ELS Study Guide 202 PDF

STUDY GUIDE ELS 202 Main Topic 1: Study of Language 1. Meaning of Language 2. Psycholinguistics 3. Language and the Brain – Broca’s area and Wernicke’s area 4. Describing Language Main Topic 2: Describing Language Speech is produced by movement of parts of the vocal tract...

STUDY GUIDE ELS 202 Main Topic 1: Study of Language 1. Meaning of Language 2. Psycholinguistics 3. Language and the Brain – Broca’s area and Wernicke’s area 4. Describing Language Main Topic 2: Describing Language Speech is produced by movement of parts of the vocal tract, including the lips, teeth, tongue, mouth, and voice box or larynx. The basic source of sounds is the larynx, which produces a range of harmonics. Different sounds are then made by changing the shape of the vocal tract. Consonants, characterized by the closure or restriction of the vocal tract, are often produced in conjunction with vowels. This relationship highlights the importance of examining the "place of articulation," the specific location within the vocal tract where the closure or restriction occurs. This analysis is facilitated by the concept of "distinctive features," which represent the contrasting characteristics used to describe sounds. By focusing on these features, we can gain a deeper understanding of the intricate relationships between different sounds in language. Vowels are produced without any obstruction to the articulatory tract (Ladefoged & Maddieson, 1996). Unlike consonants which result from the contact between articulators, vowels allow for a free flow of air. Therefore, we cannot define vowels in terms of place and manner of articulation. Rather, we define vowels in terms of the shape and position of the tongue. This means that while consonants in different dialects of a language remain relatively constant, vowels can differ widely. The defining terms for vowels are height, backness and roundness. Height refers to the vertical position of the tongue. Try saying ‘ee’ and ‘aa’ repeatedly. You will notice your tongue moving up and down. Therefore, we say that the vowel produced in saying ‘ee’ is a high vowel and that produced in saying ‘aa’ is a low vowel. Backness is based on the tongues horizontal position and shape. This is can noticed in saying ‘ee’ and ‘oo’ where the latter makes the tongue go back. Roundness is not a property of the tongue but of the lips which you will notice in making sounds such as ‘oo.’The table below will show you the vowels found in English. Words are composed of rhythmic units known as syllables, and the number of syllables in a word can be determined by singing it and assigning a different note to each syllable. For instance, the word "syl-la-ble" has three syllables, whereas many words are monosyllabic, containing only one syllable. Syllables can be broken down into a hierarchical structure, where the onset includes the initial consonant or cluster, the rime consists of a nucleus (central vowel), and a coda (final consonants). The components of a syllable (onset, nucleus, coda) are optional in English, except for the nucleus. Different languages have varying rules for the combination of syllable components. For instance, Japanese lacks codas in words, while Cantonese permits only nasal sounds and glottal stops as codas. Suprasegmental features of words and syllables, such as pitch, stress, and speech rate, can span multiple phonemes. These features, like pitch patterns, stress variations, and rhythm , play a crucial role in conveying meaning and differentiating statements, questions, and emphases in speech. English is considered a stressed-timed language, where stressed syllables are produced at equivalent time intervals, while French is a syllable-timed language with a more continuous flow of syllables. The Linguistic Theory of Chomsky Chomsky argued that language is special feature which innate, species - specific and biologically pre- programmed. For him the goal of study of syntax was to describe the set of rules or grammar that enable us to produce and understand language. Chomsky (1968) argued that it is important to distinguish between our idealized linguistic competence, and our actual linguistic performance. In his more recent work, Chomsky (1986) distinguished between externalized language (E-language) and internalized language (I-language). Chomsky's linguistic theory has evolved greatly over the years The first version was a book called " Syntactic Structures" Describing Syntax and Phrase- structure grammar Phrase structure rules are an essential component of our grammar although he went on to argue that they are not the only component. Phrase-structure rules describe how words can be combined, and provide a method of describing the structure of a sentence. The central idea is that sentences are built up hierarchically from smaller units using rewrite rules. Rewrite rules are simply rules that translate symbols. 