Language
Language allows us to know how octopuses make love and how to remove cherry stains and why Tad was heartbroken, and whether the Red Sox will win the World Series without a good relief pitcher and how to build an atom bomb in your basement and how Catherine the Great died, among other things. --Steve Pinker
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Language
What is it? (cognitive psychology definition)
A system of communication in which thoughts (ideas) are transmitted by means of organized sound (speech and music) or symbols (written words/notation and gestures)
What properties characterize language:
Communicative: language permits us to communicate with each other Arbitrarily Symbolic: Language creates an arbitrary relationship between a symbol and its referent: an idea, thing, process, relationship or description
By consensual agreement, a particular combination of sounds/letters are meaningful to us different languages use different words to refer to the same thing (Merde, Scheiße)
Regularly Structured: Language has a structure (syntax)– only particular patterned arrangements of symbols have meaning, different arrangements = different meanings adlfnaskdfasdf The cat chased the dog. The dog chased the cat. Structured at Multiple Levels: Language can be analyzed at more than one level (sound, meaning units, words, phrases and sentences)
Generative and Productive: within limits of linguistic structure, language users can create virtually limitless new utterances. say a sentence that no one has ever said before Dynamic: Language constantly evolves (On 6/15/06, the verb ―googling‖ was added to Webster’s dictionary)
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Language
Why study it?
Represents a unique kind of abstraction (very high in humans) that is basic to cognition Important component of information processing and storage (for some, it IS knowledge) The vehicle for other, higher cognitive processes (problem-solving, thinking, etc.)
The basis for human communication
Influential on perception processes Word and speech processing engages particular parts of the brain (links to neuroscience) Universal: regardless of nation, color, gender, culture, etc– develop and spontaneously use it!– no other species spontaneously uses a combinatorially complex language system close to human language
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Language
Who Studies it?
Neurolinguists:
specialists who study the relationship between cognition, language and the brain
specialists who study the relationship between psychology and language
Psycholinguists:
Goal= create models of language (content, structure, process) Use Linguistic hierarchies– descriptive frameworks from fundament components to compound components to very complex components Phonemes-- morphemes-- syntax -- transformational grammar
Arguably humans greatest hierarchy = writing systems that reflect speech and covey thought
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Linguistics (study of language)
What main areas are studied?
Words and their associated meaning:
English= 10 symbols for digits, 26 symbols for letters Humans have hundreds of thousands of words in our working vocabulary Many more may be understood
When I saw him across the crowded bar, he enkindled such passion in my heart!
More constantly being generated (dissed, online, snail-mail, mouse potato)
Word meaning– Let’s ROLL!
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Word meaning– Let’s ROLL!
move by turning over or rotating; "The child rolled down the hill" occur in soft rounded shapes; "The hills rolled past" roll out: flatten or spread with a roller; "roll out the paper" emit, produce, or utter with a deep prolonged reverberating sound; "The thunder rolled"; "rolling drums" a list of names; "his name was struck off the rolls" wind: wrap or coil around; "roll your hair around your finger" roller: a long heavy sea wave as it advances towards the shore photographic film rolled up inside a container to protect it from light begin operating or running; "The cameras were rolling" shape by rolling; "roll a cigarette" execute a roll, in tumbling; "The gymnasts rolled and jumped" bankroll: a roll of currency notes (often taken as the resources of a person or business etc.); "he shot his roll on a bob-tailed nag" bun: small rounded bread either plain or sweet hustle: sell something to or obtain something from by energetic and especially underhanded activity peal: a deep prolonged sound (as of thunder or large bells) move in a wavy pattern or with a rising and falling motion; "the waves rolled towards the beach" move about aimlessly or without any destination, often in search of food or employment; "They rolled from town to town" move, rock, or sway from side to side; "The ship rolled on the heavy seas" cause to move by turning over or in a circular manner of as if on an axis; "They rolled their eyes at his words" cast: the act of throwing dice pronounce with a roll, of the phoneme /r/; "She rolls her r's" walking with a swaying gait seethe: boil vigorously; "The water rolled" a flight maneuver; aircraft rotates about its longitudinal axis without changing direction or losing altitude Roll is a female video game character in the Mega Man series in its many continuities, and is largely considered to be the female lead in many of them. coins packaged by banks or dealers in a paper wrapper; ―A roll of dimes‖ Web of paper. Paper wound around a core or shaft to form a continuous roll or web of paper. Technique used to right a capsized kayak utilizing a hip snap and paddle stroke. Caused when cornering. As a car negotiates a left hand bend, the car leans to the right due to g-forces. Also called body roll. To move on the starting blocks prior to the starting signal. A roll is usually caught by the starter and called a false start, but swimmers will often try to guess the starter's cadence and get a good start. Similar to illegal procedure in football. Credit rolls consist of video text moving vertically up or down the screen, usually from bottom to top.
