language

Question 1

what are linguistic symbols

Answer 1

arbitrary

Question 2

what is grammar

Answer 2

• rule governed
• rules that governs how symbols are combined

Question 3

what is semantics

Answer 3

meanings of words and sentences

Question 4

how many phonemes does english have

Answer 4

44

Question 5

what are the 5 properties of language

Answer 5

• symbolic
• rule governed
• meaningful
• generative
• displacement

Question 6

what are phonemes

Answer 6

smallest unit in language
- building block

Question 7

language is a h….

Answer 7

hierarchy

Question 8

what is bottom up processing

Answer 8

• relies on sensory input to build a perception from the ground up
• makes contact with store (lexicon) with words you know

Question 9

whats top down processing

Answer 9

• using our experiences, expectations, our biases in order to anticipate things

Question 10

why do we need boundries in language?

Answer 10

• to perceive words

Question 11

whats speech segmentation

Answer 11

breaking our language into segments or words
- there is no single rule for it

Question 12

what is phonotactics

Answer 12

the distribution of sounds in speech

Question 13

what was the word spotting task and conclusions

Answer 13

• presented with a sound and told to find the word ‘apple’ hear words like ‘fapple’ and ‘vuffaple’, faster to identify ‘apple’ in ‘fapple’ because ‘fuf apple’ could be a word, ‘vuuapple’ cannot, there is no constraint of language.
• speech perception is influenced by both phonotactic constraints and lexical expectations.

Question 14

what did pollack and picket 1964 find about segmentation

Answer 14

• context helps with segmentation
• when words are presented in context they are much better at identifying the word then when it is presented in isolation

Question 15

what do we use to help us segment spoken language

Answer 15

cues

Question 16

what are phonotactics

Answer 16

what sounds/ letters are more likely to come at start/end of a word, how we make sense of language
- distribution of sounds

Question 17

whats the stressed syllable constraint (Norris et al 1997)

Answer 17

there is one stressed syllable per word constraint (per word)

Question 18

why did people find it easier to identify apple in ‘vuffapple’

Answer 18

easier to seperate ‘vuff’ and ‘apple’ as segmentation process works this way, found it harder to remove the ‘f’ from apple because of this

Question 19

who found that context helps speech segmentation and what was study

Answer 19

-pollack and picket 1964
- presented words in context and isolation
- found in context people responded much faster

Question 20

what does recognition involve

Answer 20

matching the input stimulus (spoken or written word) with an internal mental representation

Question 21

where do we store words?

Answer 21

in our mental lexicon

Question 22

what factors impact frequency

Answer 22

• frequency (how often you hear, read, say a word)
• priming (by something related e.g cat you will recognise dog faster

Question 23

what did morris 1994

Answer 23

• B and C (the barber not actually doing the cutting) are slower to be recalled, shows how priming does have an affect on how we canr ecognise something faster

Question 24

what is foresters serial search model and year

Answer 24

• 1976
• different in formation stored in different ways and interconnected
  -access files’, lists of words
• you search the list that matches the input (modality specific)
• search conducted in a serial way
• lemma contains information about the word’s syntactic and semantic properties
• lemmas are interelated (cat, dog, mouse), explains semantic priming

Question 25

is Forsters serial search modell 1976 a top down or bottom up process

Answer 25

- purely bottom up input driven process

Question 26

why was the interactive activation competition model made

Answer 26

- serial search models couldn't account for top down influences on word recognition - interactive activation models allow for top down and bottom up influences

Question 27

what are 2 components of the interactive activation competition models

Answer 27

- aloows for top down and bottom up processing - competitive, multiple words get activated at the same time and one of them has to win

Question 28

how does the interactive activation competition model work

Answer 28

- visual stimuli activate features that match the perceptual experience - features excite compatible letters/words and inhibits incompatible letters/words - words feedback excitatory and inhibitory activation to letters - active words, letter and features can also inhibit competing representations at the same time through LATERAL INHIBITION

Question 29

what is lateral inhibition

Answer 29

process where excited neuron reduces activity of its surrounding neurons, which enhances contrast and sharpens sensory signals

Question 30

who added weights to the connections of the IAC model

Answer 30

- Seidenberg and McClelland 1989

Question 31

what are 'weights' on the IAC

Answer 31

- can change weight of activation (how much activation gets passed), way inhibiton works, nature of representations - flexible and adaptable - introduces frequency (not in early IAC model)

Question 32

where is language in brain

Answer 32

largely left lateralised

Question 33

what is aphasia

Answer 33

a language disorder from a lesion in the brain following a stroke or brain injury

Question 34

what is Broca's aphasia

Answer 34

- mid 19th cent - observed impaired speech, but understood him - slow, effortful searching for words - language production was offline - damage to brain in front of and above the left ear

Question 35

wernicke's aphasia

Answer 35

- late 19th cent - did not understand well - but speak fluent but meaningless - made up words, unaware of their difficulty - found to have damage behind left ear

Question 36

conduction aphasia

Answer 36

- can understand others well - hard to repeat words or phrases - comprehension is preserved - speech fluent - aware of their errors

Question 37

whats the theory of the bi lingual cognitive advantage

Answer 37

- constant practise with selective activation, inhibiton and attention gives rise to superior executive functioning

Question 38

what tasks were done in the cogntive advantage in bilingual people

Answer 38

- card sorting task - simon task - flanker task

Question 39

what is the linguistic relativity hypothesis and who made it

Answer 39

- Sapir- Whorf hypothesis - the structure and vocabularly of a language influences how is speakers think and perceive the world - looked at constrained vocabularly sets (colour)

Question 40

what was found about Dani

Answer 40

able to categorie colours even if they didn't have words for those colours

Question 41

what was found about weak and strong linguistic relativity

Answer 41

- discrimination judgements between categories are faster than judgement within categories - memory for borderline colour better for speakers that make the distinction

Question 42

what did Boroditsky find about how people describe a bridge

Answer 42

- masculine and femine words - Germen speakers used typically feminine words to describe it while spanish speakers used more masculine language