2 main types of symbols 1) Terminal Elements 2) Non terminal Elements Surface and Deep Structure Chomsky (1965) presented a major revision of the theory, usually called the standard theory. The syntactic component in turn had two components, a set of base rules (roughly equivalent to the earlier phrase-structure rules), and transformational rules. Perhaps the most important extension of this later theory was the introduction of the distinction between deep structure and surface structure (now called d-structure and s-structure). In the standard theory, the syntactic component generated a deep structure and a surface structure for every sentence. The deep structure was the output of the base rules and the input to the semantic component; the surface structure was the output of the transformational rules and the input to the phonological rules. Principles and Parameters Theory The new "standard version of the theory" was known as Government and Binding Theory but the term Principle and parameter theory is now more widely used. Minimalism-minimalist program that aims to simplify the grammar as much as possible. Main Topic 3: The Biological and Developmental Bases of Language 1. The Foundations of Language Language plays a crucial role in our lives, shaping both our social interactions and cognitive activities. It is also essential for understanding human behavior. Generally, language is seen as a system of symbols and rules that facilitate communication. Symbols, like spoken or written words, represent other things, while rules govern how these symbols are arranged into sentences. However, defining language precisely is complex, as it can be examined from various perspectives, such as sound, meaning, or grammar. Linguistics categorizes these aspects into distinct areas: semantics (meaning), syntax (word order), morphology (word formation), pragmatics (language use), phonetics (raw sounds), and phonology (sound use within a language). Morphology studies how complex words are formed from simpler units called morphemes. It includes two types: inflectional morphology, which involves changes to a word that don't alter its basic meaning or grammatical category, and derivational morphology, which involves changes that do. The concept of a "word" itself is complex. While a word is often defined as "a unit of language," it's more nuanced, as there are other language units like sounds and clauses. Crystal (1997) defines a word as "the smallest unit of grammar that can stand alone as a complete utterance." The concept of a critical period refers to a specific window of time during which the brain is especially receptive to learning language. Early Childhood: Research indicates that there is an optimal period in early childhood for language acquisition. During this time, the brain’s language areas are highly adaptable, making it easier for children to learn languages. This critical period gradually closes as individuals grow older, making language acquisition more challenging. Sensitive Periods: While the critical period is most pronounced in early childhood, sensitive periods for language learning may extend into later childhood and adolescence, albeit with varying degrees of ease and effectiveness. Evolutionary Perspective The biological basis of language can also be viewed through an evolutionary lens, considering how language may have evolved as an adaptive trait. Social Communication: One theory suggests that language evolved as a means of enhancing social communication and cooperation among early humans. The development of complex language systems may have provided evolutionary advantages by facilitating group cohesion, information sharing, and social interaction. Comparative Studies: Comparing language abilities in humans with communication systems in other primates and animals provides insights into the evolutionary development of language. While non- human primates exhibit some forms of communication, the complexity and flexibility of human language are distinct. The biological basis of language encompasses a range of factors including brain structures, genetic influences, neural plasticity, critical periods, and evolutionary perspectives. Understanding these components provides valuable insights into how language is acquired, produced, and understood, highlighting the intricate relationship between our biology and linguistic abilities. 3. Cognitive basis of Language Jean Piaget is one of the most influential figures in developmental psychology. According to Piaget, development takes place in a sequence of well-defined stages. Four principal stages of development: a. Sensorimotor Period The First stage, wherein behavior is organized around sensory and motor processes. This stage lasts through infancy until the child is about 2 years old. A primary development in this period is the attainment of the concept of object permanence —that is, realizing that objects have continual existence and do not disappear as soon as they go out of view. b. Preoperational Stage This stage lasts until the age of about 6 or 7. It is characterized by egocentric thought, which means that these children are unable to adopt alternative viewpoints to their own and are unable to change their point of view. c. Concrete Operational Stage This stage lasts until the age of about 12. The child is now able to adopt alternative viewpoints. This is best illustrated with the classic conservation task. In this task, water is poured from a short wide glass to a tall thin glass, and the child is asked if the