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Linguistics (study of language)
What main areas are studied?
Grammar:
The ways of combining words into phrases and sentences Three areas of study:
Phonology
The combinations of sounds of a language
The combination of bits of words and words into larger units The combination of words into phrases and sentences (includes Grammar)
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Morphology
Syntax
Linguistics
Phonemes
Phone- smallest unit of speech sound, part of language or not [click of tongue, pop of cheek]
Basic unit of spoken language Smallest speech sound distinguishable from another in a language
English has about 40 phonemes—but about 9 of those are used the most frequently (make up more than half the words)
examples: ee (heat), sh (shell), aw (call), m (me), ng (sing), p (pea), i (hit)
Other languages have 15-85 phonemes
Produced by lungs, vocal cavities, larynx, lips, tongue, and teeth
Voiced: speech sounds produced by lungs, thorax, tongue that include vibration of vocal cord (example a or z)
Unvoiced: speech sounds that do not use vocal cords (s in hiss) Fricatives: produced by restricting air passage in the mouth ( sh, f, v, th) Plosives or stops: produced by interrupting the flow of air for a brief period (p, d, t)
Have no meaning themselves alone!
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Linguistics
Morphemes
Smallest unit of meaning Words, parts of words, prefixes, suffixes, etc. Adults have about 80,000 stored to make hundred of thousand words in their working vocabulary Lexicon: entire set of morphemes your store
The old chemist loved joyful sound. the and old = free/content morphemes (stand alone) chemist, joyful, loved = combination of a free/content morpheme and bound/function morpheme chem & ist joy & ful love & ed
By combining morphemes, can generate untold millions of words Composition of morphemes governed by linguistic constraints Example: in English, no more than 3 consonants may start a syllable (usually less than 2); certain letters (q and d, j & z) never appear together Linguistic constraints plus built-in redundancy act to minimize errors in transmission and decoding
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Linguistics
Syntax The systematic way in words can be combined and sequenced to make meaningful phrases and sentences. Focuses on the study of grammar (rules/ patterned relations) of phrases and sentences, how words are categorized (nouns, verbs, etc) and combined
Productivity Infinite number of sentences, phrases, utterances that are possible in a language billions and billions of sentences possible only limited by time and imagination= you are creative any time you use language! As new theories are proposed, language gives us a way of expressing them; as new inventions are created, language expands to allow us to name them. A true language is not limited to a finite number of ideas or a finite number of ways of expressing those ideas. Regularity Systematic nature of the sentences (―The boy hit the ball‖ rather than ―ball boy The hit the‖) O, S, V S, V, O Grammar — the set of rules that governs the regular patterns of language
Prescriptive: prescribes the ―correct‖ way to structure language Descriptive: attempt to describe the structures, functions and relationship of words in language ―Daddy, what did you bring that book that I don’t want to be read to out of up for?
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Linguistics
Syntax
Humans seem to have some automatic mental mechanism for classifying words according to syntactical categories that is separate from the meaning of the words: People recognize syntactical structure (S, V, O) immediately– even in the absence of meaning ―Colorless green ideas sleep furiously.‖
Correct grammar? (not meaning)
1.The student the book. 2.Bought the book. 3.Bought the student the student. 4.The book was bought by the student. 5.By whom was the book bought? 6.By student the book bought. 7.The student was bought by the book. 8.Who bought the book. 9.The book bought the student. 10.The book bought.
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People show syntactic priming of sentence structures use similar syntax for what we just heard [―The student was praised by the professor‖ respond with ―The job the student did was good‖] Speech errors– switch nouns for nouns, verbs for verbs [―I put the book on the shelf‖ not ―I put the book shelf on the‖] When composing sentences, we parse= assign parts of speech (noun, verb, etc) and the use rules to construct sequences for the components (all stored with word meaning in mental lexicon)
JABBERWOCKY Lewis Carroll (from Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There, 1872)
`Twas brillig, and the slithy toves Did gyre and gimble in the wabe: All mimsy were the borogoves, And the mome raths outgrabe. "Beware the Jabberwock, my son! The jaws that bite, the claws that catch! Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun The frumious Bandersnatch!" He took his vorpal sword in hand: Long time the manxome foe he sought -So rested he by the Tumtum tree, And stood awhile in thought.
One, two! One, two! And through and through The vorpal blade went snicker-snack! He left it dead, and with its head He went galumphing back. ―And, has thou slain the Jabberwock? Come to my arms, my beamish boy! O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!' He chortled in his joy. `Twas brillig, and the slithy toves Did gyre and gimble in the wabe; All mimsy were the borogoves, And the mome raths outgrabe.
And, as in uffish thought he stood, The Jabberwock, with eyes of flame, Came whiffling through the tulgey wood, And burbled as it came!
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Chomsky’s Theory of Grammar
Transformational grammar
The short hippopotamus saw the tall giraffe. The tall giraffe was seen by the short hippopotamus. It was the short hippopotamus who saw the tall giraffe.
