does communication accommodation change language in the short-term?

A

Social, historical & cultural forces that push speakers to adopt particular speech styles - Can be convergent or divergent

63
Q

What is interactive alignment?

A

Cognitive processes that drive convergence between speakers in order to facilitate communication (driven by social factors)

64
Q

How does having cognitive processes occurring during a conversation aid language?

A

First, cognitive processes like syntactic priming are occurring - Then convergence between speakers via communication accommodation - Facilitated communication = EASIER TO UNDERSTAND

65
Q

How is syntactic priming influenced by social factors?

A

Brannigan - Found syntactic priming effect was larger when participant was directly hearing it than when it was overhead so having the social the prime being directed at you

Syntactic priming also judged by the standardness of the speaker’s accent

Accommodation is stronger when the speaker is more attractive

66
Q

What are the main two types of information that is in the speech signal?

A
  1. Linguistic - E.g. Phonemes, words, syntactic structure

2. Indexical features - Information about the speaker (e.g. age etc.)

67
Q

How can linguistic features of speech and indexical features interact during comprehension?

A

People use an accent to disambiguate words that have different meanings in different variants of English

Even when speaking in a neutral accent, context is used to assess meaning of the words

68
Q

How can you distinguish a language from a dialect?

A

Mutual intelligibility is not a good method as Danish & Swedish are different languages that sound similar whereas Mandarin & Cantonese sound different but have the same writing system.

Can’t rely on the written form of language

Language normally serves as a social communication & dialects described in a derogatory way

69
Q

What are social markers used for?

A

To identify group membership which provides the basis for intergroup bias (favouring in group and discriminating against those outside)

70
Q

Why does intergroup bias exist?

A

Boost self-esteem, worldview confidence, optimising trade-off between individuality and group belonging & evolutionary constraint on cooperation/altruism

71
Q

How does language act as a reliable social marker?

A

Salient & readily discriminable - Can tell if someone’s dialect differs from you

Individual & Group properties - Everyone has their own speech style shared with their dialect

Difficult to fake

Universal to have a linguistic social marker

72
Q

What did a study with children find about how well language acts as a social marker?

A

Younger children saw the North American accent as smarter but the southern American accent as kinder

This carries into friendship preference

Children often prefer their own race unless that person has the same accent

73
Q

How do all aspects of language contribute to dialect and social marking?

A

As even lexical difference such ass calling ‘tea’ dinner can distinguish people

Phonetic/phonological variation contributes the most = Slower to acquire and difficult to fake

74
Q

What are the three main social factors that influence language change?

A

Conscious awareness (“meta-commentary”) - Explicit decisions/policies about implementing specific language styles (e.g. in schools)

Overt Prestige - Known associations with standardness or moral associations (e.g. When in formal situations)

Planning - Whether language change was planned or unplanned (e.g. Arctic Monkeys speak in strong Sheffield accent)

75
Q

What are people reinforcing when they talk about the ‘right’ way of speaking?

A

Existing structures of power, status and privilege

Psychology 1B (5 decks)

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