ACTUAL COGNITIVE RESEARCH I HATE THIS Flashcards
(104 cards)
1
Q
Week 2
What is a metatheory?
A
A set of assumptions and guiding principles
2
Q
Week 2
What are the three stages of memory?
A
- Encoding - the process of placing new information in memory
- Storage - where, duration, capacity, type of information, known as a memory trace (stored in some way for later use)
- Retrieval - recall (in response to a cue or question) or recognition (identifiable if encountered before)
3
Q
Week 2
Mutli-Store Models - Distinguish between STM and LTM
A
STM
- Limited capacity
- Short duration
- Physical/sensory codes
- Trace decay/interference
- Prefrontal cortex
LTM
- Unlimited capacity
- Indefinite/permanent duration
- Meaning/semantic codes
- Cue dependent forgetting
- Hippocampus
4
Q
Week 2
Relations between multi-store models
A
Sensory stores
v (Attention)
Short-term store
v (Rehearsal)
Long-term store
5
Q
Week 2
Sensory stores
A
- Information lost through decay
- Modality specific (iconic = visual, echoic = auditory)
- Holds information very briefly (1-2s)
- Attention occurs after information is held in sensory stores
6
Q
Week 2
Short-term store
A
- Information lost through displacement
- Very limited capacity (7 +/- 2 items)
- Chunks = integration of smaller
7
Q
Week 2
Long-term store
A
- Information lost through interference
- Unlimited capacity
- Stores information for a very long time
8
Q
Week 2
Displacement and interference - Serial recall task
A
- Recall items in exact sequence
- Memory advantage for first and last few items
- Primacy = interference, earlier items get full attention
- Recency = displacement, new items displace old items
- Redundant suffix item at the end of the list will disrupt recency
9
Q
Week 2
Evaluate multi-store models
A
Strengths
- Three distinct memory systems widely accepted
- Evidence to support separate STM and LTM
Weaknesses
- Oversimplified - stores do not operate in a single, uniform way
- Cannot explain implicit learning
- Information only transferred to LTM not true
10
Q
Week 2
Levels of processing
A
- Major challenge to multi-store approach
- Memories are by-products of perception, attention and comprehension
Range from:
- Shallow (physical) analysis
- Deep (semantic) analysis
Two main assumptions:
1. Level/depth effects memorability
2. Deeper levels of analysis = more elaborate, longer-lasting, stronger memory traces
11
Q
Week 2
Craik & Tulving (1975)
A
- Incidental learning (pps not told there would be a memory test)
- Three tasks:
- Shallow-graphemic = word upper/lower case?
- Intermediate-phonemic = word rhymes with target?
- Deep-semantic = word fits blank sentence?
- Assessed recognition memory
- Performance 3x higher with deep than shallow processing
12
Q
Week 2
Morris et al (1977)
A
Method
- Two learning tasks
1. Shallow = rhyme
2. Deep = semantic
- Two recognition memory tests
1. Standard = select list words from non-list words
2. Rhyme = select words rhyming with list words
Results
1. Standard recognition test
- Usual superiority for deep processing
2. Rhyme recognition test
-Superiority for shallow processing
- Memory depends on the requirements of the memory test
- Successful retrieval requires that at the time of learning, processing is relevant to the demands of the memory test
13
Q
Week 2
Working memory model
A
Central executive
v
Visuo-spatial sketchpad, episodic buffer, phonological store
v
LTM
14
Q
Week 2
Working memory model properties
A
- All components have limited capacity and can work independently
- If two tasks use the same component, they cannot be performed together successfully
15
Q
Week 3
Long-term memory systems, declarative vs non-declarative
A
Declarative
- Conscious recollection
- Episodic memories
- Semantic memories
- Explicit memory
- Medial temporal lobe and diencephalon
Non-declarative
- Unconscious
- Procedural memories
- Priming
- Implicit memory
- Basal ganglia and neocortex
16
Q
Week 3
Declarative memory
A
Episodic
- Recollection of events
- Where and when events occurred
- Reproductive - detailed and accurate picture of the past, but requires a large amount of processing
Semantic
- Facts or general knowledge about the world
- Abstracted from actual experience
- Constructive - access gist, with trivial details omitted, prone to error and illusions
17
Q
Week 3
Concepts (hierarchies)
A
- How semantic memories are stored
- Organised in hierarchies:
- Superordinate (e.g., items of furniture)
- Basic-level (e.g., chair)
- Subordinate (e.g., rocking chair)
- Typically deal with objects at basic-level
- Balance of informativeness and effectiveness
- Usually acquired first by young children
- Abstract in nature
- Stable
- Shared across individuals
Concepts vary depending on:
- Individual’s goals
- Current context/setting
18
Q
Week 3
Schemas
A
- Integrated chunks of knowledge about the world, events, people or actions
- In the form of scripts
- Information about the sequencing of events
19
Q
Week 3
Anterograde amnesia
A
- Reduced ability to acquire new memories
- Damage to hippocampus - poor episodic memory
- Damage to para-hippocampal cortex - poor semantic memory
- Damage to both regions = poor episodic/semantic memory