True meaning of sentence prevails despite rearrangement and alternation of words/morphemes Seems to be no real end to ability to vary the means of saying the same thing– rules underlying this process is transformational grammar Speech and language not passive, repetitive pattern activity Cannot be explained in S-R terms Instead, language is productive and generative– each sentence is a creative product that is readily understood by speaker and listener even though novel to both!
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Chomsky’s Theory of Grammar Phrase Structure
S NP D Adj The short N N hippopotamus saw V art the VP NP adj tall N giraffe
Sentence parsed into subject and predicate as noun phrase and verb phrase w/in noun phrase are determiner, adjective and noun; w/in verb phrase are verb and noun phrase which contains article, adjective and noun. A = B; B = A 4X = 8; X= 8/4 AB = XY (2X + N); XY= AB/ (2X + N) Same kind of rules can be applied S = NP + VP NP = D + N VP = V + NP
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Chomsky’s Theory of Grammar
Four important aspects:
Surface structure — that part of the actual sentence that can be segmented and labeled by parsing Deep structure — underlying abstract form that contains the grammatical (regular pattern) relationships between the words and phrases within a sentence Transformational rules — those that turn one structure into the other The jock pursued the sorority girl. The sorority girl was pursued by the jock.
Both have same deep structure, but surface structure differs and transformational rules relate the two
Transformational grammar — details the laws that govern this process
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Phrase Structures and Propositions
The short hippopotamus saw the tall giraffe. The tall giraffe was seen by the short hippopotamus. It was the short hippopotamus who saw the tall giraffe.
Three main Propositions: Hippopotamus is short Giraffe is tall Hippopotamus saw giraffe
Phrase-Structure rewrite rule theories or grammars provide clues for how to use syntactic knowledge to extract the propositions from the surface structure of a sentence. The same underlying propositions can be contained in a variety of surface forms generated by different combinations of rewrite rules (and transformational rules that convert trees like the one given earlier into other trees).
In addition to these linguistic arguments for phrase structures, there are a variety of psychological studies showing that they are used in language processing. For example, if part of the sentences are presented on different lines not broken at major constituent boundaries The short hippopotamus saw the tall giraffe they take longer to read than if they are broken at those boundaries The short hippopotamus saw the tall giraffe Also, if this sentence is read one word at a time (off a screen hitting a button for the next word) then the longest pauses occur at the major boundaries of the individual phrases
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Language and Thought
Four arguments regarding the connection:
Thought IS language [covert, sub-vocal] (Behaviorism-- Watson,
Skinner)
Human cognitive abilities (in particular perception) depends in various ways on language (Sapir/Whorf) Language depends on general human cognitive facilities
(Anderson)
Language and thought are two independent cognitive systems (Chomsky, Pinker, Fodor)
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Thought IS language
Behaviorism= no such thing as internal mental activity at all (Watson) Thought consists only of covert speech and other implicit motor actions
When people engaged in ―thinking‖ activities really talking to themselves Argues if can’t record sub-vocalizations, we think with our whole body– for instance, hands (signing in sleep)
However, research (1947) where they paralyzed the participant, subject was able to observe what was going on, comprehend speech, remember & think about events– so thought shown to not be just implicit speech – is truly an internal, non-motor activity
Suggests dependence of thought on language may be an illusion derived from the fact that it is hard to obtain thought without using language
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Human cognitive abilities depends in various ways on language
Linguistic-Relativity or Linguistic Determinism (also called Whorfian Hypothesis– more correctly Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis)
Assertion that speakers of different languages have different cognitive systems and these different cognitive systems influence how various people think about the world.
