Chapter 11 Quiz

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

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

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 Eskimos were frightened by the walrus. c. The man was not surprised when he found several spiders, roaches, and other bugs in the corner of the room. d. The cats won't bake.

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

a. Language has a structure that is governed by rules

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 Sapir-Whorf hypothesis. c. support the word frequency effect. d. contradict the word frequency effect.

a. support the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis.

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

a. the meaning dominance of each definition of the word.

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

a. three

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. none of the words spoken by others. 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. 100% of the words spoken by their own voices.

b. 50% of the words spoken by their own voices.

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

b. Sapir-Whorf hypothesis

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

b. Word frequency effect

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

b. lexicon

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. psychophysics. b. psycholinguistics. c. neuropsychology. d. psychoacoustics.

b. psycholinguistics.

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

b. the frontal and temporal lobes

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; demure c. fixation; pretty d. lexical distinction; pretty

c. fixation; pretty

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

c. had a large number of sophisticated language systems.

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

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.

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

d. 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.

d. anaphoric inference.

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

d. comprehension between a speaker and a listener in a conversation.

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

d. 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. given-new contract. b. age-appropriate principle. c. garden path model. d. instrument inference.

d. instrument inference.

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 group with 10 years of English instruction b. Neither group would show an effect because they are non-native English speakers c. The two groups would show equal phonemic restoration effects d. The group with one year of English instruction

a. The group with 10 years of English instruction

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.

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

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. relational d. parallel

a. hierarchical

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

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

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

a. semantics is activated as a sentence is being read.

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.

b. the interactionist approach to parsing.