20
Q
Week 3
Semanticisation
A
- Episodic memories can become semantic memories over time
- Lack personal/contextual information over time
21
Q
Week 3
Non-declarative memory
A
- Does not involve conscious recollection
- Reveals itself through behaviour
- Two major forms:
- Priming
- Facilitated processing of repeated stimuli
- Occurs very rapidly
- Tied to a specific stimulus
- Procedural
- Skill learning (e.g., riding a bike)
- Occurs very slowly
- Generalises to numerous stimuli
- Priming
22
Q
Week 3
Two types of priming
A
- Perceptual - repeated presentation of a stimulus leads to a facilitated processing of its perceptual features
- Conceptual - repeated presentation of a stimulus leading to facilitated processing of its meaning
23
Q
Week 3
Everyday memory
A
Everyday memory
- Long time and often remembered
- Incidental
- Social factors are important
- Accuracy is not the main goal/motive
Lab-based memory
- Remember information shortly beforehand
- Intentional
- Social factors and demands are absent
- Motivated to be as accurate as possible
24
Q
Week 3
Autobiographical memory
A
LTM for life events
- Related to episodic memory, as both relate to personally experienced events
- Complex memories of personal significance that extend back over many years
Flashbulb memories
- Vivid memories of distinctive events
- Long-lasting if tied to an intense emotional experience
- Trauma - painful memories repressed to protect person from psychological harm
- Childhood amnesia - inability to recall autobiographical memories from early childhood, neurogenesis
- Reminiscence bump - recall disproportionate number of memories from early adulthood, generation from life scripts
25
Week 3
Retrospective & prospective memory
Retrospective
- Emphasis is on the past
- Many external cues
- What we already know is high informational content
Prospective
- Remembering to carry out an intended action
- Absence of an explicit reminder
- When to do something is low information content
26
Week 3
Stages of prospective memory
1. Intention formation
- Intention linked to a specific cue
2. Retention interval
- Environmental monitoring of task-relevant cues
3. Cue detection and intention retrieval
4. Intention recall
- Retrieve intention from retrospective memory
5. Intention execution
- Fairly automatic and undemanding
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Week 3
Types of prospective memory
- Time-based - remembering to perform the intended action at the right time
- Event-based - remembering to perform the intended action in the right place
- Implementation intentions - action plans to achieve goal, where, when and how a goal will be achieved
28
Week 4
Biological causes of amnesia
- Surgery
- Chronic alcohol abuse
- Brain tumours
- Encephalitis
- Closed head injury
- Dementia (Alzheimer's)
- Bilateral stroke
29
Week 4
Name the three types of amnesia
- Retrograde
- Anterograde
- Global
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Week 4
Retrograde amnesia
- Poor recall of memories formed prior to onset
- Greater for episodic than semantic
- Temporal gradient - older memories less impaired than new ones
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Week 4
Temporal gradient explanations
1. Consolidation theory
- Physiological process in the hippocampus leads to formation of long-lasting memories
- Consolidated memories stored elsewhere, protecting them from the effects of hippocampal damage
2. Semanticisation
- Episodic memories become more like semantic memories over time, protecting them from the effects of brain damage
3. Reduced learning opportunity
- Episodic memories depend on a single learning experience, so reduced opportunity explains amnesia
- Semantic memories depend on several learning experiences
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Week 4
Anterograde amnesia
- Loss of ability to form new memories after onset
- Tested through Hopkins Verbal Learning Test
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Week 4
Global amnesia
- Moderate retrograde & severe anterograde
- Caused by lesions of structures in the medial temporal lobe, specifically the hippocampus
- E.g., Patient HM
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Week 4
Patient HM
- Most studied amnesiac patient
- Suffered from severe epilepsy from 10 y/o
- Surgery at 27 to remove entire medial temporal lobe
- Moderate retrograde, severe anterograde
33
Week 4
Korsakoff's syndrome
- AKA diencephalic amnesia
- Vitamin **B1 deficiency** from chronic alcoholism
- Damage to mammillary bodies in **hypothalamus**
- Memory impairment consists of the following:
- **Retrograde** & **anterograde** amnesia
- Some new learning ability, such as **motor skills**
- Slight **impairment** in **STM**, e.g., digit span
34
Week 4
Korsakoff's syndrome - issues
**Symptomology**
- Typically has a gradual onset
- Brain damage widespread (hippocampus & frontal)
- Precise pattern of damage varies across patients
- Brain plasticity and learning of compensatory strategies (*confabulation* = when a person unintentionally fills in gaps in their memory with false or distorted information — but they believe it to be true.)