amounts of water are the same. A preoperational child will reply that the tall glass has more water in it; a concrete operational child will correctly say that they both contain the same amount. Nevertheless the child is still limited to reasoning about concrete objects. d. Formal Operations Stage The adolescent is not limited to concrete thinking, and is able to reason abstractly and logically. Piaget proposed that the main mechanisms of cognitive development are assimilation and accommodation. Assimilation is the way in which information is abstracted from the world to fit existing cognitive structures. While accommodation is the way in which cognitive structures are adjusted in order to accommodate otherwise incompatible information. According to Piaget, there is nothing special about language. Unlike Chomsky, he did not see it as a special faculty, but as a social and cognitive process just like any other. It therefore clearly has cognitive prerequisites; it is dependent on other cognitive, motor, and perceptual processes, and its development clearly follows the cognitive stages of development. Adult speech is socialized and has communicative intent, whereas early language is egocentric. Language development in children with learning difficulties A clear test of the cognition hypothesis is in an examination of the linguistic abilities of children with learning difficulties. If cognitive development drives linguistic development, then slow cognitive development should be reflected in slow linguistic development. a. Children with Down syndrome Although some children with Down’s syndrome become fully competent in their language, most do not (Fowler, Gelman, & Gleitman, 1994). At first, these children’s language development is simply delayed. Up to the age of 4, their language age is consistent with their mental age (although it is obviously behind their chronological age). After this, language age starts to lag behind mental age. In particular, lexical development is slow, and grammatical development is especially slow (Hoff- Ginsberg, 1997). Most people with Down’s syndrome never become fully competent with complex syntax and morphology. b. Children with Williams’ syndrome This rare genetic disorder leads to physical abnormalities (affected children have an “elfin-faced” appearance) and a very low IQ, typically around 50, yet the speech of such people is very fluent and grammatically correct. They are particularly fond of unusual words and their ability to acquire new words and to repeat non words is also good (Barisnikov, Van der Linden, & Poncelet, 1996). c. Children with Autism Children with autism have difficulty with social communication. Their peculiarities of language use probably arise from their lack of a theory of mind about how other people think and feel, and is unlikely to be attributable to straightforward deficits in linguistic processing (Bishop, 1997). d. Children with Specific Language Impairment (SLI) Specific language Impairment is an inherited disorder. Children with SLI show a significant limitation in language ability. They find language difficult and effortful to acquire and they have problems across a range of language tasks. Speech thought is nothing more than small motor movements of the vocal apparatus. Watson (1913) argued that thought processes are nothing more than motor habits in the larynx. Jacobsen (1932) found some evidence for this belief because thinking often is accompanied by covert speech. He detected electrical activity in the throat muscles when participants were asked to think. But is thought possible. Without these small motor movements? Smith, Brown, Thomas, and Goodman (1947) used curare to paralyze temporarily all the voluntary muscles of a volunteer (Smith, who clearly deserved to be first author on this paper). Despite being unable to make any motor movement of the speech apparatus, Smith later reported that he had been able to think and solve problems. Hence there is more to thought than moving the vocal apparatus. Main Topic 4:. Language Development Language development is a complex process that involves the development of many skills, and processes that may be important for syntactic development, for example, might be of less importance in phonological development. Below are some important contributions to language development: Imitation The simplest theory of language development is that children learn language just by imitating adult language. Although children clearly imitate aspects of adult behaviour, imitation cannot by itself be a primary driving force of language development, and particularly syntactic development. Children, to be able to properly imitate adults’ speech, require appropriate grammatical construction. Nevertheless, imitation of adult speech is still an important factor in acquiring accent, manner of speech, and in the choice of particular vocabulary items. Learning Theory In Skinner’s book Verbal Behavior (1957), he argued that language was acquired by the same mechanisms of conditioning and reinforcement that were thought at the time to govern all other aspects of animal and human behaviour. However, there were points made against this position. 