Psychology of Language Flashcards
What is language generally described as that has limitations in its application?
A system of communication - Animals use non-verbal cues to communicate so language isn’t the defining feature of communication
To what extent can chimps understand language/mental states?
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
What are some features of language among humans?
Skill of language is universal, not restricted to verbal language, language takes different forms/modalities
What is meant by language being combinatorial?
There are a few common speech sounds and letters that make up the language
Why are linguistic symbols/Iconicity important?
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
Why is language not completely arbitrary?
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
What is the neurobiology of language?
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)
Give a language-centric overview of functional neuroanatomy (the four main landmarks)
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)
What are the two main methods to examine the brain?
- The lesion method - Association between location of brain damage & deficits (can use virtual lesions using non-invasive brain stimulation)
- Neuroimaging - Structural scans (MRI), Functional scans (FMRI), EEG, Intercranial EEG
Why are platonic and symbolic definitions of a concept not applicable to humans/psychology?
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
What is a good definition of a ‘concept’?
Concepts = Perceptual symbol system/embodied semantics
What are the features of a concept?
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)
How do category-specific semantic deficits occur?
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)
When do children experience a ‘vocabulary explosion’?
14-18 months = Rapidly produce more words
Word learning is difficult for children as they have to associate certain sounds with meanings
What are the types of biases that help children learn words?
- Whole object bias
Labels are assigned to the whole object rather than to just a part - Mutual Exclusivity
Some part of the situation is known so deduce the unknown (e.g. If that
is a fork, other is a knife) - Basic-level
Have a bias that what is being talked about is not too specific & is more generally applicable to all
How does verb learning occur in infants?
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)
What role does infant directed speech have?
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
What is phonology? Phonemes? Allophones?
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
How do infants develop speech perception?
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
How do infants use distributional learning to develop language?
Infants use the distribution of sound to work out the phoneme categories in their language
How do infants use categorical perception to develop language?
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
How does visual context of the McGurk effect impact speech perception?
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
How does lexical context/feedback impact speech perception?
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)
How does world knowledge tune speech sound categories?
When PPT read Wizard of Oz, with ‘Witch’ pronounced ‘Wetch’ they identified wetch as a word - key mechanism in adapting to accents
What is meant by syntax?
How sentence structure conveys meaning
What is the syntax paradox?
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
How does the syntax develop?
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
How are grammatical categories learnt?
Learn the context of how the words are used
What are frequent frames and how do they help using certain nouns as verbs?
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
What did Mintz find when testing Frequent Frames in experimental conditions?
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
What does Quasi-compositional mean?
The role of syntax is to specify the patterns of form to meaning
How is language compositional in maths & computer programming languages?
A function can be applied to any argument and will always do whatever the function does regardless of argument value
Is human language compositional?
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
What is sentence parsing?
Sentence describes an event/situation with a hierarchical structure. In order to comprehend the sentence we convert the sentence into hierarchical structure - ‘Sentence parsing’
What is the slight issue with sentence parsing?
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.
How can syntactic ambiguities be resolved?
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
What is syntactic priming?
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
How does syntactic priming work?
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
What implications does syntactic priming have?
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
What did Gleitman et al. (2007) find about syntactic priming?
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
What does the source-filter model of vowel production propose?
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
What are the two important loops in action control of speech production?
- Motor Plan
- Forward Model
(explained in next flashcard)
What happens in the motor plan of speech production?
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
How does the forward model help counter errors in the motor plan?
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)
What are the mechanisms that help with planning and monitoring of speech production?
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
What is the two-step model for word production?
- Identify the concept you want to name & select appropriate name (e.g. Cat)
- Plan out the sequence of phonemes and articulatory movements needed to produce it
What is key evidence for the two-step model of speech production for a single word?
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
What are “Spoonerisms”?
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)
Why are spoonerisms important from a psychological perspective?
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
What are dysfluencies?
Pauses in speech (e.g. “uh”, “um”, “er”)
Common in non-scripted speech & suggest planning is not complete
How are dysfluencies related to disorders such as Broca’s aphasia & agrammatism?
Dysfluencies are often a common symptom, along with reduced speech rate & short sentences etc.
How are people tested for dysfluencies?
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
What processes does fluent speech production depend on?
Syntax, Sentence planning, Lexical-semantic knowledge & articulatory/phonological planning
What is the cortical organisation of sentence processing?
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
What two opposing forces cause the change & evolution over time?
- Learnability (simplicity) - Language learners fail to learn difficult parts of language so they start to disappear from the language
- Expressive power (precision) - If we want to express lots of different information, language structures that allow that expression need to be learnt
What did Simon Kirby find about how language structure emerges from the opposing forces?
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
How is learnability a factor in language change?
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
What is a type of planning that helps in dialogue, in a social capacity, to keep the conversation going?
People can predict when someone is nearly done talking & planning the onset of their own speech
What did Stivers et al. find about overlapping speech/stereotypes about interruptions?
Turn-taking overlaps - Similar to timing errors
Backchannel overlaps - Proper interruptions
Women interrupted more than men but women were interrupted more than men
What is meant by “common ground” in social processes of language?
Common ground - Mutual knowledge, beliefs and assumptions that simplify communication
It facilitates making inferences and resolving ambiguous referents
What are examples of how common ground can be used in social situations?
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
How does communication accommodation change language in the short-term?
Social, historical & cultural forces that push speakers to adopt particular speech styles - Can be convergent or divergent
What is interactive alignment?
Cognitive processes that drive convergence between speakers in order to facilitate communication (driven by social factors)
How does having cognitive processes occurring during a conversation aid language?
First, cognitive processes like syntactic priming are occurring - Then convergence between speakers via communication accommodation - Facilitated communication = EASIER TO UNDERSTAND
How is syntactic priming influenced by social factors?
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
What are the main two types of information that is in the speech signal?
- Linguistic - E.g. Phonemes, words, syntactic structure
2. Indexical features - Information about the speaker (e.g. age etc.)
How can linguistic features of speech and indexical features interact during comprehension?
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
How can you distinguish a language from a dialect?
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
What are social markers used for?
To identify group membership which provides the basis for intergroup bias (favouring in group and discriminating against those outside)
Why does intergroup bias exist?
Boost self-esteem, worldview confidence, optimising trade-off between individuality and group belonging & evolutionary constraint on cooperation/altruism
How does language act as a reliable social marker?
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
What did a study with children find about how well language acts as a social marker?
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
How do all aspects of language contribute to dialect and social marking?
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
What are the three main social factors that influence language change?
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)
What are people reinforcing when they talk about the ‘right’ way of speaking?
Existing structures of power, status and privilege
