Cognitive Psychology, 2 nd Ed. Chapter 11 Language Production

Speech Production 2-3 words per second with 3-12 dysfluencies per minute, using a vocabulary of 45,000 words. Errors can reveal processing units (“Easier for a camel to go through the knee of an ideal”).

Speech Production Agrammatic speech found in the telegraphic language of Broca’s aphasia reveals problems in grammatical encoding (dog…boat…uh…water). Neologisms and pseudogrammatic utterances found in Wernicke’s aphasia reveal lexical- semantic failures (It’s a girl uncurl on a boat. A dog is another dog on a boatum).

Sentence Generation Grammatical encoding refers to the selection of the lexical entries to be used from among those in the speakers vocabulary and to the assembly of a syntactic frame. Phonological encoding referes to the assembly of sound forms and the intonation to be executed during articulation.

Lexical Representations A lemma is an abstract representation of the word that specifies its semantic and grammatical features (e.g., goat and sheep share semantic features and are both nouns but differ in grammatical gender). A lexeme is a representation of the phonological or sound structure of the word (goat and sheep are totally different at the level of sounds).

Stages of Grammatical Encoding (“ She is handing him some broccoli.”) Functional processing selects lemmas and assigns each to a grammatical function or case role. Example error: “He is handing her some broccoli.” Positional processing assigns the output to a phrase structure tree. Example error: “She was hand himming some broccoli”.

Phonological Encoding Failures of phonological encoding are common in the speech of young children (fis is spoken when fish is needed). Suprasegmental phonology provides the variations in intonation and pauses. Consider the difference in normal speech and the slow rate, high pitch, and large intonation changes of “motherese.”

Articulation Phonetics is the study of how speech sounds are actually produced by the human vocal tract. Consonants involve constriction of air flow whereas the mouth is open with vowels allowing unimpeded phonation.

Articulation of English Consonants Place refers to the position of air flow constriction in the mouth (e.g. bilabial). Manner refers to the way sound is emitted (e.g., stops involve complete constriction at the place of articulation). Voicing refers to whether the vocal cords vibrate (voiced) or not. Voice onset time may differ (ba—immediate vs. pa—60 ms delay).

Cascade vs. Interaction: Grammatical and Phonological Encoding By phonologically biasing the production system, people commit Spoonerisms (e.g., saying barn door instead of darn boor). Of interest, such errors occur three times more often for real words (30%) than for nonwords (10%), such as saying beal dack instead of deal back. The lexical bias effect supports a connectionist architecture with backward interaction.

Writing Systems Ideographic writing systems date to 10,000 years ago in Sumeria. Phonetic writing first appeared 3,500 years ago in the Sinai desert. A small number of letters are used to code sounds rather than large numbers of ideographs.

Writing Processes Planning refers to retrieving/creating ideas, organizing ideas, and setting goals. Reviewing refers to reading the text being produced and evaluating and editing it. Translating or generating refers to the linguistic processes to encode sentences and links between sentences. Motor transcription is closely linked in time, just as articulation is in speech.

Spelling Processes Orthography, the mapping of sounds to written symbols, must be specified only in writing unless you spell orally. Dissociation in acquired dysgraphia shows damage to direct orthographic lexicon to grapheme path. J.G. could spell nonwords but failed to spell irregular words (“none” rather than “known.”). Only the phoneme to grapheme conversion path was intact.

Knowledge-Transforming Content problems concern what to say and rhetorical problems concern how to say it. Children tell what they want to say about content but do not reflect on how to say it. Adults reflect on content and rhetorical problem spaces concurrently. They may transform knowledge as a result (i.e., changing what you think as a result of trying to express your thoughts). “How do I know what I think until I see what I say.” E. M. Forster

Challenges of writing Recursive interaction of planning, translating, and reviewing. Heavy load on working memory. Necessity of maintaining multiple representations of the author’s intent, the actual text produced, and the reader’s perspective.

Writer’s Block “Writing is easy. All you do is stare at a blank sheet of paper until drops of blood form on your forehead.” —Gene Fowler Inability to produce text caused by evaluation anxiety, cognitive overload, maladaptive planning strategies, and other process dysfunctions.