Visual and auditory building blocks of language

Question 1

what are the 6 building blocks of language

Answer 1

Phonology (sounds)
From images to graphemes
Morphology (meaning units: Morphemes)
Lexicon (words: Lexemes)
Syntax (grammar, structure)
Semantics (meaning)
Pragmatics (communicative context)

Question 2

what is the purpose of phonology

Answer 2

Without identifying the sounds, you cannot understand language
But just hearing the sounds is not enough
Syllables need to be extracted and combined into morphemes and words

Question 3

what is phonemic restoration

Answer 3

Combining bottom-up and top-down information
There is no physical /s/ sound, but you hear it anyway
You know what the word “legislators” is, so you fill in the missing sound

Question 4

what are allophones

Answer 4

How the same phonemes can sound quite different depending on -
who says it (e.g. British vs. American English)
how they say it (whispering, screaming, slurring, mumbling)
what other phonemes are nearby (coarticulation)

Question 5

what is parallel processing

Answer 5

Considering all possible candidates for phonemes and words until you are sufficiently confident about one of them

Question 6

what is the logogen model

Answer 6

Each logogen accumulates activation based on input information matching the characteristics of its word
Each logogen has afiring threshold
When the thresholdis reached, the logogen “wins” and all information about the word becomes available

Question 7

what are logogens

Answer 7

Logogens = word detectors (like the decision demons in the Pandemonium model)
Logogens are linked to visual and auditory inputs

Question 8

strengths of the Logogen Model

Answer 8

Begins to explain how different inputs are integrated
Can explain word frequency effects by assuming different thresholds (e.g. the threshold for “student” is lower than that for “steward”)
Allows context influence

Question 9

weaknesses of the logogen model

Answer 9

Activation can only rise, not fall

Can’t explain how nonwords can be processed

Question 10

summary of logogen model

Answer 10

Not an exhaustive or particularly realistic model by any means, but ideas (e.g. the threshold for word identification) are present in almost every modern model of language comprehension

Question 11

what is the cohort model

Marslen-Wilson (1980)

Answer 11

Refined the Logogen model by thinking about the time course of speech perception
You can start ID-ing a word as soon as you have identified the 1st phoneme
A word starting with “s” may be “student” or “steward” or “soup”, but not “cat”
A word starting with “st” may be “student” or “steward”, but not “soup”
Word identification occurs when there is only one word left matching the input
This is called the recognition point of a word
Usually this occurs at the uniqueness point of a word

Question 12

strengths of the COHORT model

Answer 12

Predicts (correctly) that the first phoneme should be the most important
The uniqueness point is indeed very important in speech perception
Allows some context effects: Uniqueness point is earlier for some words when context is known

Question 13

weaknesses of the COHORT model

Answer 13

Predicts (incorrectly) that you can’t identify a word if the first phoneme is missing
What about nonwords?

Question 14

effects of Broca’s aphasia

Answer 14

Slow, halting speech
Poor articulation
Speech omits prepositions, conjunctions & other grammatical filler words

Question 15

what is Wernickes area

Answer 15

area in the superior part of the left temporal lobe

Although different parts of the temporal lobe may also be involved

Question 16

what is wernicke’s aphasia

Answer 16

speech comprehension problems and atypical speech

Question 17

effects of wernicke’s aphasia

Answer 17

Reduced comprehension of spoken and written language
Non-meaningful speech & difficulty finding right word (anomia)
Patients speak fluently and effortlessly, but pronounce phonemes in the wrong order sometimes
Will utter novel words or neologisms
Patients who had a temporary lesion of Wernicke’s area say that they were unable to understand others’ or their own speech but could not stop talking

Question 18

connectionist account of Wernicke’s aphasia

Answer 18

When connections between levels are weaker, phonological substitutions and nonwords are produced more frequently (e.g. “cod” or “coa”)
substituting one word for semantically related one (when connection within a level are damaged more, that seems to lead to more such errors.)

Question 19

why does wernicke’s aphasia occur

Answer 19

inhibitory connections within the different levels of the connectionist model

Question 20

what are the 3 levels of the connectionist model

Answer 20

Semantic
lexical
phonological