**Issues**
- Difficulty with whether events happened before or after onset
- Damage to frontal lobes = other cognitive deficits
- Difficult to generalise across patients
- Does not provide a direct assessment of the impact of brain damage on LTM
35
Week 4
Semantic dementia
- Severe problems with semantic memory, but intact episodic memory (can learn explicitly)
- Severe loss of information about meanings of words, facts and concepts
- Difficulty naming pictures/objects, single word comprehension, categorising, and knowing uses and features of objects
- Episodic memory and most executive functions (e.g., attention) and reasonably intact in early stages
- Patients differ in terms of precise symptoms
- Always involves degeneration of the anterior (fronto)temporal lobe
- Where semantic memories are stored
- Perirhinal and entorhinal cortices where semantic memories are formed
36
Week 4
Dissociation definitions
**Dissociation:**
-when one cognitive function is impaired while another is preserved, suggesting they rely on separate brain systems or processes.
- Identification of a brain region responsible for a cognitive process
**Single-dissociation**
- Identify that brain damage to a structure interrupts one cognitive process (X) but not another (Y)
**Double-dissociation**
- " single
- Also, identify that brain damage to a different structure disrupts cognitive process Y but not X
37
Week 4
Double dissociation
- Amnesia and semantic dementia point to a double dissociation in LTM
- Amnesia = hippocampus
- Poor episodic memory - X
- Intact semantic memory - Y
- Semantic dementia = anterior/frontotemporal lobe
- Poor semantic memory - Y
- Intact episodic memory - X
38
Week 4
Eyewitness testimony
- Accuracy of memory can be of enormous importance
- May be inaccurate due to memory errors
- Loftus & Palmer (1974)
- Participants shown a film of a car accident
- 'How fast were the cars going when they [...] into each other?'
- Smashed = est. speed of 41 mph
- Hit = est. speed of 34 mph
- One week later, asked 'Did you see any broken glass?'
- Smashed = 34% yes
- Hit = 14% yes
39
Week 4
Memory errors
**Forgetting**
- Easier to remember recent events than distant ones
*1. Decay*
- Memory traces fade overtime
- Less information available for retrieval as time passes
*2. Interference*
- Similar information gets in the way of to-be-remembered information
- Retroactive, more recent information gets in the way of trying to recall older information
- Proactive, previously learned materials interrupt the recall of newer materials
Intrusions
**Bias**
- Memories influenced by observer's prior expectations
- *Confirmation bias* (Seek out, interpret, and remember information in a way that confirms your existing beliefs — and ignore or downplay information that contradicts them.)
-*Unconscious transference* (seen that person before and so recall them as the suspect. e.g. seen them as a bystander)
- Other-race effect
- Age
- Weapon focus
40
Week 4
DRM paradigm
- Deese, Roediger and McDermott = used to study false memories. How people can confidently **remember** something that **never** actually **happened** — just because it fits with **related** information.
