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PSYCH 258 > Chapter 11: Language > Flashcards

Chapter 11: Language Flashcards

1
Q

Language

A

a system of communication using sounds or symbols that enable us to express our feelings, thoughts, ideas and experiences

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2
Q

Hierarchical Nature of Language

A

the idea that language of a series of small components that can be combined to form larger units

for example, words can be combined to create phrases, which in turn can create sentences, which themselves can become components of a story

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3
Q

Rule-Based Nature of Language

A

the idea that there are rules in a language that specify the permissible ways for arranging words and phrases

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4
Q

Psycholinguistics

A

the field concerned with the psychological study of language

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5
Q

Lexicon

A

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

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6
Q

Semantics

A

the meanings of words and sentences, distinguished from syntax

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7
Q

Lexical Semantics

A

the meanings of words

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8
Q

Word Frequency

A

the relative usage of words in a particular language

for example, in English, home has a higher frequency than hike

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9
Q

Word Frequency Effect

A

the phenomenon of faster reading time for high-frequency words than for low-frequency words

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10
Q

Lexical Ambiguity

A

when a words can have more than one meaning

for example, bug can mean and insect, a listening device, to annoy, or a problem in a computer program

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11
Q

Lexical Priming

A

priming that involves the meaning of words

for examples, “rose” would prime “flower”, because their meanings are related

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12
Q

Meaning Dominance

A

some meanings of words occur more frequently than others

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13
Q

Biased Dominance

A

when a word has more than one meaning, and one meaning is more likely

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14
Q

Balanced Dominance

A

when a word has more than one meaning and all meanings are equally likely

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15
Q

Syntax

A

the rules for combining words into sentences, distinguished from semantics

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16
Q

Parsing

A

the mental grouping of words in a sentence into phrases, the way a sentence is parsed determines it’s meaning

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17
Q

Garden Path Sentences

A

a sentence in which the meaning that seems to be implied at the beginning of the sentence turns out to be incorrect, based on information that is presented later in the sentence

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18
Q

Temporary Ambiguity

A

a situation in which the meaning of a sentence, based on it’s initial words, is ambiguous because a number of meanings are possible, depending on how the sentence unfolds

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19
Q

Garden Path Model of Parsing

A

a model of parsing that emphasizes syntactic principles as a major determinant of parsing

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20
Q

Heuristics

A

a “rule of thumb” that provides a best-guess solution to a problem

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21
Q

Late Closure

A

in parsing, when a person encounters a new word, the parser assumes that this word is part of the current phrase

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22
Q

Constraint-Based Approach to Parsing

A

an approach to parsing that proposes that semantics, syntax, and other factors operate simultaneously to determine parsing

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23
Q

Visual World Paradigm

A

in experiments on language processing, determining how subjects are processing information in a scene as they respond to specific instruction related to the scene

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24
Q

Subject-Relative Construction

A

a sentence construction in which the subject of the main clause is also the subject of the embedded clause

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25
Q

Object-Relative Construction

A

a sentence construction in which the subject of main clause is the object in the embedded clause

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26
Q

Inferences

A

in language, the process by which readers create information that is not explicitly stated in the text

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27
Q

Narrative

A

a story that progresses from one event to another

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28
Q

Coherence

A

the representation of a text or story in a reader’s mind so that information in one part of the text or story is related to information in another part

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29
Q

Anaphoric Inference

A

an inference that connects an object or person in one sentence to an object or person in another sentence

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30
Q

Instrument Inference

A

an inference about tools or methods that occurs while reading text or listening to speech

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31
Q

Causal Inference

A

an inference that results in the conclusion that the events described in one clause or sentence were caused by events that occurred in a previous clause or sentence

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32
Q

Situation Model

A

a mental representation of what a text is about

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33
Q

Given-New Contract

A

in a conversation, a speaker should construct sentences so that they contain both given information (information that the listener already knows) and new information (information that the listener is hearing for the first time)

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34
Q

Common Ground

A

knowledge, beliefs, and assumptions shared between two speakers

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35
Q

Referential Communication Task

A

a task in which two people are exchanging information in a conversation, when this information involves reference - identifying something by naming or describing it

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36
Q

Entrainment

A

synchronization between partners in a conversation, this can include gestures, speaking rate, body position, pronunciation, and grammatical structure

