11 - Language

Question 1

what are the two aspects of language that allow for human creativity in language expression

Answer 1

1. hierarchical nature

2. rule governed structure

Question 2

what are the four main tasks of psycholinguistics

Answer 2

to understand

1. comprehension - from sounds to meaning
2. representation - how is language represented in the mind
3. speech production
4. acquisition

Question 3

what is lexical semantics

Answer 3

the meaning of words

Question 4

what is the word frequency effect

Answer 4

we respond faster to more frequent words in our language

• found with lexical decisions
• also with eye tracking (look at low freq. words for longer

Question 5

how do we cope with the variability of pronunciation

Answer 5

1. context - Pollack and Pickett; words are harder to understand when presented alone

Question 6

2 things that assist in speech segmentation

Answer 6

1. translational probabilities
2. knowledge of semantics - knowing the semantic context of the term / what a word means will isolate it from the steam, I guess

Question 7

what is lexical ambiguity

Answer 7

words wit > 1 meaning

Question 8

explain Tanenhaus’ lexical priming task for measuring lexical ambiguity

Answer 8

• lexical priming = semantic priming
• ambiguous word like rose
• primes ‘flower’ regardless of context at 0ms
• but only primes flower if accurate semantically after 200 ms
• no prime for flower if inconsistent with context at 200 ms

Question 9

what is meaning dominance

Answer 9

the rel. freq. of the meanings of ambiguous words

Question 10

explain the differences in reading speed between lexically ambiguous terms with a) biased dominance vs b) balanced dominance

Answer 10

• balanced dominance slows reading - both terms are activated
• biased at full speed

Question 11

how does context influence the activation of lexically ambiguous word meanings

Answer 11

can either increase the consistency w the meaning dominance and so activate only the one, or vice versa and activate both, slowing reading speeds

Question 12

what is parsing

Answer 12

considering how meaning is created by grouping words into phrases

Question 13

what is a garden path sentence

Answer 13

a temporary ambiguity that leads you to create one mental model and then top change it once you reach the point where your model is no longer consistent

Question 14

explain the garden path model of parsing

Answer 14

parsing is determined by processing mechanisms called heuristics - fast but can be wrong
- these rules are determined by syntax

Question 15

what is the principle of late closure

Answer 15

when a person encounters a new word, they will assume that this word is part of the current phrase, so words are added to the new phrase for as long as possible

Question 16

what is the constraint based approach to parsing

Answer 16

information over and above syntactic content plays a role in parsing that are used to make predictions about how the sentence will be parsed

Question 17

what are the 4 factors above syntax considered inn constraint based processing

Answer 17

1. meaning
2. story context; the horse raced past the barn fell is easier in certain stories
3. scene context
4. memory load and prior experience w language

Question 18

what is the visual world paradigm

Answer 18

eye track as people observe a visual scene and hear directions - apple on towel in box or sumn

• ppl will look at objects that represent ambiguities
• good for observing how people are processing ambiguous sentences as they are interpreted - they look at what they think the sentence means

Question 19

provide an example of the influence of memory load and prior experience with language on sentence parsing

Answer 19

• object relative vs subject relative clauses
• SR; the senator who spotted the reporter shouted
• OR; the senator who the reported spotted shouted
• SR is easier to process, even though both are composed of 2 clauses
• two reasons
  1. SR is more easily understood bc it demands less of the readers memory - we learn about who is doing the spotting early, so we dont have to hold people in memory to determine who is the one acting
  2. OR is also more complicated; in OR sentences, the subject in the main clause and the object of the embedded clause (ie the senator shouted = main, who the reported spotted = embedded, where the senator is the object in the second)

Question 20

Explain Altmann and Kamide’s study on predictions in language

Answer 20

• visual world paradigm as they heard sentences about a boy and a cake
• the boy will move the cake or the boy will eat the cake
• asked to reply if the sentence applied to the image, but this was irrelevant - they were looking for how they were processing the sentence
• in the move condition, looking at the cake followed the word cake
• in the eat condition, looking at the cake preceded the word cake - we used ‘eat’ to select the only relevant object

Question 21

what is an inference

Answer 21

determining what a text or sentence mean by using background knowledge to go beyond the information preceded

Question 22

what is a narrative

Answer 22

texts in which there is a story that progresses from one even to another

Question 23

what is a primary component of narrative

Answer 23

coherence - the mental representation of the story has clear relations

Question 24

what is an anaphoric reference

Answer 24

she did x or y - infer who she is based on several contextual cues

Question 25

what is instrument inference

Answer 25

inferring what a person is using or what they might be using it fr based on context - Shakespeare sat at his desk to write y, might look like a wooden desk with a candle and a quill

Question 26

what is a causal inference

Answer 26

infer that the events described in one clause or sentence were caused by events that occurring in the previous sentence

Question 27

are all inferences as easy to make?