- Recall words s**emantically associated** with list words that aren't included in the list
- You make connections between list words and the associated words, leading to **memory error**
- **Background** knowledge helps link the list words to the theme, aiding recall
41
Week 4
Misinformation effect
- Memories are easily distorted by misleading information presented afterwards (e.g. witnesses sharing information with eachother that they then adopt in their testimony)
- **Source misattribution**
- A *memory probe* (e.g., a question) activates memory traces with overlapping information
- Need to decide on the *source* of activated information (You remember the information, but not where it came from - you may confuse something you imagined, inferred, or heard from someone else)
- Misattribution occurs when memories from one source *resemble* those from another
*** PROBE, SOURCE, RESEMBLES***
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Week 4
Confirmation bias
- Tendency to recall information in a way that confirms pre-existing beliefs
- Schemas can lead us to form specific expectations
43
Week 4
Face recognition (EWT)
- Eyewitness identification from line-ups typically depends on face recognition
- However, it is often fallible
- Unconscious transference: misidentify a similar, but innocent, person
- Other-race effect: recognition for same-race faces is typically more accurate
- Own-age bias: more accurate when culprit is a similar age to the witness
44
Week 4
Anxiety and violence
- Generally impair memory
- Cause a narrowing of attention to important stimuli
- Reduce ability to remember peripheral details
- Weapon focus = attend to weapon, reducing memory for other information
- Attend to unexpected stimuli that are inconsistent with the schema of that situation
45
Week 4
Avoiding memory errors
- Cognitive interview = strategies to aid retrieval
1. Mental reinstatement of the environment
2. Encourage reporting of every detail
3. Describe the incident in several different orders
4. Reporting the incident from different viewpoints
- Increases information obtained and makes it most effective
46
Week 5
Gestalt psychology
- Concerned with how perceptual organisation is achieved (How does your brain group visual elements together? How do you know what’s an object and what’s background?)
- Describe how we separate and link into individual objects (How do you separate one object from another in a complex scene?)
47
Week 5
Guiding principles of Gestalt psychology
- **Similarity** - group together objects that resemble each other
- **Simplicity** - interpret an object in the simplest way possible
- **Closure** - bias towards perceiving closed objects rather than incomplete ones
- **Proximity**- the closer object are to each other, the more likely we are to group them together perceptually
- **Good continuation** - preference to organise objects where contours continue smoothly
***SSCPG***
48
Week 5
Figure-ground segregation
- Separating an object from its background
- Reversible figure-ground pattern
- E.g., faces vs vase optical illusion
Strengths
- Focuses on fundamental issues
- Principles applicable to complex images
- Simplicity is key
Weaknesses
- Deemphasised the importance of past experience
- Provides descriptions (not explanations) of perceptual phenomena
- Principle of perceptual organisation based on 2D drawings
49
Week 5
Is figure-ground segregation innate?
- Relies on past experience/learning
- Healthy controls = identified regions containing familiar configuration as figure more often than novel configuration
- Amnesia (limited memory for familiar objects) = no difference in figure-ground decisions for familiar or novel configurations
50
Week 5
Feature detection theories
- A simple pattern, fragment or component
- Appears in combination with other features across a variety of stimuli
- Object recognition first involves identifying 'building-block' features
- **Recognition-by-components (RBC) theory**
- All objects are reduced to geometric ions/'geons'
51
Week 5
RBC
- Perceiving objects is the first major step in object recognition
- Object recognition is a joint effort between two processes:
1. One responsible for features and components
2. Another for overall shape and global patterns
52
Week 5
Evidence for RBC
- If a pattern is degraded, it matters where it is degraded
- Non-recoverable objects
- Vertices missing
- Cannot/take longer to recognise object
- Recoverable objects
- Segments of smooth, continuous edges missing
- Easy to fill in missing parts and recognise the object
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Week 5
Weaknesses of RBC
- Tied to bottom-up processing
- Some evidence contradicts the features-first aspect of the model
- Embodied cognition - perception influenced by our expectation of how we will interact with the object(s)
54
Week 5
Perceptual constancy
- We perceive the constant properties of objects, despite sensory information changing
- Essential aspect of perceiving objects - perceiving what something is
- Three examples:
