Cognition 12 – Flashcards
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What is psycholinguistics?
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the study of the comprehension, production, and acquisition of language
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What is the the study of the comprehension, production, and acquisition of language called?
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psycholinguistics
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What is grammar?
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the implicit knowledge one has of the structure of a language
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What is the implicit knowledge one has of the structure of a language called?
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grammar
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What is discourse?
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a coherent group of written or spoken sentences
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What is a coherent group of written or spoken sentences called?
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discourse
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What level does discourse represent?
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...
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What is one way to represent the relationships in a discourse?
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propositions
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What are propositions?
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assertions that can be expressed in clauses in sentences
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What are assertions that can be expressed in clauses in sentences called?
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proposition
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What does a propositional representation do?
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relates the action, the one oding the action, and the thing being acted on
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What are the five levels of language representation?
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discourse level, syntactic level, word level, morpheme level, phoneme level
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What is a key part of language comprehension?
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arriving at the basic understanding of who did what to whom
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What does the discourse representation do?
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links the sentence meaning to the context in which it occurs and to information in long-term memory, which allows you to relate the sentence to prior knowledge and to generate inferences
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What is syntax?
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the relationship between the types of words in a sentence; this structure specifies the roles of the entities named by words
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What is the relationship between the types of words in a sentence; this structure specifies the roles of the entities named by words called?
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syntax
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What is a standard way of representing the syntax of a sentence?
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phrase structure tree
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What is a phrase structure tree?
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a diagram of a sentence that illustrates its hierarchical syntactic structure
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What is a diagram of a sentence that illustrates its hierarchical syntactic structure called?
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phrase structure tree
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What is aphasia?
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language or speech disruption
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What is a language or speech disruption called?
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aphasia
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What is nonfluent aphasia?
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a form of aphasia characterized by nonfluent speech, often with fairly good comprehension but deficits in processing complex sentences
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What is a form of aphasia characterized by nonfluent speech, often with fairly good comprehension but deficits in processing complex sentences called?
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nonfluent aphasia
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What is another term for nonfluent aphasia?
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Broca's aphasia
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What is Broca's aphasia?
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nonfluent aphasia
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What levels do Broca's patients have difficulty with?
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relating the discourse and syntactical levels of representation
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In general, what do Broca's patients have difficulty with?
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Not in the meaning of words, but with the relationships among them in the sentence.
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What type of aphasia has difficulty with the relationships among words in a sentence?
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Broca's aphasia
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What type of aphasia would have difficulty with the discourse and syntactical levels of representation?
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Broca's aphasia
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How would a Broca's patient interpret The chef burned the noodles, The noodles burned the chef, and The noodles were burned by the chef?
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Because their knowledge about how the world work is unimpaired, they would tend to interpret all of these sentences according to the most likely combination of words chef, noodles, and burned, and thus interpret all three sentences to mean that the chef burned the noodles
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What are morphemes?
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the smallest unit of meaning in a language
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What are the smallest unit of meaning in a language called?
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morphemes
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What are bound morphemes?
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morphemes that attach onto other morphemes
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What are morphemes that attach onto other morphemes called?
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bound morphemes
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What are content morphemes?
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morphemes that convey meaning but do not convey information about the structure of the sentence
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What are morphemes that convey meaning but do not convey information about the structure of the sentence called?
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content morphemes
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What are function morphemes?
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a morpheme that conveys syntactical information, such as the -s plural morpheme
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What is a morpheme that conveys syntactical information called?
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function morpheme
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What link the levels of word and syntax?
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function morphemes
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What do function morphemes do?
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link the levels of word and syntax
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What are function words?
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words that convey information about the syntactical structure of a sentence, for example articles, auxiliary verbs, and conjunctions
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What are words that convey information about the syntactical structure of a sentence called?
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function words
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What is -ed an example of?
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function morpheme
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What is an example of a function morpheme?
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-ed and the
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What is "the" an example of?
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function morpheme
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What sort of information do content morphemes convey?
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meaning
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What morphemes convey meaning?
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content morphemes
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What morphemes convey information about relationships among words and about the syntactic structure of a sentence?
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function morphemes
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What sort of information do function morphemes convey?
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information about relationships among words and about the syntactic structure of a sentence
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What is Wernicke's aphasia?
