Week 11: Language Production Flashcards
Speech production
– Speech planning
– Speech errors
– Theories
Is speech production effortless? - 2-3 words/s
Strategies to reduce cognitive demands when planning speech:
- preformulation
- under specification
Preformulation
production/ using of phrases used before
e.g. a piece of cake
Under specification
Use simplified expressions
‘… or something’
’.. and things like that’
Speech production is complex: effect of intoxication
suggests speech is not effortless
- impairs attention, memory, thinking and reasoning
- produce more dysfluencies (stammering, stuttering)
- slower speaking rate
- reduction of richness and creativity
1st stage of speech production: Speech planning
Can occur at different levels:
- clause
- phrase
Clause: part of the sentence containing a subject and verb
‘ the dog was sleeping’
Phrase: group of words that express a single idea
‘ on the bed’
Clause level
Speech errors provide evidence that speech planning extends over the entire clause
e.g. word exchange error
instead of ‘my room seems empty without my chair’ they may say ‘my chair seems empty without my room’
Speech errors: when?
- Generally accurate when speaking, but sometimes prone to error
- Majority of errors are not random, but systematic
- Provide insight into how cognitive systems work
Phrase level
decribe moving pictures
2 differing conditions:
1) simple initial noun phrase: [the tie moves] above the candle and the foot
2) conjoined initial noun phrase: [the tie and the candle] move above the foot
finding: took longer to initiate the conjoined phrase
Types of speech errors:
Word exchange
Sound (or phoneme) exchange
Spoonerism
Semantic substitution
Morpheme exchange
Number agreement
Word exchange
- speech planning extends over the entire CLAUSE
e.g. the chair seems empty without my room
Sound/ phoneme exchange
Sounds of words planned shortly in advance
E.g. Bedbugs -> Budbegs
Spoonerism
Initial letter of 2 words are switched
go and shake a tower –> go and take a shower
Semantic substitution
Word replaced by another with a similar meaning
Where is my cricket bat? -> where is my cricket racket?
Morpheme exchange
Inflexions/ suffixes attached to wrong words
He has already trunked two packs
Number agreement
The team HAS won the match (correct)
the collective noun ‘team’ is singular but someone may say:
The team HAVE won the match (plural = wrong)
Theories of speech production (two major theories)
- spreading-activation theory (Dell)
- Weaver++ model
Spreading-activation
Processing occurs in parallel at different levels (semantic, lexical and phonological)
CATEGORICAL RULES: Impose constraints on items/ categories that are acceptable at each level
INSERTION RULES: select items to be spoken, most highly activated nodes selected
Spreading activation: strengths
- levels of processing interact (parallel)
- can account for several speech production errors
- link between speech production and other cognitive activities (e.g. word recognition)
Spreading-activation: weakness
- extent interactive processes involved in speech production unclear
- occur less when processing demands high
Weaver++
Word-form Encoding by Activation VERification
- activation of levels in serial fashion
3 main levels:
1) Highest level: nodes representing lexical concepts
2) Second level: Nodes representing lemmas (abstract words with syntactic/semantic features only)
3) Lowest level: nodes representing words forms (morphemes/ phonemes)
SPEECH PRODUCTION PROCEEDS FROM MEANING (LEXICAL SELECTION/ LEMMA) TO SOUND (MORPHEMES/ PHONEMES)
explains TIP-OF-THE-TOUNGUE state - semantic activation successful but then phonological processing unsuccessful
Weaknesses
– Does not allow interaction between different levels
– Speech errors occur more than model predicts
Weaver ++ strengths
– Shift focus from speech errors and toward precise timing of production processes
– Simple model that can make testable predictions
Neuropsychology (study of brain damage patients)
- study of aphasia in 19th century
- due to stroke, tumors, injury or infection, etc.
Distinguished between 2 types of aphasia…
Broca’s aphasia
Problems with speech production
* Slow, non-fluent speech * Poor ability to produce syntactically correct sentences * Comprehension relatively intact
Wernicke’s aphasia
- Also known as fluent or receptive aphasia
- Fluent and grammatical speech
- Speech often lacks meaning
➢ Problems with speech comprehension
Neuropsychology: oversimplified?
Some truth in distinction between 2 types, but oversimplification
– Same form of aphasia, but different impairments
– Several different areas involved in language processing
– Patients with Broca’s aphasia have damage to Wernicke’s area (and vice versa!)
– Patients also have more general problems (attention/memory)
Neuropsychology: Moving away from Brocas/Wernickes distinction: 3 SPECIFIC COGNITIVE IMPAIRMENTS
- Anomia
- Agrammatism
- Jargon aphasia
Agrammatism
Difficulties PRODUCING GRAMMATICALLY CORRECT SENTENCES
– Short sentences with content words (nouns/verbs)
– Omit function words (the, and, in) and word endings
(Problems at the LEXICAL (SYNTAX/GRAMMAR) levels
Anomia
- Experienced by all aphasics
- Impaired ability to NAME EVERYDAY OBJECTS – Problems with word retrieval
– No problem with comprehension
(Problems at PHONOLOGICAL level)
e.g. describing matches as something you use to make fire
Jargon aphasia
Speech grammatically correct but have difficulties ACCESSING CORRECT WORDS – Substitute one word for another
– Produce NEOLOGISMS (made-up-words)
(Problems at PHONOLOGICAL level)
Next part of lecture: Speech as communication
- nearly always occurs in a social context
- importance of AUDIENCE DESIGN
(tailor to the needs of listeners)
Common ground
Shared knowledge of speaker & listener
- work together for mutual understanding
Speaker makes assumptions of listener:
- global
- local
Global:
preferred language, general knowledge, shared experiences
Local
attending to at a given moment
Is common ground cognitively demanding?
Yes
Speaker needs to focus on listerners pov whilst also planning what to say
Often plan what to say without considering the listener’s perspective
Audience design: Common ground (4 factors)
- syntactic priming
- gesture
- prosodic cues
- discourse markers
Syntactic priming
- Speaker copies words, phrases heard previously
– Other person speaking serves as a prime/prompt
E.g. If someone says a passive sentence (the ball was chased by the dog) you’re likely to say a passive one back (my homework was eaten by my dog)
e.g. moving to uni and picking up some of the words there can make common ground less demanding as words can serve as a prompt
- gesture
- Assumed to increase ability to communicate with listener
– Listeners find it easier to understand - Also makes it easier to work-out what to say
– Use gestures even when we can’t see speaker
Research found: fewer words were provided (22%) in giving a definition when hand gestures were restricted
- prosodic cues
- How words are uttered
– Rhythm, stress (accent), intonation, etc. - More likely to be provided when meaning is ambiguous
e.g. pauses change the meaning of: the old men and women sat on the bench
- discourse markers
- Words/phrases that are not directly relevant to the speaker’s message
Um.. Er… = Speaker experiencing problems deciding what to say
You know?… = Speaker checking that listener understands
