Cognitive Psychology

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Cognitive Psychology Chapter 9a Language
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11/7/2014
Oh freddled guntbuggly, thy micturations are to
me As plurdled gabbleblothchits on a lugid
bee Groop, I implore thee, my foonting
turlingdromes And booptiously drangle me with
crinkly bindlewurdles Or I will rend thee in the
gobberwarts With my blurglecruncheon, see if I
dont Prostetnic Vogon Jeltz Hitchhikers
Guide to the Galaxy

• Language
• Articulatory Phonetics
• Top down processes
• Syntax
• Lexical and semantic factors
• Case Grammar
• Neuropsychology of language
• Classical Localization Model
• Neurophysiology of language

Study Questions. How has sentence ambiguity
been used to study the psycholinguistics of
grammar. Describe the classical localization
model of brain and language. How do different
aphasias relate to the model. Give examples.
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Language

• Articulatory Phonetics
• Voicing

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Language

• Is speech special?
• Do we possess specialized neural mechanisms for
  perceiving speech?
• Categorical perception
• Voice onset-time and distinguishing /d/ from /t/
  

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Language

• Articulatory Phonetics
• Vowels
• Positioning and part of tongue
• Height
• High (/i/ beet)
• Med (/e/ bait)
• Low (/a/ pot)
• Part
• Front (/I/ bit)
• Central (but)
• Back (/o/ boat)

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Language

• The search for invariants
• Distinctive features
• Problems with a simple bottom-up approach
• There are no periods of silence between phonemes
• The speech spectrograph

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Language

• The search for invariants

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Language

• The search for invariants
• Phonemic information is presented in parallel
• Coarticulation
• E.g. Cf. /M/ in Tim vs. /M/ in mad
• We perceive them as the same, but they are
  different
• We perceive the same sound differently according
  to the context
• E.g. Writer vs. Rider
• E.g. Insert a silence between /s/ and /i/
  --gt ski
• Insert a silence between /s/ and /u/ --gt
  spew

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Language

• Top down processes
• Phonemic restoration effect (Warren, 1970)
• Their respective legilatures
• Found a eel on the axle
• Found a eel on the shoe

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Language

• Perceiving conversational speech
• Two main problems
• There are no physical boundaries between words
• Anna Mary candy lights since imp pulp lay things
• ( An American delights in simple play things)
• Speech is sloppy
• He wants to kiss this Guy?
• Misheard Lyrics (www.kissthisguy.com)
• This was the best buy vs. She is a bad
  girl

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Language

• Perceiving conversational speech

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Language

• Perceiving conversational speech

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Language

• Top-down processes and speech perception
• Phonemic perception
• The McGurk Effect
• Sentence comprenension
• Miller Isard (1963)
• Participants shadow sentences
• Grammatic Bears steal honey from the hive.
• Semantically incorrect Bears shoot honey on the
  highways.
• Ungrammatic Across bears eyes honey the bill.

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Language

• Top-down processes and speech perception
• Miller Isard (1963)
• Results
• Gram. Nonsem. Nongram.
• No noise 89 79 56
• Noise 63 22 3

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Language

• Syntax
• Finite state grammar
• E.g, Miller (1958).

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Language

• Syntax
• Finite state grammar
• E.g, Miller (1958).
• Structured Random
• L1 L2 R1 R2
• SSXG NNSG GNSX NXGS
• NNXSG NNSXG NSGXN GNXSG
• SXSXG SXXSG XGSSN SXNGG
• Etc. Etc. Etc. Etc.

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Language

• Syntax
• Finite state grammar
• E.g, Miller (1958).

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Language

• Syntax
• Finite state grammar
• Problems with finite state grammar
• Linguistic competence
• Judgements of grammaticity (Chomsky)
• e.g., Colourless green ideas sleep furiously
• (For words never paired together)
• Judgements of agrammaticity (Miller and
  Selfridge)
• e.g., Was he went to the newspaper is in deep
  end.
• (For words often paired together)
• Resolving/explaining ambiguity
• e.g., They are cooking apples.

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Language

• Syntax
• Phrase structure grammar
• Constituent analysis

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Language

• Syntax
• Phrase structure grammar
• Three types of sentences
• Grammatical / meaningful maps onto only one
  phrase structure.
• Nongrammatical cannot be mapped onto a phrase
  structure
• Grammatical / ambiguous maps onto more than one
  phrase structure.
• e.g., They are flying planes

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Language

• Syntax
• Transformational grammar
• Some ambiguous sentences are not explained by
  phrase structure
• E.g, Visiting relatives can be boring
• Both interpretations map onto the same phrase
  structure...but, they map onto different meanings
• Surface structure Superficial appearance (i.e.,
  phrase structure).
• Deep structure The meaning of the sentence.
• Transformational rules convert the deep
  structure into a surface structure (a sentence
  ready to be spoke)

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Language

• Syntax
• Resolving ambiguity (McKay, 1966)
• Lexical ambiguity
• E.g., Although he was continually bothered by the
  cold
• Control headache
• Surface ambiguity
• E.g., Although Hannibal sent troops over a week
  ago
• Control almost
• Underlying ambiguity
• E.g., Knowing that visiting relatives could be
  bothersome .
• Control visiting some

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Language

• Syntax
• Resolving ambiguity (McKay, 1966)
• Results

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Language

• Syntax
• Case grammar
• Semantic analysis involves determining the
  semantic role of each word or concept and
  computing sentence meaning based on that
  analysis.
• E.g,
• A The key will open the door
• B The janitor will open the door with the key
• The key is the subject of A and an object in
  B but serves the same role in each sentence.

