COGPSY- Ch. 11

speech perception

perception of (spoken) words is about how we link the sounds we hear to our lexicon

Consider the sentence, "Because he always jogs a mile seems like a short distance to him." The principle of late closure states that this sentence would first be parsed into which of the following phrases? a. "Because he always jogs" b. "Because he always jogs a mile" c. "he always jogs" d. "a mile seems"

"Because he always jogs a mile"

4. Pollack and Pickett's experiment on understanding speech found that when participants were presented with individual words taken out of conversations (single words presented alone with no context), they could identify a. 100% of the words spoken by their own voices. b. 50% of the words spoken by their own voices. c. 50% of the words spoken by others with an accent similar to theirs. d. none of the words spoken by others.

50% of the words spoken by their own voices

Late closure

As we read a new sentence, we keep adding new words to part of the current phrase.

Tanenhaus & Trueswell (1995) (Scene Context)

Eye movements change when information suggests revision of interpretation of sentence is necessary Linguistic and nonlinguistic information (i.e., scene context) is used simultaneously

Garden-path model

First we read using syntax, such as late closure to parse a sentence When something doesn't make sense semantically, then we go back and re-parse it Syntax first, semantics second

Isolated words study Pollack & Pickett (1964)

People could identify only half of the words (even with their own voice) Context helps us to perceive words in conversations

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. Results showed that the participants responded most slowly to the test stimulus a. ANT. b. SPY. c. SKY. d. All of these would have similar response times.

SKY

Interactionist approach

Semantics and syntax work together at the same time Instead of semantics later, semantic processing occurs "on-line" While the sentence is being read

garden-path sentence

Sentences that begin by appearing to mean one thing, but then end up meaning something else Leads us down the wrong path

What is language?

System of communication using sounds or symbols

the word superiority effect (top-down effects)

discriminating between letters is easier in the context of a word than as letters alone or in the context of a nonword string

Which of the following is the best example of a garden path sentence? a. Before the police stopped, the Toyota disappeared into the night. b. The man was not surprised when he found several spiders, roaches, and other bugs in the room. c. The cats won't bake.

a. Before the police stopped, the Toyota disappeared into the night.

Word frequency

affects the lexical decision task

lexicon

all of the words a person understands; "mental dictionary"

psycholinguistics

cognitive psychology; discover psychological process by which humans acquire and process language

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. Presentation at the conference is segregated 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 a. sensation. b. psychoacoustics. c. neuropsychology. d. psycholinguistics.

d. psycholinguistics.

6. In the lexical decision task, participants are asked to a. separate a sentence into individual words. b. decide which meaning of an ambiguous sentence is correct in a specific situation. c. identify words that are contained in sentences. d. decide whether a string of letters is a word or a non-word

decide whether a string of letters is a word or a non-word

lexical decision task results

faster to say a high frequency word is a word than to say a low frequency word is a word

Language is ____________

hierarchical made up of different parts that can be combined governed by rules (specific ways components can be arranged) universal

Language consists of smaller components, like words, that can be combined to form larger ones, like phrases, to create sentences, which themselves can be components of a larger story. This property is known as a. hierarchical structure. b. relational organization. c. parallel organization. d. propositional representation.

hierarchical structure

acquisition

how we learn language

production

how we produce language

represenation

how we represent or code language

comprehension

how we understand language

transitional probabilities

knowing which sound will likely follow another in a word

3. Ron is an avid reader. He has a large vocabulary because every time he comes across a word he doesn't know, he looks it up in the dictionary. Ron encounters "wanderlust" in a novel, reaches for the dictionary, and finds out this word means "desire to travel." The process of looking up unfamiliar words increases Ron's a. lexicon. b. parser. c. syntactical capacity. d. mental set.

lexicon

logophile

lover of words

semantics

meanings of words and sentences

Parsing

mentally groups the words into phrases helps the listener create meaning

7. Lexical ambiguity studies show that people initially access a. only the meaning of an ambiguous word that is consistent with the context. b. multiple meanings of an ambiguous word. c. the appropriate meaning of an ambiguous word based on syntax. d. the appropriate meaning of an ambiguous word based on the principle of late closure.

multiple meanings of an ambiguous word

language is universal

no culture has been found not to have language languages are "unique but the same"

syntax

rules for combining words into sentences

lexical decision task

see a string of letters determine if it is a real English word or not as fast as you can typically speed and accuracy are the dependent measures

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

semantics is activated as a sentence is being read

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

10. 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 a. parsing. b. temporary ambiguity. c. speech segmentation. d. lexical priming.

temporary ambiguity

semantics

the meaning of language

lexicon semantics

the meaning of words

speech segmentation

the process of perceiving individual words in the continuous flow of the speech signal languages we don't know seem to blend together but in own language words seem separate) using knowledge of the language to find the word boundaries (knowledge= top-down)

9. Syntax is a. the rules for combining words into sentences. b. the meanings of words. c. the way people pronounce words in conversational speech. d. the mental grouping of words in a sentence into phrases.

the rules for combining words into sentences

letters are not processed one-by-one

they are processed in parallel word activates letter components

word frequency effect

we respond more quickly to high frequency words faster to read a sentence with high frequency words we look at low frequency words longer

The crucial question in comparing syntax-first and interactionist approaches to parsing is ____ is involved a. whether semantics b. whether syntax c. when semantics d. when syntax

when semantics

lexical ambiguity

words can have two meanings When reading a word with lexical ambiguity, both meanings are accessed right away, but then context overrides one of them