Question 1

ERP and eye tracking have both been found to be useful for studying predictive language processing in spoken language, but there may be specific experimental circumstances in which one would be more appropriate than the other. What would you need to consider when deciding whether to use the ERP or the eye-tracking method?

Accepted Answer

The answer of ERP and eye tracking have both been...

Question 2

Which sentence is a garden path sentence?

Accepted Answer

A)  The lawyer with a wart was hit by the gang leader. 
B)  The gang leader hit the lawyer with a wart. 
C)  The cruel man beat his puppy using a thick stick. 
D)  The puppy was beaten with a thick stick by the cruel man.

Question 3

Understanding thematic relations of a verb

Accepted Answer

A)  always results in the disambiguation of a garden path sentence. 
B)  does not help to disambiguate a garden path sentence. 
C)  allows a listener to make inferences about the event and participant relationships being described in a sentence. 
D)  is helpful for resolving ambiguities involving reduced relative clauses, but not other ambiguities.

Question 4

In the sentence The cruel man beat his puppy with a thick stick, _______ is the indirect object.

Accepted Answer

A)  the cruel man 
B)  beat his puppy 
C)  puppy 
D)  a thick stick

Question 5

In which situation would speakers be most likely to use prosodic cues that are helpful for disambiguating spoken language?

Accepted Answer

A)  Working together with a friend to build a birdhouse 
B)  Giving instructions for building a birdhouse over the phone to a friend 
C)  Reading instructions for building a birdhouse aloud to a friend 
D)  Recording instructions for building a birdhouse to be heard by a friend at a later time

Question 6

Grammatically, _______ exemplifies a sentence in passive voice; whereas _______ uses an active voice.

Accepted Answer

A)  The man jumped on the trampoline; The man is jumping on the trampoline 
B)  The plumber was sued by the baker; The baker sued the plumber 
C)  The horse is racing past the fence; The horse who was raced past the fence tripped 
D)  The thief is taking the jewels; The jewels were taken by the thief

Question 7

Describe the task researchers used to measure cognitive control in working memory, and how this relates to the processing of garden path sentences.

Accepted Answer

The answer of Describe the task researchers used to measure...

Question 8

Isabelle, 4, has the vocabulary of a 5-year-old. Sam, 5, has an average vocabulary for his age. In a study of language processing based on predictive eye movement,

Accepted Answer

A)  Isabelle's eye movements toward relevant visual cues would be faster than Sam's. 
B)  Sam's eye movements toward relevant visual cues would be faster than Isabelle's. 
C)  the children would orient to relevant visual cues at similar speeds. 
D)  we would learn about orientation to relevant visual cues in young children because this age group has not yet been studied.

Question 9

In the sentence The stew simmered on the stove turned out to be delicious, the phrase simmered on the stove is ambiguous because it is missing certain function words. This grammatical structure is known as a

Accepted Answer

A)  conjoined clause. 
B)  reduced relative clause. 
C)  sentence complement. 
D)  main clause.

Question 10

_______ suggested that people often use heuristics to solve problems, and sometimes these shortcuts in thought lead us to make errors in judgments.

Accepted Answer

A)  Maryellen McDonald 
B)  John McIntyre 
C)  Daniel Kahneman 
D)  Tom Bever

Question 11

Based on ERP studies of language predictability, which sentence would likely generate the largest N400 effect in response to the underlined word?

Accepted Answer

A)  The teacher spilled his tea. 
B)  He stopped by the store to pick up a loaf of cheese. 
C)  The runner tripped over a root. 
D)  He eats his cereal in a bowls.

Question 12

Which outcome suggests that participants process meaning during the shadowing task?

Accepted Answer

A)  Participants' shadowing slows down when the sentence they are repeating combines meaningful words in nonsensical ways. 
B)  Participants say that they are processing the meaning as they shadow what they hear. 
C)  Researchers ask the participants to report the gist of each sentence. 
D)  Shadowing is the process of understanding.

Question 13

Which sentence contains a sentential complement verb?

Accepted Answer

A)  The yellow bird sings sweetly. 
B)  The weary traveler slept. 
C)  The police office recommended that she not drive at night. 
D)  Please hand me the largest wrench.

Question 14

The garden path theory places emphasis on the _______ rather than _______ of processing during the initial parsing phase.

Accepted Answer

A)  phonetics; syntax 
B)  speed; accuracy 
C)  semantics; syntax 
D)  rules; short cuts

Question 15

Consider the sentence Let's eat grandma. Which vocal cue would help disambiguate the sentence?

Accepted Answer

A)  A pause between the word eat and the word grandma 
B)  A rising intonation at the end of the sentence 
C)  Articulating grandma clearly 
D)  Speaking the sentence at an even speed

Question 16

Which of the following is a confound, preventing researchers from concluding that bilinguals have an advantage in cognitive control?

Accepted Answer

A)  Bilinguals are known to be smarter on average, making them better at language learning. 
B)  Bilinguals have a wide variety of different language experiences and different amounts of exposure to their two languages. 
C)  Cultural effects from bilinguals' native countries interfere with their ability to complete certain kinds of tasks similarly enough to monolinguals. 
D)  Interference from bilinguals' native languages interferes with their second language, preventing them from completing assessments in the same way as monolinguals.

Question 17

Do individual differences affect people's language parsing abilities? Provide empirical evidence to support your argument.

Accepted Answer

The answer of Do individual differences affect people's language parsing...

Question 18

Kamide and colleagues (2003) investigated predictive language processes and found that after hearing only the first few words, Japanese speakers

Accepted Answer

A)  wrongly interpreted grammatical cues to draw incorrect predictions about how a sentence might end. 
B)  used specific grammatical cues to predict how a sentence might end. 
C)  fixed their eyes on a picture of the subject of the sentence. 
D)  avoided making the kinds of predictions about the end of a sentence that English speakers often make in similar studies.

Question 19

Refer to the figure.
 Based on the results of the experiment illustrated, how does context affect a subject's ability to make sense of the ambiguous component in the sentence Put the apple on the towel in the box?

Accepted Answer

A)  The pencil does not aid the listener in A, but the apple in B provides context, helping the subject avoid confusion. 
B)  The listener is confused in both A and B. Since they do not know to look only at the apple on the towel, they look at the single apple first. 
C)  The time spent looking at the towel in A demonstrates a clear understanding of the sentence. 
D)  The two sets of timelines of eye-gaze duration in A and B show that context does not affect the listener's ability to disambiguate sentence.

Question 20

The mouse the cat chased keeled over. For the sentence, identify the main and subordinate clauses and the reasons for this classification.

Accepted Answer

The answer of The mouse the cat chased keeled over....

Exam 8: Understanding Sentence Structure and Meaning