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37
Q

Syntactic Coordination

A

process by which people use similar grammatical constructions when having a conversation

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38
Q

Syntactic Priming

A

hearing a statement with a particular syntactic construction increases the chances that a statement that follows will be produced with the same construction

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39
Q

Theory of Mind

A

the ability to understand what others think, feel, or believe

40
Q

Prosody

A

the pattern of intonation and rhythm in spoken language

41
Q

Emoji’s

A

symbols used in electronic communication and web pages that can indicate emotions, and are also used to represent other things, such as objects, animals, places and weather

42
Q

Tonic

A

the key of a musical composition, the tonic note is the first note of a scale in a particular key

43
Q

Return to the Tonic

A

in a musical composition, coming back to the tonic note that was at the beginning of the composition

44
Q

Congenital Amnesia

A

a condition, present at birth, in which people have problems with music perception, including tasks such as discriminating between simple melodies or recognizing common tunes

45
Q

What is language?

A

system of communication using sounds or symbols

express feelings, thoughts, ideas, and experiences

46
Q

What is a hierarchical system?

A

components that can be combined to form larger units

letter to word to sentence to text

47
Q

What is the universality of language?

A

deaf children invent sign language that is all their own

all humans with normal capabilities develop a language and learn to follow it’s complex rules

language is universal across cultures

language development is similar across cultures

languages are “unique but the same”

48
Q

How are all languages “unique but the same”?

A

different words, sounds, and rules

all have nouns, verbs, negatives, questions, past/present tense

49
Q

What is B.F. Skinner’s idea of verbal behavior?

A

language learned through reinforcement

50
Q

What is Noam Chomsky’s idea of syntactic structures?

A

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

human language coded in genes: just like we are genetically programmed to walk, we are programmed to acquire and use language

underlying basis of all language is similar

51
Q

How did Noam Chomsky’s ideas lead to the development of psycholinguistics?

A

children produce sentences they have never heard and that have never been reinforced

against the viewpoint of reinforcement is “I hate you, Mommy”

this led to the development of psycholinguistics

52
Q

What is psycholinguistics?

A

discover psychological process by which humans acquire and process language

53
Q

What is comprehension?

A

understand spoken and written language

54
Q

What is speech production?

A

psychological processes of speech production

55
Q

What is representation?

A

how people represent language (verbal, mental model)

56
Q

What acquisition?

A

learning language including the second langauge

57
Q

What is a lexicon?

A

all words a person understands

58
Q

What are the components of words?

A

phonemes and morphemes

59
Q

What are phonemes?

A

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

bit contains the phonemes /b/ /i/ /t/
/p/ /i/ /t/
/b/ /e/ /t/
/b/ /i/ /d/

different from letters” one letter can have two phonemes, “e” in “we” and “wet”

the “e” in some is silent, “e” in “home”

60
Q

What are morphemes?

A

smallest unit of language that has meaning or grammatical function

“table” contains a single morpheme, “bedroom” contains two morphemes, “bed” and “room”

endings such as “s” and “ed” are morphemes, so “tables” contains two morphemes, “table” and “s”

61
Q

What is the 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 nonword

62
Q

What is the phenomic restoration effect?

A

“fill in” missing phonemes based on context of sentence and portion of word presented

Warren (1970) replaced the first /s/ in “legislatures” with the sound of a cough when reading the sentence “the state governors met with their respective legislatures convening in the capital city”

no participants can notice it even when they were informed /s/ was missing

63
Q

What is speech segmentation?

A

context: participants could identify only half of the word of their own conversation when single words were relayed

understanding of meaning: an unfamiliar language sounds like an unbroken string of sounds

understanding of sound and syntactic rules: words can begin with Kr (e.g. krill) but end in rk (e.g. work)

statistical learning

64
Q

What factors influence our ability to understand words?

A

word frequency effect and context effect

65
Q

What is the word frequency effect?

A

respond more rapidly to high-frequency words in a lexical decision task

fixate on low-frequency words longer than high-frequency words

eye movements while reading: look at low-frequency words longer

66
Q

What are context effects?

A

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

walrus is easy to understand in “the eskimos were frightened by the walrus” than in “the bankers were frightened by the walrus”

67
Q

What is lexical ambiguity?