Claim that language determines our perception and conceptualization of reality Language shapes thought
Does not claim thought is language (behaviorism) but that thought depends on language
Physical reality is translated, according to specific language codes, into a perception– thus, language affects the way we conceive reality, process information, and store things in memory and recall
Whorf studied different languages–idea is that rich variety of word would cause the speaker to perceive world differently ( have a more complex mental representation) than person who only had single a word for a category
Hanunoo people of Philippines have 92 names for varieties of rice Arabic language has 20 names for type of camels
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Human cognitive abilities depends in various ways on language
Linguistic-Relativity
Major research area on color names (late 60s, early 70s)– all have same visual apparatus
(same physiological ability to see colors and make color discriminations), so mental
processing of colors suspected of being due to difference among language codes
English= 11 basic color words (short & used frequently)
Black, white, red, green, yellow, blue, brown, purple, pink, orange, gray
Dani (Indonesian New guinea) = 2 color words
Mili (dark, cold hues) and Mola (bright, warm hues)
Q= if categories of language determine perception, do Dani perceive color in a less refined manner than English speakers? A= despite differences in language for colors, Dani & English speakers shown to perceive colors in same ways (11 focal colors specially processed by visual system)
Other Studies– comparing Navajo verbs and matching tasks, English and other languages with less color names found similar non-difference
These studies and others= evidence tends NOT to support extreme view that language determines thought
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Human cognitive abilities depends in various ways on language
Linguistic-Relativity
BUT evidence DOES support milder form
Language does not determine but CAN and DOES influence
perception
Research on Droodles Research on ambiguous figures
Language effects encoding, storage and retrieval in memory
Eyewitness testimony influenced by wording of questioning Verbal and written statement later influenced recall– participants remembered what they had previously said/written rather than what they had seen •Misunderstanding between people who speak other languages can occur because of differences in parsing
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Language depends on general human cognitive facilities
This argument suggest that the structure of language is determined by the structure of thought
Aristotle argued 2500 years ago that categories of thought determine categories of language
Human ability to think (remember, problem solve, etc.) appear earlier evolutionary and occur sooner developmentally that the ability to use language
Many species without language appear to be capable of complex cognition Before being verbal, children give clear evidence of relatively complex cognition
Here, language is viewed as a tool that arose as a way to communicate thought– language shaped, like other tools, to fit objects (thoughts) on which is must operate
Evidence:
Linguistic structure (phrase) matches simple assertions (propositions)– clear example of dependence of language on thought From earlier color name research– human verbal system maximally sensitive to certain colors and as a consequence, have special short, high frequency words which determine these colors (visual system determines how English language divides up color spectrum) Word order research– every language has preferred word order for expressing subject, verb, object (English = SVO language) – only 4 of 6 possible word orders used (and one rarely) in world languages
In may ways, the structure of language corresponds to the structure of how our minds process the world. (Anderson)
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Language and thought are two independent cognitive systems
Modularity Position (Chomsky, Fodor- early 80’s)
Holds that language (both its acquisition and processing) is a separate cognitive component that functions separately (is independent) from other cognitive systems Separate linguistic module first analyses incoming speech and the passes this analysis on to general cognition Language generation– linguistic module takes the intentions to be spoken and produces speech Position does not deny that linguistic module may have been shaped to communicate thought– however argues that it operates according to a different set of principles and as such cannot be influences by general cognition– is only passing and receiving of their products between 2 systems
Evidence: people who have substantial deficits in language but not general cognitive ability and vise versa (Williams syndrome [rare genetic disorder] produces mental retardation but does not affect linguistic fluency)
Has become major dividing issue in field with 2 main domains of research – language acquisition & language comprehension
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Language Acquisition
With very little and often no deliberate instruction-- children by age 10 implicitly have accomplished what generations of Ph.D. linguists have not accomplished explicitly– they have internalized all the major rules of
a natural language (appears to be thousands of rules with subtle
interactions)
No linguist has yet to been able to formulate a grammar for any language that will identify all and only the grammatical sentences
Yet children have such a grammar
Cannot be articulated– is implicit knowledge (procedural) that can only be displayed through language use
Language = in-born support modified by the environment innately guided learning
Anderson
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Language Acquisition
Universality (regardless of native language)
Children are noisy from birth
Cooing– mostly vowel sounds
Usually starts with ―ah‖ sound– differing intensity and differing emotional tones
Indistinguishable across babies and language (also, deafness)
By age 6 months, engage in babbling
Rich variety of speech sounds with intonation patterns set to specific language Both vowels and consonants but totally meaningless to listeners Deaf infants no longer vocalize
Children produce sounds that they will not use in the particular language they will learn Can make acoustic discriminations among sounds not used in the language they will learn (why learning 2nd language younger is good)
Japanese infants can discriminate between /i/ and /r/, while Japanese adults cannot English infants can discriminate variations of /t/ sounds important for the Hindi language that English adults cannot Up to 8 months, infants can distinguish between 869 phonemes. After 8 months, brain starts to reorganize and becomes sensitive to sounds of native language (English language only has 59 different phonemes from the original 869 possible) [Gibbs, 2002]
Anderson
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Language Acquisition
Universality (regardless of native language)
Around age 1– first word spoken
Early words refer to here and now Speech only consists of one-word utterances even though know more than one word Use one word to convey whole thought (called holophrases) Often overextend word (dog used for any furry animal, DaDa for any man) One-word stage lasts about 5 months
Around 1.5-2.5 years– children put 2 words together
About 2 dozen semantic relations (agent- action [me go!], agent-object [me car!], action-object [car drive!], object-location [me park!], etc. Word order corresponds to one of the correct word orders (grammatically) in adult speech for native language
No corresponding 3 word stage- children start speaking in varied length (3-8 words)
Starts with specific quality, sometimes referred to as telegraphic– resembles old telegraph messages– omit unimportant function words like the and is
“Put truck window.”; “Want more grape juice.” Approximate adult speech by producing ever larger and more complex constructions
Language development is characterized not by learning more kinds of sentences but by sentences becoming gradually better approximations of adult sentences
Anderson
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Language Acquisition
Universality (regardless of native language) Language mastered by age 6, still pick up detail until at least age 10
Children master language at a very young age and with little direct instruction!
