Deck 11: Language

Question 1

Which property below is NOT one of the characteristics that makes human language unique?

A) Hierarchical structure
B) Communication
C) Governed by rules
D) It involves arrangement of a sequence of symbols

Answer 1

Communication

Question 2

Pollack and Pickett's experiment on understanding speech found that when participants were presented with individual words taken out of conversations (single words presented alone with no context), they could identify

A) 100 percent of the words spoken by their own voices.
B) 50 percent of the words spoken by their own voices.
C) 50 percent of the words spoken by others with an accent similar to theirs.
D) none of the words spoken by others.

Answer 2

50 percent of the words spoken by their own voices.

Question 3

Ty has finished work on his doctoral dissertation. He studied how most adults understand words, specifically the priming effects of categorically related words, and submitted a proposal to be included in a psychological conference to present his work to his peers. Presentations at the conference are grouped based on the particular topic in psychology under consideration. It is most likely that Ty's work will be presented in a conference session on

A) psychophysics.
B) psychoacoustics.
C) neuropsychology.
D) psycholinguistics.

Answer 3

psycholinguistics.

Question 4

Ron is an avid reader. He has a large vocabulary because every time he comes across a word he doesn't know, he looks it up in the dictionary. Ron encounters "wanderlust" in a novel, reaches for the dictionary, and finds out this word means "desire to travel." The process of looking up unfamiliar words increases Ron's

A) lexicon.
B) parser.
C) syntactical capacity.
D) mental set.

Question 5

In a study, participants listened to the following tape recording:
Rumor had it that, for years, the government building had been plagued with problems. The man was not surprised when he found several spiders, roaches, and other bugs in the corner of the room.
As participants heard the word "bugs," they completed a lexical decision task to a test stimulus flashed on a screen. To which of the following words would you expect participants to take the longest to respond to?

A) ANT
B) SPY
C) SKY
D) ROACH

Question 6

In New Guinea, tribes that had been isolated for centuries were found that they

A) had a large number of sophisticated language systems.
B) had languages that were more primitive than languages of most non-isolated societies.
C) communicated by hand signals but not verbal language as we know it.
D) had just a few language systems that were all governed by similar rules.

Question 7

When the front part of a sentence can be interpreted more than one way, but the end of the sentence clarifies which meaning is correct, we say that the sentence is an example of

A) parsing.
B) temporary ambiguity.
C) speech segmentation.
D) lexical priming.

Question 8

A researcher had participants read each of the sentences below and measured the time it took to read each sentence.
Trial 1: The lamb ran past the cottage into the pasture.
Trial 2: The dog ran past the house into the yard.
The participants' response times were longer for ____________________ because of the ____________________ effect.

A) trial 2; word frequency
B) trial 1; word frequency
C) trial 2; word superiority
D) trial 1; word superiority

Question 9

Within the realm of conversational speech, knowledge refers to the

A) meaning of a conversation.
B) rules for combining spoken words into sentences.
C) tendency to see relationships between spoken concepts even when those relationships do not exist.
D) previously understood information that we bring into the conversation.

Question 10

B.F. Skinner, the modern champion of behaviorism, proposed that language is learned through

A) parsing.
B) genetic coding.
C) syntactic framing.
D) reinforcement.

Question 11

One of Chomsky's most persuasive arguments for refuting Skinner's theory of language acquisition was his observation that children

A) produce sentences they have never heard.
B) show similar language development across cultures.
C) are rewarded for using correct language.
D) learn to follow complex language rules, even though they are not aware of doing so.

Question 12

Yoda, a central character of the Star Wars movies created by George Lucas, has a distinctive way of speaking. His statement, "Afraid you will be," violates which property of the English language?

A) Language involves the use of a lexicon.
B) Coding is required for language.
C) Language symbols must have high discriminability.
D) Language has a structure that is governed by rules.

Question 13

Which set of stimuli would be the best selection for having people perform a lexical decision task?

A) Common words "cat, boat" and uncommon words "peon, furtive"
B) Concrete words "window, monkey" and abstract words "doubt, energy"
C) Words "pizza, history" and nonwords "pibble, girk"
D) Correctly spelled words "speech, potato" and misspelled words "speach, potatoe"

Question 14

Lilo can't wait for school to start. This year is the first time she gets to take a foreign language class, and she is taking Japanese. Dr. Nabuto is a professor interested in studying how people learn additional languages later in life, and he is including Lilo's class in his research. Dr. Nabuto is most likely studying

A) language comprehension.
B) language acquisition.
C) speech production.
D) speech parsing.