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Language

• Syntax
• Interaction between syntax and semantics
• Fillenbaum (1974)
• Had subjects read and then paraphrase several
  sentences
• Normal sentences
• Threat Dont print that or I will sue you.
• Control John got off the bus and went to the
  store
• Perverse/disordered
• Threat Dont print that or I wont sue you
• Control John went in the store and got on the
  bus.
• Results
• Perverse 50 normalized in their paraphrases
• Disordered 60 normalized.
• When subjects checked their work, they missed
  half of the errors

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Nice were having weather isnt it?
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Brain Language

• Neuropsychology of language
• Aphasia Language deficits resulting from
  brain-related disorders and injury.
• Very common
• 40 of all strokes produce some aphasia
• Brocas Aphasia
• Paul Broca - studied patient Leborgne
  (A.K.A.Tan)
• Treated for leg injury
• Died a few days later
• Autopsied brain
• Discovered Brocas area
• Left Hemisphere dominance for language

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Brain Language

• Neuropsychology of language
• Brocas Aphasia

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Brain Language

• Neuropsychology of language
• Brocas Aphasia
• Production Deficits
• Problems in producing fluent language
• Range from Tan,tan,tan, to short phrases
• Lack function words and grammar
• May retain idioms (fit as a fiddle) or songs
• Proximity to motor cortex
• Dysarthria loss of control over articulatory
  muscles
• Speech Apraxia Unable to program voluntary
  articulatory movements.

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Brain Language

• Neuropsychology of language
• Brocas Aphasia
• Comprehension deficits
• Unable to analyze precise grammatical information
• E.g.
• The Boy ate the cookie
• Who ate the Cookie?
• Boy ate cookie
• Implied grammar (cookies dont eat boys)
• The Boy was kicked by the girl
• Who kicked whom?
• Boy kick girl

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Brain Language

• Neuropsychology of language
• Wernickes Aphasia
• Carl Wernicke, 1870s
• Examined two patients
• Problems understanding language following strokes
• Fluent but nonsensical speech
• Poor language comprehension
• Proximity to auditory sensory areas
• (Wernicke proposed word memory area)

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Brain Language

• Neuropsychology of language
• Wernickes Aphasia
• Production deficits
• Sounds fluent (e.g., foreign language)
• Neologistic (invented words)
• Semantic substitutions
• E.g.
• I called my mother on the television and did not
  understand the romers by the door.

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Brain Language

• Neuropsychology of language
• Wernickes Aphasia
• Comprehension deficits
• Do not recognize the incomprehensibility of
  their own sentences
• Do not comprehend written or spoken language
• Here and gone again
• Aphasia improves over time
• Anomia Losing the ability to retrieve words
  (nouns)

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Brain Language

• Neuropsychology of language
• Classical localization model (Lichtheim, 1885
  Geschwand, 1967)

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Brain Language

• Neuropsychology of language
• Classical localization model (Lichtheim, 1885
  Geschwand, 1967)
• Damage to main areas
• Brocas Aphasia
• Wernickes Aphasia
• Damage to connections
• Conduction aphasia
• Transcortical sensory aphasia

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Brain Language

• Neuropsychology of language
• Conduction aphasia
• Damage to the connection between Wernickes and
  Brocas area
• Arcuate Fasciculus

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Brain Language

• Neuropsychology of language
• Conduction aphasia
• Production deficits
• Problems producing spontaneous speech
• Problem repeating speech
• Sometimes use words incorrectly
• Comprehension
• Can understand spoken/written words
• Can hear their own speech errors, but cannot
  correct them

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Brain Language

• Neuropsychology of language
• Conduction aphasia

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Brain Language

• Neuropsychology of language
• A prediction

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Brain Language

• Neuropsychology of language
• A prediction
• Disconnecting Wernickes from the conceptual
  area should lead to repetition without
  comprehension.
• Transcortical Sensory Aphasi
• Damage to the angular gyri

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Brain Language

• Neurophysiology of language in the intact brain
• ERP studies
• The N400 Semantic violations

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Brain Language

• Neurophysiology of language in the intact brain
• ERP studies
• The P600 Syntactic Positive Shift (syntactic
  violation)

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Brain Language

• Neurophysiology of language in the intact brain
• Dispreferred continuation of ambiguous sentences
• E.g.,
• The spy saw the cop with the binoculars
• Who has the binoculars?
• The spy has the binoculars -gt preferred
  continuation
• The N400 and aphasia
• Swaab et al.
• Patients listened to sentences that had an
  anomalous word at the end.

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Brain Language

• Neurophysiology of language in the intact brain
• Swaab et al. (1997)

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Brain Language

• Neurophysiology of language in the intact brain
• A caveat Individual differences
• Stimulation mapping of the brain
• Neurosurgery around left hemisphere language
  areas
• A couple hundred of partients
• Correlation with effects in Wernicke and Brocas
  area are week
• Some patients have naming problems in the area,
  not all.
• Anatomical localizations vary considerably.

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Brain Language

• Neurophysiology of language in the intact brain
• A caveat Individual differences