W9: Language Production

Describe spoken language

*Speech production is cognitively demanding so use strategies to reduce pressing demands

• Preformulation: production of phrases used before e.g. a piece of cake

• Under specification: use of simplified expressions

Effect of Intoxication

Reveals complexities of speech production

• Impairs attention, memory, thinking and reasoning

• Produce more dysfluencies (e.g. stammering, stuttering)

• Slower speaking rate

• Reduction in richness and creativity

Speech Planning

1 stage of speech production, might occur at different levels

• Clause: part of sentence containing a subject and a verb

—> speech errors provide evidence that speech planning extends over the entire clause

• Phrase: a group of words that express a single idea

^E.g. describe moving pictures…

2 differing conditions

1. Simple initial noun phrase e.g. the tie moves above the candle and foot

2. Conjoined initial noun phrase e.g. the tie and candle move above the foot

^took longer (77ms) to initiate conjoined phrase

Provide examples of different speech production errors

*Majority of errors are not random, but systematic

*Provide insight into how cognitive systems work

• Word exchange: speech planning extends over the entire clause

• Sound (or phoneme) exchange: sounds of words planned shortly in advance

• Spoonerism: initial letter of 2 words are switched

• Semantic substitution: word replaced by another with similar meaning

• Morpheme exchange: inflexions/suffixes attached to wrong words

• Number agreement: collective noun is singular but resembles plural noun

Summarise the main assumptions of 2 influential theories of speech production

Spreading Activation Theory (Dell, 1986)

*processing occurs in parallel at different levels (semantic, lexical)

• Categorical rules

—> impose categories on items/categories that are acceptable at each level

• Insertion rules

—> select items to be spoken

—> most highly activated nodes selected

• Key strength= levels of processing interact

✅ Can account for several speech production errors

✅ Link between speech production and other cognitive activities (e.g. word recognition)

• Extent interactive processes involved in speech production unclear difficult to know how much activation there is

^occur less when processing demands high  e.g. tired

WEAVER++

*each processing stage occurs in seriation (no backwards activation)

• Feed-forward activation in serial fashion (1 thing happens and sends info to the next level)

• 3 main levels…

1. Highest level: nodes representing lexical concepts

2. Second level: nodes representing lemmas (abstract words with syntactic/semantic features only) not a precise word representation

3. Lowest level: nodes representing word forms (morphemes/phonemes)

• Speech production proceeds from meaning to sound

• Explains tip-of the-tongue state

—> semantic activation but phonological processing unsuccessful

✅ shift focus from speech errors and toward precise timing of production processes

✅ simple model that can make testable predictions

❌ does not allow interaction between different levels

❌ speech errors occur more than model predicts

Describe the problems experienced by patients with aphasia

Neuropsychology

*Study of patients with Aphasia in 19th century

• Due to stroke, brain tumour, injury infection etc.

• Impairments of language comprehension/production

Early research made distinction between 2 types of aphasia…

 

Broca's aphasia

• Slow, non-fluent speech

• Poor ability to produce syntactically correct sentences

• Comprehension relatively intact

*Problems with speech production

 

Wernicke's aphasia

• Known as fluent or receptive aphasia

• Fluent and grammatical speech

• Speech often lacks meaning

*Problems with speech comprehension

 

Some truth in distinction, but oversimplification

• Same form of aphasia but different impairments

• Several different areas involved in language processing

• Patients with Broca's aphasia have damage to Wernicke's area (and vice versa)

• Patients also have more general problems (attention/memory)

 

Moving away from Broca's/Wernicke's distinction to specific cognitive impairments…

Anomia

• Experienced by all aphasics

• Impaired ability to name everyday objects

--> problem with word retrieval

--> no problem with comprehension

*Problem at phonological level

 

Agrammatism

• Difficulties producing grammatically correct sentences

--> short sentences with content words (nouns/verbs)

--> omit function words (the, and, in) and word endings

*Problems at lexical (syntax/grammar) levels

 

Jargon aphasia

• Speech grammatically correct but have difficulties accessing correct words

--> substitute one word for another

--> produce neologisms (made up words)

*Problems at phonological level

Explain how speakers tailor their communications to the needs of listener(s)

Speech as Communication

• Speech nearly always occurs in a social context

• Importance of audience design (need to take into account and tailor to the needs of listeners)

 

Common Ground

• Shared knowledge between speaker/listener

^work together to ensure mutual understanding

• Speaker makes assumptions about the listener

- Global: preferred language, general language, shared experiences

- Local: attending to a given moment

How much common ground do speakers use?

 

Very cognitively demanding

• Difficulties for speakers to focus on listeners perspective while also planning what to say next

• Speakers with high cognitive abilities can use more common ground

Often plan what to say without considering listeners perspective

Audience Design

1. Syntactic priming

—> speaker copies words, phrases heard previously likely to borrow the structure- don't necessarily notice it occurs

--> other person speaking serves as a prime/prompt

2. Gesture

—> assumed to increase ability to communicate with listener

—> listeners find it easier to understand

—> makes it easier to work-out what to say

^use gestures even when we can't see speaker

3. Prosodic cues

—> how words are uttered e.g. rhythm, stress (accent), intonation, etc

—> more likely to be provided when meaning is ambiguous

4. Discourse markers

—> words/phrases that are not directly relevant to the speaker's message

^speaker experiencing problems deciding what to say e.g. um

^speaker checking that listener understands e.g. you know?

Understand the dual-route model of spelling

*Written language leaves a trace

Dual-Route Model of Spelling  

*Based on findings from double dissociation studies and how these findings constrained connectionist models

• Patient A has surface dysgraphia: cannot spell irregular words, but can still spell nonwords

• Patient B has phonological dysgraphia because they can only spell known words but cannot generalise spelling of nonwords based on their phoneme or grapheme correspondences

 

Cognitive Neuropsychology Case Study

Caramazza A., & Miceli G (1990)

Analysing spelling errors of patient LB

• Acquired dysgraphia from brain injury impacting the graphemic representations (orthographic working memory)

• This means LB made errors whatever the type of word or type of input

• Analysing these errors can inform cognitive psychology theory of spelling

 

Example Errors

• Substitutions: e.g. colore --> conore (colour)

• Transpositions: e.g. denaro --> derano (money) swapping letters along

• Omissions: e.g. nostro -->nosro (ours)

• Addition: e.g. fritto --> fritto (fried)

^special case of double letters

 

Double Letters

• Error analysis revealed the most common error with double letters was shifting the double feature to another position

^e.g. sorella --> sorrela

• Concluded that letter identity and quantity are stored independently and can therefore be dissociated and reassigned incorrectly