NOV 14th
What is Human Language?
A system that organizes sounds and symbols to communicate concrete or abstract meanings
What's an example of Syntax?
Lung Cancer In Women Mushrooms
REMINDER: Syntax is based on what you see and what you hear
What is the Word Frequency Effect?
What is the Context-Effect?
WFE: More frequent words are accessed faster (there are certain words in a language that are used more frequently)
CE: Words are perceived faster if it matches the context
What is the Rayner study on the interaction of syntax?
"Some say it’s not the syntax first, it’s the syntax interacting with the meaning of the word to help us with language comprehension."
EX: “The spy saw the cop with the revolver, but the cop didn’t see him”
They meant to say the spy saw a cop who had a revolver (this makes more sense: syntax first)
What if we keep the syntax and change the word from revolver to binoculars, the structure, the syntax is identical.
The reaction time is quicker for binoculars vs revolver
What's a similar example of the Buz & Jaegar study?
Pickering & Garrod Maze Study:
One student would look at what’s on the screen (a maze) the second student would be handed a sheet of paper (identical) but with a position of an x. The task is the student that knows the position of the x needs to describe and direct the first student to identify what the position is (only based on a verbal conversation)
As dialogue proceeds, interlocutors (2 conversation partners) gradually and automatically align their dialogue at many levels ranging from the phonological to the syntactic and semantic
“The way you speak to me affects the way I am going to speak to you”
1. What are Phonemes? 2. Are Phonemes exclusively related to English?
1.The smallest unit of speech sound that distinguishes one utterance in a given language from another
2. No, other languages as well
What is Pragmatics?
What's an example of Pragmatics?
Is Pragmatics top-down or bottom-up processing?
The use of language with particular contexts.
Dr. Kang's daughter, "I Kill My Daddy"
Completely top-down processing
What is Lexical Ambiguity?
LA: All possible meanings are accessed within the first 200ms (The more ambiguous a word is, the longer it takes for us to process. We measure this through reaction time)
What was the point of the Tanenhaus study? (Integration of visual and linguistic info) What did it show us?
They wanted to measure reaction time and eye gaze. They had an apparatus that measured and followed where your eyes would go on a particular stimulus.
The participants saw an image on a screen and then were given a sentence “Put the apple on the towel in the box”.
SYNTAX IS IMPORTANT BUT IT GETS INTEGRATED WITH MEANING (SO NOT JUST SYNTAX ALONE)
What is Syntactic Priming? What is the Branigan study?
SP: Responding to statements with the same syntactic structure as your conversation partner: This facilitates the understanding conversation
BS: A divider with two tables, one table a confederate (research assistant) and the participant(subject) at another. On the table there are cards with pictures on them (both tables), the task is the confederate (research assistant) would read a statement and the participant would pick up a card that bests describes the sentence.
Afterwards the subject then picks up the card and describes the picture and the confederate has to pick up a card that depicts the sentence that he or she has heard
Depending on how the subject heard what was said, they started to mimic the same sentence structure when they had to describe a picture for the confederate to identify
1. How many phonemes does the word "Things" have and why?
2. How many morphemes are in the word "Things"? What type of morphemes are they?
1. 4
2. 2 (content and function)
Language is ....
What was Chomsky's stance on language?
Learned by reinforcement and hard-coded into your genes
The environment has no impact on on your ability to acquire language, it's all genetics
What was the takehome of the "any, spy, sky" study?
When we determine the meaning of language specifically the meaning of a word, we search through all the possible meanings of that word, especially a very ambiguous word (ex: bugs: insect or surveillance device), the more ambiguous a word is the longer it takes to search one’s lexicon to determine what is the fitting meaning of that word given the particular context
What happened in the Florida State study?
Another factor that affects comprehension is VISUALIZATION
GROUP 1: (MATCHED) “The egg fried in the pan vs the egg was in the refrigerator”
GROUP 2: (MISMATCHED) Had the same pictures, but before showing the pictures they read the sentences “The egg fried in the refrigerator vs the egg was in the pan” these sentences did not match what they saw in the picture.
The reaction time was quicker for the matched and slower for the mismatched.
How do we visualize information, if it matches our language comprehension we process it faster (one facilitates the other)
Language is distinguished from other forms of communication by its and its
hierarchal structure, governing rules
1. What's a Morpheme? 2. What's Lexicon?
MOREPHEME= The shortest storage unit of language meaning (content) or grammatical function (function)
LEXICON= The entire set of morphemes in a given language
What does Psycholinguistics composed of?
What does Phonemic restoration mean?
Comprehension(Understanding), Speech Production (Create), Acquisition (Learn)
PHONEMIC RESTORATION: A perceptual illusion in which a listener hears a phoneme (speech sound), that is not actually present (example of top-down processing)
What is N400?
What is P600?
P600 = Neuron activity that spikes when the grammatical syntax is not intact (POSITIVE CHARGE)
What's another study that shows how visualization affects comprehension?
The pencil study. Participants are asked to respond to whether the object they see was mentioned in the sentence.
Sentence = “John put the pencil in the desk draw”
They then saw 2 objects (one set standing up, the other sideways)
What is a Problem?
When there is an obstacle between a present state and a goal, and it is not immediately obvious how to get around the obstacle
1. Does your Lexicon change over time?
2. What is Syntax?
1. Yes, think of this as "your vocabulary", it can increase or decrease
SYNTAX= The way in which we put words together to form sentences according to grammatical rules
What is Speech Segmentation?
What is Coarticulation?
SS: The ability to perceive individual words from a continuous speech signal (physical energy) (example of top-down processing)
C: The overlapping of phonemes and words, such that there is blending on sounds, yet comprehension is possible
What is Parsing?
What is The Garden Path Model Theory?
PARSING = A manner of grouping words in a sentence that gives it's meaning
GPM Theory= (Syntax first) Whenever we read an ambiguous sentence, we first instinctively focus on the syntax, we’re pulled by the grammar, but if it still doesn’t make sense when we read it then we revert back and turn to semantics and the context to give it meaning
What did the Buz & Jaegar study show?
Highlighted the importance that when we speak or converse there is a very adaptive element to language (the way I communicate and talk is dependent on who you are talking to)
EX: If you are holding a newborn baby (2 week old), how do you communicate with the baby? (How are you doing? Vs Aw (baby talk)
What is Sternberg's Problem Solving Cycle?
Recognize/Identify the problem (If you don’t recognize the problem there isn’t anything to solve or any difference between the current state and where you want to be)
Mentally define the problem (You have to represent the problem in your head.Saying and stating the problem in your own words (We all think and define a problem differently)
Develop solution strategy
(Any time we talk about solving a problem we have to think about how to get around the obstacle in a way that is not currency obvious to you. If it’s obvious then you don’t have a problem, it would be solved )
Organize the knowledge about the problem (EX: If you’re trying to solve senseless killing you have to figure out what are the facts, the nature of the shootings this past weekend, and is there a pattern to the victims or location. Is there a premeditated cause? These are all knowledge/facts)
Allocate mental/physical resources (Time, attention, etc)
Monitor progress toward goal (Are we getting any closer to solving the problem? Or are we taking one step forward and three steps backward?)
Evaluate the accuracy of the solution (Is the solution actually addressing the problem in which you’re trying to solve)