Answer 27

no, some are much more cognitive demanding - think the inference from a) Sharon took a Tylenol, her back pain went away b) Sharon went on a bike ride, her back pain went away

Question 28

summarize the relevance of inferences

Answer 28

they create connections in texts that are essential for forming coherence in the text - these inferences require some degree of creativity - dynamic process that involves transformation of words and setences into a story

Question 29

what is a situation model

Answer 29

the perceptual/motor representation of a sentence formed in the mind of the listener

Question 30

how do we test the idea that people create situation models

Answer 30

by having participants read a sentence that describes a situation involving an object, then indicate fast if an image shows the object in the sentence - faster response in objects are consistent with the SM

Question 31

Explain Metusalem's 2012 ERP study on situation models

Answer 31

used the N400 which is an ERP component that is greater when an attended word is unexpected - very large N400 responses to non-situational terms that complete a sentence like (x was going to a concert ... he came out one the ...)

Question 32

is the N400 response to situation-model-inconsistent words all or nothing - how does this relate to semantic priming?

Answer 32

no, words that are [artially associated with the context but still unexpected (like guitar in a concert context) are activated thru semantic priming, so have a lower one than those which are unexpected AND unrelated

Question 33

are situation models consistent with embodied notions of concepts

Answer 33

YES - these brain areas involved in the movements in a story are also activated during reading of that story

Question 34

explain the 'given-new contract'

Answer 34

speakers ought to formulate sentences so that have 2 types of info 1. given information - shit that is presupposed by both speaker and listener 2. new information - new information in past sentences can become given in future ones - given information can be explicit or implicit, and this determines processing speed as it means sometimes ppl will have to make inferences

Question 35

what is common ground

Answer 35

the mental knowledge and beliefs shared among conversational parties - people are learning info both about the world, and the knowledge of their conversational partner - backchannel responses between and in the middle of a sentence to indicate whether the common ground is being preserved

Question 36

what are the two main ways of studying common ground

Answer 36

1. look at conversational transcripts | 2. referential communication task

Question 37

what is the referential communication task

Answer 37

task where two people enhance information in a conversation, where the information involves reference - people;e start to develop simple terms to refer to the objects they are trying to refer to, which is the establishment of common ground

Question 38

what is entrainment

Answer 38

the process of establishing common ground

Question 39

what is syntactical coordination

Answer 39

the entrainment of syntax between conversational partners

Question 40

how does syntactical coordination come about

Answer 40

through syntactic priming - hearing sentences with a given construction activates that construction which results inn a greater chance that you will use that construction while speaking

Question 41

explain branigans experiment on syntactic priming

Answer 41

ppl can't see each other, PA works with the experiment, PB is not - PA makes a priming statement with one of two syn. forms - then had to pick up a response card with an image - will the response structure match the initial statement structure - yes on 78% of the trials!

Question 42

what is prosody

Answer 42

the pattern of intonation and rhythm in spoken language that creates emotion

Question 43

what is a main difference between music and language

Answer 43

1. the emotionality in music is an outcome of combining meaningless units, while language has meaningful units (somewhere!)

Question 44

what is a main similarity between language and music?

Answer 44

they both combine elements to create structured sequences

Question 45

do we make predictions about music like we do with language ?/

Answer 45

yes - common expectation in music is the return the tonic, or the note a key is based around - or when a bad cord that doesn't fit the melody is tossed in - effects a p600 response which is a positive response that occurs after a word - increase response by breaking syntax - found that this happened in music too.

Question 46

how do music and language interact in the brain?

Answer 46

look at patients with Broca's aphasia - difficult understanding sentences with complex syntax - given a language task involving understanding syn. complex sentences, and a music task that involved detecting off key chords - patients performed poorly on both relative to controls, but musical cap. was less effected than language - But there are cases where musical interpretation are unaffected

Question 47

what is congentital amusia and does it interfere with language

Answer 47

severe problems with tasks like discriminating between simple melodies or recognizing common tones - tend to have normal language abilities,

Question 48

what is the gist of the relationship between music and language int he brain

Answer 48

probably loosely related, but not directly - there are overlapping brain regions and also non overlapping ones, ext.