1. Adults (generally) correct only the truth and meaning of children’s utterances, not the syntax (Brown & Hanlon, 1970). Indeed, attempts by adults to correct incorrect syntax and phonology usually make no difference. 2. Some words (such as “no!”) are clearly understood before they are ever produced. 3. The pattern of acquisition of irregular past verb tenses and irregular plural nouns cannot be predicted by learning theory. The sequence observed is: correct production, followed by incorrect production, and then later correct production again (Brown, 1973; Kuczaj, 1977). 4. Fourth, Chomsky (1959) argued that theoretical considerations of the power and structure of language means that it cannot be acquired simply by conditioning. 5. In phonological production, babbling is not random, and imitation is not important: the hearing babies of hearing-impaired parents babble normally. To sum up, language development appears to be strongly based on learning rules rather than simply learning associations and instances. The Role of Child-Directed Speech Can children learn language from what they hear? Chomsky showed that children acquire a set of linguistic rules or grammar. He further argued that they could not learn these rules by environmental exposure alone. The language children hear was thought to be inadequate in two ways. First, they hear a degenerate input. It is full of slips of the tongue, false starts, and hesitations. Sounds run into one another so that the words are not clearly separated. Second, there does not seem to be enough information in the language that children hear for them to be able to learn the grammar. This is known as the poverty of the stimulus argument. The first part of this argument is controversial because of research done on the special way adults, particularly mothers, talk to their children which is called child-directed speech (originally motherese). Commonly known as “baby talk”, CDS is the simplified way of talking to make speech more recognizable marked by higher pitch, more pauses, shorter utterances, more redundancy, slower speech, and is clearly segmented. Mothers using sign language also use a form of CDS when signing to their infants, repeating signs, exaggerating them, and presenting them at a slower rate (Masataka, 1996). The level of simplification in CDS is determined in two ways: linguistic hypothetical hypothesis which states that mothers in some way tailor the amount of simplification they provide depending on how much the child appears to need, and conversational hypothesis, in which what is important is the mothers’ expectation of what the child needs to know and can understand. These two were both proved correct by Cross, Johnson-Morris, and Nienhuys (1980). The controversy about the significance CDS makes in language development remains, as children does not necessarily require a syntactically and phonologically simplified input in order to be able to acquire language. What seems to be important about CDS is not merely the form of what is said to the children but, perhaps not surprisingly, the content. In particular, the children who learn fastest are those who receive the most encouragement and acknowledgement of their utterances. Questioning and directing children’s attention to the environment, and particularly to features of the environment that are salient to the child (such as repeated household activities) are also good facilitators of language development. The children who showed the most rapid linguistic development were those whose mothers both asked their children more questions and gave more extensive replies to their children’s questions (Howe, 1980). In summary, even though CDS might not be necessary for language development, it might nevertheless facilitate it. One possibility is that it serves some other function, such as creating and maintaining a bond between the adult and child. Chomsky considered it to be impossible that a child could deduce the structure of the grammar solely on the basis. The Language Acquisition Device Noam Chomsky argued that language acquisition is guided by innate constraints and is a special faculty independent of other cognitive or perceptual processes. He suggested that children acquire language at a young age, despite their limited intellectual abilities, indicating that language development is not dependent on intelligence, cognition, or experience. Chomsky posited that the language children are exposed to is insufficient for them to learn grammar solely through exposure. He introduced the concept of a Language Acquisition Device (LAD) as an innate structure aiding language learning. Later, he replaced this with the idea of universal grammar, a set of principles and parameters that constrain and guide language acquisition. For Chomsky, language is not learned but rather develops naturally. Chomsky (1981) introduced the idea of "parameter setting" in language acquisition, where universal aspects of language, or parameters, can take on different positions like switches. These parameters are set based on a child's exposure to a specific language. The Language Acquisition Device (LAD) doesn't dictate the details of individual languages but rather sets limits on how languages can vary. For instance, no