PSYC 224 Exam 3

Semantic Memory

-a type of long-term memory that stores general knowledge about the world, concepts, and language
-NOT tied to specific personal experiences

Episodic Memory

-A type of long-term memory that stores specific personal experiences and events
-It includes details about what happened, where, and when

Network Model

-A representation of semantic memory where concepts are represented as nodes connected by links
-The strength of the links reflects the relationship between the concepts

Spreading Activation

A process in network models where activation spreads from one node to another along connecting links

Priming

A phenomenon where exposure to a stimulus makes it easier to process related stimuli

Typicality Effect

The finding that it is easier and faster to verify typical members of a category than atypical members

Feature Overlap Model

-A model of semantic memory that represents concepts as lists of features
-The more features two concepts share, the more closely related they are

Hierarchical Network Model

A network model where concepts are organized in a hierarchy from general to specific

ACT-R Network Model

A network model where the relationships between concepts are represented in terms of strength of relationships between the nodes based on frequency of exposure

Connectivity Effect

The phenomenon that items with more densely connected associates are better remembered

Resonance effect

The phenomenon that items whose associates have strong reciprocal connections back to the target are better remembered

DRM Effect

The tendency to falsely remember a non-presented word (the lure) that is strongly associated with studied words

Schemas

Organized knowledge structures about the world that influences perception, memory, and understanding

Scripts

Schemas for specific events, such as going to a restaurant

Associative cuing test

A memory where participants study targets in isolation and then try to recall them when presented with associated cues

Cued-recall test

A memory test where participants study targets and cues together and then try to recall the targets when presented with the cues

Set size effect

The phenomenon that items from smaller networks are better remembered than items from larger networks in associative cuing tests

Aphasia

A language disorder caused by brain damage, resulting in impairments in speaking, understanding, reading, or writing

Broca's Aphasia

A type of aphasia characterized by difficulty in producing fluent and grammatically correct speech

Center-embedded Sentence

A sentence in which one clause is embedded within another clause

Constituent

A basic unit in a sentences surface structure

• representing a meaningful grouping of words

Deep structure

The underlying meaning of a sentence

Displacement

The ability of language to communicate about things that are not present in time or space

garden-path sentence

A sentence with a transient ambiguity that leads the reader to initially make an incorrect interpretation

Generativity

The ability to use a limited number of words/grammatical rules to produce an infinite variety of novel expressions

Immediacy of interpretation

The principle that people attempt to extract meaning from each word as it arrives, rather than waiting for the end of a sentence or phrase

• garden-path sentence supports this idea

Inference

A conclusion of interpretation that is drawn from available evidence or information

Linguistic universals

Feature or properties that are common to all human languages

Morphology

The study of the internal structure of words and how they are formed

N400

A event-related potential (ERP) signal that indicated difficulty in semantic processing

Permanent Ambiguity

Ambiguity in a sentence that cannot be resolved, even after considering the entire sentence

Phonology

The study of the sound system of a language

P600

An event-related potential (ERP) signal that indicates difficulty in syntactic processing

Pragmatics

The study of how language is used in context and how meaning is conveyed beyond the literal interpretation of words

Saccades

Rapid eye movements

• occur when reading,

• jumping from one fixation point to another

Semantics

The study of the meanings of words and sentences

Semanticity

The property of language that its sounds and symbols carry meaning

Surface structure

The form of a sentence, as it appears in written or spoken language

transient ambiguity

Ambiguity in a sentence that is resolved by the end of the sentence

Wernicke's aphasia

A type of aphasia characterized by fluent but semantically meaningless speech and difficulty in understanding language

Language

Shared symbolic system for communication using spoken sounds or written characters

Symbolic

Consists of units forming words representing concepts or objects

Arbitrariness

No inherent connection between sounds/words of a language and their meanings

Flexibility

Ability to change word meanings freely

Syntax

Rules governing word arrangement in sentences and phrases

Perceptual Stage

Encoding and maintaining attention to linguistic input

Parsing Stage

The process of analyzing a sentence to determine its grammatical structure and meaning

Utilization Stage

The stage of language comprehension where background knowledge is used to interpret the linguistic input for storage

Fixations

Times when eyes remain still during reading

Negatives

Sentences with negative constructions affecting comprehension

Ambiguity

Multiple interpretations due to unclear words or structure

Backward Inferences

Inferences connecting a sentence to prior context

Forward Inferences

Inferences anticipating unasserted information

Psycholinguistics

an interdisciplinary field that examines how people use language to communicate ideas

transformational rules

used to convert deep structure into surface structure

cognitive functional Approach

emphasizes that the function of human language in everyday life is to communicate meaning to other individuals

