Chapter 11 Notes PDF

Creativity of Human Language Hierarchical Structure: Language consists of small components (sounds, words) combined to form larger units (phrases, sentences). Rule-Based: The arrangement of these components follows specific rules (e.g., "What is my cat saying?" is acceptab...

Creativity of Human Language Hierarchical Structure: Language consists of small components (sounds, words) combined to form larger units (phrases, sentences). Rule-Based: The arrangement of these components follows specific rules (e.g., "What is my cat saying?" is acceptable, but "Cat my saying is what?" is not). Universal Need to Communicate with Language Language as Universal: All humans have an innate need to communicate, using language across cultures and environments. Inventing Language: Deaf children create sign languages when no formal language is available (e.g., Goldin-Meadow, 1982). Language Development: Consistent across cultures; babbling begins around 7 months, first words by age 1, and multi-word sentences by age 2. Languages are Unique but Similar: Languages differ in words, sounds, and rules but share common functions (e.g., nouns, verbs, negation, questions, and tenses). Studying Language: Historical Roots: Language study dates back to ancient philosophers like Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle 1. Modern research began with Broca (1861) and Wernicke (1874), who linked brain areas (Broca’s area for production, Wernicke’s area for comprehension) to language. Behavioral Approaches: In the 1950s, B.F. Skinner proposed language is learned through reinforcement (similar to behaviorism), 1. Noam Chomsky (1957) argued that language is innate and genetically programmed Psycholinguistics: The field focuses on how language is acquired and processed, with four major concerns: 1. Comprehension: How we understand spoken and written language. 2. Representation: How language is mentally represented, including sentence and story structure. 3. Speech Production: The physical and mental processes of speaking. 4. Acquisition: How we learn language, both as children and adults. Understanding Words Lexicon: The mental dictionary of all the words we know. Semantics: The study of meaning in language, with lexical semantics referring to the meaning of words. Word Frequency and Processing Word Frequency: The number of times a word appears in a language (e.g., "home" vs. "hike"). Word Frequency Effect: We respond more quickly to high-frequency words (e.g., "home") than low-frequency words (e.g., "hike"). Evidence: Lexical Decision Task: Faster response for high-frequency words (e.g., "history") compared to low-frequency ones (e.g., "reverie"). Eye Movement Studies: ○ Participants had longer first fixation and total gaze durations for low-frequency words (e.g., "waltz") compared to high-frequency ones (e.g., "music"). ○ Longer fixations suggest more time is needed to access the meaning of low-frequency words. Pronunciation Variability and Word Understanding Variability in Pronunciation: People pronounce words differently depending on their accent, speed, and informal speech (e.g., "Did you" vs. "Dijoo"). Contextual Influence: Context helps with understanding words Evidence: Study by Pollack and Pickett (1964): Participants had difficulty identifying words when presented alone from their own conversations. Context (full conversation) helped them understand the words better No Silences in Speech: In normal conversation, words often have no pauses between them. Speech Segmentation: We use statistical regularities and word meanings to segment speech into words. Context Helps Understanding: Knowledge of context and word meanings aids in interpreting speech. Factors Affecting Word Understanding: 1. Frequency: Word familiarity. 2. Context: Sentence or situation. 3. Statistical Regularities: Common sound patterns in language. 4. Word Meaning: Understanding definitions aids comprehension Accessing Multiple Meanings of Words Lexical Ambiguity= when word has more than one meaning Context and Ambiguity: When hearing an ambiguous word (e.g., "rose"), we initially activate all possible meanings (e.g., "rose" as a flower or "rose" as a verb for standing up), but context quickly helps resolve ambiguity Tanenhaus et al. (1979): In their experiment, participants heard sentences like "She held a rose" (noun, flower) or "They all rose" (verb, standing up) ○ Method - Lexical Priming: Priming occurs when a word activates a related word, making it easier to process. In the experiment, hearing "rose" as a flower made people respond faster to "flower," showing priming effects ○ Results: Even when "rose" was used as a verb, it still primed "flower," indicating that all meanings of ambiguous words are briefly accessed Delay Impact: When a 200 ms delay was added, priming still occurred for the noun meaning of "rose," but not for the verb meaning, showing that the context helps focus meaning after a slight delay Frequency and Meaning Activation: Meaning Dominance: 1. Biased dominance: One meaning is much more frequent than the other (e.g., bank (money) vs bank (riverbank) 2. Balanced dominance: Both meanings are equally frequent (e.g.,bat (animal) and bat (base-ball) Impact on Word Processing: 1. Biased words are processed quickly, as only the dominant meaning is activated. 