1. Spoken Word Recognition 1 Language Use and Understanding

2. Context Effects on Lexical Access (Swinney, 1979) How does a sentence’s context interact with accessing its words? Swinney argues that context must affect the interpretation of words at some point for comprehension to work. The question is when…

3. Context and lexical access The man was not surprised when he found several spiders, roaches, and bugs…. Syntax: N, N, and N Semantics: Spiders, roaches, etc… N- insectN- wire tapV - to annoy

4. Interactive vs. Modular Theory Prior Decision Hypothesis (Interactive): Postdecision Hypothesis (Modular): What would these models look like? How do these hypotheses relate to Fodor’s claims about modularity? Why might a modular model be useful?

5. Problems with Previous Studies Measures weren’t sensitive enough. Phoneme monitoring has to occur on word following target. Time course is a big issue in modularity debates. Why? What does it mean for a task to be on-line? Elman and McClelland suggested that time course doesn’t necessarily tell us anything about modularity? Why not?

6. Cross-Modal Priming 1) Reaction time is closely time locked with lexical access. 2) Subjects are not aware of the relationship between the sentence and the target word. 3) It can be used during the on-line processing of the sentence. What are some problems with the task?

7. Experiment 1 Stimuli p. 650 What are the predictions of Prior Decision and PostDecision hypotheses? Why is the unambiguous condition there? Why is the unrelated prime there?

8. Results Both meanings of the ambiguous word were primed compared to a completely unrelated word. Experiment 2 shows that this effect goes away three syllables after the target word. Only context appropriate meaning is primed.

9. Questions Do these results necessarily provide evidence for a modular processor? (..think of McClelland and Ellman’s thoughts on time course). Can you think of an interactive system that’s compatible with the results here?