Question 15

Evidence that language is a social process that must be learned comes from the fact that when deaf children find themselves in an environment where there are no people who speak or use sign language, they

A) lose the ability to communicate in any way.
B) invent a sign language themselves.
C) start speaking out loud even though they cannot hear themselves.
D) demonstrate compensatory regeneration of lost auditory neural pathways.

Question 16

Lexical ambiguity studies show that people access ambiguous words based on

A) the identification of a single meaning for that word.
B) the meaning dominance of each definition of the word.
C) the word that comes immediately before and the word that comes immediately after the ambiguous word in the sentence.
D) a bottom-up progression of meaning comprehension.

Question 17

The word frequency effect refers to the fact that we respond more

A) slowly to low-frequency words than high-frequency words.
B) slowly to letters appearing in nonwords than letters appearing in words.
C) quickly to letters that appear multiple times in a word than just once in a word.
D) quickly to phonemes that appear multiple times in a word than just once in a word.

Question 18

Language consists of smaller components, like words, that can be combined to form larger ones, like phrases, to create sentences, which themselves can be components of a larger story. This demonstrates the ____________________ property of language.

A) hierarchical
B) relational
C) parallel
D) propositional

Question 19

Noam Chomsky proposed that

A) humans are genetically programmed to acquire and use language.
B) language is learned through the mechanism of reinforcement.
C) as children learn language, they produce only sentences they have heard before.
D) the underlying basis of language is different across cultures.

Question 20

In the lexical decision task, participants are asked to

A) separate a sentence into individual words.
B) decide which meaning of an ambiguous sentence is correct in a specific situation.
C) identify words that are contained in sentences.
D) decide whether a string of letters is a word or a nonword.

Question 21

Imagine you are interpreting a pair of sentences such as "The sidewalk was covered with ice" and "Ramona fell down." The kind of inference we use to link these sentences together would most likely be a(n) ____________________ inference.

A) causal
B) coherent
C) anaphoric
D) instrument

Question 22

Brain imaging studies reveal that semantics and syntax are associated with which two lobes of the cerebral cortex?

A) The parietal and occipital lobes
B) The frontal and temporal lobes
C) The temporal and parietal lobes
D) The frontal and parietal lobes

Question 23

When two people engage in a conversation, if one person produces a specific grammatical construction in his or her speech and then the other person does the same, this phenomenon is referred to as

A) anaphoric inferencing.
B) phonemic restoration.
C) garden pathing.
D) syntactic priming.

Question 24

Which of the following statements is NOT accurate?

A) Lexicon is smaller in scope than semantics.
B) Semantics are multidimensional in scope.
C) The scope of lexical semantics is variable.
D) Semantics and lexicons are equal in scope.

Question 25

The idea that the rules governing the grouping of words in a sentence is the primary determinant of the way a sentence is parsed is part of the ____________________ approach to parsing.

A) semantic
B) temporary ambiguity
C) garden path
D) interactionist

Question 26

Boxing champion George Foreman recently described his family vacations with the statement, "At our ranch in Marshall, Texas, there are lots of ponds and I take the kids out and we fish. And then of course, we grill them." That a reader understands "them" appropriately (George grills fish, not his kids!) is the result of a(n) ____________________ inference.

A) narrative
B) instrument
C) analogic
D) anaphoric

Question 27

Which of the following is the best example of a garden path sentence?

A) Before the police stopped, the Toyota disappeared into the night.
B) The man was not surprised when he found several spiders, roaches, and other bugs in the room.
C) The cats won't bake.
D) The Eskimos were frightened by the walrus.

Question 28

Chaz is listening to his grandma reminisce about the first time she danced with his grandpa 60 years ago. When his grandma says, "It seemed like the song would play forever," Chaz understands that it is more likely his grandma was listening to a radio playing and not a CD. This understanding requires Chaz use a(n)

A) garden path model.
B) given-new contract.
C) instrument inference.
D) age-appropriate principle.

Question 29

The concept of language can best be thought of as a ________.

A) process
B) dialogue
C) cognition
D) system

Question 30

Syntax is the

A) rules for combining words into sentences.
B) meanings of words.
C) way people pronounce words in conversational speech.
D) mental grouping of words in a sentence into phrases.

Question 31

The given-new contract is a method for creating

A) comprehension between a speaker and a listener in a conversation.
B) children's mastery of syntax.
C) resolution of a lexically ambiguous sentence.
D) anaphoric inferences between consecutive sentences.

Question 32

Consider the following sentences: "Captain Ahab wanted to kill the whale. He cursed at it." These two sentences taken together provide an example of a(n)

A) instrument inference.
B) garden path sequence.
C) global connection.
D) anaphoric inference.