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a form of aphasia characterized by fluent but often meaningless speech, many made-up words or other speech errors, and poor comprehension
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What is a form of aphasia characterized by fluent but often meaningless speech, many made-up words or other speech errors, and poor comprehension called?
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Wernicke's aphasia
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What is another term for fluent aphasia?
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Wernicke's aphasia
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What is another term for Wernicke's aphasia?
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fluent aphasia
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What is fluent aphasia?
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a form of aphasia characterized by fluent but often meaningless speech, many made-up words or other speech errors, and poor comprehension
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What is a form of aphasia characterized by fluent but often meaningless speech, many made-up words or other speech errors, and poor comprehension called?
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fluent aphasia
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What aphasia has trouble with comprehending content morphemes?
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Wernicke's aphasia
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What sort of morphemes do Wernicke's aphasiacs have trouble with?
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content morphemes
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What do Wernicke's patients have difficulty with?
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Cannot produce or comprehend content morphemes, so they have very little understanding of what is said to them and speak word salad
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What two important distinctions are highlighted by Broca's and Wernicke's aphasias?
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The differences between the impairments of the two kinds of patients emphasize the distinct levels of how language is represented mentally in the brain, and demonstrate how different levels can be affected to varying degrees. Secondly, the nature of patients' impairments shows the degree to which these levels are interconnected: problems at one level, such as the disruption of function morphemes suffered by Broca's aphasiacs, can contribute to difficulties at other levels, such as interpreting sentence syntax—which then leads to difficulties in the comprehension of sentence meaning
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What are phonemes?
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the smallest distinguishable units of speech sound that make up the morphemes of a given language
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What are the smallest distinguishable units of speech sound that make up the morphemes of a given language called?
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phoneme
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What is a phonetic alphabet?
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...
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What is called?
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phonetic alphabet
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What does our knowledge of words include? Two things.
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While were are consciously aware of breaking a word down into letters for spelling, we also unconsciously represent words in terms of phonemes
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What is Broca's aphasia associated with?
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poor comprehension and production of syntax and function morphemes, as well as impairments in perceiving function morphemes at all
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Describe Bird's study on Broca's patients.
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Pairs of words were played to Broca's patients. Some of the words, such as pray and prayed, were identical except that the second member of the pair contained the past tense function morpheme -ed. Other pairs, such as tray and trade, also sounded very similar, but were two different words with unrelated meanings. For each pair, the patients were asked whether they heard two different words, or the same word twice.
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Describe the results of Bird's study on Broca's patients.
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Patients had difficulty hearing the difference between both pray/prayed and tray/trayed, thinking that the same words had been repeated twice. The patients' difficulty seemed to be linked specifically to poor perception and comprehension of certain sequences of speech sounds, which in turn can lead to poor comprehension of function morphemes, and thence to problems interpreting syntax and ultimately understanding sentence meaning
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Describe the significance of Bird's study on Broca's patients.
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Broca's aphasiacs have problems perceiving function morphemes
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What is the duality of patterning?
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a feature of a communication system that enables a small number of meaningless units to be combined into a large number of meaningful units
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What is a feature of a communication system that enables a small number of meaningless units to be combined into a large number of meaningful units called?
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duality of patterning
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What are the 3 key traits of human languages?
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duality of patterning, arbitrariness, generative capacity
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What is arbitrariness?
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in language, the lack of direct resemblance between words and their references
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What is the lack of direct resemblance between words and their references called?
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arbitrariness
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What is generative capacity?
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the uniquely human ability to recombine morphemes, words, and sentences to convey an infinite number of thoughts
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What is the uniquely human ability to recombine morphemes, words, and sentences to convey an infinite number of thoughts called?
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generative capacity
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What is recursion?
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the successive embedding of grammatical phrases within sentences, leading to the infinite creativity of human language
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What is the successive embedding of grammatical phrases within sentences, leading to the infinite creativity of human language called?
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recursion
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What is a key component of generative capacity in syntax?
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recursion
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What is "whom the manager hired yesterday" in the sentence "the chef, whom the manager hired yesterday, burned the noodles" referred to?
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recursion
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What is "The chef burned the noodles that were made from the wheat that was grown on the farm that sat on the hill that was near the forest that..." an example of?
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recursion
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What is the triangle model?
