1. Fundamentals of Cognitive Psychology
Chapter 8
Language
Fundamentals of Cognitive Psychology, 2e by Ronald T. Kellogg ©SAGE Publications, Inc.

2. Linguistics and Psycholinguistics Psycholinguistics
The study of psychological processes involved in producing and comprehending language
Linguistic performance
Linguistics
The study of language in its pure form
Linguistic competence .

3. What is language?
A system of symbols used to communicate ideas among two or more individuals.
Arbitrary
Rule-governed
Conventional
Fundamentals of Cognitive Psychology, 2e by Ronald T. Kellogg ©SAGE Publications, Inc.

4. Components of Language
Receptive vs Productive language skills
Phonology – sound system phonemes, phonological rules
Semantics – meaning or content mental lexicon
Morphology – structure of units of meaning morphemes (bound, free), morphological rules
Syntax – word classes and word order syntactic rules
Pragmatics

5. Levels of Language Representation

6. Phonology: The Sounds of Language
Analysis of the basic speech sounds
/ / represents the sound, apart from spelling
Acoustic structure can be viewed with the use of a speech spectrograph, which produces a spectogram
Plots sound waves of differing frequencies that result from speech

7. Phonetic differences do not change the meaning of a word
Phones and Phonemes
Phone (phonetic)
An acoustically discriminable language sound ("a" sound in cat, vs. "a" sound in bat)
Phonetic differences do not change the meaning of a word
Phonetic level is acoustic—the physical sound that we produce

8. Phoneme (phonemic)
Speech sound represented by a single symbol
letters
Contain no meaning
Phonemic differences do change the meaning of a word
About 200 phonemes across all known languages
44 in English

9. Practice
Bat 3
Chat
Love
Find 4
Trick

10. Perceiving phonemes
Despite coarticulation….
Categorical Perception
Tendency to perceive phones within a phoneme category as the same
Phonemes are invariant across different contexts
/p/
/p/at
/p/et
/p/it
/p/ot
/p/ut

11. Liberman, Harris, Hoffman, and Griffith (1957)
Used speech synthesizer to produce and present speech sounds that differed on a continuum (b-d-g)
Increased voice onset time in 5 millisecond increments
Despite continuous variation in the acoustic signal, participants did not classify the sounds continuously
Classified sounds into 3 distinct categories corresponding to the phonemes /b/, /d/, and /g/

12. The Importance of Context
The role of top-down processing in perceiving phonemes
Phonemic restoration effect 
We tend to perceptually “replace” sounds that are missing from a speech signal

13. Warren (1970)
Presented with one of four sentence:
It was found that the *eel was on the axle
It was found that the *eel was on the shoe
It was found that the *eel was on the orange
It was found that the *eel was on the table
* phoneme replaced by cough
What did subjects report hearing?
Wheel
Heel
Peel
Meal

14. Morphology: From Sounds to Words
Combining phonemes into morphemes
Morpheme
Smallest unit of language that has meaning
Words, prefixes, and suffixes
Types
Free morpheme
Word or part of a word that may stand alone
Bound morpheme
Part of a word that may not stand alone (suffix or prefix)

15. Practice
Loved
Two
1 free (“love”)
1 bound (“-ed”)
Unhappiness
Three
1 free (“happy”)
2 bound (“un-” and “-ness”)
Game
One
1 free (“game”)

16. Producing (or “Morphing” the Spoken Word)
How do we change the form of words? (i.e., singular to plural, present to past, etc.)
Two Systems
Regular transformation (askasked; add –ed)
Irregular transformation (know  known)

17. Evidence supporting the two-system view
Overregularizations
Child applies a rule too broadly (knowknowed)
First child does it correctly and then incorrectly
As language ability improves, children begin to apply rules of language
Different brain areas are active during formation of regular and irregular transformation
Regular formations
Procedural system  “knowing how” to apply a rule
Irregular formation
Declarative system  “knowing that” there is an irregular transformation of a word

18. Evidence not supporting the two-system view
fMRI studies showing same brain areas are involved in irregular and regular transformation

