What is a theory-based view of concepts?
Concepts are understood through interwoven beliefs about how features relate
What is categorization by resemblance?
A fast educated guess where items are judged based on similarity
What are semantic networks?
Knowledge network using nodes and associative links representing conceptual relationships.
What was Collins & Quillian’s main claim?
Response time increases with the number of links that must be travelled in a semantic network.
What is a major problem with Collins & Quillian’s model?
Typicality effects—more typical items are verified faster even with equal network distance.
What are propositions in ACT theory?
The smallest units of knowledge that can be true or false; stored as nodes and links.
What is the difference between type and token nodes?
Type nodes represent categories; token nodes represent specific instances.
What are distributed representations in PDP models?
An idea is represented by a pattern of activity across a large number of nodes
What is the delta learning rule?
Connection weight increases when two nodes activate together and decreases when they do not.
What is backpropagation?
Learning algorithm that essentially teaches an artificial neural network to learn from its mistakes
What is a phoneme?
The smallest sound difference that changes meaning
What is coarticulation?
Overlap of phonemes during speech production
What is categorical speech perception?
Better sensitivity to differences between categories than within categories.
What is a morpheme?
The smallest meaningful unit of language
What is tense vs. aspect?
Tense = time; aspect = whether an event is ongoing or completed.
What is the difference between sense and reference?
Sense is conceptual meaning; reference is the actual object the term refers to.
What is generativity in language?
The ability to produce an infinite number of sentences from finite rules.
What are phrase structure rules (PSRs)?
A set of rules used to describe how words and phrases are organized
What is a garden-path sentence?
A grammatically correct sentence that tricks your brain into an initial, incorrect meaning
What is minimal attachment?
A shortcut that builds the simplest possible sentence out of a complex sentence
What is late closure?
Your brain automatically tries to attach new words to the phrase you are currently processing
What do constraint-based models propose?
Humans use all available information at once to solve a problem
What was the finding of Tanenhaus (1995)?
Visual context pushes the processing and undersanding of spoken language
What does the Nativist Theory propose?
Children are born with an innate Language Acquisition Device and universal grammar.
