Lexical Bias and Experimental Paradigm used to study it

lexical bias effect

tendency for speech errors (like slips of the tongue) to result in real words rather than non-words

Freudian slips - parapraxes 1901

*errors in speech that occur due to interference of an unconscious wish/internal thought

*parapraxes inhere the idea that we unconsciously wished to express that intention

*not all due to repressed thoughts, impulse or inention

Dell & Reich 1981

*speech errors show a lexical bias, errors statistically waiting to happen

*tendency for speech errors to result in real words comes from process of self monitoring

*self monitoring: as we speak we have an internal quality control manager that inspects the assembled words that leave our mouth, errors come from this especially nonsense words

*errors that are real words are harder for the monitor to notice as they don’t stand out as obviously flawed

self monitory hypothesis - Motley, Camden & Baars 1982

*elicited spoonerisms with the SLIP technique (like swapping sounds between words)

*spoonerisms - phoneme transpositions

*SLIP - spoonerisms of laboratory induced predisposition

*when slips formed real words they occurred more often than when they would have produced non words

Motley, camden and baars 1979

• used emotionally charged contexts to investigate how situational priming affects speech errors (spoonerisms)

• when ps primed with sexual situations, more likely to produce sexual spoonerisms (errors that created sexually suggestive words)

• when primed with threat related words (possibility of electric shock), more likely to produce threat related spoonerisms (errors linked to danger/harm)

• spoonerisms not random, influenced by speakers emotional and cognitive states

• internal monitoring and unconscious thoughts can bias which errors escape into speech

• supported Freuds parapraxes having psychological meaning

parallel processing model - Dell 1986

• naming is an assembling interactive process of bidirectional activation between semantic features and phonological forms

• Errors are more likely to result in real words because only real words have representations in the mental lexicon that can activate and be activated by sounds

• Sounds can only feedback to words (non-words not represented) so only words can feedback to sound level

• example - semantic features of dog activate cat, some features (animate) activate rat, ae and t activate sounds k, ae, t, ae and t activate rat by feedback

parallel processing model dell 1986 - interaction activation

semantic features activate corresponding word forms (lemmas) which activate their phonological components (sounds)

parallel processing model dell 1986 - bidirectional feedback

semantic levels activate words and sounds, activated sounds can feedback to influence word selection

hinojosa et al 2010

• during letter searching in image naming task, ps had longer reaction time when presented with emotionally charged images compared to neutral images

• -emotion and anxiety, as well as non-verbal components of language or non-verbal languages (i.e. ASL) and second language speech production are not encompassed within traditional models of speech production. 

Motley, Baars and Camden 1979 - situational anxiety

• situational anxiety can affect speech production by increasing frequency of speech erros (freudian slips) and pausing mid sentence

• In ps who were asked to speak about anxiety provoking topics, in emotionally charged situations, or situations that cause anxietyspeakers have a harder time accessing the “right” words to accurately express how they are feeling