known language forms questions by inverting word order from declarative sentences. The LAD can be seen as a set of switches that guide the possible grammar a child can acquire, with exposure to a particular language setting these switches. If no exposure occurs, the switches remain neutral. Language acquisition, therefore, is viewed as a process of parameter setting. The "pro-drop parameter" is a linguistic feature that determines whether a language allows dropping the pronoun in sentences. How Children Develop Language How do children learn the rules of grammar? Most narratives emphasize the relevance of induction in learning. Induction is the process of formulating a rule by generalizing from specific examples. One feature of the weakness of the stimulus argument is that children come to learn rules that cannot be taught from the input they get (Lightfoot, 1982). Gold (1967) demonstrated that the induction mechanism alone is insufficient to facilitate language learning; this is known as Gold's theorem. Bilingualism Language researchers have traditionally drawn distinctions between phenomena of “bilingualism” and the processes and features of “second language acquisition” (SLA). Accounts have generally relied upon factors of context, age of acquisition, degree of proficiency or ability, “nativeness,” or “native-likeness,” and social identity. Ability to speak two languages. It may be acquired early by children in regions where most adults speak two languages. Children may also become bilingual by learning languages in two different social settings; for example, British children in British India learned an Indian language from their nurses and family servants. Bilingualism can also refer to the use of two languages in teaching, especially to foster learning in students trying to learn a new language. Second Language Acquisition Second language acquisition, or SLA, has two meanings. In a general sense it is a term to describe learning a second language. More specifically, it is the name of the theory of the process by which we acquire - or pick up - a second language. This is mainly a subconscious process which happens while we focus on communication. It can be compared with second language learning, which describes how formal language education helps us learn language through more conscious processes. To sum it up, the main difference between Bilingualism and Second Language Acquisition is that SLA is when a person has a language that they already speak fluently and they begin to learn an additional language. Whereas, childhood bilingualism involves the child learning two languages simultaneously. Main Topic 4 Recognizing Visual Words Recognition involves identifying an item as familiar. Of course, we are not only interested in discovering how we decide if a printed string of letters is familiar or not, but also how all the information that relates to a word becomes available. In lexical access, we access the representation of an item from its perceptual representation and then this sort of information becomes available. Balota (1990) called the point in time when a person has recognized a word but not yet had access to its meaning “the magic moment”. In models with a magic moment, a word’s meaning can only be accessed after it has been recognized. Johnson Laird (1975) proposed that the depth of lexical access may vary. He noted that sometimes we retrieve hardly any information for a word. Gerrig (1986) extended this idea, arguing that there are different “modes of lexical access” in different contexts. It is an intuitively appealing idea, fitting with our introspection that sometimes when we read, we are getting very little sense from what we are reading. One important difference between the processing of spoken language and processing of visual language is that the speech signal is only available for a short time in spoken language, whereas under normal conditions, a written word is available for as long as the reader needs it. Although written language might not be as fundamental as spoken language, it is exceptionally useful. Literacy is an important feature of modern civilization. The study of word recognition should have many implications for teaching children to read, for the remediation of illiteracy, and for the rehabilitation of people with reading difficulties. Six Main Methods Used to Explore Visual Word Recognition: 1. BRAIN IMAGING The main method used is subtraction: the participant carries out one task (e.g. reading aloud) and then a variant of that task (e.g. reading silently), and the images of one are subtracted from the images of the other. You then identify where the critical difference between the two is located (e.g. here, just the vocalizing component of reading aloud). A number of techniques for examining the brain’s activity have been around for some time. These include EEG (electro encephalograms) and ERP (event-related potentials), both of which measure the electrical activity of the brain by electrodes on the scalp. Disadvantages of brain imaging are that these techniques are expensive; and their temporal and spatial resolution are currently poor. However, when the improvement of the situation occurs, these techniques could