Basics of Language
What is a morpheme?
Sentences can be more difficult to understand if they have: (4 answers)
Negatives
Passive voice
Complex syntax
Ambiguous meanings/words
What is neurolinguisitics?
Discipline that examines how brain processes language
What is the dual-route approach to reading?
Readers use both direct and indirect access routes to reading
What is discourse?
Interrelated language units that are larger than a sentence
What is the difference between syntax and pragmatics?
Syntax is examining the meaning of words, phrases, and sentences.
Pragmatics is knowledge of the rules that govern language (not grammar)
What is lexical ambiguity?
Fact that a single word can have multiple meanings.
What is Broca's area and what does damage to it cause?
Broca's area is an area in the front of the brain responsible for speech production
Damage typically results in hesitant speech with isolated words and short phrases (not the only symptoms possible)
What is the difference between direct- and indirect-access routes?
Direct-access recognizes directly through vision without sounding out words
In indirect access, people often translate visual stimuli into sound before reading
How do we understand discourse? (4)
Using context
Expectations
Interactions of bottom-up and top-down processing
Draw Inferences
What does it mean if a sentence is ambiguous?
The sentence can have the same surface structure but different meanings.
"She hit the man with the umbrella."
What is incremental interpretation?
We do not wait until the end of an entire sentence is spoken before making judgments about what it means
What is Wernicke's area and what does damage to it cause?
Wernicke's area is an area in the back of the brain responsible for understanding language
Damage typically results in trouble understanding speech and also language production (not the only possibilities)
The phonics approach is most in-line with which route?
Indirect
How do test anxiety and reading comprehension interact?
If you believed in the cognitive-functional approach, what would be believe?
That the function of human language is to communicate meaning to others
People are more to pick one meaning over another when:
(1) one meaning is more common than the other
(2) rest of the sentence is consistent with that meaning
Which hemisphere of the brain is responsible for resolving ambiguities?
Both
What is the recommenced approach that educators take when teaching reading?
A compromise of both methods
What is the relationship between metacomprehension and young children?
Young children do not have appropriate cognitive skills for metacomprehension
What did Tomasello's research discover?
Children have powerful cognitive and social learning skills that interact with language.
What did Tonenhaus and colleagues discover?
Context could exert early influence on how one interpreted the grammar of sentences
These context effects were not limited to linguistic content
Describe the mirror system.
The mirror system is a network of neurons in the brain's motor cortex. They are activated when watching someone perform an action
What is the whole-language approach?
Reading instruction should emphasize meaning and be enjoyable to increase enthusiasm about learning to read
How does Huitema et al.'s research support the constructivist view of inferences?
Readers try to connect material in passage, and consult long-term memory, then try to construct an internally consistent representation