1. Size constancy - correctly perceive size on objects, despite changes in size created by viewing distance
2. Shape constancy - correctly perceive shapes of objects despite changes in viewing angle
3. Colour constancy - correctly perceive same colour of an object despite changes in the wavelengths
55
Week 5
Object comparison
- Achieving perceptual constancy
- Compare target object with those in the background
- Role of interpretation
- E.g., the monster illusion - misperception of size
56
Week 5
Depth cues
1. Binocular cues
- Each eye has a different view of the world (stereopsis)
- Difference = binocular disparity
2. Oculomotor cues
- Convergence: eyes turn inwards when we focus on close objects
- Accommodation: shape of lenses in the eyes changes depending on the distance of an object
3. Monocular (pictorial) cues
- Interposition/occlusion - blocking our view of one object with another
- Linear perspective - parallel lines seem to converge farther from view
- Texture gradients - a surface appears smoother further away
4. Motion cues
- Motion parallax - nearby objects move more rapidly than far away objects
- Optic flow - images appear larger as we approach them
57
Week 5
Agnosia
- Failure to recognise objects; deficit caused by brain damage
- Music professor (Dr. P)
- Lost his ability to recognise objects and faces
- Able to describe the features or components of an object, but unable to name it
58
Week 5
Subtypes of agnosia
- Stem from different regions of the brain
**1. Apperceptive agnosia**
- Ability to perceive features (e.g., colour)
- Unable to group features to name an object
- Damage to posterior regions of the right hemisphere
**2. Associative agnosia**
- Able to group features
- Cannot associate features with stored knowledge of object identity
- Damage to temporal and occipital lobes in both left and right hemispheres
59
Week 5
Implications of subtypes of agnosia
1. Detecting the features in a visual stimulus is a separate (and later) process than sensation
2. Detecting the visual features is critical in constructing a whole object
3. There is a separate step in connecting an object with its meaning and name
60
Week 5
Face recognition
- Differs in important ways from other forms of object recognition
- Involves holistic processing
- Involves integrating information from an entire object
- Face inversion effect (Thatcher illusion)
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Week 5
Prosopagnosia
- Face blindness
- Poor face recognition but good object recognition
- Face and object recognition involve different brain areas
- Fusiform gyrus
62
Week 10
Sentence comprehension - levels of analysis
1. Syntactical structure
- Analyse the rules (e.g., word order) for the formation of grammatical sentences
2. Sentence meaning
- Analyse the intended meaning rather than literal - irony, sarcasm
63
Week 10
Parsing
- The process of grouping sequences of words together to form phrases and sentences we can make sense of
- Four possibilities of when information is used:
1. Syntactic analysis occurs before semantic analysis
2. Semantic analysis occurs before systematic analysis
3. Syntactic and semantic analyses occur together
4. Syntax and semantics are closely related
**Syntax > Semantic > Systemic**
64
Week 10
Ambiguous sentences
- Reveal information about the parsing process
- Ambiguity at a **global level** - a whole sentence can have two or more meanings (e.g., kids make nutritious snacks)(sentence is ambiguous even after reading whole thing)
- Ambiguity at a **local level** - various meanings possible at some point when parsing (e.g., the old men and women sat on the bench)(ambiguity is cleared up once read whole sentence)
65
Week 10
Prosodic cues
- We make rapid use of prosodic cues to resolve ambiguity and facilitate understanding
- Include:
- Stress (/accent)
- Pauses
- Intonation
- Rhythm
- Word duration
66
Week 10
Models of parsing
Two categories:
1. Two-stage, serial processing models - e.g., Garden path model (Fraizier & Rayner, 1982)
2. One-stage, parallel processing models - e.g., Constraint-based model (MacDonald et al., 1994)
67
Week 10
Garden path model
- Misleading content/structure at the beginning of a sentence
- Reader enticed towards incorrect interpretation
- Must retrace mental footsteps to find understandable alternative
- Detected by recording eye movements
- Tell us where a reader has gone wrong and is re-reading a sentence
- Makes the following assumptions:
- **One** syntactical structure considered
- Semantics **not** involved initially
- **Simplest** syntactical structure chosen using minimal attachment and late closure
- If a sentence is incompatible with additional semantic information, interpretation is **revised**
- **Minimal attachment**: grammatical structure producing fewest nodes is preferred
- **Late closure**: new words encountered are attached to the current phrase if grammatically permissible (e.g., Since Jay always jogs a mile (it) seems like a short distance to him) [ When you read a new word, your brain tries to attach it to the sentence part you’re already building — as long as it’s grammatically okay.]
