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Cognitive Psych > Chapter 11-Language Pt. 1 > Flashcards

Chapter 11-Language Pt. 1 Flashcards

1
Q

What is language?

A

System of communication using sounds or symbols

Express feelings, thoughts, ideas, and experiences

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2
Q

Creativity of human language

A

Language makes it possible to create new and unique sentences

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3
Q

Hierarchical system

A

Components that can be combined to form larger units

Letter to word to sentence to text

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4
Q

Language is governed by

A

Rules

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5
Q

The universality of language

A
  • deaf children invent sign language
  • humans develop a language and learn to follow its complex rules
  • language is universal across cultures
  • language development is similar across cultures
  • languages are “unique but the same”
    • different words, sounds, and rules
    • all have nouns, verbs, questions, past/present tense
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6
Q

B.F Skinner

A
  • 1957
  • Behaviourist
  • book called Verbal Behaviour
  • language learned through reinforcement
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7
Q

Noam Chomsky

A
  • book called Syntactic Structures
  • human language coded in the genes
  • underlying basis of all language is similar
  • children produce sentences they have never heard and that have never been reinforced
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8
Q

What led to the development of psycholinguistics

A

Noam Chomsky’s 1959 theory

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9
Q

Psycholinguistics

A

-psychological process by which humans acquire and process language.

  1. Comprehension: understand spoken and written language
  2. Speech production: psychological processes of speech production
  3. Representation
  4. Acquisition: learning language including a second language
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10
Q

Lexicon

A

All words a person understands

The components of words include Phonemes and Morphemes

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11
Q

Phoneme

A

-the shortest segment of speech that, if changed, changes the meaning of the word

Bit contains the phonemes /b/ /I/ /t/
Can change to /p/ /I/ /t/

Different from letters: one letter can have two phonemes (e.g. “e” in we and wet)

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12
Q

Morphemes

A

Smallest unit of language that has meaning or grammatical function

“Table” contains a single morpheme

“Bedroom” contains two

Endings such as “s” and “ed” are morphemes

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13
Q

Word Superiority Effect

A

People perceive a letter better when the letter is in a word than when the letter is presented alone or in a non-word

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14
Q

Coglab: Word Superiority Effect Experiment

A

An isolated letter like K or a word like WORK is shown for 40 ms and then immediately replaced by a mask of X’s or O’s

The observer has to choose between whether a D or K was presented at that location

Key component: the choices at the end of WOR could create a valid word (control)

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15
Q

Coglab: Word Superiority Effect results

A

Percentage is larger for the detection of a letter in a word than in isolation

If you are guessing on each trial, then your percentages should be close to 50%

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16
Q

Recognizing letter within a word (Feedback Activation)

A
  • feedback activation is sent from word units to each letter units for that word
  • feedback activation does not occur when the letter is presented alone and sometimes occurs with a non word
17
Q

Phonemic Restoration Effect

A
  • “fill” in missing phonemes based on context of sentence and portion of word presented
  • Warren replaced the first /s/ in “Legislatures” with the sound of a cough
  • No participants can notice it even if they are informed /s/ was missing

Sentence provides context which allows you to restore the sound

18
Q

Speech Segmentation

A

Context-participants could identify only half of the words of their own conversation when single words were presented

Understanding meaning-an unfamiliar language sounds like an unbroken string of sounds

Understanding of sound and syntactic rules

Statistical learning (can learn to separate words from other words)

19
Q

Saffran and Colleagues

A

Learning:

  • 8 month old infants heard string of 4 artificial words in random order
  • Then hear pair of words “whole” (padoti) and “part” (tibida)
  • Transitional probabilities of pa followed by doti is 1 but of ti followed by bida is 0.33

Test:

  • listening to pairs of words “whole” and “part”
  • listening time greater for part word
20
Q

Word Frequency Effect

A
  • respond faster to high-frequency words in a lexical decision task
  • fixate low frequency words longer than high frequency words
21
Q

Eye movement while reading

A

Look at low frequency words longer

22
Q

Context effects

A

The meaning of a sentence affects our ability to access words in a sentence

23
Q

Lexical ambiguity

A
  • words have more than one meaning
  • context removes ambiguity after all meanings of a word have been briefly accessed

E.g. bug could be insects or hidden listening devices

24
Q

Meaning dominance

A

The fact that some words are used more frequently than others

Biased dominance: when words have two or more meanings with different dominance (e.g. tin)

Balanced dominance: when words have two or more meanings with about the same dominance (e.g. cast)

25
Q

No prior context for accessing the meaning of ambiguous words while reading a sentence

A

Speed determined by dominance

For balanced dominance both meanings are activated which results in slow access

For biased dominance, only the most frequent meaning is activated which results in fast access

26
Q

With prior context for accessing the meaning of ambiguous words while reading a sentence

A

If less biased word is indicated by context, it is activated, but so is the more dominant meaning, even though it doesn’t fit the context. This slows down access

If the more dominant meaning is indicated by the context, it is the only meaning activated, and access is fast

27
Q

Swinney

A

Demonstrated that although the context clears the ambiguity, participants accessed both meanings right after hearing the word

28
Q

Lexical priming Effect

A
  • used by Swinney
  • heard ambiguous word had priming effect for the words relevant to both meanings

E.g. listen to statement “…and other bugs..” and word ANT flashes on screen. Have to say whether it is a word or not

Should only see priming effect for ant if you only accessed one meaning for bug

However, both ant and spy are primed because both meanings of bug are activated

29
Q

What did Swinney propose to vanish the lexical prime effect

A

He reported that the lexical prime effect (for the context impropriate word) vanished if the test word was presented two or three syllables after the presentation of the prime (people only assess one meaning)

30
Q

Are components of language processed in isolation

A

No they are not processed in isolation. All occur simultaneously:

  • phonemic restoration effect
  • speech segmentation
  • word Superiority Effect
  • lexical ambiguity (short term) and then elimination of lexical ambiguity via context
  • word frequency effect
  • context provided by the sentence
31
Q

Semantics and syntax

A

Semantics: meanings of words and sentences

Syntax: rules for combining words into sentences

32
Q

Broca’s aphasia

A

The apple was eaten by the girl (No trouble)

The boy was pushed by the girl (trouble)

Damage to Broca’s area (frontal lobe) causes problems in syntax (creating meaning based on word order)

33
Q

Wernicke’s aphasia

A

Produced speech that was fluent and grammatically correct but tended to be incoherent

Wernicke’s area is in the temporal lobe and is involved in semantics- understanding meaning

Wouldn’t be able to understand both sentences

34
Q

What type of studies have shown syntax and semantics are associated with different mechanisms

A

-event related potential and brain imaging studies in novel, normal patients

The cat won’t eat versus the cat won’t bake (N400 is marker that indicates issues in meaning)

The cat won’t eat versus that cat won’t eating (P600 is marker that indicated issues in syntax)

35
Q

Parsing

A

Mental grouping of words in a sentence into phrases

36
Q

Syntactic ambiguity

A

More than one possible structure=more than one meaning

Parsing mechanism (two proposals):

  • syntax first approach
  • interactionist approach
37
Q

Syntax-first approach to parsing

A

-grammatical structure of sentence determines parsing

  • late closure: parser assumes new word is part of the current phrase
  • also called Garden path model

Review slide chart

Cognitive Psych (21 decks)

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