potentially tell us a number of things. In particular, they might tell us a great deal about the time course of processes, and when different sources of information are used. Suppose that in a brain scan taken during the production of a single word we find that the area responsible for processing the meaning of words becomes active, and then some time after this a different area responsible for processing the sound of words becomes active. This would suggest that when speaking, processes involving meaning and sound do not overlap. On the other hand, we might find that the meaning and sound areas overlap and become almost immediately simultaneously active. This would suggest that meaning and sound processing interact. In effect, we could plot the graphs of the time course of processing and how different types of information interact. In addition, a significant problem with current brain imaging is that the results are often difficult to interpret. Imaging will tell us where something is happening, but in itself it does not tell us how or why. Looking at how the brain works is not the same thing as looking at how the mind works. 2. EXAMINING EYE MOVEMENTS The study of eye movements has become important in helping us understand both how we recognize words and how we process larger units of printed language. 3. MEASURING NAMING Technique where participants are visually presented with a word that they then have to name, and the naming latency is measured. That is, how long does it take a participant to start to pronounce the word aloud from when it is first presented? This reaction time is typically in the order of 500 ms from the onset of the presentation of the word. 4. MEASURING LEXICAL DECISION Technique where the participant must decide whether a string of letters is a word or nonword. In the more common visual presentation method, the words are displayed on a computer screen or tachistoscope (there is also an auditory version of this task). One problem with this task is that experimenters must be sensitive to the problem of speed-accuracy trade-offs (the faster participants respond, the more errors they make; see Pachella, 1974), and therefore researchers must be careful about the precise instructions the participants are given. Encouraging participants to be accurate tends to make them respond accurately but more slowly; encouraging them to be fast tends to make them respond faster at the cost of making more mistakes. 5. MEASURING CATEGORIZATION TIMES Technique where it requires the participant to make a decision that taps semantic processes. For example, is the word “apple” a “fruit” or a “vegetable”? Is the object referred to by the word smaller or bigger than a chair? 6. TACHISTOSCOPIC IDENTIFICATION A technique where the participants are shown words for very short presentation times. Researchers in the past used a piece of equipment called a tachistoscope; now computers are often used instead, but the name is still used to refer to the general methodology. The experimenter records the thresholds at which participants can no longer confidently identify items. If the presentation is short enough, or if the normal perceptual processes are interfered with by presenting a second stimulus very quickly after the first, we sometimes find what is commonly known as subliminal perception. What Makes Word Recognition Easier (And Harder)? 1. Interfering With Identification Slowing down the process of word identification comes with making it harder to recognize the stimulus. Stimulus Degradation – The process of degrading a word’s physical appearance. It can be achieved by breaking up the letters that form the word, by reducing the contrast between the word and the background, or by rotating the word to an unusual angle. Backwards Masking – The process of presenting another stimulus immediately after the target. The two ways of doing this are energy masking (unstructured; e.g. a patch of randomly positioned black dots or just a burst of light) and pattern/feature masking (structured; e.g. comprises letters or random parts of letters). Energy masks operate on the visual feature detection level by causing a visual feature shortage and making feature identification difficult. Feature masks cause interference at the letter level and limit the time available for processing. Masking is used in studies of one of the greatest of all psycholinguistic controversies, that of perception without awareness. Perception without awareness - A form of subliminal perception. Allport (1977) and Marcel (1983a, b) found that words that have been masked to the extent that participants report they are not aware of their presence, can nevertheless produce processing. That is, we can access semantic information about an item without any conscious awareness of that item. However, the results of the techniques used are questioned by Ellis and Marshall (1978) and Williams and Parkin (1980). Holender (1986), in critically reviewing this field, emphasized the importance of titrating the level of conscious awareness for each individual participant, and ensuring that participants are equally dark-adapted during the preliminary establishing of individual thresholds and the main testing phase of the