Chapter #9 / Session #9

Question 1

When someone speaks in English, they produce about ___ words per second,.

Answer 1

3

Question 2

What is Psycholinguistics?

Answer 2

Psycholinguistics is an interdisciplinary field that examines how people use language to communicate ideas. Psycholinguists focus not only on the processes that allow us to produce or comprehend language, but also on the key principles that govern the social norms of naturalistic conversation.

Question 3

What is a Phoneme?

Answer 3

A phoneme is the basic unit of spoken language, such as the sounds a, k, and th. The English language has about 40 phonemes. If you change just one phoneme in a word, you change the meaning of that word.

Question 4

What is a Morpheme?

Answer 4

A morpheme is the basic unit of meaning. For example, the word reactivated actually contains four morphemes: re-, active, -ate, and -ed. Each of those segments conveys meaning.
Many morphemes can stand on their own (like giraffe).
In contrast, some morphemes must be attached to other morphemes in order to convey their meaning.

Question 5

What is Syntax?

Answer 5

Syntax refers to the grammatical rules that govern how we organize words into sentences. A more inclusive and familiar term, grammar, encompasses both morphology and syntax; it therefore examines both word structure and sentence structure.

Question 6

What are Pragmatics?

Answer 6

Pragmatics refers to our knowledge of the social rules that underlie language use; pragmatics takes into account the listener’s perspective.
For example, think about how you would define the word syntax to a 12-year-old child, as opposed to a college classmate.
Pragmatics is the discipline within linguistics that focuses most on social interactions.
-Pragmatic factors also influence comprehension.

Question 7

The average North American vocabulary size spans somewhere between ___ words.

Answer 7

20,000 to 100,000

Question 8

Linguists estimate that about ___ languages are currently spoken throughout the world

Answer 8

7,000

Question 9

Noam Chomsky’s approach to syntax contributed to the decline of what school of psychology?

Answer 9

behaviorism

Question 10

What is the difference between the deep structure and the surface structure of a sentence?

Answer 10

The surface structure is represented by the words that are actually spoken or written. In contrast, the deep structure is the underlying, more abstract meaning of a sentence. People use transformational rules to convert deep structure into a surface structure that they can speak or write.

Question 11

What are the cognitive approaches to language?

Answer 11

In contrast to Chomsky’s theory, the cognitive approaches argue that grammar and other aspects in language are interconnected with other cognitive processes such as attention, working memory, and world knowledge stored in our long-term memory.
Proponents of cognitive approaches argue that we are skilled at language because our powerful brains can master many cognitive tasks. Language is just one of those tasks, and it has the same status as tasks such as memory and problem solving.

Question 12

What is the cognitive-functional approach?

Answer 12

The cognitive-functional approach is a representative approach which emphasizes that the function of human language in everyday life is to communicate meaning to other individuals. As this name suggests, the cognitive-functional approach also emphasizes that our cognitive processes—such as attention and memory—are intertwined with our language comprehension and language production.
The cognitive-functional approach argues that people can use language creatively, in order to communicate subtle shades of meaning.

Question 13

If a sentence contains a negative word, such as no or not, or an implied negative (such as rejected), the sentence almost always requires ___ processing time than a similar, affirmative sentence.

Answer 13

more

Question 14

Does the English Language use Active or Passive language more?

Answer 14

The English language uses the active voice much more often than the passive voice.

Question 15

In English, ___ voice is easier to understand opposed to ___ voice.

Answer 15

Active // Passive

Question 16

What is Incremental Interpretation?

Answer 16

Incremental interpretation refers to the observation that when processing language, we do not wait until an entire sentence is spoken (or read) before making judgments about what it means. Language unfolds bit-by-bit over time. Thus, the systems responsible for language comprehension provide you with the ability to continuously update your interpretation of an incoming message as you encounter new bits of information.

Question 17

A great deal of research indicates that language comprehension occurs ___.

Answer 17

incrementally

Question 18

Most sentences in English follow a specific pattern. The ___ of the sentence usually comes first, followed by the ___, which is in turn often followed by an ___.

Answer 18

subject // verb // object

Question 19

What are on-line language processing measures?