A

words have more than one meaning

context clears up ambiguity after all meanings of a word have been briefly accessed

bug could be insects or hidden listening devices

“my mother is bugging me” can clear the ambiguity

68
Q

What is dominance?

A

the fact the some words are used more frequently than others

69
Q

What is biased dominance?

A

when words have two or more meanings with different dominance

70
Q

What is balanced dominance?

A

when words have two or more meanings with about the same dominance

71
Q

What is lexical priming?

A

heard ambiguous word had priming effect for the words relevant to both meanings

72
Q

What is semantics?

A

meanings of words and sentences

73
Q

What is syntax?

A

rules for combining words into sentences

74
Q

How does Broca’s aphasia affect how a person understands language?

A

the apple was eaten by the girl (no trouble)
the boy was pushed by the girl (trouble)

modern researchers have concluded that damage to Broca’s area in the frontal lobe causes problems in syntax - creating meaning based on word order

75
Q

How does Wernicke’s aphasia affect how a person understands language?

A

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

Wernicke’s patients have more widespread difficulties in understanding and would have difficulty in understanding both sentences

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

76
Q

What is parsing?

A

mental grouping of words in a sentence into phrases

it is easy to parse “the spy saw the man”

but how about “the spy saw the man with binoculars”

we can group “with binoculars” with either the spy or the man

77
Q

What is syntactic ambiguity?

A

more than one possible structure, more than one meaning

two proposed parsing mechanisms: syntax-first approach and the interactionist approach

78
Q

What is the syntax-first approach to parsing?

A

grammatical structure of sentence determines parsing

late closure: parser assumes new word is part of the current phrase

79
Q

What is the interactionist approach to parsing?

A

semantics and syntax both influence processing as one reads a sentence

80
Q

What is coherence?

A

representation of the text in one’s mind so that information from one part of the text can be related to information in another part of the text

most of the coherence in text is created by inference

81
Q

What is inference?

A

readers create information during reading not explicitly stated in the text

82
Q

What are anaphoric inferences?

A

connecting objects/people

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

Riffifi, the famous poodle, won the dog show. She has now won the last three shows

reading are capable of creating anaphoric inferences even under adverse conditions

83
Q

What are instrumental inferences?

A

inferences about tools or methods

Shakespeare wrote Hamlet while he was sitting at his desk. We can infer that he was using a quill pen

84
Q

What are causal inferences?

A

events in one clause caused by events in previous sentence

Sharon took an aspirin. her headache went away

85
Q

What is the situation model?

A

mental representation of what a text is about

represent events as if experiencing the situation

point of view of protagonist

in a story about a man walking through a building, the reader would create a map of the space through which the protagonist is walking and keep track of the protagonist’s location in the building

86
Q

What is the physiology of simulations?

A

approximately the same areas of the cortex are activated by actual movements and by reading related action words

the activation is more extensive for actual movements

87
Q

What are conversations?

A

two or more people talking together

dynamic and rapid

ways to make easier for the listeners to understand

88
Q

What is semantic coordination in conversations?

A

good if participants have shared knowledge

using similar grammatical constructions

89
Q

What is the given-new contract?

A

speaker constructs sentences so they include: given information and new information

new can then become given information

90
Q

What is syntactic priming?

A

production of a specific grammatical construction by one person increases chances other person will use that construction

reduces computational load in conversation

91
Q

What is theory of mind?

A

being able to understand what others feel, think, or believe

92
Q

What is nonverbal communication?

A

being able to interpret and react to the person’s gestures, facial expressions, tones of voice, and other cues of meaning

93
Q

What is the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis?

A

language influences thought

94
Q

What is categorical perception?

A

stimuli in same categories are more difficult to discriminate from one another than stimuli in two different categories

95
Q

What is the relationship between music and language?

A

music as the “language of emotion”

music creates emotion through sounds that have no meaning

language, on the other hand, creates emotions using meaningful words

language combines words and music combines tones to create structured sequences that unfold over time

96
Q

What is prosody?

A

the pattern of intonation and rhythm in spoken language

often creates emotion in spoken language (a speaker’s “soaring oratory”)

PSYCH 258 (13 decks)

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