Semantic Interpretation Flashcards
Visual attention is highly sensitive to phonological information. True or false?
True! The visual world affects how we process a word or a sentence
Tanenhaus & Dahan 2005 study about visual attention hypothesized that:
Perceptual characteristics of an object (shape for example) play an important role in lexical processing and saccadic movements.
What was Tanenhaus & Dahan’s 2005 study design/results about perception characteristics and lexical processing?
They showed participants an image with several objects (important ones were a snake and a rope). If participants heard “snake” they would look at the rope (This is a strong condition) rather than an umbrella (shocking right???). But if they heard “rope”, gaze fixation on the snake image (weak condition) was weaker.
what does it tell us? the shape does matter.
Huettig & Altmann’s study of semantic knowledge and attention (the one with Piano and Trumpet) showed that:
If we hear the word piano and look at the image, where there’s no piano but another musical instrument, we would look at that, so semantics matter. again, who would have thought???
How does color category affect Semantic processing? Huettig and Altman study as well. These two are relentless.
If we see a black & white image of a frog, cake, and glove and hear the word spinach, we would rather look at the frog, because the frog is usually green and so is spinach. However, if there is a colored image and the frog is yellow? The effect is much smaller, weaker, and delayed. Soo semantically related objects (like piano and trumpet) induce attention shift much faster than color-related objects.
Language-driven event interpretation means that:
Some words such as verbs have a restrictive nature. If we see an image with a boy, cake, and a ball and we hear, that the boy will eat the ….. we are going to assume, that the boy will eat the cake. But if we use the word “move” instead, both cake and ball can be moved so this verb is less restrictive. Therefore, depending on which verb we hear, we are going to have a different assumption about the situation. This is a language-driven event interpretation.
What does serial coercion mean and which study is referring to it?
In the Scheepers 2008 study participants saw an image depicting an artist, brushes, a painting, and a magnifying glass. When participants heard “The artist started/painted/analyzed the picture using the …” they mostly would look at painting or paint brushes. Serial coercion means clear fixation bias for one instrument over another.
Is semantic interpretation incremental?
Yes, or no, or wait is it? yes, it is. Your semantic interpretation of this sentence was updated along the reading. First, you were sure, then unsure, then sure again. This means it gets updated with every next word, which means it’s incremental.
What are the four maxims (a short, pithy statement expressing a general truth or rule of conduct) that Pia’s bestie, Paul Grice established about conversational contribution?
- Quality - don’t say incorrect things
- Quantity - be informative but not too much
- Relation - be relevant
- Manner - don’t be ambiguous, be brief
wouldn’t it be nice if Pia’s slides had some quantity and manner? BE MORE LIKE GRICE PIA, PLEASEEE
In 2006 Mr. Belke put participants under pressure and told them to talk rapidly and describe objects, what happened?
If they were told to describe size, all of them used an unnecessary color modifier.
Else if they were told to describe color, half of them used a size modifier.
This happens because we’re egocentric and want to describe stuff in a very detailed way. Which again kinda explains why Pia’s slides look the way they look.
Is over-specification or over-description of an item helpful or not?
According to Engelhardt, not really. It makes comprehension more difficult. Over-descriptions create N400-like negativity.
