Language Comprehension

Question 1

What is local structure in discourse?

Answer 1

relationships between individual sentences

Question 2

What is global structure in discourse?

Answer 2

our knowledge of the structure corresponding to more general events/circumstances

Question 3

How do references contribute to cohesion?

Answer 3

By creating a semantic relation between words and/or phrases

Question 4

What is conjunctive cohesion?

Answer 4

expressing a relationship between phrases or sentences by using conjunctions

Question 5

What is lexical cohesion?

Answer 5

when a tie is made between one sentence or phrase and another by virtue of the lexical relationships between certain words

Question 6

when relating a current expression to one encountered earlier, the referring expression is called an ____, and the previous referent is called an _____.

Answer 6

anaphor, antecedent

Question 7

explain the given/new strategy and its three stages

Answer 7

its a model of sentence integration where one (a) identifies new and given info, (b) finds memories on the given info, and (c) attaches the new info to the memory

Question 8

Which are the 3 levels of memory for discourse?

Answer 8

1. surface representation: exact words
2. propositions: meaning behind words
3. situational model: general picture of discourse

Question 9

What is the spatial iconicity effect (Kurby & Zacks, 2013)?

Answer 9

semantic judgments for word pairs presented in a spatial arrangement congruent with their real-world arrangement (e.g., roof above basement) are faster than when presented in an incongruent arrangement (e.g., basement above roof)

Question 10

What did Kurby and Zacks (2013) find regarding participant brain activation after reading auditory imagery clauses?

Answer 10

activation of the auditory cortex, Broca’s area, and Wernicke’s area

Question 11

What did Kurby and Zacks (2013) find regarding participant brain activation after reading visual imagery clauses?

Answer 11

nothing

Question 12

What did Kurby and Zacks (2013) find regarding participant brain activation after reading motor imagery clauses?

Answer 12

activation in the left PMC and secondary SMC

Question 13

What was the main conclusion of Kurby and Zacks (2013)?

Answer 13

reading clauses high in auditory or motor imagery leads to increases in activity in modality-specific brain regions during discourse comprehension

Question 14

What is stated by perceptual symbol theories (Zwaan et al., 2002)?

Answer 14

people activate and manipulate perceptual symbols during language comprehension

Question 15

What is implied by amodal symbol theories (Zwaan et al., 2002)?

Answer 15

object orientation is not mentally represented during reading

Question 16

Zwaan et al. (2002) found that participants were faster & more accurate to pair sentence and picture when the two matched (e.g. “the swan was in the lake” + image of swan in lake vs image of swan flying). What theory did these findings support?

Answer 16

perceptual symbol theory

Question 17

In a second experiment, Zwaan et al. (2002) added a neutral condition where sentences didn’t imply anything about the sentence subject’s state (e.g. “he looked at the swan”). What did they find?

Answer 17

Same as exp. 1: neutral and mismatch conditions didn’t differ significantly in RT –> matching sentences+images facilitate responses, supportng perceptual symbol theory

Question 18

How can we interpret the following (Zwaan et al., 2002): “the representation of meaning from linguistic input is a dynamic process involving malleable perceptual representations rather than the mechanical combination of discrete components of meaning”?

Answer 18

we form mental representations when comprehending language that are based on the context of the discourse

Question 19

When is the mentalising network active?

Answer 19

when we try to infer someone’s mental state

Question 20

What information did Yeshurun et al. (2017) find people use to interpret events?

Answer 20

the externally provided input & internal cognitive information

Question 21

Which brain regions are activated similarly among people with the same story interpretation (Yeshurun et al., 2017)?

Answer 21

the DMN, the mirror neuron system, and high-level language comprehension regions

Question 22

What do single-step models of language interpretation pose (Nieuwland & van Berkum, 2006)?

Answer 22

locally supplied ‘‘semantic’’ cues have no principled temporal or functional precedence over globally supplied ‘‘pragmatic’’ cues

Question 23

What do two-step models of language interpretation pose (Nieuwland & van Berkum, 2006)?

Answer 23

local semantics cannot be overruled by global contextual factors initially

Question 24

in their article “When Peanuts Fal in Love”, what ERPs did Nieuwland & Van Berkum (2006) measure and why?

Answer 24

they mesured the N400 because it indicates semantic processing of words and other semantically meaningful stimuli

Question 25

What should happen to N400 ERPs according to single-step and two-step models of language interpretation, if a story contains multiple animacy violations (Nieuwland & Van Berkum, 2006)?

Answer 25

single-step: later animacy violations should have a DECREASED N400 response
two-step: later animacy violations should have THE SAME N400 response

Question 26

What model did Nieuwland & Van Berkum’s (2006) study findings support, and what do they imply?

Answer 26

the single-step models - N400 responses decreased in magnitude later in the story. It implies that establishing a certain context (pragmatics) can overrule local lexical semantic information

their second experiment ruled out lexical repetition as a possible explanation