19. Discerning Word Boundaries
Weak relationship between breaks in the acoustic speech signal and breaks between words
Never touch a snake with your bare hands

20. Bottom-up factors
Phonotactic knowledge
Sensitivity to the rules that govern phoneme combinations in a given language
Example: jp never occurs in English
Metrical segmentation
Phonological regularities of a given language
Example: In English, content words tend to start with strong syllables and end with weak syllables

21. THEREDONATEAKETTLEOFTENCHIPS
Top-down factors
Knowledge of the words in a given language help locate word boundaries
IRANDOWNTHESTAIRS
MYDOGCHASEDTHECAT
THEREDONATEAKETTLEOFTENCHIPS
Visual analog--Just like these examples, speech is a continuous stream of information, and we must impose boundaries
Parse this sentence into words—your knowledge of the words in our language help you to do it—did you get confused at beginning? Yes because Iran is a word in our language. But once you got past that, the rest was easy because down the stairs is the only parsing that works in our language. My dog chased cat—easy as no other interpretation. There donate a kettle of ten chips/the red on a tea kettle often chips/There don ate a kettle of ten chips—multiple interpretations as the boundary between words is difficult.
Consider what would happen if you had little or no familiarity with a language. Have you ever listened to a person engaged in the fluent speaking of a language other than English? It sounds like they’re talking a mile a minute, but really, this is a sort of illusion induced by your lack of familiarity with the language. Because you have only minimal (or no) knowledge of the words in that language, parsing them is nearly impossible.
Think about taking cognitive psychology in Norwegian? Would be hard.
Even in our own language we often we make mistakes

22. Semantics
Semantics is the study of meaning, that is, how people mentally represent the meaning of words and sentences.
Morphemes taken together comprise a mental lexicon, the dictionary of long-term memory.
Fundamentals of Cognitive Psychology, 2e by Ronald T. Kellogg ©SAGE Publications, Inc.

23. Fundamentals of Cognitive Psychology, 2e by Ronald T
Fundamentals of Cognitive Psychology, 2e by Ronald T. Kellogg ©SAGE Publications, Inc.

24. The Mental Lexicon
Mental lexicon
General knowledge representation of words in semantic memory
Lexical Access
Process by which a word is activated within the mental lexicon

25. Factors Affecting Lexical Access
Word frequency
How commonly a word occurs in one’s day-to-day linguistic encounters
High frequency words are more easily and quickly accessed than low-frequency words

26. Foss (1969)
Phoneme monitoring task
Listen for a target phoneme (e.g., /g/) while attempting to comprehend a speech passage
Target phoneme occurred after a:
low-frequency word
high-frequency word
Dependent variable: RT to detect the target phoneme
Results
RT was longer after a low than high-frequency word
Additional resources are needed to access a low-frequency word, slowing RT

27. Lexical ambiguity
A word that has more than one meaning
Does encountering an ambiguous word, activate all representations or just the one relevant to the context?

28. Foss (1970)
Phoneme monitoring task
Listen for a target phoneme (e.g., /g/) while attempting to comprehend a speech passage
Target phoneme occurred after:
an ambiguous word
a non-ambiguous word
Dependent variable: RT to detect the target phoneme
Results
RT was longer after ambiguous than non-ambiguous words
Both representations were activated and additional resources are needed to disambiguate, slowing RT

29. Sentence Comprehension
Structural ambiguity: the linear string of words that is heard or read is consistent with more than one syntactic structure and sentence meaning.
Garden path sentence: the listener or reader is first “led down the garden path” to an incorrect interpretation before being allowed to reanalyze the sentence and find the correct interpretation.
Garden path sentences reveal a very basic property about sentence comprehension: its immediacy—we interpret words as we encounter them.

30. Syntax
Grammatical rules that specify how words and other morphemes are arranged so as to yield acceptable sentences.
Implicit knowledge provides linguistic intuitions of ungrammatical strings and equivalency of meaning of different grammatical constructions.
Fundamentals of Cognitive Psychology, 2e by Ronald T. Kellogg ©SAGE Publications, Inc.