Answer 19

On-line measures of sentence processing are designed to gauge the amount of difficulty one experiences as the linguistic signal unfolds unit-by-unit over time. Thus, researchers can assess which components of a sentence are more difficult to process than others.

Question 20

What is Lexical ambiguity?

Answer 20

Lexical ambiguity refers to the fact that a single word can have multiple meanings. Indeed, many words in English qualify as lexically ambiguous.

Question 21

When are people more likely to strongly consider one particular meaning of a lexically ambiguous word?

Answer 21

(1) if that meaning is more common than the alternate meaning, and
(2) if it appears in a sentence, and the rest of the sentence is consistent with that meaning.

Question 22

The same linguistic signal may be interpreted in vastly different ways based on the ___ in which it is heard.

Answer 22

environment

Question 23

In general, people typically manage to read ___.

Answer 23

quite rapidly

Question 24

What is the good-enough approach?

Answer 24

According to the good-enough approach to language comprehension, we frequently process only part of a sentence.

Question 25

College students can read normal sentences at the rate of about ___ words per minute.

Answer 25

255

Question 26

The good-enough approach to language comprehension is an example of a ___.

Answer 26

heuristic

Question 27

What is Aphasia?

Answer 27

A person with aphasia has difficulty communicating, typically as a result of damage to the brain caused by a stroke or a tumor.

Question 28

What is the Broca’s area?

Answer 28

Broca’s area is located toward the front of the brain, and usually in the left hemisphere (in an area called the left inferior frontal gyrus, or LIFG). Broca’s area is located in the vicinity of brain areas known to contribute to motor movement. To produce speech, you must move your lips and tongue.

Question 29

What is Broca’s Aphasia?

Answer 29

Broca’s aphasia is primarily characterized by an expressive-language deficit—or trouble producing language. Damage to Broca’s area typically leads to hesitant speech that primarily uses isolated words and short phrases. People with Broca’s aphasia may also have some trouble with language comprehension.

Question 30

What is the Wernicke’s area?

Answer 30

Wernicke’s area is located toward the middle side of the brain.

Question 31

What is Wernicke’s Aphasia?

Answer 31

Damage to Wernicke’s area typically produces serious difficulties understanding language. In fact, people with Wernicke’s aphasia often have such severe problems with language comprehension that they cannot understand basic instructions such as, “Point to the telephone” or “Show me the picture of the watch.”

However, many people with Wernicke’s aphasia also have problems with language production. Specifically, their spoken language is often wordy and confused. They usually have relatively few pauses, compared to someone with Broca’s aphasia

Question 32

Clinicians note that individuals with Broca’s aphasia often omit ___ (such as, “the”, “a”, “an”), and often fail to produce words with the correct ___. For example, they often omit the ___ from words like running that is necessary to signal the present progressive tense in English.

Answer 32

grammatical function words // morphology // +ing

Question 33

The hypothesis is that Broca’s area is important for ___, ___, and the ___. Thus, perhaps one of the reasons that individuals with Broca’s aphasia exhibit production and some comprehension difficulties is that they have deficiencies in ___ or in ___.

Answer 33

grammatical processing // grammatical operations // learning of grammar // syntactic knowledge // syntactic processing abilities

Question 34

In fMRI experiments, Broca’s area is often activated in many ___ tasks.

Answer 34

language-related

Question 35

For about 5% of right-handers and about 50% of left-handers, language is either localized in the ___.

Answer 35

right hemisphere or is processed equally by both hemispheres.

Question 36

The ___ hemisphere performs most of the work in language processing, for the majority of people

Answer 36

left

Question 37

When is the left hemisphere most active?

Answer 37

The left hemisphere is especially active during speech perception; it quickly selects the most likely interpretation of a sound. It is also very active when you are reading or trying to understand the meaning of a statement. In addition, high-imagery sentences activate the left hemisphere.

Question 38

When is the right hemisphere most activated in speech perception?

Answer 38

The right hemisphere is active when you are paying attention to the emotional tone of a message. It also plays a role in appreciating humor. In general, then, the right hemisphere is responsible for more abstract language tasks.

