Psych Week 16 (Cog) - Language and Thought

Is reading learned or innate?

• Learned

• Lots of people around the world are illiterate

• Relatively new skill → no time for evolution

• Rarely acquired without explicit instruction

Is verbal language learned or innate?

• Instinct that minimises but does not remove role of learning

• Critical period for language learning

• Brain damage like Broca’s aphasia can specifically impair language

What is an alternative theory to language being instinctual?

• Language as a by-product of increased intelligence (a spandrel → phenotypic byproduct of another characteristic evolving)

• Characteristic selected for is greater intelligence

What are the subsystems of language?

• Semantics

• Phonology

  • Syntax connects semantics and phonology

• Orthography

What is the frequency effect?

• High frequency words read more quickly than low frequency words

What is the regularity effect?

• Regular words read more quickly than irregular words (e.g. hint is regular vs pint is irregular because the vowel sound isn’t normal)

• Due to the conflicting pronunciations of irregular words by different routes

• Only found for low frequency words

What is surface dyslexia?

• Difficulty reading irregular words (would say ‘pint’ phonologically wrong)

• Fine with nonwords and regular words

• Damage to both lexical routes with sub-lexical route left intact

What is phonological dyslexia?

• Difficulty reading nonwords

• Fine with regular and irregular words

• Difficulty in using the sub-lexical route

What is deep dyslexia?

• Difficulty with nonwords, regular and irregular words

• Better with words that have high imageability (e.g. ‘leaf’) than low imageability (e.g. ‘hope’)

• Often make semantic errors (e.g. would read ‘pig’ as ‘elephant’)

• Patients can only read by the lexical-semantic route, and it is partly damaged

What is lexical knowledge?

• Word-level knowledge

• Can be lexical-orthographic, lexical-semantic or lexical-phonological

What is sub-lexical knowledge?

• Individual letters

• Groups of letters (graphemes)

• Phonemes

• Groups of phonemes (e.g. syllable)

What are the three routes for word processing according to the dual route model?

• Sub-lexical grapheme-phoneme route (regular and nonwords)

• Lexical-phonological route (irregular and regular words)

• Lexical-semantic route (irregular and regular words)

• Speed and pronunciation depends on the route than finishes first

How does visual similarity impact word identification?

• Makes it harder

• e.g. table and cable (neighbours)

• e.g. crown and crow (supersets/subsets)

• e.g. trial and trail (transposed letters)

How does age of acquisition affect reading time?

• Early-acquired words are read more quickly than late-acquired ones

What is categorical perception?

• Perception of discrete categories even though the world is continuous

• e.g. our colour perceptions do not faithfully mirror properties of light

• Potentially influenced by language → remember high codable colours more easily