weeks 4.1 to 5.2

Question 1

closure vs. release/burst (types of stops)

Answer 1

closure: fully blocking airflow at a point of constriction to build up air pressure (shown as a period of silence on the waveform and spectrogram)
release/burst: release the constriction to let the air out (shown as a spike on the waveform and spectrogram)

Question 2

fricatives

Answer 2

formed by friction; air passing through a tight pathway (constriction) in the oral cavity

Question 3

aspirated vs. unaspirated stop (p example)

Answer 3

aspirated: [p^h] as in “pet”
unaspirated: [p] as in “spin”

Question 4

voice onset time (VOT)

Answer 4

a quantitative measure for stop consonants; the duration (in milliseconds) between the stop burst/release and the beginning of voicing (vocal fold vibration)

Question 5

VOT positive versus negative numbers

Answer 5

0 or negative = voiced
positive = voiceless

Question 6

phonology and phonetics

Answer 6

phonology: patterning and sequencing of sounds
phonetics: physical properties of sounds (i.e., IPA)

Question 7

broca’s area region and Brodmann area

Answer 7

left inferior frontal gyrus; Brodmann area 44/45

Question 8

wernicke’s area region and Brodmann area

Answer 8

left posterior superior temporal gyrus; Brodmann area 22

Question 9

Broca’s area

Answer 9

first discovered by Paul Broca in 1861 in aphasic patients; language production, both linguistic and non-linguistic rule learning, processing of syntactic structure, abstract sequence processing

Question 10

BA44 versus BA45 (Broca’s area)

Answer 10

BA44: pars Opercularis; for structure/syntactic processing (i.e., noun-verb agreement)
BA45: pars Triangularis; for semantic processing (i.e., extra verbs)

Question 11

Wernicke’s area

Answer 11

discovered by Carl Wernicke in 1874 in aphasic patients; language comprehension, reading and visual word recognition, speech perception, pre-articulatory phonological retrieval

Question 12

arcuate fasciculus (AF)

Answer 12

the connection between Broca’s and Wernicke’s area; crucial in relaying information in both comprehension and production (in dorsal (up) stream)

Question 13

damage to the arcuate fasciculus

Answer 13

possible difficulties in reading aloud or repeating sentences

Question 14

diffusion tensor imaging (DTI)

Answer 14

fiber tracking of arcuate fasciculus; diffusion of water molecules in white matter

Question 15

Wernicke-Geschwind model

Answer 15

based on the assumption of left-hemisphere dominance in language processing; ignores the role of right-hemisphere in language processing (i.e., prosody/rhythm processing); actual language network is more distributed than this model (!)

Question 16

basal ganglia

Answer 16

motor function, control articulation, produce sequences of sounds and words (sentences)

Question 17

interpreting fMRI results

Answer 17

a contrast between two conditions (seen in colored blobs on the brain); condition A shows larger activation in X region than condition B

Question 18

interpreting EEG results

Answer 18

neural response to a stimulus (waveforms); timing and effect size of the cognitive event (ERP)

Question 19

ERP naming conventions (P, N, number)

Answer 19

P: positive
N: negative
number: either the latency (the duration from the stimulus onset to the peak of the ERP) or the peak order

Question 20

ERPs (N400 and P600)

Answer 20

N400 (semantic anomaly): a negative-going waveform peaked at 400ms after stimulus onset
P600 (syntactic anomaly): a positive-going waveform peaked at 600ms after stimulus onset

Question 21

mismatch negativity (ERP)

Answer 21

a negative waveform peaked at ~200ms post-stimulus onset; shows sensitivity to small frequency change

Question 22

Broca’s vs. Wernicke’s aphasia

Answer 22

Broca’s (non-fluent): impaired fluent speech production; agrammatism (sentence construction deficit, content words preserved more than function words, impaired parsing of complex sentences)
Wernicke’s (fluent/jargon): impaired comprehension; production OK; word-finding difficulties; content-word substitutions; made-up words (neologism)

Question 23

conduction aphasia (and short-term memory conduction aphasia)

Answer 23

conduction: damage to the arcuate fasciculus; impaired repetition but comprehension OK
STM: impaired auditory short-term memory

Question 24

evidence from Goschke et al. (2001)

Answer 24

evidence of sequential learning (experiment 1); intact motor sequence learning, but domain-specific (auditory) impairment in Broca’s aphasics (experiment 2)

Question 25

what speech errors tell us

Answer 25

the possible psychological units of language production (e.g., phonemes)

Question 26

local parallel processing (an account for speech errors)

Answer 26

retrieval occurs in the same stage of processing; multiple words compete with each other for activation; incorrectly activated candidates lead to errors; words can be exchanged or blended together

Question 27

spoonerism

Answer 27

a “slip of the tongue” where initial consonants are exchanged (i.e., hissed my mystery lectures)

Question 28

feature perseveration

Answer 28

a type of speech error where there is a spreading of the voiceless or voiced feature to change another phoneme (i.e., turn the knop)

Question 29

phoneme anticipation vs. perseveration

Answer 29

phoneme anticipation: a speech error where there is an anticipation of the production of a phoneme in one of the following words, typically in word-initial position (i.e., the mirst of May)
phoneme perseveration: a speech error where there is a spreading of a phoneme in one of the previous words to one of the following words (typically in word-initial position) (i.e., red rumbrella)

Question 30

Freudian slip

Answer 30

a higher-level speech error that is thought to be a reflection of our repressed thoughts (i.e., saying an ex’s name)

Question 31

environmental contamination

Answer 31

a cognitive intrusion error resulting from the distracting input in the environment, usually phonologically driven (i.e., seeing Clark st. and saying “get out of the clark” instead of “street”)

Question 32

Levelt’s model (3) vs. Garret’s model (5) of speech production

Answer 32

Levelt: conceptualization, formulation, articulation
Garret: message level (conceptualization), functional level, positional level, sound level, articulatory instructions (articulation)

Question 33

macro- vs microplanning (conceptualization)

Answer 33

macroplanning: goal setting; retrieval of relevant information (a big picture)
microplanning: putting together more detailed information; focus of the utterance

Question 34

conceptualization

Answer 34

selection of relevant information from memory; produces a preverbal message

Question 35

formulation

Answer 35

syntactic planning (sentence structure); lexicalization (forming sentences)

Question 36

lexicalization

Answer 36

a two-stage process; (1) syntactic and semantic features, sound-based (phonology)

Question 37

lemma vs. lexeme (formulation/lexicalization)

Answer 37

lemma: the “pre-phonological form” of a word (between the concept and phonological form); the syntactic and semantic features of the word; abstract
lexeme: the phonological form of a word

Question 38

BA44 vs. BA45 (lexicalization)

Answer 38

BA44: syntactic and semantic features (more about the semantic roles); lemma
BA45: concept; part of semantics, at the abstract meaning level