Question 39

When doo the left and right hemispheres work together in speech perception?

Answer 39

The left and right hemispheres often work together on tasks such as interpreting subtle word meanings, resolving ambiguities, and combining the meaning of several sentences.

Question 40

What is the mirror system?

Answer 40

The mirror system is a network involving the brain’s motor cortex. Many argue that neurons in motor-related areas of the brain display special properties. These mirror neurons are activated both when you watch someone perform an action and when you perform the action yourself.

Question 41

We can silently identify an isolated word in about ___.

Answer 41

200 milliseconds/1/5 of a second.

Question 42

For adults, scores on reading comprehension tests are ___ correlated with scores on oral comprehension tests; typically, the correlation is about ___.

Answer 42

strongly // +.90

Question 43

What is the direct-access route?

Answer 43

Sometimes you read a word by a direct-access route; you recognize this word directly through vision, without “sounding out” the words. For example, you look at the word choir and the visual pattern is sufficient to access the word and its meaning. You are especially likely to use direct access if the word has an irregular spelling and cannot be “sounded out”—for example, the words one or through.

Question 44

What is the indirect-access route?

Answer 44

Other times, you read a word by an indirect-access route; as soon as you see a word, you translate the ink marks on the page into some form of sound, before you can access a word and its meaning. You are especially likely to use indirect access if the word has a regular spelling and can be sounded out—for example, the words ten and cabinet.

Question 45

True or False: People can recognize a word visually, without paying attention to the sound of that word

Answer 45

True

Question 46

The dual-route approach also argues that people’s reading skills can determine whether they use indirect or direct access. Beginning readers would be especially likely to sound out the words, using ___ access. More advanced young readers would be especially likely to recognize the words directly from print. People who are relatively poor readers primarily use ___ access, although better readers may be more likely to rely on ___.

Answer 46

indirect // indirect // direct access

Question 47

What is the whole-word approach?

Answer 47

The whole-word approach argues that readers can directly connect the written word—as an entire unit—with the meaning that this word represents.

The whole-word approach emphasizes that the correspondence between the written and spoken codes in English is notoriously complex. Supporters therefore argue that children should not learn to emphasize the way a word sounds. Instead, the whole-word approach encourages children to identify a word in terms of its context within a sentence

Question 48

What is the phonics approach?

Answer 48

The phonics approach states that readers recognize words by trying to pronounce the individual letters in the word. If your grade school teachers told you to “sound it out” when you stumbled on a new word, they championed the phonics approach.

The phonics approach argues that speech sound is a necessary intermediate step in reading. It also emphasizes developing young children’s awareness of phonemes. According to the research, it’s clear that phonics training helps children who have reading problems. For example, a meta-analysis of 34 studies showed that phonological training programs had a major impact on children’s reading skills.

Question 49

What is the whole-language approach?

Answer 49

According to the whole-language approach, reading instruction should emphasize meaning, and it should be enjoyable, to increase children’s enthusiasm about learning to read.
Children should read interesting stories and experiment with writing before they are expert spellers. They also need to use reading throughout their classroom experiences.
A wealth of research demonstrates that the more experience an individual possesses with written language (especially in their earlier years), the better their reading and other language processes are likely to be later in life.
An additional benefit of increased practice—and thus, of increased reading ability—is this: When children improve their reading skills, they also improve their ability in mathematics

Question 50

What is the Constructionist view of inferences?

Answer 50

According to the constructionist view of inferences, readers usually draw inferences about the causes of events and the relationships between events. When you read a novel, for instance, you construct inferences about a character’s motivations, personality, and emotions. You develop expectations about new plot developments, about the writer’s point of view, and so forth.

This perspective is called a “constructionist view” because readers actively construct cohesive explanations when they integrate the current information with all the relevant information from the previous parts of the text, as well as their background knowledge. The constructionist view argues that people typically draw inferences, even when the related topics are separated by several irrelevant paragraphs.

Question 51

People are more likely to draw inferences if they have a large ___. They are also likely to draw inferences if they have excellent ___ skills. People are also likely to draw inferences if they have ___ about the topic described in the text.

Answer 51

working-memory capacity // metacomprehension // expertise