Research shows children do not get much direct instruction and ignore most of what
they get
Learning task one of induction– infer from utterances that they hear what is acceptable in their language However, children also appear to be capable of learning language in absence of
input (deaf children learn sign language, often make up own sign language that
have the normal structure of language, invented signing goes through stages outlined earlier)
Children seem to be born with a propensity to communicate and will learn a language no matter what!
Been used to argue that the way we learn language is different from the way we learn other cognitive skills (2 independent systems) Also, children learn 1st language when other intellectual abilities are still weak
Anderson
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Chomsky’s Theory of Language Acquisition
Language is innate and universal
Idea that learning a language would be impossible unless we possessed some innate information about the possible structure of natural human languages
Problem: discover grammar of language (constraints about types of phrase structures and transformations possible) when only given instances of utterances of language Compare to finding a matching sock (language) from a huge pile of socks (set of possible languages)
One can use various features (utterances) of the sock to determine if any particular
sock in the pile is a matching one If the sock pile was big enough and the socks similar enough, the task would be impossible Enough formally possible grammars are similar enough to make it impossible to
learn every possible instance of a formal language
However, because we learn language (young, easily), Chomsky argues we must have special innate knowledge that allows us to substantially restrict the number of possible grammars to consider– like knowing ahead of time which part of the sock pile to inspect
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Language Acquisition
Universality (regardless of native language) Also nurture side
Imitation–
Children mimic language patterns of others (especially parents)
Modeling
Adults seem to go out of their way to demonstrate correct formats for verbal interactions (intonation, turn-taking, try hard to understand early utterances)
Across cultures use child-directed speech, motherese
Conditioning
Children associate words with desired objects (―Cookie‖) or actions ―Play‖
However, nurture alone not enough to explain productivity of language– so, combination of nature and nurture at play!
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Critical Period for Language Acquisition
Claim that younger children appear to acquire a second language faster than older
children/adults
Critical period cited as 2-11 years (some say 2-6) However, systematic research suggest that older children (11+) and adults learn 2nd language faster than younger children
Issue related to age is instead about the level of mastery
Children develop better skill at finer points of language (phonology & morphology) Grammar seems to be particularly sensitive to the critical period Ability to speak 2nd language without accent goes down as age goes up 1st language acquisition-- Deaf adults who learn sign language in adulthood achieve
poorer mastery than children who learn it.
After the age of about 11, children start losing the ability to acquire a new language to high levels of proficiency
Anderson
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Language Comprehension
Comprehension: Extraction of meaning Consists of a perceptual stage, a parsing stage and a utilization stage
Perceptual stage: processes by which spoken (acoustic) or written message is originally encoded Parsing stage: process by which the words in the message are transformed into a mental representation of the combined meaning of the words Utilization stage: where comprehenders use the mental representation of the sentence’s meaning (to make inferences)
The 3 stages are ordered in time but can overlap
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Perceptual Stage for spoken language
Can perceive as many as 50 phonemes per second BUT we perceive only about 1 phone per second of non-speech. [does not make sense!]
Answer lies in Coarticulation:
Phonemes/other sound units are produced in a way that overlaps them in time [one or more phonemes begin while other phoneme are still being produced]
Phonemes in words overlap Boundaries between words in continuous speech tend to overlap
Considered necessary for effective transmission of speech
Speech perception considered different from other types of perception because of way information must be encoded for effective transmission Question as to whether different from other types of auditory perception
Ordinary View: speech is just like other forms of perceptional processing– regular acoustic signal
Emphasizes template matching/feature detection processes (analyze components, match to template) but with higher level decision making above and beyond, too. Note: cognitive and contextual factors can influence perception of actual sensed signal
Phoneme restoration (similar to visual closure) : ―It was found that the *eel was on the axle/shoe/table/orange.‖
Apply Gestalt principles of proximity, similarity, etc.
