Language (9)

Language is a system of ___ using sounds or symbols that enables us to ___ our feelings, thoughts, ideas, and experiences

Research fields: 1. Comprehension: how do people ___ spoken and written language?

2. Speech production: how do people ___ language?

3. Representation: how is language represented in the ___ and in the ___?

4. Acquisition: how do people ___ languages?

Components of words: 1. Phonemes; ___ segment of speech that, if changed, changes the ___ of a word, refers to sounds not letters

2. Morphemes: ___ units of language that have a definable ___ or a grammatical function, e.g. truck is a morpheme and bedroom consists of two, endings such as "s" and "ed" also morphemes

The phonemic restoration effect: phonemes are ___ in speech even when the sound of the phenome is ___ up by an extranous noise, top-down

How perceiving sounds and letters is affected by meaning (Classic Study): participants listened to a recording of a sentence where one phenome was ___ with the sound of a cough, participants could later not identify the correct ___ of the cough, did not notice that the phenome was missing

People's conversation in waiting room was recorded, were presented with recordings of ___ words taken out of their own conversation, could only identify half the words --> ability to perceive words in conversations is aided by the ___ provided by the words and sentences that make up the conversation

Speech segmentation: ___ words are perceived in spoken sentences even though there are usually no ___ between words in the speech stimulus

Word superiority effect: more rapid processing of letters within a ___, letters in words are not processed one by one but each letter is affected by the ___ within which it appears, FORK vs. RFOK

The word frequency effect: our ___ experiences with words influences our ability to access their ___

Classic Study: recording of eye ___ while reading sentences with high- or low-___ target words, results showed that readers looked at ___-frequency words about 40ms longer than ___-frequency words --> readers needed more time to access the ___ of the low-frequency words

Lexical ambiguity: the existence of ___ word meanings, some with higher ___, comprehension depends on context

Semantics: the ___ of words and sentences

Syntax: the ___ for combining words into sentences

Semantics and syntax are affected by damage to different brain areas: damage in the Broca area affects ___ and damage in the Wernicke area affects ___ ---> processed by different brain areas

Interactionist approach to parsing: the idea that information provided by both ___ and ___ is taken into account ___ as we read or listen to a sentence, active role of the reader who is continuously ___ what words will come up next

Words in a sentence can affect processing of ___ sentences (the spy saw the man with the binoculars vs. the bird saw the man with the binoculars)

Making predictions based on world knowledge (Classic Study): people had to complete ___ sentences, most people responded with the same word due to the meaning of the sentences and the ___ regarding the context

Information in ___ scene can affect processing of an ambiguous sentence

Making predictions based on knowledge of language constructions (Classic Study): participants read sentences by seeing one word at a time on a screen, to view the next word the participants had to push the space bar, ambiguous vs. unambigious, words in ___ sentences took longer to read but after repitition, the ambiguity effect ___

Temporary ambiguity can be caused by ___ and can be changed by ___

Making inferences: people infer ___ that extends beyond the wording of a sentence

Anaphoric inference: inferences that connect an ___ or ___ in one sentence to an ___ or ___ in another sentence ("Rififi won the dog show. She has now won 3 shows.", we infer that "she" refers to Rififi)

Instrument inference: inferences about ___ or ___ ("William Shakespeare wrote Hamlet while we has sitting at his desk", we infer from our knowledge that he was using a quil pen, not a laptop)

Causal inference: inferences that the events described in one sentence were ___ by the events that occurred in a ___ sentence ("Sharon took an aspirin. Her headache went away")

Situation model: a mental ___ of what a ___ is about

Mental representation as simulations: person ___ the ___ and ___ characteristics of the objcets and actions in a story

Classic Study: participants read a sentence that describes a situation involving an object (bird flying away), next they should indicate as quickly as possible whether a picture ___ the object mentioned in the sentence, reaction times were ___ when the picture matched the ___ described in the sentence (bird sitting vs. bird flying)

The Given-New Contract states that a ___ should construct sentences so that they include two kinds of information: given information (information that the listener ___ knows) and new information ---> ___ information in first sentence becomes ___ information in second sentence

Common ground: the speakers' ___ knowledge, beliefs, and assumptions

Classic Study: participants had to ___ 16 cards with NY buildings in groups of two in three trials, on each successive trial participants needed ___ words to sort the pictures --> established common ground, high percentage of name references were used when both participants were NY residents

Syntactic Priming: when two people exchange statements in a ___, it is common for them to use ___ ___ constructions