Question 1

Your textbook discusses the topic of metacomprehension in young children. According to this discussion,

Accepted Answer

A)  young children do not have the skills that they need, in order to use metacomprehension. 
B)  teachers do not try hard enough to emphasize metacomprehension. 
C)  the stories in the textbooks do not require metacomprehension. 
D)  children's memory skills are very limited, because their working memory holds only two or three words at a time.

Question 2

According to Chomsky, sentences such as "Teddy ate the broccoli" and "The broccoli was eaten by Teddy" are related through

Accepted Answer

A)  surface structure rules. 
B)  transformational rules. 
C)  pragmatic rules. 
D)  ambiguity processes.

Question 3

Chapter 9 discusses a study by Luo and his colleagues, in which people made semantic judgments about two-word sequences such as APPLE-PAIR. If the participants in this study judged that these two words were indeed semantically related, the results would support which of the following hypotheses about reading?

Accepted Answer

A)  The direct-access route 
B)  The indirect-access route 
C)  The modular hypothesis 
D)  The cognitive-functional hypothesis

Question 4

Research on word recognition suggests that

Accepted Answer

A)  word recognition can use either a direct or an indirect route, depending upon factors such as the skill level of the reader. 
B)  poor readers need to translate written words into sound prior to recognition; good readers consistently recognize the printed words directly. 
C)  written words must always be translated into sound prior to recognition; theorists agree on this particular principle. 
D)  readers need to translate ambiguous words into sound; they recognize other words directly.

Question 5

The whole-word approach to teaching reading emphasizes that

Accepted Answer

A)  readers directly connect a written word with the word's meaning. 
B)  we should emphasize the way that words sound. 
C)  readers perceive the individual letters in the visual stimulus, so we should take a bottom-up approach to reading. 
D)  beginning readers emphasize the whole word; advanced readers emphasize the sounds within each word.

Question 6

When you read a section of your cognitive psychology textbook, you read language units that are longer than an isolated paragraph. This kind of language is called

Accepted Answer

A)  phonemes. 
B)  discourse. 
C)  pragmatics. 
D)  schemas.

Question 7

Which of the following children is likely to have the lowest reading-accuracy score, assuming that each is "average" for their language group?

Accepted Answer

A)  a child who is learning to read German 
B)  a child who is learning to read French 
C)  a child who is learning to read English 
D)  a child who is learning to read Portuguese

Question 8

Which of the following is true about sentences that are grammatically complex?

Accepted Answer

A)  They make fewer demands on a reader's memory resources. 
B)  They are very infrequent in language. 
C)  Even when people are given practice with complex sentences, they do not improve their processing speed. 
D)  Highly experienced readers actually experience less processing difficult with complex grammar than they do with simple grammar.

Question 9

Suppose that you are walking on your college campus, and a stranger asks you how to get to the library. Before answering, you need to figure out whether this person is familiar with any of the landmarks on the campus. Your concern about background information is most relevant for the aspect of language known as

Accepted Answer

A)  phonemes 
B)  semantics. 
C)  syntax. 
D)  pragmatics.

Question 10

According to Chomsky's approach, the relationship between "The dog chased the cat" and "The cat was chased by the dog" can be described as

Accepted Answer

A)  one deep structure with two surface structures 
B)  two deep structures with one surface structure 
C)  two deep structures and two surface structures 
D)  two deep structures linked by a transformational rule

Question 11

Which of the following statements is true about inferences made during reading?

Accepted Answer

A)  We do not store inferences in long term memory. 
B)  We store inferences separately from the statements that actually occurred in the text. 
C)  We always construct and store inferences, even when reading complex scientific texts. 
D)  We often retain the gist or general meaning of a passage, forgetting that we constructed some elements that did not actually appear in the story.

Question 12

In contrast to written language, spoken language is especially likely

Accepted Answer

A)  to be spread out across space. 
B)  to be controllable with respect to the rate of input. 
C)  to require the use of working memory. 
D)  to have discrete boundaries between words.

Question 13

When the fMRI technique is used in studying language comprehension,

Accepted Answer

A)  both the left and the right hemisphere are active, though their functions are somewhat different. 
B)  people's responses occur so quickly that the fMRI is not especially useful. 
C)  the results reveal that people who have experienced strokes show remarkably normal patterns of brain activity. 
D)  the results reinforce the conclusion that language tasks are handled exclusively by the left hemisphere.

Question 14

According to the cognitive-functional approach to language,

Accepted Answer

A)  we need to explore how morphology has implications for syntax. 
B)  people have strong, explicit knowledge about the way they understand and create language. 
C)  the purpose of language is to convey meaning to other people. 
D)  language is a unique skill, and it is not really related to other cognitive processes such as attention and memory.

Question 15

Part of Chapter 9 discusses a comparison between reading and listening to spoken language. When you read, you are

Accepted Answer

A)  more likely to encounter error-free language. 
B)  more likely to encounter nonverbal cues. 
C)  less likely to re-scan the language input. 
D)  less likely to detect clear-cut boundaries between words.

Question 16

Which of the following sentences should be easiest to comprehend?

Accepted Answer

A)  My cat Lupin chased the mouse under the sofa. 
B)  The mouse was chased under the sofa by my cat, Lupin. 
C)  The cat that chased the mouse was named Lupin. 
D)  Heather denied that her cat did not chase the mouse.

Question 17

According to Chapter 9,

Accepted Answer

A)  the speaking vocabulary of the average North American is between 10,000 and 12,000 words. 
B)  it would take about 2,000 times the age of the earth to say all the potential 20-word English sentences that could be generated. 
C)  whereas memory is an active process, language comprehension is primarily passive. 
D)  the term syntax refers to the sound of spoken language.

Question 18

Tierney uses neuroscientific testing methods to examine the underlying brain structures and systems that support language. Her discipline would most accurately be described as

Accepted Answer

A)  cognitive neuroscience. 
B)  linguistic neurology. 
C)  neurolinguistics. 
D)  psycholinguistics.

Question 19

The fact that a "bat" could be a flying mammal or a necessary tool to play baseball is an example of

Accepted Answer

A)  syntactic ambiguity. 
B)  lexical ambiguity. 
C)  the lack of proper rules in the English language 
D)  pragmatics.

Question 20

Languages like Russian or Spanish are considered easier to read than English because

Accepted Answer

A)  Russian and Spanish have a one-to-one correspondence between letters of the alphabet and speech sounds. 
B)  Russian and Spanish have fewer irregular grammatical structures. 
C)  Russian and Spanish alphabets have fewer letters than the English alphabet does. 
D)  Russian and Spanish words are shorter, on the average.

Exam 9: Language I: Introduction to Language and Language Comprehension