Specialized View: speech is perceived by separate, special processes– special phonetic messages
Categorical Perception: actually hear continuum of variation in sound waves but experience discontinuous categories of speech sounds (does not apply to non-speech sounds such as tone)
BA today, BA tomorrow
BABA
BADA
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Perceptual Stage for written language
Perceptual Span: How much information can be perceived during a brief presentation Visual acuity is best for images that fall on part of retina called Fovea (small indentation on the back center of eye that is densely packed with cones, 0-2 degrees on center)
More removed from fovea, less clear perception (try focusing on one letter- some letters on either side seen clearly but letters/words only a few degrees away fuzzy and peripheral unrecognizable)
Despite acuity drop off sharply from fovea, identification of letters/words out side fovea vision occurs during normal course of reading •Fovea information clearly detected and sent to brain for further Parafoveal processing •Information in parafoveal & near peripheral partially encoded Foveal depending on distance from fixation point •Recognition in non-fovea field must be attributed to something other than physical stimulation of the retina *Important task of verbal processing Near Peripheral system = make semantic sense of familiar lines and curve and fill in the gaps from the information detected and derive the ultimate meaning intended by the writer
Peripheral
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Perceptual Stage
Research has found that good readers detect letter and word shape information from a limited area of 17-19 character spaces from a fixation point (5 degrees) Studies of reading process seem to reflect a person’s capability to form hypotheses rapidly about that requires only the confirmation or denial of expectation rather than the detailed feature analysis of each letter Subjects move eyes forward to confirm hypothesis (most frequent occurrence) or disconfirm hypothesis (needs more processing) Word perception is influenced by past n_t_r_ human experience– reading is and active process in which we m_m_r_ long-term search for perceptual objects that already have p_rs_n_l_t_ traits their representation in memory
Reading very much relies on Top-down Processing!
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Perceptual Stage
Lexical Decision Task: A type of priming task Designed to study contextual effects on word identification Pairs of words are presented and the participant determines whether or not they are real words. Reaction time for identifying the second word as a real word was faster when the first word is associated (BREAD-BUTTER vs. BREAD-NURSE) Explained as a result of semantic networking
Suggests we activate a rich chain of associative reactions that are used to understand the thing being perceived
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Parsing Stage
Input is broken into smaller, more distinct chunks of information that can be more easily interpreted and acted upon (broken into propositions) Back to the idea of phrase structures (also referred to as constituents)The short hippopotamus saw the tall giraffe People process the meaning of a sentence one phrase at a time (after process phrase, no need to make further reference to exact wording) Maintain access to a phrase only when processing its meaning Try to extract as much information as possible from each word and spend additional wrap-up time at the end of each phrase People integrate semantic and syntactic cues to arrive at an interpretation of a sentence When people come to a point of ambiguity in a sentence, they adopt one interpretation which they will have to revise if it is later contradicted
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Parsing Stage
Immediacy of Interpretation Principle: states that people try to extract meaning out of each word as it arrives and do not wait until the end of a sentence (or even end of phrase) to decide how to interpret word:
The young man turned his back on the rock concert stage and looked across the resort lake. Tomorrow was the annual one-day fishing contest and fishermen would invade the place. Some of the best bass guitarists in the country would come to this spot
Down-the-Garden- Path experiments:
support the Immediacy of Interpretation Principle by showing people will mis-pronounce the word, backtrack and look at previous words
Suggest that early stages of comprehension of written material may occur during very brief time intervals (change interpretation of word within milliseconds) Suggest that comprehension is nearly instantaneous with visual perception Suggests we activate a rich chain of associative, abstract reactions that are used to understand the thing being perceived
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Utilization Stage
After sentence has been parsed and mapped into representation of its meaning, listener/reader is not passive. How do these propositions get connected together and organized into meaningful frameworks ?
Inferences: going beyond what is explicitly stated to what is implied by the speech/text
Direct Statement: The dentist pulled the tooth painlessly. The patient liked the method. Backward Inference: The tooth was pulled painlessly. The dentist used a new method. Forward Inference: The tooth was pulled painlessly. The patient liked the new method.
Q= is it true: A dentist pulled the tooth? Explicitly stated in #1, but highly plausible in #2 and #3, even though not stated
Listeners make backward inferences to connect to prior sentences and only some forward inference that connect to possible future material
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Utilization Stage
How do these propositions get connected together and organized into meaningful frameworks ? The most basic kind of connection between propositions that provides a necessary condition for coherence is for the propositions to have entities in common in common -- that is they are talking about the same things (recall that a proposition is a relation together with the entities that it interrelates). For example, Horace took the beer out. The beer was warm.
Here there are two propositions (one in each sentence) and they are connected by having the entity beer in common: the first proposition has the relation took-out relating the entities Horace and beer, while the second proposition has the property-relation warm relating to beer. took-out (Horace, beer) warm (beer)
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Utilization Stage
How do these propositions get connected together and organized into meaningful frameworks ?
