Properties of Language
The goal of communication is to have speakers and listeners match on the linguistic level. The goal of psycholinguistics is to...
Generate knowledge about how the physiological and acoustic levels occur between the speakers and listeners so that we can better understand how these linguistic levels are able to match or why they don't in some cases
What is the difference between localization and lateralization?
Localization refers to the specialization of particular brain areas for particular functions and lateralization refers to the specialization of function to one side of the brain or another.
T or F: fMRI is a direct measure of brain activity based on hemodynamic changes
False; indirect!
Since speech is a continuous stream, babies must rely on what to segment words by means of bottom-up processing?
Transitional Probabilities
low probability (between words) and high probability (within words)
If you have two alternatives, you should have how many logic statements?
2
should always be the same number and based on narrow question
Sarah places her hands far apart to indicate that something is big. Unlike this type of gesture, the fact that sounds [dɔg] refer to the canis lupus familiaris species in English exemplifies that language is....
Symbolic/Non-Iconic
Lenny, who has a severed corpus callosum, is presented a cookie in his right visual field. Will he be able to name it? Why?
Yes, the object presented in his right visual field with be processed by his left hemisphere which is responsible for language processing. If the object was in his left visual field, however, he wouldn't be able to name it since the signal would be transmitted to his right brain (not responsible for language) and have no bridge (corpus callosum) to pass it over to the left hemisphere.
This type of brain activity measuring technique provides real-time information about the TIME COURSE of cognitive processing
ERPs (Event-Related Potential)
Fricatives, affricates, and nasals are examples of what dimension for which sounds can vary?
Manner of Articulation
What is the difference between a broad and narrow/specific question?
Broad: open-ended; cannot be answered within the context of one study; bigger picture problem
Narrow/specific: close-ended to the extent that the alternatives provide mutually exclusive and collectively exhaustive responses/potential outcomes for the present study; what is this particular study interested in
The sentence...
"The baby who ate the clementine that was given to them by their mother who was now on the couch that they recently bought which was on the carpet."
demonstrates:
Recursion
Before a child can even say words, they will make different types of vocalizations. One of these vocalizations is called babbling. You are doing an experiment about babbling in 5-month-olds. If the movements that are required to babble are only just motor flexing, you would observe...
Equal mouth opening on both sides for babbling as smiling
Say you ask an individual with FOCAL damage to Broca's area to participate in a verbal fluency task, which category would they find the easiest to produce responses:
Sodas
Beverages
Pets
Those with Focal Broca's damage struggle with
low word agreement/association (finding words out of more choices)
So if you limit their choices/competition, like "sodas" vs. all "beverages" they can successfully retrieve words within it like Sprite, Coke, root beer, but broader categories like "pets" are extremely difficult ("Uh... I can't...").
You are given the sentence the "the ___eel is on the car" with white noise in the space. What will the participant likely say they heard despite not hearing all the phonemes?
"Wheel"; phoneme restoration effect
_____ refers to interpreting information starting from the input/signal itself. Whereas, _______ uses world knowledge, expectations, and context to inform the input.
Bottom-up processing
Top-Down processing
"Ghoti" can never be the same as "fish" in English despite all of these sounds making the same sounds as "fish" in particular contexts. What does this demonstrate about language?
Language is rule-governed- discrete combinatory system
The word "cat" is played in the left ear and the word "bat is played in the right ear. What will the participant be more likely to hear?
"Bat"
Which of these sentences would be difficult for Broca's aphasics? Why?
A. The banana that the boy is eating is yellow.
B. The girl who the boy is pushing is tall.
C. The girl read the book.
B. The girl who the boy is pushing is tall.
When syntax IS necessary --> they struggle ❌
- The girl who the boy is pushing is tall. (non-linear)
- The man bit the mosquito.
VS. When sentences do NOT require syntax ✅ --> no problem! (Non-ambiguous/context-dependent)
Like A. and C.
The fact that we can determine the difference between the initial sound in "pat" and "bat" despite there being only a millisecond VOT difference, but not the "p" sound in "pat" and "top" demonstrates what problem in speech perception?
Lack of invariance
Olivia is a infant participating in a psycholinguistics study. She hears her name in the phrase "Olivia's doll" and is able to segment the speech and isolate the new word unit: doll.
This demonstrates that babies, like adults, also rely on this kind of processing...
Infants rely on top-to-bottom processing, using the words they’re familiar with to signal where to pay more attention/segment words.
In English, the word for a certain smart and playful sea mammal is "dolphin." However, in my language/dialect, the name for this creature is "lumba-lumba." What property of language does this example demonstrate?
Language is arbitrary
A patient whose corpus callosum has been severed participates in a task where they have to name an object as well as pull an object from either their left or right visual field. They aren't able to name the object in their left visual field, but they are able to pick the object up. What do the results from the SEARCH task indicate?
This suggests that there is not a global knowledge deficit in the right hemisphere that is preventing the patient from naming the object.
You are participating in an ERP experiment, with electrodes all over your scalp. You're asked to read this sentence one word at a time:
1. I brushed my teeth and combed my unruly lamp.
2. I brushed my teeth and combed my unruly HAIR.
3. I brushed my teeth and combs my unruly hair.
What kind of ERP response would each of these elicit?
N400 - semantic manipulation (indexes ease of accessing lexical items, or words, in context)
P300 - physical manipulation (unexpected non-linguistic stimuli like font size)
P600 - syntactic manipulation (abnormal sentence grammar)
If a Chinese-learning 4-day newborn (was exposed to Chinese in utero) is first presented the following:
1. Chinese and German
2. English and Hindi
For which of the two conditions will they be successful in distinguishing between the presented languages?
Condition 1: Chinese and German
Newborns can pick out their native language but cannot distinguish between non-native languages as shown by Mehler et al. (1988)'s study with the French learning babies.
What are the components of a good logic statement?
1. an Alternative; “If A1 is true…”
2. Manipulated variable - IV; "when we do __"
IN RELATIONSHIP TO:
3. Outcome as measure of behavior -DV; "we should expect __ to happen”