Question 33

According to the situation model of text processing,

A) people create a mental representation of what the text is about in terms of information about phrases, sentences, and paragraphs.
B) people create a mental representation of what the text is about in terms of people, objects, locations, and events.
C) it will take longer to understand a story that involves a complex series of situations.
D) people draw inferences about what is happening in a story by considering both local and global connections.

Question 34

Coherence refers to the

A) mental process by which readers create information during reading that is not explicitly stated in the text.
B) principle that we process information in isolation before we link it to its context.
C) mental process whereby ambiguity is resolved online during sentence reading.
D) representation of the text in a reader's mind so that information in one part of the text is related to information in another part of the text.

Question 35

The crucial question in comparing garden path and constrain-based approaches to parsing is ____________________ is involved.

A) whether semantics
B) whether syntax
C) when semantics
D) when syntax

Question 36

The constraint-based approach to parsing states that

A) semantics is activated only at the end of a sentence.
B) semantics is activated as a sentence is being read.
C) the grammatical structure of a sentence determines the initial parsing.
D) semantics is only activated to clear up ambiguity.

Question 37

Most of the coherence in text is created by

A) inference.
B) syntax.
C) parsing.
D) phoneme restoration.

Question 38

Tanenhaus and coworkers' eye movement study presented participants with different pictures for interpreting the sentence, "Put the apple on the towel in the box." Their results showed the importance of ____________________ in how we understand sentences in real-life situations.

A) the cooperative principle
B) local connections
C) environmental context
D) instrumental inferences

Question 39

According to the concept of ________, when we read a sentence like, "Jorge grabbed his coat from his bedroom and his backpack from the living room, walked downstairs, and called his friend Gerry," we create a simulation of Jorge's apartment and keep track of his location as he moves throughout the apartment.

A) global connections
B) situation models
C) causal inference
D) speech continuity

Question 40

Consider the sentence, "Because he always jogs a mile seems like a short distance to him."
The principle of late closure states that this sentence would first be parsed into which of the following phrases?

A) "Because he always jogs"
B) "Because he always jogs a mile"
C) "he always jogs"
D) "a mile seems"

Question 41

Identify the types of meaning dominance in language. Give examples of each to support your thinking.

Question 42

Define inference as it applies to text processing. Write a sample narrative paragraph that includes examples of anaphoric inference, instrument inference, and causal inference. Identify and describe each occurrence.

Question 43

Compare and contrast Skinner's and Chomsky's views on language acquisition. Give examples of each perspective to support your ideas.

Question 44

Which term best reflects a musical composer who writes a film score in the key of E?

A) Prosody
B) Tonic
C) Heuristics
D) Entrainment

Question 45

Which of the following is a nonverbal component of communication?

A) Anaphoric inference
B) Causal inference
C) Theory of mind
D) Syntactic priming

Question 46

If human speech is just an ongoing stream of sounds, how are computerized voice recognition systems able to function effectively? What "human" capabilities and qualities do they need to be programmed with? Give examples to support your thinking.

Question 47

Dictionaries commonly list the multiple definitions of a particular word in a numbered list, with the first definition as #1, the next definition as #2, and so on. Which concept does this reflect?

A) Lexical priming
B) Object-relative construction
C) Meaning dominance
D) Positional inference

Question 48

In the context of language, another term for "heuristics" is ________.

A) phrases
B) rules
C) meanings
D) turns

Question 49

Explain how language and music are both similar and different.

Question 50

Which term best reflects the process of reading and understanding sentences in a story?

A) Dynamic
B) Rigid
C) Sequential
D) Conscious

Question 51

Which of the following terms best describes the concept of entrainment?

A) Isolation
B) Similarity
C) Cooperation
D) Understanding

Question 52

Which of the following is NOT a factor in prosody?

A) Rhythm
B) Semantics
C) Sound
D) Structure

Question 53

If human speech is represented as a string of taffy on a candy-making assembly line, then what function does speech segmentation serve at the candy factory?

A) It mixes the taffy ingredients.
B) It adds flavors to the taffy.
C) It puts the taffy in packages.
D) It cuts the taffy into pieces.

Question 54

From the perspective of the listener, as a person speaks, each sentence often is characterized by ________ until the sentence is completed.

A) tonics
B) heuristics
C) entrainment
D) ambiguity

Question 55

Conversation is often described as a "give and take" that is generally more effective when people are "on the same page." Explain these concepts from the perspective of cognitive psychology. Provide examples to support your ideas.

Question 56

In written English, which punctuation mark has the most parsing power?

A) Hyphen
B) Exclamation point
C) Period
D) Comma