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a theory of the lexicon, used to describe word representation, with three major components: spelling (orthography), sound (phonology), and meaning
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What is a theory of the lexicon, used to describe word representation, with three major components: spelling (orthography), sound (phonology), and meaning called?
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triangle model
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What does speech perception involve in the triangle model?
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relating the sound representation—the phonology—of a word to the meaning representation
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What does reading involve in the triangle model?
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relating the spelling—orthography—of a word to its meaning
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What does language production involve in the triangle model?
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relating the meaning of the word to its sound representation for speaking it aloud, or to its spelling representation for writing
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What is ambiguity?
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in language, the property of having more than one interpretation of a sound, word, phrase or sentence
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What is the property that permits more than one interpretation of a sound, word, phrase or sentence called?
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ambiguity
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Where is ambiguity most prevalent? Least prevalent?
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Most prevalent in common words of the language; words that do not have multiple meanings are typically technical terms and other relatively unusual words
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How does ambiguity relate to the triangle model?
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A single spelling or sound maps on multiple word meanings at the top of the triangle. As a result, for most words most of the time, we must sort through multiple alternative meanings, even though we typically become aware of only one interpretation
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What are the three reasons why studies of how we resolve ambiguities are important?
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1) Ambiguities are more prevalent than we realize, so studying it helps us resolve conditions in which ambiguity is a problem, 2) A better understanding of why we are so good at resolving ambiguity may help in the development of computer language programs, 3) provides a good testing ground for understanding how language is mentally represented and processed
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What are ambiguities good for?
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provides a good testing ground for understanding how language is mentally represented and processed
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In the triangle model, what does top-down information include?
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influence from meaning to spelling representations during reading
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What is key in speech perception?
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identifying boundaries between the words the speaker is saying
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What is a spectrogram?
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two-dimensional visual display of speech in which time is shown on one axis, the frequency of the sound on the other, and the intensity of the sound at each point of time and the frequency indicated by the darkness of the display
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How do we find word boundaries?
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unconsciously make educated guesses based on a mix of bottom-up and top-down information
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What is the bottom-up information for determining word boundaries?
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cues from the speech signal directly, like stretches of silence
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What is the top-down information for determining word boundaries?
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Knowledge about typical phoneme patterns (b and k don't go together in English)
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Why do we have a hard time figuring out word boundaries in foreign languages?
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we don't have knowledge about typical phoneme patterns
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What are the two problems in speech perception?
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detecting word boundaries and identifying phonemes
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What is articulation?
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the production of speech sounds
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What is the production of speech sounds called?
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articulation
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What is coarticulation?
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the overlapping of in time of articulation of speech sounds
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What is the overlapping of in time of articulation of speech sounds called?
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coarticulation
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How do we identify what phonemes are in the speech signal?
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use of top-down information, particularly information about the context in which the phoneme is pronounced
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What is a common theme running through all the research on ambiguity resolution?
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integration of bottom-up and top-down information
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What is a lexicon?
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the entire set of mental representations of words
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What is the entire set of mental representations of words called?
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lexicon
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What is lexical knowledge?
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mappings between one level of representation and another
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What are mappings between one level of representation and another called?
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lexical knowledge
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What is the phoneme restoration effect?
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a perceptual phenomenon in which a missing or distorted phoneme is supplied by the listener
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What is a perceptual phenomenon in which a missing or distorted phoneme is supplied by the listener called?
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phoneme restoration effect
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Describe Warren's study.
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Participants listened to spoken sentences on audiotape and reported what they heard. Unbeknownst to the listeners, the experimenters had spliced out a small portion of the tape corresponding to a single phoneme in a word and inserted in its place a recording of a couch of exactly the same duration.
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Describe the results of Warren's study.
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Most people did not notice that anything had been removed from the sentences; a common perception was that someone in the room had coughed during the recording. This illusion is even more dramatic in *eel sentences
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Describe the significance of Warren's study
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Evidence for role of top-down processing in phoneme restoration effect. The word at the end of the sentence can influence the perception of *eel only after it has been partly recognized, its meaning partly received, and its relationship to various words that end with a soul like eel considered. Even though we have a conscious perception that we instantly recognize words we hear, often all the relevant information for recognizing a word doesn't arrive until after we hear it
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Describe Shilcock's study.
