Cognitive Psychology Chapter 11 – Flashcards

1. Used for communication 2. Expresses our feelings, thoughts, ideas, and experiences 3. Uses arbitrary symbols (sounds and shapes) 4. Possesses a hierarchical structure governed by rules - The rules are grammar and syntax 5. Is generative/creative (produce novel statements) -Chompsky: downfall of behaviorism -We have brains that are prepared for language 6. Is dynamic (evolves over time)

Language is an inate (and probably unique) feature of human behavior

1. Phonemes -Smallest unit of speech sounds 2. Words -Basic unit of the lexicon -semantic longterm -mental dictionary 3. Sentences -Ordering of words with syntactic structure 4. Texts -A group of related sentences **Ambiguities at each level

The shortest segment of speech that, if changed, changes the meaning of a word. -Map roughly onto letters of the alphabet (~ 47 phonemes in English) -200 phonemes in all the worlds languages -Up until about 1 yr old babies can say all 200 phonemes until the environment starts to take over Ambiguities include: -Dialects or accents -Coarticulation: -Disambiguate sloppily produced phonemes using context -Phonemic Restoration Effect: Missing phonemes restored by context and never consciously identified as missing or Occurs when phonemes are percieved in speech when the sound of the phoneme is covered up by an extraneous noise. *Study Warren 1970s -You fill in what you miss which is a top-down processes -Warren also showed that the phonemic restoration effect can be influenced bu the meaning of the words that follow the missing phoneme. *McGurk Effect: Both visual and auditory information used in phoneme perception

We experience speech segmentation even though language is produced in a speech stream -we put in pauses -Use top-down processing (context) to "fill in the gaps"

Two important properties: 1. Semantics: Meaning of words and sentences 2. Syntax: Rules for combining words into sentences *Dissociation of semantics and syntax evident in neuropsychological case studies and in event-related potential (ERP) studies of brain activity (erros of semantics and syntax generate ERP responses) -In the sentence the cats won't bake results in a larger N400 response -meaning of a word in a sentence -it is sensitive to the meaning of the word in a sentence -The the sentence the cats won't eating results in a larger N600 response -it is sensitive to the form of a sentence Ambiguities include: 1. Semantic Ambiguity: -Usually resolved by surrounding context 2. Syntactic Ambiguity: -Parsing: determines how words are grouped together into phrases as sentences are read (WM) -can be tricked by garden path sentences -garden path sentences are: Begin appearing to mean one thing but then end up meaning something else *these sentences illustrate temporary ambiguity: because the initial words of the sentence are ambiguous - they can lead to more than 1 meaning - but the meaning is made clear by the end of the sentence *Interactionist Approach to Parsing: Syntax + Semantics: -The idea that information provided by both syntax and semantics is taken into account simultaneously as we read or listen to a sentence

Coherence: linking of information in one part of test to other parts -Enhanced by inference Inferences: determining what the text means by using our knowledge to go beyond the information provided by the text. -inferences are usually unconscious -Interaction of WM and LTM *Situation Model: mental representation of what a text is about (the nail and the eagle example: Stanfield and Zwaan) - reaction times were faster when the picture matched the situation described in the sentence - The situation model approach also includes the idea that a reader or listener simulates the motor characteristics of the objects in a story. According to this idea a story that involves movement will result in simulation of this movement as the person is comprehending the story.

Refers to the finding that letters are easier to recognize when they are contained in a word than when they appear alone or are contained in a nonword. -Very brief presentation of word, single letter, or nonword, followed by mask -Task: From two choices, decide which letter was presented in the original stimulus *Result: Easier to identity a letter it is in the context of a word rather than presented by itself -B should be easier but A actually is

Assessing the meaning of a word is influenced by: 1. Frequency of the word in your mental lexicon 2. Context of the sentence 3. Meaning dominance (if more than 1 meaning)

1. The human brain is prepared to learn language 2. Languages are more similar than different across cultures 3. Critical period for language and syntax learning 4. People develop language and learn to follow complex grammatical rules easily 5. Cooing/babbling stages in babies is essential for learning phonemic structure of language

A system of communication using sounds or symbols that enables us to express our feelings, thoughts, ideas, and experiences.

Language is learned through reinforcement -Chomsky debunked this and said that human language is encoded in the genes. -he completely disagreed with behaviorism

The field concerned with the psychological study of language. The goal of this field is to discover the psychological processes by which humans acquire and process language. -Four concerns: 1. Comprehension 2. Speech Production 3. Representation 4. Acquisition

A person's knowledge of what words mean, how they sound, and how they are used in relation to other words

1. Refers to sound 2. Refers to meaning

The smallest units of language that have a definable meaning or a grammatical function.