68
Week 10
Evaluate the Garden Path model
Strengths
- Provides a **simple** account
- Use of principles **reduced processing** demands
Weaknesses
- Assumption that we do not use meanings of words initially is **inconsistent** with some evidence
- Do **not** always adhere to principles
-**No definitive test** of model
- Does not account for **difference in languages** that have a preference for **early closure** [Brain ends the phrase too soon] (e.g., Spanish)
69
Week 10
Constraint-based model
- One-stage, parallel processing
- Makes the following assumptions:
- **All sources** of information (syntax, semantics, context) are **available** to parse
- **Constrain** the number of possible **interpretations** (able to derive meaning faster)
- Competing syntactic analyses of a sentence are **activated** at the **same time**
- The structure receiving the **most support** from **constraints** is **highly activated**
70
Week 10
Evaluate the Constraint-based model
Strengths
- **Efficient** - uses all information from the outset
- Able to account for **more** than one **syntactic analysis** at a time
Weaknesses
- Fails to make **precise predictions about parsing**, unlike the Garden Path model
71
Week 10
Unrestricted race model
- Combines (the best?) aspects of both the Garden Path and Constraint-based models
- Makes the following assumptions:
1. **All** sources of **information** are used to **identify** the **syntactic** structure of a sentence
2. All **other structures** are **ignored**, unless the favoured structure is disconfirmed
3. If a chosen structure is **discarded**, **reanalysis** is undertaken before another structure is chosen
72
Week 10
Pragmatics
- The study of intended, not literal, meaning
- Figurative language
- Metaphor
- Irony
- Idiom
73
Week 10
Understanding metaphor
- Traditionally assumed to be very effortful
- Two differing accounts:
1. Standard pragmatic model (Grice, 1975)
2. Prediction model (Kintsch, 2000)
74
Week 10
Standard pragmatic model
- Three stages:
1. Literal meaning first accessed
2. Reader/listener decides if literal meaning makes sense
3. If literal meaning is inadequate, search for suitable non-literal meaning
- Predicts that metaphorical meanings are accessed more slowly than literal ones, however some metaphors are understood rapidly
75
Week 10
Prediction model
- Two stages:
1. Latent semantic analysis - represents meanings of words based on relations with others
2. Construction-integration - use information from first stage to construct interpretation
76
Week 10
Common ground
- Need to adopt the speaker's perspective to understand what they are saying
- Common ground = shared knowledge between speaker and listener - they work together to ensure mutual understanding
- Very attentionally demanding
77
Week 10
Egocentric heuristic
- Interpretations are based on our own knowledge, rather than common ground
- Often causes misunderstandings
78
Week 10
Inferences
- Filling in the blanks
Three types:
1. Logical - depends on the meaning of words
2. Bridging (or backward) - establish coherence between current part of text and preceding text
3. Elaborative - embellish, or add, details to text using knowledge to expand on information
79
Week 10
Causal inferences
- Common form of bridging inference
- Decipher causal relationship between current sentence and previous sentence
- Use contextual information and prior knowledge
- Two stages of forming:
1. Bonding - automatic activation of words from preceding sentence
2. Resolution - ensures interpretation is consistent with contextual information
Schema theory
- Description of a story is highly selective
- Relate information just read to relevant knowledge stored in LTM
- Knowledge stored in the form of schemas, which determine what we remember
80
Week 10
Evaluate schema theory in inferences
Strengths
- Schematic knowledge helps with text comprehension and general understanding
- Accounts for errors and distortions
Weaknesses
- Schema theories are difficult to test
- When/how schemas are used is unclear
- Exaggerate how error-prone we are
81
Week 11
Speech production
- 2-3 words per second (~150 per minute)
- Use strategies to reduce processing demands:
- Preformulation - production of phrases used before
- Under specification - use of simplified expressions (... or something, ... and things like that)
82
Week 11
Effects of intoxication on speech production
- Impairs attention, memory, thinking and reasoning
- Produce more dysfluencies (stammering, stuttering)
- Slower speaking rate
- Reduction in richness and creativity
83
Week 11
Speech planning
- First stage of speech production
