Psycholinguistics Flashcards

Flashcards covering key vocabulary and concepts from the Psycholinguistics lecture.

Psycholinguistics

The study of the psychological and neurobiological factors that enable humans to acquire, use, comprehend and produce language.

Levels of Analysis of a Sentence

Analyzing a sentence involves syntactic structure, morphic-phonology, semantic interpretation, and spatial structure.

Regular Inflection

Associated with Broca’s area, and a lower statistical threshold may include the arcuate fasciculus and Wernicke’s area.

Irregular Inflection

Involves grammar, but rules may not help; meaning is specified but modified involving non-language areas.

Broca's Area Functions

Unification of phonology syntax and semantics, sequential processing during reading, morphological processing, working memory.

Broca’s Meta-Analysis Clusters

Cluster 1: Semantic & phonological tasks (BA 45/46). Cluster 2: Working memory (BA 44). Cluster 3: Empathy (BA 47).

Alternative Hypotheses for Broca

Broca’s area as a mosaic of functional regions or computing abstract functions, with functions changing based on activation of connected regions.

Serial Processing

Syntax precedes semantics.

Parallel Processing

Syntax and semantics processed simultaneously.

Garden Path Sentence

A grammatically correct sentence that is difficult to understand because the initial parsing leads the reader or listener to an incorrect interpretation.

Jackendoff's Parallel Architecture

Model involving phonological, syntactic, and semantic structures with interfaces.

Mental Lexicon

Memorized word-specific knowledge stored in declarative memory and associated with fluent aphasia and the temporal lobe.

Mental Grammar

Rule governed combination of lexical items into complex representations using procedural memory associated with non-fluent aphasia and Broca’s area.

Amodal Semantic Processing

Semantic processing that is not tied to a specific sensory modality.

Modality Specific Activations

Action, Motion, Auditory, Color, Olfactory, Gustatory, Emotion Perception & action in language.

Somatotopic Representation

Concepts are represented in the brain in a way that corresponds to the body parts involved in experiencing or interacting with those concepts.

(E)LAN

Syntactic violations – Grammatical agreement or word category expectations.

N400

Semantic processing – predictions of semantic memory systems.

P600

Syntactic integration – Violations, ambiguities, complexity, garden path sentences constructing sentential structure.

N400-like MEG

Semantic congruity.

Lateralization of language

LEFT HEMISPHERE: Phonetics, Segmental, Prosodic (timing; tones), Phonology, Morphology, Syntax, Semantics. RIGHT HEMISPHERE: Contextual, Familiar proper nouns, Emotional terms, Pragmatics, Conversation.

Figurative Language

Right hemisphere processing, disruption of right hemisphere damaged patients.

Coarse Semantic Coding Theory

Left hemisphere and Right hemisphere.

Theory of Mind

Ability to attribute mental states—beliefs, intents, desires, emotions, knowledge, etc.

Infant N400

Indicative of semantic processing (from 14 months of age).

Social N400

An N400 is elicited, when babies do not, only an observer experiences a mislabeling.

Conceptual Metaphor Theory

Abstract thought E = mc2.

Abstractness effect

Concrete words used figuratively: neural sensitivity to abstractness.