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COG PSYCH > 11. LANGUAGE > Flashcards

11. LANGUAGE Flashcards

1
Q

What is language?

A
  • a system of communication using sounds or symbols

- enable us to express our feelings, thoughts, ideas and experiences

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2
Q

What are the 2 natures of language?

A
  1. hierarchical nature of language- consists of a series of small components that can be combined to form larger units (words can be combined to create phrases)
  2. rule based nature of language- these components can be arranged in a certain way
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3
Q

What are Broca’s area and Wernicke’s area known for?

A

Broca (frontal lobe): is responsible for the production of language

Wernicke (temporal lobe): resposible for comprehension of language

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4
Q

What are the four main concerns of psycholinguistics?

A
  1. comprehension- how do people understand and write language
  2. representation- how is language represented in the mind
  3. speech production- how do people produce language
  4. acquisition- how do people learn language
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5
Q

Define lexicon, and hence lexical semantics.

A

lexicon- is our mental dictionary of all the words we know

lexical semantics- the meaning of words

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6
Q

Define word frequency and hence the word frequency effect.

A

Word frequency- the frequency with which a word appears in a language

Word frequency effect- we respond more rapidly to high frequency words like than to low frequency words. a word’s word frequency also influences how we process the word

WFE can demonstrate how our past experiences with words influence our ability to assess their meaning

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7
Q

What is the lexical decision task and how does it work?

A

lexical decision task- is to quickly decide if the string of letters are words or non words. it is one way to process the difference between high and low frequency words

slower response for low frequency words is demonstrated by measuring people’s eye movements while reading

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8
Q

What is total gaze duration?

A

The sum of all fixations made on a word

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9
Q

What is speech segmentation?

A

The perception of individual words even though there are often no pauses between the words

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10
Q

What are some complications we need to consider when understanding words?

A
  1. differences in word frequency: high or low
  2. pronunciation of words are variable: context, accents, speeds
  3. there are no silences between words in a normal conversation
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11
Q

Describe lexical ambiguity and lexical priming.

A

Lexical ambiguity- words can have more than one meaning. when ambiguous words appear in a sentence, we usually use the context of the sentence to determine which definition applies

Lexical priming- priming that involves the meaning of words. occurs when a word is followed by another word with a similar meaning.

(the priming effect will not occur if the meanings of both words are not related)

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12
Q

Describe an eg. that can explain lexical ambiguity and lexical priming.

A

Tanehaus et al. (1979)- people briefly access multiple meanings of ambi words before the effect of the context takes over.

condition 1: partis heard ‘she held the rose (noun)’ -> say ‘flower (noun’ as quickly
condition 2: partis heard ‘they all rose (verb)’ -> say ‘flower (noun)’ as quickly

PART A.

  • the time that elapsed between the end of the sentence and when partis began saying the word is the reaction time
  • RESULT: the word rose resulted 37ms faster than the word in the control
  • ‘they all rose’ still resulted in a faster response to flower than the control
  • HENCE what this means is that the flower meaning of rose is activated after hearing rose, whether it is a noun or verb
  • an ambiguous word’s meaning are activated immediately after hearing the word

PART B.

  • they re-ran the experiment again and added a 200ms delay between the end of sentences and the probe word ‘flower’/
  • RESULTS: priming still occurs for condition 1, but no longer for condition 2.
  • HENCE the context is provided by a sentence helps determine the meaning of a word, but context exerts its influence after a delay during which other meanings of a word are assessed.
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13
Q

Does the frequency in which different meanings occur, affect the way people assess meanings of words in a sentence? Name the 3 types of dominance associated with it.

A

Yes.

Meaning dominance- the relative frequency of the meanings of ambiguous words

Biased dominance- when particular meanings of words occur more often than others (tin as in a type of metal vs tin as a small metal container)

Balanced dominance- when 2 particular meanings of words are equally likely (cast as in members of a play vs plaster cast)

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14
Q

What is the difference between biased and balanced dominance

A

The difference between both influences the way people access meanings of words as they read them.

Researchers measure eye movements as partis read sentences and note the fixation time for ambiguous words and also for a control word (with one meaning).

  1. Meaning frequency
    - cast here has balanced dominance. hence the parti will take longer
    - both meanings are activated
    - but when the reader reaches the end of the sentence, the meaning becomes clear
  2. Context frequency
    - context can play a role as well
    - in a sentence where the context is added bef the ambiguous word can indicate the meaning
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15
Q

What is syntax?

A
  • the structure of a sentence
  • discovers cues that language provide
  • shows how words in a sentence relates to one another
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16
Q

What is parsing?

A

how meaning is created by the groupings of words into phrases

17
Q

What are Garden path sentences

A

Garden path sentences:

  • sentences which begin to appear to mean one thing but end up meaning something else
  • they illustrate temporal ambiguity
  • first one organization is adopted
  • next the error is realized, and person shifts to correct organization
18
Q

What is the Garden path model of parsing?

A

It is one of the early model proposals to explain parsing, and garden path sentences

19
Q

What is late closure?

A
  • when a person encounters a new word, the person’s parsing mechanism assumes this word is part of the current phrase
  • so each new word is added to the current phrase for as long as possible
20
Q

What is the Constraint based approach to parsing?

A

Information contained in the words of a sentence, and in the context within which a sentence occurs, is used to make predictions about how the sentence should be parsed.

21
Q

What are the different factors that influences how a sentence should be parsed?