31. Fundamentals of Cognitive Psychology, 2e by Ronald T
Fundamentals of Cognitive Psychology, 2e by Ronald T. Kellogg ©SAGE Publications, Inc.

32. Syntax and Semantics: From Words to Sentences
Set of rules that specify legal combinations of words within a given language
Semantics
Set of rules that govern the effective transmission of meaning
The boy kissed the girl
The girl was kissed by the boy
Boy the girl the kissed
Colorless green dreams sleep furiously
The cat chased the dog
His insecurities chased him in his dreams
1 and 2 are the same semantically but differ syntactically
5 is syntactically and semantically valid but unusual based on our semantic knowledge
4 is syntactically valid but semantically invalid
3 is syntactically and semantically invalid
6 is syntactically and semantically valid but violates the literal meaning of chase yet we understand the meaning is metaphorical

33. Dissociation that supports distinction between syntactic and semantic processing
Broca’s aphasia
Associated with frontal lobe damage
Loss of syntactic ability, but preserved semantic ability
Wernicke’s aphasia
Associated with temporal lobe damage
Loss of semantic ability, but preserved syntactic ability

34. Transformational Grammar
Noam Chomsky argued that language cannot be learned due to the “poverty of the stimulus”
Children apply rules (represented physiologically from birth) to the symbols of language
Develops in the absence of formal “teaching”
True regardless of the language being spoken, so approach is often referred to as universal grammar

35. Phrase Structure, Surface Structure, and Deep Structure
The rules that define:
the fundamental components of a sentence
the types of words that comprise these components
the ways that words may be arranged
…but phrase structure is insufficient to explain the production and comprehension of a sentences

36. Sentences exist at two levels
Surface structure
Superficial external version of sentence
Syntax
Deep Structure
Meaning of the sentence
Semantics
Sentence generation
Phrase structure rules used to create the deep structure
Transformational rules are applied to the deep structure to create the surface structure

37. Pragmatics
The manner in which speakers communicate their intentions depends on the social context.
Direct speech acts (e.g., command: “Open the window!”) may be socially awkward. Indirect speech acts assume the guise of a different speech act to achieve the same result (e.g., inform: “It is really hot in here.”)
Fundamentals of Cognitive Psychology, 2e by Ronald T. Kellogg ©SAGE Publications, Inc.

38. Pragmatics
The cooperative principle guides conversations so that speakers utter appropriate statements. We speak audibly, use language understood by the listener, and follow the rules.
Listeners draw appropriate inferences called conversational implicatures. For example, if I say “I am out of gas” you might say “There’s a gas station around the corner.”
Fundamentals of Cognitive Psychology, 2e by Ronald T. Kellogg ©SAGE Publications, Inc.

39. Pragmatics
Language typically involves a dialogue. It is a bilateral activity requiring cooperation.
Listening is as important as speaking
Self-monitoring of one’s speech is required
But so is monitoring of the listener’s comprehension
Gestures, as well as speech, are part of the dialogue.
“People not only speak, but nod, smile, point, gaze at each other and exhibit and place things...It is the vocal and gestural acts together that comprise their talk.” (Clark & Krych, 2004; p. 62)
Fundamentals of Cognitive Psychology, 2e by Ronald T. Kellogg ©SAGE Publications, Inc.

40. * * * * * * * Defining Features of Language
Animation put asterisks by defining features discussed in book * * *

41. Contrasts to Animal Communication
Only language uses symbols to represent objects. Words are detached from their referents unlike the calls of a bird or chimpanzee. Displacement in space and time is thus possible with language.
Productivity is ability to create novel sentences that can be understood by other speakers of the language. Although chimpanzees can learn ASL and sign novel expressions, there is a vast difference in productivity.
Fundamentals of Cognitive Psychology, 2e by Ronald T. Kellogg ©SAGE Publications, Inc.