2. Balanced words cause competition between meanings, resulting in slower processing Context Influence: 1. Context can guide which meaning is activated: If context suggests the less frequent meaning (e.g., bank as river), both meanings are activated, and processing is slower If context suggests the more frequent meaning, only the dominant meaning is activated, speeding up processing Parsing: Making Sense of Sentences Parsing: Grouping words into phrases to create meaning. Garden Path Sentences: Sentences that initially lead to one interpretation but later shift to the correct one when the structure is clarified Temporary Ambiguity: The initial misinterpretation is corrected once the sentence is fully processed. Garden Path Model of Parsing Heuristics: Rules used during parsing to rapidly make decisions about sentence structure, based on syntax. ○ Pros: Fast processing ( 200 words per minute) ○ Cons: Can lead to incorrect interpretations (e.g., in garden path sentences). Late Closure Principle: When encountering a new word, the parser assumes it's part of the current phrase until it can't logically continue. This can lead to initial misinterpretations, like in the sentence: ○ Example: "After the musician played the piano was wheeled off the stage." First, "played the piano" is treated as one phrase. Then, "was" is mistakenly added, making it appear as part of the same phrase. When "wheeled" is added, the structure is incorrect, forcing a re-parse. Re-parsing: After the initial mistake, we reconsider the sentence structure and correct the interpretation: ○ Correct parsing: [After the musician played] [the piano was wheeled off the stage]. Criticisms: Some researchers argue that syntax is not the only factor influencing parsing. Other factors (e.g., semantics or context) can affect the initial interpretation too Constraint-Based Parsing: Parsing involves more than just syntax; word meaning, context, and visual scene also influence it. Memory Load & Experience: Example: "The senator who spotted the reporter shouted" (easier) vs. "The senator who the reporter spotted shouted" (harder due to increased memory load and complex sentence structure). Prediction in Sentence Processing General Concept: when reading or listening to sentences, we constantly make predictions, helps us process language quickly Incorrect Predictions: Sometimes predictions lead us down the "garden path" Correct Predictions: Most of the time, predictions are correct and help us understand language quickly, especially in noisy environments or when language is unclear. Altmann & Kamide (1999) Experiment: Setup: Participants heard sentences like "The boy will move the cake" or "The boy will eat the cake" while looking at a scene with a cake.  Findings: When hearing "eat," participants looked at the cake before hearing the word "cake," showing they predicted the action based on the sentence context (faster eye movement for "eat") Making Inferences in Language Inference: Creating connections between parts of a story by using prior knowledge. Anaphoric Inference: Inferring references. Instrument Inference: Inferring tools used Causal Inference: Inferring cause-effect relationships Situation Models Situation Model: Mental representation formed while reading, simulating the perceptual and motor characteristics of events and objects. Study Example: Participants responded faster when the picture matched the described situation (e.g., nail orientation or eagle shape). N400 ERP Study: N400 wave is a measure of how much a word disrupts your understanding of a sentence Larger N400 response to unexpected words (e.g., "barn" in a concert scenario). Event-related words (e.g., "guitar") generate a smaller N400 Simulation of Movement: Reading about movement (e.g., riding a bicycle) activates brain regions associated with movement, simulating the action. This supports the situation model idea, which includes both perceptual and motor knowledge. Given–New Contract Given–New Contract: speaker should include given info (what lisner already knows) and new info Haviland & Clark (1974) Study: Result: Comprehension is faster when new information is clearly linked to given information. Common Ground Common Ground= Shared knowledge and beliefs between conversational parties Establishing Common Ground: people speaking to each other synchronize their knowledge during a conversation Referential Communication Task: A task where one person (A) describes an object, and the other (B) uses that description to identify the object. Example: A and B describe and identify abstract objects (e.g., a "monk praying"), which becomes easier as common ground is established through conversation. Entrainment: The synchronization between partners, including gestures, speaking rate, body positions, and pronunciation, that happens as common ground is established Syntactic Coordination Syntactic Coordination: When speakers use similar grammatical structures in conversation. This is known as syntactic priming, where hearing a sentence with a specific structure increases the likelihood of producing a sentence with the same structure. Importance of Syntactic Coordination: It reduces the cognitive load of conversation, making it easier to understand and respond Conversation Process: Common Ground: Sharing knowledge during conversation, like understanding what the other person knows. Theory of Mind: Understanding the feelings and beliefs of others. Turn-taking: Knowing when to speak in a conversation.