A
  1. Influence of word meaning
  2. influence of story context
  3. influence of scene context
  4. influence of memory load and prior experience with language
22
Q

Describe the Influence of Word Meaning, on how a sentence should be parsed.

A
  • the meaning of words in a sentence can influence parsing right from the beginning
  • they differ in how hard they are to figure out

eg. defendant examined by the lawyer was unclear
eg. evidence examined by the lawyer was unclear

23
Q

Describe the Influence of Scene context, on how a sentence should be parsed.

A

Tenahaus et al. (1995)- visual word paradigm: involves determining how info in a scene can influence how a sentence is parsed

A.

  • partis eye movements were measured as they saw objects on a table
  • they were told to carry out some ambiguous instructions
  • ‘place the apple on the towel in the box…’
  • RESULTS: partis looked wrongly as the sentence is ambiguous
  • when sentence was ambiguous, partis looked at the towel 55% of the time
  • when it wasnt ambiguous, the partis didnt look at the other towel

B.

  • here they reran with 2 apples
  • now participants only looked at the other towel about 10% of the trials ‘place the apple on the towel’ (ambiguous sentence) and ‘place the apple that is on the towel’ (non-ambiguous sentence) when looking at the display
  • HENCE, the fact that partis eye movement patterns were the same for the ambiguous and non ambiguous sentences mean that in this context, the partis were not led down the garden path
24
Q

Describe the Influence of Memory load and prior experience with language, on how a sentence should be parsed.

A
  1. the senator who spotted the reporter shouted
  2. the senator who the reporter spotted shouted

Subjective relative construction:

  • break 1. into main clause (senator shouted) and embedded clause (the senator spotted the reporter)
  • the senator is the subject of both the main and embedded clause

Object relative construction:

  • break 2. into main clause (senator shouted) and embedded clause (reporter spotted the senator)
  • senator is the object here as he is the one who is spotted
  • (-) difficult to understand as it demands more of the reader’s memory
  • (-) difficult to understand as it is more complicated
25
Q

Describe an eg. to show how prediction works in a sentence.

A

Altmann and Kamide (1999)- experi to show that the partis were making predictions as they were reading a sentence by measuring their eye movements.

  • partis will hear the boy will move the cake OR the boy will eat the cake
  • the cake is the target object here
  • they were then told to indicate which sentences they read could be applied to the pictures
  • RESULTS: eye emovements toward cake occured 127 msec aft hearing ‘move, and 87 msec for the ‘eat’ sentence.
  • HENCE, hearing the word eat causes them to look towards the cake before he or she hears the word
26
Q

What is Instrument inference, and Causal inference?

A

Instrument inference- what do you picture when reading Shakespeare write hamlet while sitting at his desk. it is likely you will say quill pen

Causal inference- infer that the events described in one clause/ sentence were caused by events that occurred in a previous sentence

27
Q

What are situation models?

A

the approach to how we understand sentences proposes that as people read or hear a story, they create a situation model which simulates the perceptual and motor characteristics of the object and actions in a story

eg. Stanfield and Zwann (2002)- read a sentence that describes a situation involving an object and indicate as quickly whether a picture shows the object in the sentence

    1. he hammered the nail into the wall
    1. he hammered the nail into the floor
  • hori nail matches 1. and vertical nail matches 2.
  • they presented these with matching or non matching picture
  • they had to say ‘yes or no’ to which picture shows the object mention in the sentence
  • RESULT: parti responded yes more rapidly when the pic’s orientation matched the situation described in the picture
28
Q

What is common ground?

A
  • mental knowledge and beliefs shared among conversational parties
  • they are accumulating info about the topic and about what the other person knows
29
Q

Describe the Referential communication task and an eg. that explains it

A
  • another way of studying how common ground is established
  • 2 people exchange info in a convo
  • this info involves reference- identifying smth by naming it

Eg. Stellman and Brennan

  • 2 partners to match identical sets of 12 cards with pictures
  • A arranges the cards in specific order
  • B’s task is to arrange her cards in the same order
  • B cant see A cards, have to do so through communication
  • aft finish, A rearrange and partners repeates twice
  • they have established common ground
  • they know what each other knows and can refer to the cards by the names they created
30
Q

Explain entrainment

A
  • the process of creating common ground

- leads to this which is the synchronisation between 2 partners

31
Q

What is syntactic coordination

A
  • conversational partners can end up coordinating their grammatical constructions
32
Q

What is syntactic priming

A
  • hearing a statement with a particular syntactic construction increase chances that a sentence will be produced with the same construction
33
Q

What is Minimal Attachment?

A

Make no extra nodes if possible

34
Q

What is the Modular Approach and the Interactive Approach?

A

MA:

  • ‘bottom up’
  • finish each stage bef moving on, and check later
  • prediction: resolving ambiguity takes time
  • phonology -> lexicon -> syntax -> context

IA:

  • ‘top down’
  • bottom up processes can be influenced by top down
  • prediction: only ‘valid meanings’ will be active
  • context -> syntax -> lexicon -> phonology
35
Q

What is the Linguistic Relativity Hypothesis (Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis)?

A

the strong version says:

  • language DETERMINES thought
  • linguistic categories limit and determine cognitive categories
  • eg. languages that have fewer color terms can also perceive a full spectrum of colors
  • the strong version is unlikely

the weak version says:

  • linguistic categories and usage only INFLUENCE thoughts and decisions
  • eg. can language facilitate perception? can languages with more color terms perceive color ore rapidly?
  • yes
  • this weak version still holds credibility

COG PSYCH (10 decks)

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