42. Kanzi and the Bonobos
Most impressive evidence of language in non-humans
This work is noteworthy for several reasons
Language was learned spontaneously
Kanzi learned lexigram symbols by watching researchers use them with his mother

43. Language evolved through his everyday activities; did not attempt to engage in human-like conversation
Led to a great deal of data—13,000 utterances generated over a 4-month period
Analysis revealed he:
could generate novel combinations of symbols
could distinguish between different types of symbols (nouns and verbs)
could place symbols in appropriate slots in an utterance
made up his own grammatical rules and consistently used them

44. Universal Grammar
Genetically determined knowledge of language allows rapid acquisition, in theory. At issue is whether a general learning process is sufficient.
A Language Acquisition Device (LAD) requires parameter setting from exposure to examples but restricts range (e.g., SOV, SVO, VSO, VOS in a pinch but not OVS or OSV).
Fundamentals of Cognitive Psychology, 2e by Ronald T. Kellogg ©SAGE Publications, Inc.

45. Levels of Language Representation
Aphasia: a language or speech disruption (from Greek words meaning “without speech”).
Aphasia manifests itself in many different ways; one of them, which disrupts the syntactic level of representation, is called nonfluent aphasia.
Or Broca’s aphasia, named for the French physician Paul Broca (1824–1880), who first described an aphasic patient with damage to a left frontal area of the brain now known as Broca’s area.

46. Neural Systems
Broca’s aphasia is an inability to speak fluently without effort and correct grammar. Speech is halting and agrammatic.
Wernicke’s aphasia is a comprehension dysfunction. Speech is fluent and effortless but also semantically vacuous.
Fundamentals of Cognitive Psychology, 2e by Ronald T. Kellogg ©SAGE Publications, Inc.

47. Levels of Language Representation

48. Representing Meaning

49. Fundamentals of Cognitive Psychology, 2e by Ronald T
Fundamentals of Cognitive Psychology, 2e by Ronald T. Kellogg ©SAGE Publications, Inc.

50. Connectionist Model of Aphasia
Damage to the strength of connections between the phonological, lexical, and semantic levels produces phonological errors found in fluent aphasics (e.g., golf for glove or brind for bread).
But, semantic errors (e.g., parsley for carrot) can’t be so modeled. They reflect damage just at the semantic level.
Fundamentals of Cognitive Psychology, 2e by Ronald T. Kellogg ©SAGE Publications, Inc.

51. Fundamentals of Cognitive Psychology, 2e by Ronald T
Fundamentals of Cognitive Psychology, 2e by Ronald T. Kellogg ©SAGE Publications, Inc.

52. Neural Systems
90% of the population is left-hemisphere dominant. Right- handedness and left localization of Broca’s and Wernicke’s are universal, at least in males. Females show more bilateral language representation.
Left-handed individuals may present with left, mixed, or in some cases right language representation.
The language zone extends far beyond Broca’s and Wernicke’s areas in neocortical and subcortical regions.
Fundamentals of Cognitive Psychology, 2e by Ronald T. Kellogg ©SAGE Publications, Inc.

53. Fundamentals of Cognitive Psychology, 2e by Ronald T
Fundamentals of Cognitive Psychology, 2e by Ronald T. Kellogg ©SAGE Publications, Inc.

54. Sentence Comprehension
Comprehension involves building mental representations similar to constructing a building. For example, a topic sentence is fixated longer than other sentences, allowing the reader to lay a foundation.
Suppositions and inferences go beyond the literal words in constructing an accurate mental representation of the author’s or speaker’s intentions.
Fundamentals of Cognitive Psychology, 2e by Ronald T. Kellogg ©SAGE Publications, Inc.

55. Fundamentals of Cognitive Psychology, 2e by Ronald T
Fundamentals of Cognitive Psychology, 2e by Ronald T. Kellogg ©SAGE Publications, Inc.

56. Suppositions
A simple assertion (e.g., the star is above the plus) takes 1,450 ms to comprehend.
To comprehend a negative, one must first presuppose the simple assertion and then deny it, taking an additional 300 ms (e.g., the star is not above the plus).
Fundamentals of Cognitive Psychology, 2e by Ronald T. Kellogg ©SAGE Publications, Inc.