Usually propositions are not so explicitly stated and the connections have to be inferred from our knowledge of the world and language:
Horace took the beer out. It was warm.
must infer that It is the beer using our language knowledge about pronominal reference (look for the previous noun as the reference for a pronoun, assign that reference right away) A bigger inference is required if it were: Horace took the picnic supplies out. The beer was warm. Here to establish that there is an entity connection between the propositions requires using our knowledge of the world to infer that beer is a kind of picnic supply so that is the connection. People do make these entity-connection inferences because if we look at the reading time of the second sentence (The beer was warm) when preceded by the picnic supplies sentence then it takes longer to read than when it is preceded by the same sentence with beer instead of picnic supplies. This extra time is the time needed to make the inference (i.e., the linking proposition isa(beer, picnic-supply)) in the picnic supply case
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Sometimes, people rely on plausible semantic interpretations of words in a sentence
Kintsch’s Model of Comprehension
Kintsch’s theory of comprehension (1998): in understanding something, first construct a network of propositions (both explicit and inferred) and connect them with common entity links (both explicit and inferred), and that a hierarchy is established in this network by having the proposition that first mentions an entity be superordinate in the hierarchy to the other propositions that mention it. For technical logical reasons he calls this argument repetition-- keeping with our terminology we will call it entity repetition. Let’s look at a simple example of how this works. Suppose we read the following text:
President W went to Europe. He met with European leaders. He told them about his antimissile plan. He told them he opposes the Kyoto treaty. The meetings were cordial.
This would yield the following set of propositions (note the propositions are numbered, P1 and these numbers are used when one proposition is contained inside another): P1 went ( W, Europe ) P2 President ( W ) P3 met ( W, leaders ) P4 European ( leaders ) P5 told ( W, leaders, plan ) Kintsch suggest that people process a text one proposition P6 own ( W, plan ) at a time, trying to relate new propositions to a leading P7 anti-missile ( plan ) edge proposition that they are keeping active. P8 told ( W, leaders, P9 ) P9 oppose ( W, treaty ) P10 Kyoto ( treaty ) P11 participants ( meetings, W, leaders) P12 cordial ( meetings) Note that there are a number of deviations from the surface structure here that better indicate the underlying meaning: e.g., "his plan" is converted into a proposition indicating that W owns the plan, and P11 is inferred so that meetings (and therefore P12) is linked to the rest of the passage. Also note that P9 is contained as an entity in P8 because what W told the leaders was the entire proposition P9 (i.e., that he opposes the treaty). Now applying the Entity Repetition rule (the first proposition mentioning an entity is superordinate to the others) we can establish the following hierarchy (the top of the hierarchy is to the left):
Suggest text reading is Bottom-up
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Kintsch’s Model of Comprehension
In this text base hierarchical network P1 introduces W and is at the top level, then the next level (to the right) is linked to it because they repeat the W entity. P 3 then introduces the entity leaders and P4 repeats that and so is subordinate to it. P5 is also linked to P3 by the leaders link but it is not subordinate to it because it is also linked to P1 by the W link. And so forth. Kintsch has shown the validity of this hierarchy by finding that it can be used to predict likelihood that someone will remember a proposition and the time it takes to retrieve a proposition from memory. The idea is that memory retrieval starts at the top of the hierarchy (to the left in our diagram) and travels down the links to retrieve other propositions. The more links that have to be traversed to get to a proposition the more likely one is to have missed a link so the less likely a proposition will be retrieved; thus propositions lower in the hierarchy are more likely to be forgotten and take longer to retrieve than those higher in the hierarchy. In our example, the proposition that W went to Europe would be the best remembered and first remembered, while the propositions that the leaders were European and that it was the Kyoto treaty would be less likely to be remembered (and take longer to retrieve).
Suggest text reading is Bottom-up
T= 6.37 + .94p
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Propositions in a text can be organized hierarchically according to various semantic relations
Utilization Stage
However, these entity links between propositions aren’t the whole story-- while they provide the necessary conditions for coherence they only provide a weak linkage and there are stronger links.
Causal and goal links provide much stronger linkages for propositions in memory. If a reader can infer a causal (e.g., an action in one proposition directly results in or sets the conditions for the action in another proposition) or goal (e.g., the action in one proposition is part of a plan for attain a goal in stated in another proposition) link then the propositions are remembered particularly well. For example, people remembered statements embedded in a story like the following:
John was working in the kitchen. He bumped the table and the bowl fell off and broke.
much better than statement like
John was working in the kitchen. He looked at the table and the bowl fell off and broke.
Note that the only difference here is using bumped in the first case but looked at in the second case. Having bumped allows the readers to infer that that action is cause of the second action of falling off, while merely looking at the table is not going to cause the bowl to fall off. Thus writing texts with statements linked by causal links and having readers infer those links provides a much stronger memory for those texts than having the propositions merely linked by entity repetition.
Memory for textual material is sensitive to the hierarchical and causal structure of that text and tends to be better when people attend to the causal structure
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Abstraction Models of Comprehension
Bartlett (1932) studied story recall
The War of the Ghosts
Subjects read the story and then reproduced it 20 hours, 8 days, 6 months, and 30 months later.
Over time, details dropped out, gist remained.
Found that stories are encoded and remembered based on Schemata (plural for schema)– abstract representations based on active organization of past experiences
Round Robin
Suggest comprehension is Top-down
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Abstraction of Linguistic Ideas
So what happened to the original story?