Recorded the conversations of subjects who sat in a room waiting for the experiment to begin. When the subjects were then presented with recordings of single words taken out of their own conversations. When the subjects were then presented with recordings of singles words taken out of their own conversations, they could only identify half the words, even though they were listening to their own voices. -Sounds of speech are easier to understand when we hear them spoken in a sentence -Knowing the meaning of a word helps us perceive them.

The frequency with which specific words are used and the frequency of different meanings and grammatical constructions in a particular language.

We respond more rapidly to high-frequency words than to low-frequency words.

Reading a list that consists of words and nonwords. Your task is to indicate as quickly as possible whether each entry in the two lists below is a word. -Lower response for less frequent words.

Measured subjects' eye movements as they read sentences that contained either a high or low frequency target word. -Subjects look at infrequent words longer than frequent words.

The existence of multiple word meanings

1. The fact that some meanings of words occur more frequently than others 2. When words have two or more meanings with different with different dominances 3. When a word has more than one meaning but the meanings have about the same dominance

1. The frequency of a word determines how long it takes to process its meaning. 2. The context of the sentence determines which meaning we access, if a word has more than one meaning.

Slow, labored, ungrammatical speech -Frontal lobe damage

Produce language that is fluent and grammatically correct but is incoherent. They also cannot understand speech and writing -Temporal lobe damage

As people read a sentence, their grouping of words into phrases is governed by a number of rules that are based on syntax. If, along the way, readers realize there is something wrong with their parsing, then they take other information into account in order to reinterpret the sentence.

When a person encounters a new word, the new word is added to the current phrase for as long as possible. -It often leads to correct parsing

Determining how subjects process information as they are observing a visual scene. -subjects eye movements were measured as they saw objects on a table *results of the study - the way subjects interpret the sentence, as indicated by their eye movements, is determined by the scene they are observing. This result is different from the syntax first approach: If parsing is always based on the structure of a sentence, then changing the scene should have no effect on the eye movements.

**We use language to interact with the environment Continually using our knowledge of the environment to make predictions about what we are about to read or hear. According to this idea, we take the "statistics" of the environment - our knowledge of what is most likely to occur - into account to determine meaning

Readers also make predictions based on their knowledge of how their language is constructed -Our experience with certain sentence constructions can influence how we predict a sentence will be organized

Asked whether readers can learn to change their predictions based on experience with new constructions. Results: The results illustrate the role of experience in language processing by showing that the subjects adjusted their expectations about the RC sentences so that these structures eventually become easier to process. This experience-based explanation of sentence understanding supports the interactionist approach to parsing because it shows that a person's predictions about the structure of language can influence processing as the person is reading a sentence

Bransford and Johnson experience -they presented their subjects and asked what they remembered -- People use a similar creative process to make a number of different types of inferences are they are reading a text.

Inferences that connect an object or person in one sentence to an object or person in another sentence

Inferences about tools or methods

Inferences that the events described in one clause or sentence were cause by events that occurred in a previous sentence

Inferences create connections that are essential for creating coherence in texts, and making these inferences can involve creativity by the reader. Thus, reading a text involves more than just understanding words or sentences. It is a dynamic process that involves transformation of the words, sentences, and sequences of sentences into a meaningful story.

Results show that areas of the cortex activated by the actual movements and by reading the action words. The activation is more extensive for actual movements, but the activation caused by reading the words occurs in approximately the same areas of the brain.

States that a speaker should construct sentences so that they include two kinds of information. 1. Given information: Information that the listener already knows 2. New information: Information that the listener is hearing for the first time *Haviland and Clark demonstrate the consequences of not following the given new contract by presenting pairs of sentences and asking subjects to press a button when they thought they understood the second sentence in each pair -you need a sharing process

The speakers mutual knowledge, beliefs, and assumptions

The process by which people use similar grammatical constructions -Bock Syntactic priming: copying of sentence form -Branigan - cards

hierarchical

Communication

Language has a structure that is governed by rules

invent a sign language themselves.

produce sentences they have never heard.

Lexicon

trial 1; word frequency

the previously understood information that we bring into the conversation.

the meaning dominance of each definition of the word.

Word frequency effect

the frontal and temporal lobes

sytax-first

"Because he always jogs a mile"

semantics is activated as a sentence is being read, in addition to syntax.

when semantics

the level of relationship of information in one part to information in another part of the text.

people create a mental representation of what the text is about in terms of people, objects, locations, and events.

Sapir-Whorf hypothesis

syntactic priming.