Human Cognitive: Chapter 11

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. none of the words spoken by others. d. 50% of the words spoken by others with an accent similar to theirs.

50% of the words spoken by their own voices.

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

Before the police stopped the Toyota disappeared into the night.

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? a. Language symbols must have high discriminability b. Language involves the use of a lexicon c. Coding is required for langauge d. Languge has a structure that is governed by rules

Languge has a structure that is governed by rules

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

Sapir-Whorf hypothesis

You are conducting a study on how fluency influences the phonemic restoration effect. You study two groups of non-native English speakers, one with a year of English classes and the other with 10 years. All of your stimuli are in English. Who would you expect to show the greatest phonemic restoration effect? a. The two groups would show equal phonemic restoration effects b. Neither group would show an effect because they are non-native English speakers c. The group with one year of English instruction d. The group with 10 years of English instruction

The group with 10 years of English instruction

Which of the following is NOT influenced by meaning? a. The lexical decision task b. Phonemic restoration effect c. Word frequency effect d. Word superiority effect

Word frequency effect

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

an extraneous cough.

Consider the following sentences: "Captain Ahab wanted to kill the whale. He cursed at it." These two sentences taken together provide an example of a(n) a. global connection. b. garden path sequence. c. instrument inference. d. anaphoric inference.

anaphoric inference.

The given-new contract is a method for creating a. comprehension between a speaker and a listener in a conversation. b. resolution of a lexically ambiguous sentence. c. anaphoric inferences between consecutive sentences. d. children's mastery of syntax

comprehension between a speaker and a listener in a conversation.

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

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

In an eye movement study, Rayner and coworkers had participants read sentences that contained either a high- or low- frequency target word. For example, the sentence "Sam wore the horrid coat though his ____ girlfriend complained," contained either the target word "pretty" or "demure." Results showed the participants' _____ was shorter for the target word _____. a. lexical distinction; demure b. fixation; pretty c. lexical distinction; pretty d. fixation; demure

fixation; pretty

In New Guinea, tribes that had been isolated for centuries were found that a. communicated by hand signals but not verbal language as we know it. b. had a large number of sophisticated language systems. c. had languages that were more primitive than languages of most non-isolated societies. d. had just a few language systems that were all governed by similar rules.

had a large number of sophisticated language systems.

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 demonstrates the _______ property of language. a. hierarchical b. propositional c. parallel d. relational

hierarchical

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

humans are genetically programmed to acquire and use language.

Chaz is listening to his grandma reminisce about the first time she danced with his grandpa 60 years ago. When his grandma says, "It seemed like the song would play forever," Chaz understands that it is more likely his grandma was listening to a radio playing and not a CD. This understanding requires Chaz use a(n) a. age-appropriate principle. b. given-new contract. c. garden path model. d. instrument inference.

instrument inference.

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. syntactical capacity. b. lexicon. c. mental set. d. parser.

lexicon.

According to the situation model of text processing, a. it will take longer to understand a story that involves a complex series of situations. b. people create a mental representation of what the text is about in terms of information about phrases, sentences, and paragraphs. c. people create a mental representation of what the text is about in terms of people, objects, locations, and events. d. 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 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 a. neuropsychology. b. psycholinguistics. c. psychoacoustics. d. psychophysics.

psycholinguistics

Coherence refers to the a. principle that we process information in isolation before we link it to its context. b. mental process whereby ambiguity is resolved online during sentence reading. c. 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. d. mental process by which readers create information during reading that is not explicitly stated in the text.

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.

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

semantics is activated as a sentence is being read.

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

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

A psycholinguist conducts an experiment with a group of participants from a small village in Asia and another from a small village in South America. She asked the groups to describe the bands of color they saw in a rainbow and found they reported the same number of bands as their language possessed primary color words. These results a. support the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis. b. contradict the word frequency effect. c. contradict the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis. d. support the word frequency effect.

support the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis.

Brain imaging studies reveal that semantics and syntax are associated with which two lobes of the cerebral cortex? a. the frontal and temporal lobes b. the frontal and parietal lobes c. the temporal and parietal lobes d. the parietal and occipital lobes

the frontal and temporal lobes

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 a. the syntax-first approach to parsing. b. the interactionist approach to parsing. c. the garden-path model to parsing. d. both syntax-first and interactionist approaches to parsing.

the interactionist approach to parsing.

Lexical ambiguity studies show that people access ambiguous words based on a. the identification of a single meaning for that word. b. the word that comes immediately before and the word that comes immediately after the ambiguous word in the sentence. c. a bottom-up progression of meaning comprehension. d. the meaning dominance of each definition of the word.

the meaning dominance of each definition of the word.

The word "bad" has ____ phoneme(s). a. one b. two c. four d. three

three