Quiz 7: Language

The interactionist approach to parsing states that -semantics is only activated to clear up ambiguity. -semantics is activated as a sentence is being read. -semantics is activated only at the end of a sentence. -the grammatical structure of a sentence determines the initial parsing.

-semantics is activated as a sentence is being read.

Yoda, a central character of the Star Wars movies created by George Lucas, has a distinctive way of speaking. His statement, "Afraid you will be," violates which property of the English language? Language has a structure that is governed by rules Language involves the use of a lexicon Coding is required for language Language symbols must have high discriminability

Language has a structure that is governed by rules

In a study, participants listened to the following tape recording: "Rumor had it that, for years, the government building had been plagued with problems. The man was not surprised when he found several spiders, roaches, and other bugs in the corner of the room." As participants heard the word "bugs," they completed a lexical decision task to a test stimulus flashed on a screen. To which of the following words would you expect participants to take the longest to respond to? ANT. SKY. ROACH. SPY.

SKY.

The ____________________ states that the nature of a culture's language can affect the way people think. Sapir-Whorf hypothesis given-new contract interactionist approach cooperative principle

Sapir-Whorf hypothesis

Which set of stimuli would be the best selection for having people perform a lexical decision task? -Words "pizza, history" and non-words "pibble, girk" -Concrete words "window, monkey" and abstract words "doubt, energy" -Correctly spelled words "speech, potato" and misspelled words "speach, potatoe" -Common words "cat, boat" and uncommon words "peon, furtive"

Words "pizza, history" and non-words "pibble, girk"

An experiment on the phonemic restoration effect would most likely include an extraneous cough. a garden-path sentence. two similar-sounding letters (e.g., "T" and "C"). a categorical perception task.

an extraneous cough.

Imagine you are interpreting a pair of sentences such as "The sidewalk was covered with ice" and "Ramona fell down." The kind of inference we use to link these sentences together would most likely be a(n) ____________________ inference. instrument coherent anaphoric causal

causal

Which property below is NOT one of the characteristics that makes human language unique? Hierarchical structure It involves arrangement of a sequence of symbols Governed by rules Communication

communication

Noam Chomsky proposed that -language is learned through the mechanism of reinforcement. -as children learn language, they produce only sentences they have heard before. -the underlying basis of language is different across cultures. -humans are genetically programmed to acquire and use language.

humans are genetically programmed to acquire and use language.

Evidence that language is a social process that must be learned comes from the fact that when deaf children find themselves in an environment where there are no people who speak or use sign language, they -start speaking out loud even though they cannot hear themselves. -lose the ability to communicate in any way. -invent a sign language themselves. -demonstrate compensatory regeneration of lost auditory neural pathways.

invent a sign language themselves

When we look at a record of the physical energy produced by conversational speech in a person's native language, we see that the speech signal has breaks between words. is continuous. has breaks between phonemes. has breaks between morphemes.

is continuous.

According to the situation model of text processing, -it will take longer to understand a story that involves a complex series of situations. -people create a mental representation of what the text is about in terms of people, objects, locations, and events. -people draw inferences about what is happening in a story by considering both local and global connections. -people create a mental representation of what the text is about in terms of information about phrases, sentences, and paragraphs.

people create a mental representation of what the text is about in terms of people, objects, locations, and events.

Ty has finished work on his doctoral dissertation. He studied how most adults understand words, specifically the priming effects of categorically related words and submitted a proposal to be included in a psychological conference to present his work to his peers. Presentations at the conference are grouped based on the particular topic in psychology under consideration. It is most likely that Ty's work will be presented in a conference session on psycholinguistics. neuropsychology. psychophysics. psychoacoustics.

psycholinguistics.

B.F. Skinner, the modern champion of behaviorism, proposed that language is learned through parsing. genetic coding. syntactic framing. reinforcement.

reinforcement

Coherence refers to the -principle that we process information in isolation before we link it to its context. -representation of the text in a reader's mind, so that information in one part of the text is related to information in another part of the text. -mental process by which readers create information during reading that is not explicitly stated in the text. -mental process whereby ambiguity is resolved online during sentence reading.

representation of the text in a reader's mind, so that information in one part of the text is related to information in another part of the text.

According to the idea of ____________________ , when we read a sentence like, "Carmelo grabbed his coat from his bedroom and his backpack from the living room, walked downstairs, and called his friend Gerry," we create a simulation of Carmelo's apartment and keep track of his location as he moves throughout the apartment. causal inference situation models speech continuity global connections

situational models

The word frequency effect refers to the fact that we respond more -slowly to letters appearing in non-words than letters appearing in words. -quickly to letters that appear multiple times in a word than just once in a word. -quickly to phonemes that appear multiple times in a word than just once in a word. -slowly to low-frequency words than high-frequency words.

slowly to low-frequency words than high-frequency words.

When the front part of a sentence can be interpreted more than one way, but the end of the sentence clarifies which meaning is correct, we say that the sentence is an example of parsing. speech segmentation. temporary ambiguity. lexical priming.

temporary ambiguity

Tanenhaus and coworkers' eye movement study presented participants with different pictures for interpreting the sentence, "Put the apple on the towel in the box." Their results support the interactionist approach to parsing. both syntax-first and interactionist approaches to parsing. the garden-path model to parsing. the syntax-first approach to parsing.

the interactionist approach to parsing.

A phoneme refers to the shortest segment of speech that, if changed, changes the meaning of a word. the property of combining words into unique sentences. the first word produced by infants, usually during their second year. a mental grouping of words being heard during "inner audition."

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