Incremental interpretation

the observation that when processing language, we do not wait until an entire sentence is spoken or read because making judgements on what it means

lexical ambiguity

when a ginle word can have multiple meanings

good-enough approach

how we frequently only process part of a sentence

Neurolinguistics

the discipline that examine the underlying neurological structures and systems that support language and language-related processes

language-localizer task

compensates for the problem of individual differences in brain size

mirror system

network involving the brain's motor cortex

perceptual span

the number of letters and spaces that we perceive during a fixation

Parafoveal preview

the fact that readers can access information about upcoming words even though they are currently focused on the word before.

direct access route

you read the word

indirect access

you sound out the word in your head

the “car” is what type of category

basic level

a category is…

a group of objects that belong together

If you are buying tickets at a box-office or eating at a restaurant, you expect certain events to occur in a certain order. This sequence of events is known as: 

a script

In connection with semantic memory, the term spreading activation refers to:

  the proposal that, when a concept is mentioned, the activation expands to related concepts.

According to the ACT-R model (Anderson and his colleagues, 2004):

the meaning of a sentence is represented by a propositional network

family resemblance means…

each example shares at least one attribute in common with some other example of the concept.

according to the network model what happens when the name of a concept is mentioned

the node representing that concept is activated

In the name “parallel distributed processing” approach, the word distributed refers to:

the distribution of information across many locations in the brain.

Research on prototypes reveals that they:

All of these are correct.

are judged or supplied as good examples of a category.

facilitated more by semantic priming than are other examples of a category.

share many attributes in a family resemblance category

all are correc

In a typical study about schemas or scripts, people view a common scene, such as a professor’s office or a doctor’s office. When they were subsequently asked to recall objects that they had seen in the office…

they often incorrectly remembered seeing objects that are typically found in offices but were not in the viewed office.

An important feature of semantic memory is that

it allows us to draw inferences that extend beyond the information supplied in the original stimulus.

When we compare network models with the prototype approach, we find that network models

are more likely to emphasize how different members of a category are related to one another.

How do the prototype approach and the exemplar approach differ from each other?

• The exemplar approach represents a concept in terms of many specific examples of a concept.

• The prototype approach is based of an ‘ideal example’ or the most typical

If you have just heard the word vegetable, you can quickly make judgments about the word carrot; in contrast, your judgments about the word mushroom take much longer. According to the prototype approach, this observation shows that:

after priming, people respond faster to prototypes than to nonprototypes.

People are able to process the meaning of a sentence best if it is:

an affirmatively worded sentence in the active voice.

The typical result of damage to an area in the left cerebral hemisphere called Broca’s area is speech that is:

hesitant, effortful, and grammatically simple.

what are the approaches to reading?

• dual route

• direct access

• indirect access

According to the most famous linguist (Chomsky, 1957, 2003, 2006):

all humans have an innate understanding of the abstract principles of language.

The basic linguistic unit that conveys meaning is the:

morpheme

The grammatical rules of language are known as:

syntax

The typical result of damage to an area in the left cerebral hemisphere called Wernicke’s area is impairment in:

producing unconfused speech, as well as in understanding speech.

• long-winded speaking

• nonsensical

Which of the following statements accurately characterizes the functioning of Broca’s area?

It may be part of the executive attention network.

All of these are correct.

It is unclear how involved it is in language processing.

It is active during the Stroop task, mental imagery, and music

all are correct

The indirect-access route in reading emphasizes that:

readers translate a printed word into sound before they can locate information about its meaning.

The famous sentence “Colorless green ideas sleep furiously”:

provides evidence that knowledge about grammatical rules is innate, not learned.

• one of Chomsky’s arguments

The mirror system could be relevant in neurolinguistics because mirror neurons:

may be especially active when we listen to speech in a noisy setting.

On-line language processing measures:

rely on reaction time data to provide an index of processing difficulty.

can provide information about where in a sentence readers experienced difficulty.

All of these are correct.

provide information about how long it takes for people to process a new word given previous words in a sentence.

all are correct

what is an on-line task

• time based measure of comprehension

• measure RT people have to specific words or phrases

• eye-gaze duration use

• provides insight on immediate comprehension

Experiments investigating reading skill reveal that it:

depends heavily on other cognitive abilities, such as working memory.

The results of the Tanenhaus and colleagues (1995) experiment suggest that:

even visual context can change how people understand a sentence that contains a syntactic ambiguity.

What are the methods of teaching reading to children and which is the best?

• Phonics approach (has a lot of evidence backing)

• world approach

• (best) whole language approach - combination of the two

what are the three stages of language comprehension?

• perceptual

• parsing

• utilization

what are the 5 universals of language?

• semanticity

• arbitrariness

• flexibility

• displacement

• generativity