Untitled Quiz

Language

• Language is a collection of symbols and the rules to combine them.
• Language is symbolic; sounds and words are symbols for things in the world.
• Language is structured; rules combine symbols to create meaning for others.
• Language is generative; a limited number of words creates an unlimited number of sentences.
• Association Theory (1957) suggests relying on learned associations between words to create sentences.
• This theory is not sufficient as it does not account for the infinite nature of language or the frequent generation of new sentences.
• Grammar Theory (1957) describes rules that generate grammatically correct sentences.
• Learning a grammar frame makes constructing new sentences easy.
• Broca's Aphasia (1861) is the inability to speak in grammatically correct sentences.
• Wernicke's Aphasia (1874) is the inability to speak in meaningful sentences.
• These aphasias stem from damage to distinct brain regions.
• Grammar and meaning are separate language components.
• Morphemes are the smallest units of language having a definable meaning or grammatical function.
• Root words and suffixes are morphemes.
• Morphemes allow us to create new words by modifying or adding meaning.

Morpheme Acquisition

• Grammatical rules govern combining morphemes to form words.
• Word pluralization or past tense formation can occur without explicit instruction.
• Some rules (adding "s" for plural) are simple; others (contractions) are more complex.
• Children sometimes make mistakes, applying rules to irregular words.

Three Stages of Morpheme Acquisition

• No combination of morphemes; root words strung together (e.g., Glass break).
• Memorization of irregular verbs (e.g., The glass broke).
• Learning grammatical rules (e.g., The glass was broken).

Phonemes

• Phonemes are the basic sounds of a language.
• Morphemes and words are built from phonemes.
• Changing one phoneme can change the word's meaning (e.g., "bit" vs. "pit," "bit" vs. "bat").
• A phoneme is not inherently meaningful; a morpheme is.
• English has 37 phonemes.
• There are 24 corresponding to consonant sounds.
• There are 13 corresponding to vowel sounds.

Phoneme Recognition

• Visual and auditory object recognition are similar in that noisy inputs are problematic.
• Context aids in phoneme recognition.
• Warren (1970) experimented on listeners, erasing phonemes within sentences.
• Listeners often perceive a missing phoneme.
• Adults have impaired ability to recognize phonemes not present in their native language. This limits their learning ability in other languages.
• The "perceptual magnet" (Kuhl, 2000) describes acquired prototypes aiding in the recognition of native phonemes.

Speech Errors

• "Slips of the tongue" occur within a given level of language.
• Errors are either between words, morphemes, or phonemes.

Three Types of Exchange Errors

• Word Exchanges
• Morpheme Exchanges
• Phoneme Exchanges

Language Comprehension

• Comprehension is making sense of the words read or heard.
• Ambiguous sentences can impede comprehension.
• Ambiguous words, clauses, or sentences can have various meanings.
• Swinney & Hakes (1976) examined how context affects ambiguous words.
• Readers initially process multiple meanings and then filter based on context.
• Poor readers may have difficulty suppressing inappropriate word meanings.

Levels of Ambiguity

• Phonemic Ambiguity: Different words/phrases sound the same
• Lexical Ambiguity: Words have multiple meanings
• Syntactic Ambiguity: Ambiguity regarding a word’s function in a sentence
• Pragmatic Ambiguity: Sentences interpreted through context

Swinney & Hakes (1976)

• Studied how context alters comprehension of ambiguous words.
• Developed a method exposing subjects to varied passages and having them indicate a particular phoneme.
• Studied the effect of context on resolving lexical ambiguities..

Swinney (1979)

• Studied whether context prevents premature activation of multiple meanings.
• Determined that both meanings of an ambiguous word may be activated briefly but are filtered by context.

Gernsbacher (1993)

• Found that poor readers have difficulty suppressing inappropriate word meanings when encountering ambiguous words.

Language System

• Multiple word meanings can cause confusion. Context helps clarify meaning.
• Context can occur before or after the ambiguous word.

Repair Processes

• Repair occurs when a listener needs to refocus on meaning while hearing/reading.

Miyake, Just, & Carpenter (1994)

• Examined why some readers are better than others.
• Suggested a smaller short-term memory capacity affecting the capacity to resolve ambiguity.

Ambiguities and Word Frequency

• Word frequency affects the speed at which we process ambiguous words.
• When no context is available, we tend to guess the meanings of ambiguous words, favoring the more frequent use of the word.

Eye Movements and Ambiguities

• Eye tracking devices (eye trackers) are used to trace eye movements in response to sentences.
• Regressions, revisits to previously read words, often indicate repair attempts in response to ambiguities or errors.