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Participants performed two tasks simultaneously: they listened to spoken sentences and at some point during every sentence, they saw a letter string on a computer screen and had to push a key indicating whether or not the letter string was a real word or not (lexical decision task). Unknown to the participants, some of the spoken sentences and printed words had a particular relationship that was designe to address the question of whether listeners consider several hypotheses during speech perception. On these critical trials, participants heard spoken sentence containing a two-syllable word in which the second syllable formed a real word. i.e., "trombone" and "bone." For half of these sentences, the printed word in the lexical decision task was related to the embedded second syllable word (rib, which is related to bone), and on the other half of the trials, the word was unrelated (bun). If listeners were temporarily considering bone as a possible word in the sentence while they were trying to find word boundaries and recognize words, then activating bone as a possible word should prime related words such as rib, resulting in faster decision times.
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Describe the results of Shilcock's study.
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Participants evaluated words related to embedded second syllables faster than they evaluated unrelated words.
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Describe the significance of Shilcock's study.
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Even though perceivers are not aware of considering several different word boundaries during speech recognition, they do activate possibilities that they rapidly reject. Speech recognition is a process of unconsciously trying out many alternatives and rapidly homing in on the one that is the best fit
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What is a lexical decision task?
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a letter string on a computer screen and have to push a key indicating whether or not the letter string is a real word or not
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How does grammatical encoding work?
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As the beginning, words are selected and the structure of the sentence begins to be developed, these early wrods move into the next stage of language production, phonological encoding. Speakers can therefore plan many different parts of the sentence at once. Because the earliest parts of the sentence are the ones in the lead in planning, these parts will be ready to be uttered while the speaker is still working on other, later parts.
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What can happen during the interleaving of lexical selection and sentence structure planning? 2 breakdowns
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word-exchange errors, like "I wrote a mother to my letter." Also being at a loss for word if the speaker finishes all the planned parts of the sentence before later parts are fully ready to be uttered
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When do word-exchange errors occur?
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They only occur within a certain word type, like nouns with nouns and verbs with verbs.
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Why does a "loss for words" occur?
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if the speaker finishes all the planned parts of the sentence before later parts are fully ready to be uttered
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What is the relationship between choosing a word and retrieving its pronunciation?
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separate stages
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What is phonological encoding?
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retrieving the pronunciation representations that are necessary for articulating the words in the utterance
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What happens in a tip-of-the-tongue state?
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you can think of a word, but you can't think of the pronunciation of that word
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What can people in a tip-of-the-tongue state do? What does this suggest?
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they can answer several things about a word' s pronunciation, like the first or last phoneme of the word, number of syllables, or words that sound similar. So, people in a TOT state certainly know the word and has some small amount of the phonological representation activated; they also demonstrate that the choice of a word and the activation of its phonological form are distinct processes
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What is the birthplace of spoonerisms and sound exchange errors?
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phonological encoding
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What points to interactionism between grammatical and phonological stages?
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in word exchange errors, the exchanged words contain similar phonemes more often than would be expected by chance. Thus, there is some interaction between grammatical and phonological encoding because such an effect would not happen if the two stages operated independently
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Describe Baars' study.
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Participants saw short phrases such as darn bore on a computer screen. The participants' task was to prepare to say this phrase if in a few seconds it was replaced by a Go signal. However, if the phrase was replaced by a different phrase on a computer screen, participants were to ignore the previous phrase and say the new one. The phrases that appeared before the Go signal all began with the same pair of letters (e.g., da__ bo__). Then came a go signal, and a phrase appeared with the same initial letters, but this time reversed (ba__do).
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Describe the results of Baars' study.
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. After planning their responses on the basis of the initial series, participants found it difficult to switch, and this is where the sound exchange errors appeared. Sometimes the reversed sounds produced another pair of words (darn bore -> barn door), or nonsense (dart board -> bart doard). Sound exchange errors, however, occurred more often when it created real words than nonsense words
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Describe the significance of Baars' study.
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Sound exchange errors occurred more often when it created real words than nonsense words indicating that the phonological level interacts with the word selection process
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Describe the linguistic development of bilingual children.
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Must learn to map each concept onto two different phonological forms and learn the syntactic structures for two different languages. Initially slows down their linguistic development.
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Describe the results of bilingualism in adults.
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More tip-of-the-tongue experiences. Have to choose every time which language to produce or write, thereby inhibiting the not-chosen language. As a result, have better executive processes