57. Inferences
Anaphoric reference is illustrated by the problem of linking a pronoun to its antecedent reference noun (e.g., William went for a walk. He meandered through Dante’s square.).
Activation of referents and suppression of nonreferents through inhibition result in the proper linkage.
Fundamentals of Cognitive Psychology, 2e by Ronald T. Kellogg ©SAGE Publications, Inc.

58. Inferences
Given-new strategy in reading assumes that writers mark information already understood as opposed to new information. New information (someone meandered); old information (the person is William)
Explicit marking is quickest to grasp (William < bard < he).
Fundamentals of Cognitive Psychology, 2e by Ronald T. Kellogg ©SAGE Publications, Inc.

59. Inferences
Polysemy is the property of language that a single word can have more than one meaning. Homonyms (bank—river or finance?) and metaphors (time flies—how can it without wings?) illustrates the problem.
Potential meanings are activated and then selectively inhibited in word recognition.
Priming can directly activate nonliteral readings of metaphors.
Fundamentals of Cognitive Psychology, 2e by Ronald T. Kellogg ©SAGE Publications, Inc.

60. Discourse Comprehension
True discourse is referentially coherent, meaning the words of each sentence refer unambiguously to the others sentences.
Local cohesion helps provide this (e.g., anaphora).
Global frameworks representing the theme or topic also help.
Fundamentals of Cognitive Psychology, 2e by Ronald T. Kellogg ©SAGE Publications, Inc.

61. Global Frameworks
Micropropositions are the individual propositions of a sentence.
Macropropositions are the schema-based generalizations that summarize main points or the gist of the text.
Fundamentals of Cognitive Psychology, 2e by Ronald T. Kellogg ©SAGE Publications, Inc.

62. Fundamentals of Cognitive Psychology, 2e by Ronald T
Fundamentals of Cognitive Psychology, 2e by Ronald T. Kellogg ©SAGE Publications, Inc.

63. Reading Pathways
There are two possible routes from the printed word to its meaning:
(1) Spelling→meaning, the route from the spelling of the printed word at the bottom left of the triangle up to meaning at the top, a route much like that for the recognition of objects.
(2) Spelling→phonology→meaning: the print is first related to the phonological representation (that is, there is mapping between the two bottom points of the triangle), and then the phonological code is linked to meaning, just as in speech perception.

64. Reading Pathways

65. Eye Movements and Reading Comprehension
Fixations ( ms) and rapid eye movements or saccades provide snapshots of 4 characters to the left and up to 15 characters to the right of each fixation point.
80% of content and 20% of function words are fixated. With time to build mental structures, wpm is a normal reading rate.
Fundamentals of Cognitive Psychology, 2e by Ronald T. Kellogg ©SAGE Publications, Inc.

66. Process Models of Reading
Fixations ( ms) and rapid eye movements or saccades provide snapshots of 4 characters to the left and up to 15 characters to the right of each fixation point.
80% of content and 20% of function words are fixated. With time to build mental structures, wpm is a normal reading rate.
Fundamentals of Cognitive Psychology, 2e by Ronald T. Kellogg ©SAGE Publications, Inc.

67. Process Models of Reading
Immediacy Assumption: an interpretation is immediately attached to each word fixated. N400 ERPs to anomolous words reflect an attempt to assign meaning immediately.
Eye-Mind Assumption: the duration of fixation varies proportionally with the amount of information that must be processed (e.g., a grammatically complex sentence takes more time and activates more neural tissue than a simple sentence).
Fundamentals of Cognitive Psychology, 2e by Ronald T. Kellogg ©SAGE Publications, Inc.

68. Speed Reading is Trained Skimming
Start fixations at the right of first word and take the last fixation prior to the end of the sentence.
Focus on content words and infer function words.
Avoid regressive eye movements.
Avoid subvocalization.
Fundamentals of Cognitive Psychology, 2e by Ronald T. Kellogg ©SAGE Publications, Inc.