Omissions — specific details drop out
Rationalization — information is added to explain incongruities
Dominant Theme — these remain Transformation of information — unfamiliar words are
transformed to more familiar words
Transformation of sequence — sequence of events is altered Subject attitude — attitude of reader toward passage determines degree of recollection
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Abstraction Model of Comprehension
Bransford & Franks (1971) hypothesis:
Abstract a basic idea from initial sentence exposed to and store that abstracted entity rather than simply sentences themselves in disconnected series
Implication: human memory for sentences is not merely a transcription of words (like tape recording) but a dynamic process
in which ideas are abstracted
Important: Their research shows sentences are not stored in memory in isolation if the sentences are semantically related– combine sentences into abstract form and abstraction is remembered better than specific form
Suggest comprehension is Top-down
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Knowledge and Comprehension
Greater the knowledge of the reader (more complete schema) = better the comprehension of the text
Abstract knowledge serves as an organized collection of information, new information then can be more easily assimilated into this existing cognitive structure (leads to meaningful inferences)
Much of comprehension is Top-down processing
Context important! -- Situational information or instructions can trigger top down processing. Access frameworks (schema) for processing the incoming information– research shows increases recall for text
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Knowledge and Comprehension
Soap Opera Effect: Adding a goal structure to a narrative text results in a more coherent, interesting and memorable text one group read an unsurprising script-based story just containing the expected actions of scripts while another group had an introductory sentence that introduced a goal structure (the girl in the story wondering if she were pregnant) Adding this introduction allowed the readers to infer a goal structure linking together many story statements lead to the story being better remembered. Down side– readers make incorrect inferences In other, similar research- skilled readers make these kinds of goalbased inferences when reading stories-- readers took longer to read story statements when they needed to make goal-based inferences and they later thought they explicitly seen these inferences when given a memory test.
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Suggest comprehension is Top-down
Knowledge and Comprehension
Power of induced schema: Participants asked to read story about wealthy family home either from perspective of buyer or burglar. ―Thieves‖ recalled valuable loot ―Buyers‖ recalled condition of house Police officer schema induced by having subjects complete police entrance exam, then subjects read story with ―idea units’ some that fit police schema and some that did not fit– subjects that took police exam remembered 2x more police idea units Also- specific schema induced also effected people’s interpretation of a picture!
Suggests understanding or encoding textual material is influenced by contextual information that activates a specific type of schema
Suggest comprehension is Top-down
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Comprehension
Extracting physical features of letters Encoding words and accessing the lexicon (mental ―dictionary‖ of words and usage) Assigning case roles (categorizing, integrating into schemata, etc) Integrating with representation of previous text
All of the above is done in the context of the reader’s knowledge of the world, contextual information and inference processes!
Suggest comprehension is Top-down
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Comprehension
Uniting Kintsch’s model (bottom-up) with abstraction models (Top-down):
Level of reading text: bottom-up based on propositions drawn from text base Level of reader intention: top-up based on a goal schema that directs reader’s comprehension of material Supports Bartlett’s research that people remember the gist (lose details individual propositions) Reproductions (statements that accurately reflect comprehension of the text) goes down Reconstructions (statements that are plausible inferences from main themes plus subject world knowledge) go up Metastatements (subjects’s comments, opinions and attitude toward text) goes up slightly
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Study by Kintsch & Van Dijk finds that over time:
Language and Neurology
Earliest scientific analysis of language = neurological
Neurology of language has centers of localization, but for full operation, they must interact and work together. Generally, language functions are centered in the left hemisphere (specializes)
PET Scans
Visually presented words = occipital lobe
Orally presented words =
temporoparietal lobe
Also important is (left) frontal association cortex and (left) temporal cortex
However, language complex (simple see red say blood) involves vision, feature and word identification, lexical access, word association , motor activity and speech, maybe emotion == could use many other parts (amygdala, hippocampus, other cortical areas)
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Word Recognition: Anatomical Approach
Peterson & Posner- Lexical decision tasks (DOCTORNURSE) plus PET scan
3 tasks- passively watch word, repeat word, generate use for word
Gabrieli – judge words abstractly or concretely (semantic) vs. upper/lower case (perceptual) plus fMRI Different parts of the brain process semantic information about a word (meaning) vs. perceptual aspects of the word (shape, lines, curves). Priming for visual features = occipital cortex Semantic = left inferior prefrontal cortex
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Dyslexia
Dyslexia:
disturbance in the ability to read
some have difficulty perceiving words and knowing what words look like some have difficulty matching sounds with letters could be damage to part of thalamus which inhibits correct processing during reading eye movements (saccades) could also be that they cannot hear the differences between phonemes (the smallest unit of sound)
could be smaller part of thalamus that is the issue
dyslexics show underactivation in Wernicke’s area, the angular gyrus (area for visual associations) and the visual cortex and overactivation in inferior frontal gyrus (lower frontal cortex)
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