Week 9 - verbal communication

Question 1

What is language?

Answer 1

• Intention to communicate
• Select words and construct sentences
• Retrieve speech code
• Plan articulation
• Produce speech
• Perceieve sounds
• auditory processes
• recognise speech
• activate words
• deconstruct sentence
• comprehend speakers intention

Question 2

What is grammar, phonology, and semantics?

Answer 2

grammar: combinatorial rules
speech/phonology: speech sounds
semantics: meaning

Question 3

What does speech production involve?

Answer 3

1. the construction of an utterance
2. mottor planning
3. air from the lungs
4. pitch / fundamental frequency from vocal cords
5. manipulation of air flow using ‘‘articulators’’ (tongue, lips, velum, etc…)

Question 4

What does speech production have to be robust?

Answer 4

Speech signal is highly variable:
- even the same words uttered by the same speaker will be physically distinct every time
- different speakers (with different voices) produce different sounds
- variability in accent

Question 5

how is speech decoded?

Answer 5

In the conchlea: wave information is transformed to nerve impulses.

Speech recognition: involves a complex network of brain regions.

Question 6

What is the McGurk effect?

Answer 6

Visual processing interacts with what you hear, helping to make speech more intelligbile.

Question 7

what is a mental lexicon?

Answer 7

A component of the human language faculty which contains information regarding the composition of words, such as their meanings, pronounciations, and syntactic characteristics.

Question 8

3 things about the LEXICON.

Answer 8

1. accessing the mental lexicon takes time
2. Rejecting something that looks like a word takes time
3. Related words cause ‘‘priming’’

Question 9

What is semantic priming?

Answer 9

A cognitive phenomonon that occurs when a word is processed faster after being precended by a related word (synonym)