experiment. As yet it is unclear whether we can identify and access meaning-related information about words without conscious awareness, although the balance of evidence is probably that we can. Repetition Priming Repetition priming is a technique of facilitating recognition by repeating a word. Repetition facilitates both the accuracy of perceptual identification (Jacoby & Dallas, 1981) and lexical decision response times (Scarborough, Cortese, & Scarborough, 1977). Repetition has a surprisingly long-lasting effect. Repetition interacts with frequency. In a lexical decision task, repetition-priming effects are stronger for low-frequency words than for high-frequency ones, an effect known as frequency attenuation (Forster & Davis, 1984). Forster and Davis also concluded that repetition effects have two components: a very brief lexical access effect, and a long-term episodic effect, with only the latter sensitive to frequency. There has been considerable debate as to whether repetition priming arises because of the activation of an item’s stored representation (e.g. Morton, 1969; Tulving & Schachter, 1990) or because of the creation of a record of the entire processing even in episodic memory (e.g. Jacoby, 1983). An important piece of evidence that supports the episodic view is the finding that we generally obtain facilitation by repetition priming only within a domain (such as the visual or auditory modality), but semantic priming (by meaning or association) also works across domains (see Roediger & Blaxton, 1987). 1. Form-based Priming It is reasonable to expect that a word like CONTRAST should prime CONTRACT, as there is overlap between their physical forms. As they share letters, they are said to be orthographically related, and this phenomenon is sometimes known as orthographic priming or form-based priming. In fact, form-based priming is very difficult to demonstrate. Humphreys, Besner, and Quinlan (1988) found that form-based priming was only effective with primes masked at short SOAs so that the prime is not consciously perceived. Forster and Veres (1998) further showed that the efficacy of form-based primes depends on the exact makeup of the materials in the task. Form- related primes can even have an inhibitory effect, slowing down the recognition of the target (Colombo, 1986). One explanation for these findings is that visually similar words are in competition during the recognition process, so that in some circumstances similar looking words inhibit each other. 1. Frequency, Familiarity, and Age of Acquisition Commonly used words are easier to recognize and are responded to more quickly than less commonly used words. Whaley (1978) showed that frequency is the single most important factor in determining the speed of responding in the lexical decision task. Forster and Chambers (1973) found a frequency effect in the naming task: the effect of frequency is not just due to differences between frequent and very infrequent words (e.g. “year” versus “hermeneutic”) where you would obviously expect a difference, but also between common and slightly less common words (e.g. “rain” versus “puddle”). Therefore, it is essential to control for frequency in psycholinguistic experiments, ensuring that different conditions are matched. 1. Length Effects Length of a word can be measured by its number of letters, number of syllables, how long it takes to say the word, and number of phonemes. Gough (1972) argued that letters are taken out of a short-term visual buffer one-by-one at a rate of 15 ms per letter. The transfer rate is slower for poor readers. Therefore, it would not be at all surprising if long words were harder to identify than short words. However, a length effect that is independent of frequency has proved surprisingly elusive. The Relation Between Word Recognition and Object Recognition The distinction between the word-processing systems and other recognition systems can be examined most simply in the context of naming pictures of objects, the picture-naming task. One important way of looking at this is to examine the extent to which the presentation of printed words affects the processing of other types of material, such as pictures. Pictures facilitate semantically related words in a lexical decision task (Carr, McCauley, Sperber, & Parmalee, 1982; McCauley, Parmalee, Sperber, & Carr, 1980; Sperber, McCauley, Ragain, & Weil, 1979; Vanderwart, 1984). Morton (1985) discussed differences in the details of experimental procedures that might account for different findings. For example, in experiments such as Durso and Johnson (1979) the pictures were presented very clearly, whereas in Warren and Morton (1982) they were presented very briefly. Very brief presentation acts in a similar way to degrading the stimulus and produces a processing bottleneck not present in other experiments. Phonological transparency refers to the shared part sounding the same, such as in "friendly" and "friendship," while semantic transparency indicates the obviousness of the meaning from the parts, as seen in "unhappiness." Semantically transparent words are morphologically decomposed, regardless of phonological transparency, while semantically opaque words are not decomposed.