Week 9-comprehension Flashcards
Describe what occurs during step 1 of auditory comprehension
ear detection of speech stream
.Speech Signal:
-Vocal fold vibrations create pressure variations.
-speed of variations determines pitch
-magnitude indicates loudness (amplitude).
-Acoustic phonetics=all speech sounds perceivable by human ear.
.Auditory Discrimination-Detection relies on:
-Proper hearing mechanisms.
-Intact auditory pathways in brain.
-Attention to focus on speech while filtering out other stimul
Describe what occurs during step 2 of auditory comprehension
Finding words in speech stream/word recognition or lexical access.
Bottom-up Processing:
-identify words based on sounds
-check their lexicon, and interpret phrases sequentially.
e.g. wait to hear “the” and “boy” to construct noun phrases, allowing for real-time interpretation/ handling unexpected info
Top-down Processing:
-predict upcoming words using morphological, semantic, and syntactic cues
-speeds up comprehension by filtering out irrelevant sounds.
Describe step 3 of auditory comprehension
obtaining info about word from mental lexicon
-Spreading Activation: Activation starts from single node and spreads to related words. Based on context, we select the word that fits the sounds, overall sentence meaning, and discourse meaning.
-Morphological priming: Measures of brain activity show priming to pairs of verb forms such as teach/taught during the early stages of lexical access.
-Phonological priming: Significant priming effects were obtained when the prime and target words shared phonological information (word initial and word final)
Describe what occurs during step 4 of auditory processing
Parsing
Deriving meaning from the speech signal
-Phonological decoding & lexical selection: Recognizing sounds to identify words
-Grammatical decoding
(Syntactic and semantic): Hearing each words makes available its syntactic and semantic properties.
Describe what occurs during step 5 of auditory processing
avoid ambiguity and comprehend
-Lexical Ambiguity: Words like pear and pair activate both meanings. Selection depends on word frequency and context (the overall meaning and discourse).
-Structural Ambiguity: Both meanings are activated, with selection influenced by syntactic frequency, environmental context, and linguistic context.
Describe what occurs during step 6 of auditory comprehension
Discourse: Communication over multiple sentences, e.g. conversations, debates, speeches, instructions, and storytelling.
Comprehension: Understanding discourse requires reflecting on and remembering entire interaction.
Example: In a debate, rebuttals necessitate active listening and precise comprehension to effectively respond to opposing arguments.
What evidence exists for parsing (provide definitions for all)
Shadowing: Repeating speech right after hearing it shows that listeners process sentence structure quickly.
Garden Path Sentences: These mislead readers, requiring backtracking, as eye-tracking reveals longer processing times at points of confusion.
Intonation Hints: Variations in pitch and stress help predict sentence boundaries and meanings.
Memory Limitations: Working memory constraints hinder parsing, making longer sentences harder to interpret.
What evidence exists for lexical activation (provide definitions)?
Slips of the Ear: Mishearing words (e.g., “great ape” as “gray tape”) demonstrates how context and sound affect word recognition.
Lexical Decision Tasks: Participants rapidly determine if letter strings form words, indicating how quickly meanings are accessed in the brain.
Semantic Priming: Recognizing a word faster after a related word (e.g., “doctor” following “nurse”) shows automatic activation of related lexical entries.
What evidence exists for top-down processing during word segmentation?
Noise Distraction: Context helps listeners segment words in noisy environments by using prior knowledge to fill gaps.
Shadow Tests: These tests show how listeners use context to identify word boundaries despite interference.
Speech Signal Obstruction: Any interruption affecting speech comprehension.
