Week 3 Flashcards
What does the term ‘lexicon’ mean in the context of our lectures?
A mental dictionary
What kind of linguistic modality is referred to by ‘orthography’?
Visual/written
How long, on average, does it take for a spoken word to ‘unfold’, and what is that important?
About 500ms
It’s important because at that speed we need to start interpreting the meaning of the word before it is finished ‘unfolding’ in order to comprehend speech as it happens
When we listen to the sound of a word unfolding, our mind throws up multiple potential words as candidates before we finish hearing the whole word. What is the name given to those candidate words?
And what is the name given to the process of all these candidates words being thrown up?
- Lexical competitors
2. Parallel activation
Work by Marslen-Wilson indicates that ambiguous audio stimulus (like ‘kapt’) not only PRIMES us to think of words that start with that sound (captain, captive)… it primes us to think of words associated with those words (like ship, guard). Amazing.
If the ambiguous stimulus primes us to think of two words, one that we hear more frequently that the other, which word will be the MOST primed in our minds.
The one we hear more often (surprise, surprise)
‘TRACE’ is a… what?
a neural network (or ‘connectionist’) model developed by Elman and McClelland for thinking about spoken word recognition
Under the TRACE model, what is the name give to the mechanism theorised to enable lexical selection?
Describe the meaning/function of the term
LATERAL INHIBTION
This mechanism enables the lexical entry most consistent with the input to inhibit the activity of its competitors
On the subject of word recognition in bilinguals, and the question of whether bilinguals have an integrated lexicon, what did van Heuven at al show using their interlingual neighbour paradigm?
That Dutch-English bilinguals were slower at identifying English words that sounded similar to lots of Dutch words (relative to English bilinguals)
… thereby implying that the Dutch-English bilinguals were working harder to inhibit lexical competitors, ergo, the lexicons were integrated not separate
What’s the actual, like, definition of an ORTHOGRAPHIC NEIGHBOUR?
Any word differing by a single letter form a target word
There’s something called the Bilingual Interactive Activation Model which I am struggling with a bit
Need to revise through lecture recordings
There’s also Green’s Inhibitory Control Model of Bilingual Language Production, which tbh just made me glaze over
Need to revise through lecture recordings
The brain imaging evidence in relation to bilingualism indicates that when bilinguals switch from L1 to L2, they activate the dACC as much as monolinguals do when switching from verbs to nouns.
But there are a different STRUCTURAL and FUNCTIONAL qualities to the dACC between bilinguals and monolinguals, what are they?
- Structurally -Bilinguals have more grey matter density in the dACC
…presumably because they are constantly faced with language conflict
- Bilinguals also use the dACC more efficiently - outperformed monolinguals on cognitive control tasks while showing lower dACC activation
In the context of brain imaging of bilingual speakers, what is meant by the term the ‘prefrontal effect’
The fact that, in a bilingual, the dACC and pre-SMA are more more engaged while they’re speaking their second (ie weaker) language
… and this reflects the additional cognitive effort required to speak in that second language
Apparently studies indicate that learning a second language increases grey matter volume in two places (beyond the dACC mentioned before). What are they?
- The left dorso-lateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC)
2. the left anterior cingulate cortex (ACC)
What is the the left dorso-lateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) particularly good for, in the context of all this bilingual stuff?
Guiding response selection under conditions of conflict
and also refreshing representations in working memory
