The speaking brain Flashcards
A store of the abstract speech sounds that make up known words
Phonological lexicon
The process of matching a perceptual description of a word onto a stored memory description of that word
Lexical access
In lexical access, a large number of spoken words are initially considered as candidates but words get eliminated as more evidence accumulates
Cohort model
The point at which the acoustic input unambiguously corresponds to only one known word
Uniqueness point
The extent to which a word can evoke a concrete image; ex: “table” is high on this measurement but “truth” is low
Imageability
An event-related component in EEG found when a word meaning appears out of context or unexpectedly
N400
Not tied to one or more perceptual systems
Amodal
A type of noun denoting
a unique entity such as
people and place names,
e.g., “Donald Trump” or
“Washington DC.”
Proper name/Proper noun
The problem of defining concepts without assuming some preexisting knowledge
Symbol grounding problem
The idea that the body (its movement, or internal state) can be used in cognition (ex: to understand words, or social situations)
Embodied cognition
A model of semantic memory that contains both amodal concepts (the hub) and semantic features that are grounded in the sensory, motor and bodily cortex (the spokes)
Hub-and-spokes model
The hypothesis that semantic features are clustered in the brain according to what they are used for and what their physical properties are
Sensory-functional distinction
A type of aphasia traditionally associated with damage to Wernicke’s area and associated with fluent but nonsensical speech and poor comprehension
Wernicke’s aphasia
A type of aphasia traditionally associated with damage to Broca’s area and linked to symptoms such as agrammatism and articulatory deficits
Broca’s aphasia
The order and structure of the words within a sentence
Syntax