- Might occur at different levels:
- Clause - evidence provided by speech errors
- Phrase - two differing conditions: simple initial noun phrase, conjoined initial noun phrase
- It takes longer to initiate a conjoined phrase
84
Week 11
Speech errors
- We are generally accurate when speaking, but sometimes prone to error
- Majority of errors are not random, but systematic
- Provide insight into how cognitive systems work
85
Week 11
Types of speech error
- Word exchange
- Sound (/phoneme) exhange
- Spoonerism (initial letters switched)
- Semantic substitution (word replaced with a synonym)
- Morpheme exchange (suffixes attached to wrong words)
- Number agreement
86
Week 11
Theories of speech production
1. Spreading-activation theory (Dell, 1986)
- Processing occurs in parallel at different levels (semantic, lexical, phonological)
2. WEAVER ++ model (Levelt et al., 1999)
- Each processing stage occurs in seriation
87
Week 11
Spreading-activation theory
- Categorical rules
- Impose constraints on items/categories that are acceptable at each level
- Insertion rules
- Select items to be spoken
- Most highly activated nodes selected
- Key strength = levels of processing are intact
- Can account for several speech production errors
- Link between speech production and other cognitive activities
- Extent interactive processes involved in speech production unclear
- Occur less when processing demands are high
88
Week 11
WEAVER ++ model
- Three main levels:
1. Highest level: nodes representing lexical concepts
2. Second level: nodes representing lemmas (abstract words with syntactic/semantic features only)
3. Lowest level: nodes representing word forms (morphemes/phonemes)
Strengths
- Shift focus from speech errors towards precise timing of production processes
- Simple model that can make testable predictions
Weaknesses
- Does not allow interaction between different levels
- Speech errors occur more than the model predicts
89
Week 11
Neuropsychology YAYYYY
- Study of patients with aphasia in the 19thC
- Due to stroke, brain tumour, injury infection, etc.
- Impairments of language comprehension/production
- Early research made distinction between two types: Broca's & Wernicke's
Specific cognitive impairments:
- Anomia
- Agrammatism
- Jargon aphasia
90
Week 11
Broca's aphasia
- Frontal lobe
- Slow, non-fluent speech
- Poor ability to produce syntactically correct sentences
- Comprehension relatively intact
- Problems with speech production
91
Week 11
Wernicke's aphasia
- Temporal lobe
- AKA fluent/receptive aphasia
- Fluent and grammatical speech
- Speech often lacks meaning
- Problems with speech comprehension
92
Week 11
Evaluation of neuropsychology
- Some truth, but oversimplified
- Patients can have the same form of aphasia, but different impairments
- Several different areas are involved in language processing
- Patients with Broca's aphasia have damage to Wernicke's area and vice versa
- Patients also have more general problems (attention/memory)
93
Week 11
Anomia
- Experienced by all aphasics
- Impaired ability to name everyday objects
- Problems with word retrieval
- No problem with comprehension
- Problems at phonological level
94
Week 11
Agrammatism
- Difficulties producing grammatically-correct sentences
- Short sentences with content words (nouns/verbs)
- Omit function words (the, and, in) and word endings
- Problems at lexical (syntax/grammar) levels
95
Week 11
Jargon aphasia
- Speech grammatically correct, but have difficulty accessing correct words
- Substitute one word for another
- Produce neologisms
- Problems at phonological level
96
Week 11
Speech as communication
- Nearly always occurs in a social context
- Importance of audience design
97
Week 11
Common ground
- Speaker makes assumptions about listener(s)
- Global: preferred language, general knowledge, shared experiences
- Local: attending to at a given moment
- Very cognitively demanding - difficult to divide attention
98
Week 11
Audience design
Common ground ->
1. Syntactic priming
2. Gesture
3. Prosodic cues
4. Discourse markers
99
Week 11
Syntactic priming
- Speaker copies words and phrases heard previously
- Other person speaking serves as prime/prompt
100
Week 11
Gesture
- Assumed to increase ability to communicate with listener
- Also makes it easier to work out what to say
- Common among Spaniards & Italians
101
Week 11
Prosodic cues
- How words are uttered (rhythm, stress, intonation, etc.
- More likely to be provided when meaning is ambiguous
102
Week 11
Discourse markers
- Words/phrases that are not directly relevant to the speaker's message
- 'Er...', 'Um...', '... you know?'
