Chapter 11: Language

True or false: the primary brain region involved in understanding speech is Broca’s area

False

Which allows for a speaker to convey more than what they actually say?

Pragmatics

Which refers to the concept of teasing apart complex phrases?

Parsing

Drawing a conclusion by connecting an object in one sentence to an object in another sentence

Anaphoric inference

Drawing a conclusion about methods that occurs while reading text or listening to speech

Instrument inference

Drawing the conclusion that events described in one sentence were prompted by events in a previous sentence

Casual inference

System of communication that enables us to express our feelings, thoughts, ideas, and experiences

Language

Idea that there are principles specifying the permissible ways for arranging words and phrases in a system of communication

Rule-based nature of language

Field concerned with the mental and emotional study of language

Psycholinguistics

Knowledge of what words mean, how they sound, and how they relate to other words

Lexicon

Meanings of words and sentences in a language

Semantics

Meaning of words

Lexical semantics

Phenomenon of faster reading time for words that are highly common compared with unusual words

Word frequency effect

Process of perceiving individual words with the continuous flow of words

Speech segmentation

Situation when a word can have more than one meaning

Lexical ambiguity

Situation where some definitions of words occur more frequently than others

Meaning dominance

Situation when a word has more than one meaning and one meaning is more likely

Biased dominance

Situation when a word has more than one meaning and all meanings are equally likely

Balanced dominance

Set of rules for combining words into sentences

Syntax

Condition characterized by labored ungrammatical speech and difficulty in understanding some types of sentences

Broca’s aphasia

Mental grouping of words in a sentence into phrases

Parsing

Group of words that appears to mean one thing but ends up meaning something else

Garden path sentence

Situation in which the meaning of a sentence is unclear because multiple meanings are possible

Temporary ambiguity

“Rule of thumb” that provides a best-guess solution to a problem

Heuristic

Principle that a person encountering a new word assumes it’s part of the current phrase

Late closure

Determining how subjects process information in a scene while responding to specific instructions about it

Visual world paradigm

Information in one part of a text is related to information in another part

Coherence

Process by which readers create information that is not explicitly stated in the text

Inference

Mental representation of what a text is about

Situation model

Idea that a speaker should construct sentences that contain both known information and unknown information

Given-new contract

Set of knowledge, beliefs, and assumptions shared between two speakers

Common ground

Synchronization between partners in a conversation

Entrainment

Idea that a statement with particular construction leads to a subsequent statement being similarly constructed

Syntactic priming

Ability to understand what others think, feel, or believe

Theory of mind

Pattern of intonation and rhythm in spoken language

Prosody

First note of a scale in a particular key

Tonic

Condition, present at birth, in which people have problems with music perception

Congenital amusia

Determine whether each example represents the principle of late closure or the constraint-based approach to parsing

True or false: disfluencies only disrupt communication

False

Determine whether each example represents simultaneous or sequential bilingualism

Determine whether each piece of information is “given” or “new” in the following sequence: The dog ate a biscuit. It was stale.

According to the graphs shown in the image, which is true about bilingualism?

Accents and grammar were negatively impacted by the age of learning a second language

Which of the following are cognitive advantages of bilingualism?

Cognitive reserve

Code switching

Which species has the brain physiology required to create and comprehend complex language?

Humans

Determine whether each word has biased or balanced dominance

Light, program, book, run

To correctly group words in a sentence, which type of punctuation is used?

Comma

Haley has just woken from a restful night of sleep and greets her mother by uttering, “Hi, Mama! Want cereal.” Based on what is known about language development, how old is Haley?

24 months

Which brain region has been shown to activate in both language and music?

Broca’s area

Based on the observation, “Ever since I can remember, the sun has risen every morning” and the conclusion “The sun is going to rise tomorrow,” which of the following type of reasoning can be inferred?

Inductive reasoning

Determine what type of inference is provided in each example

Label the location of eye movements in the image when participants were told to “Put the apple on the towel in the box.”

Which phrase will be parsed more quickly? Defendant examined or evidence examined?

Evidence examined

Which are features of entrainment?

Gestures

Body position

Grammar

True or false: syntactic coordination involves only the use of voice inflection in spoken conversations

False