PSY 357 exam 2

does the English/Chinese bilingual categorization study (with cows, chickens, grass) support the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis?

- americans: cow and chicken go together (taxonomic categorization) - chinese: cow and grass go together (relational categorization) - supports weak version of whorf hypothesis (language spoken - categorization)

late closure

- group new word in with current phrase - delay "closing" off phrase until later

perceptual span (define, example, methodology, varies across language and why)

- idea that we can perceive more than just words we're fixating - English: 3-4 characters to left, 15 characters to right - Hebrew: 11 characters to left, 3 characters to right - orthographic differences, reading direction affect it

What sequence of events led to so many reputable sources being wrong about the number of Eskimo words for snow? What role did Whorf himself play in this sequence? What have been the consequences of this sequence of events, in terms of common cultural (mis)understandings about the facts of this phenomenon?

- ideas were misunderstood and misinterpreted, numbers kept changing - he oversimplified it and generalized it - leads to misconceptions about language and culture, and reinforcement of stereotypes

garden path sentence (and example)

- leads reader or listener down wrong syntactic or semantic path, forcing them to reinterpret - the horse raced past the barn fell - because he always jogs a mile seems like a short distance to him

2 routes of dual route model

- lexical route: direct access to irregular pronunciations - sublexical route: bypasses lexical access, computes grapheme-to-phoneme conversion, allows pronunciation of nonwords

McGurk Effect

- looking at mouth vs what is being said - perceive speech the way we imagine ourselves doing it - motor theory of speech perception

does Rosch's color categorization study support the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis?

- no - language differences have no effect on thought

Neisser's 1964 study of visual search? Is it top down or bottom up?

- one array with no features in common with Z - another array in common with Z - bottom up processing

does Roberson et al.'s color categorization study support the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis?

- repeated rosch just a little different - british could discriminate better between green and blue - berinmo were better at discriminating nol and wor - supports weak version of whorf hypothesis - diff cultures = diff labels for colors = way they discriminate between colors varies

how does dyslexia helps resolve the dual-route/connectionist debate?

- some with acquired dyslexia show opposite patterns of deficits - phonological dyslexia: ability to read nonwords disrupts, but reading learned words remains satirical (no sublexical route, lexical route preserved) - surface dyslexia: ability to read irregular forms of words disrupted, but able to use grapheme-to-phoneme rule

From a list of statements concerning changes in eye movement patterns (fixations duration, fixations per 100 words, percent of regressions) with age and experience (e.g., from 1st grade to adulthood), identify a statement that best characterizes those changes. Also understand the implications of these changes.

- start with lots of eye movement, as we get older there is less - less time fixating on words - fewer fixations - don't need to regress as much, more efficient from extracting info from fixations

Weak Whorf hypothesis

- thoughts and perceptions influenced by language - explains SOME variance

implications of Best Buy demo

- words snipped out of context "best" and "go to" - placed back and can understand meaning - illustrates important segment and context - original speaker would have just has much difficulty

Given a place where a consonant is articulated in the mouth (e.g., lips, roof of mouth, teeth, etc.) be able to identify the phonetic term for that consonant's place of articulation.

-bilabial: lips - pat/bat -labiodental: bottom lip to teeth - fat/vat, ph -dental: tongue to teeth - THen, thuh -alveolar: tongue to alveolar ridge - tack, late, duhh -palatal: tongue to hard plate - fiSH. CHurch, chhh -velar: tongue to soft palate - cat, get -glottal: hat, huu

minimal attachment

-proceeds through a sentence seeking the simplest phrase structure that will accommodate the words heard so far -"the defendant examined by the lawyer turned out to be unreliable" = prefers main verb interpretation because it creates simpler structure - "the dog walked to the park" - main verb int: the dog is walking itself to the park/ reduced relative clause int: someone else is walking the dog to the parl

what kind of strategy is late closure?

-syntactic strategy -makes it simple and efficient

How do the assumptions made by Orwell in 1984 illustrate the concept of linguistic determinism?

-thought is dependent on words -concept of freedom determined by word

Strong Whorf hypothesis

-thoughts and perceptions are determined by language -language explains ALL variance in thought

implications of the word superiority effect? top down or bottom up?

-top down -people can recognize letters within words compared to recognizing letters that are isolated

aspect of speech sound that is primary factor in determining if one perceives /ba/ or /pa/? what results support?

-voice onset time (time delay between release of air and the onset of a vocal cord vibration) -categorical perception

source of variation

-vowels -front, center, back of mouth -tongue high, middle, low

Primary difference between vowels and consonants, according to articulatory phonetics

-vowels: airflow from lungs unobstructed -consonants: impede airflow in some capacity

How many words do Eskimos have for snow, according to Whorf? How many words to Eskimos have for snow, according to Pullum? Is it truly different than the number of words that any other culture has for snow?

Whorf: 7 pullum: 2 - no, it isn't, just reflects different cultures and environments

bottom-up processing

acoustic signal (features)

fricative consonants

air through mouth /s/ /z/

regressions

backwards saccades

language production

cognitive process that allows humans to create linguistic products (meaning to sounds)

language comprehension

cognitive process that allows humans to understand other people's productions (sounds to meaning)

top-down processing

context of larger whole (word superiority)

eye tracker

device that measures where and how long people look at something

linguistic relativity

differences among languages cause differences in thoughts of their speakers

saccades

eye movements from one spot to another

how does speed-reading apps help eye movement process

helps decrease eye movement so it theoretically increases reading times

alphabet

letters represent phonemes

orthography

mapping of sounds to written symbols

parsing

mental grouping of words in a sentence into phrases

unvoiced consonants

no vibration of vocal chords /f/ /h/

does Whorf's observation that Eskimos have many words for snow support the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis?

no, they don't have more words

word-scrambling methods that would/would not lead to identifiable word strings

placing all words into sentence context, can scramble words except first and last word and can still understand - top down processing

dual route model of reading

pronouncing strings of letters based on their sounds, and pronouncing irregular words based on their lexical info

irregular/regular spelling-to-sound correspondence in English

regular: graphemes map onto phonemes in expected way, standard pronunciation (speak, rave, hint) irregular: steak compared to sneak, speak, leak / pint compared to hint, liint, mint

the adaptation that the perceptual system seems to have made to accommodate the lack of invariance

same phoneme can be said different ways, but we adapt to overall category for phoneme

syllabary

syllable as linguistic unit (po-ta-to = 3 syllables)

interactionalist approach

syntax = non-structural info > parse - parallel, interactive, algorithmic

syntax-first approach

syntax > semantics/non-structural info > parse - serial, modular, heuristic

stop consonants

temporary block of airflow /p/ /k/ /t/

linguistic determinism

thought is determined by language, all thoughts must be words first

fixations

time spent looking at a given location

identify the broad category of processing that explains both phonemic restoration and successful speech segmentation of first languages

top-down processing

voiced consonants

vocal cords vibrate /d/ /L/ r/

logography

words correspond to individual pictorial symbols (chinese)

identify a description of a speech signal (a record of the physical energy) produced by conversational speech in terms of breaks between different elements of the sentence

you cannot see breaks between words, continuous uninterrupted stream of sounds, we mentally impose breaks that aren't actually there