Question 1

While Japanese speakers consider the relation between /r/ and /l/ to be fluid and thus_______, English speakers treat the two as distinct _______.

Accepted Answer

A)   diphthongic; allophones
B)   allophonic; phonemes
C)   phonemic; allophones
D)   allophonemic; diphthongs B

Question 2

Extrapolating from the general principles that motivate the technique used in Eimas et al.'s 1971 study, how would you expect your 1-week-old sister to respond to being shown a new toy she has never seen before?

Accepted Answer

A)   She would begin to cry, fearing the object.
B)   She would suck more vigorously on her pacifier.
C)   She would suck less vigorously on her pacifier.
D)   She would ignore the toy and look away. B

Question 3

Discuss how Jusczyk and Aslin's 1995 methodology allowed them to investigate infants' abilities to perceive word breaks in sentences. Do the results indicate that infants have this capability? Explain.

Accepted Answer

Jusczyk and Aslin presented infants with a set of sentences containing a target word. They were exposed to that word in the context of a sentence, with no specific indication of the word's importance. When they were later presented with the target word in isolation, infants demonstrated that they were familiar with it, and not to test words they had not heard before in the familiarization phase. The methods and outcome of the experiment demonstrate that infants have some way of encoding specific components of fluid speech and retaining those components outside the context of the sentences in which they were presented. This is because, if infants had been unable to parse out the target word from each sentence, they wouldn't have shown familiarity toward that word when it was later presented in isolation.

Question 4

Implicit knowledge is to explicit knowledge as _______ experience is to _______ experience.

Accepted Answer

A)   unconscious; unconscious
B)   conscious; conscious
C)   conscious; unconscious
D)   unconscious; conscious

Question 5

At what age do babies begin to sort their inventory of sounds based on the separate phonemic categories of the language they are learning?

Accepted Answer

A)   Immediately after birth
B)   At about 4 months of age
C)   By the end of their first year of life
D)   When they begin to learn to talk

Question 6

Explain how artificial languages are used to uncover possible learning biases.

Accepted Answer

The answer of Explain how artificial languages are used to...

Question 7

Which sound pair represents the concept of complementary distribution of allophones?

Accepted Answer

A)   The first sounds in colt and kip
B)   The vowels in beet and in bit
C)   The last sounds in fan and in ram
D)   The last sounds in in let and in led

Question 8

Illustrate how Saffran et al.'s 1996 experiments demonstrated that 8-month-olds can segment completely novel speech that does not contain any clues such as intonation or phonotactic information.

Accepted Answer

The answer of Illustrate how Saffran et al.'s 1996 experiments...

Question 9

Based on the results of Bortfeld et al.'s 2005 study, you would predict that Julie, a 6-month-old, would show the most familiarity with which word in the following sentence?
Julie's hair was cut short by the stylist.

Accepted Answer

A)   Hair
B)   Cut
C)   Short
D)   Stylist

Question 10

In Jusczyk et al.'s 1999 study, the researchers reported that 10.5-month-olds detected the phonetic difference between night rate and nitrates. Using the principle of assimilation, describe how infants are able to make this distinction.

Accepted Answer

The answer of In Jusczyk et al.'s 1999 study, the...

Question 11

How do researchers use head-turning behavior to identify differences in babies' perception of familiar and novel words?

Accepted Answer

The answer of How do researchers use head-turning behavior to...

Question 12

In Saffran and colleagues' 1996 study, 8-month-olds who were habituated to streams of multi-syllabic artificial words and later tested for recognition of those "words"

Accepted Answer

A)   could distinguish between strings of syllables that made up a word and strings of syllables that did not.
B)   could not distinguish between words and non-words.
C)   used parental cues to distinguish words from non-words.
D)   could distinguish between words and non-words if a researcher pointed, orienting the child.

Question 13

Teinonen et al. (2009) exposed 2-day old infants to 15 minutes of speech and measured their ERP activity. Based on the findings of this study, you might predict that

Accepted Answer

A)   newborns would be unable to detect differences in transitional probabilities of syllables in a native language.
B)   newborns would be able to detect differences in transitional probabilities of syllables in a non-native language.
C)   newborns would be unable to detect differences in transitional probabilities of syllables in any language.
D)   ERP is not an appropriate measure to use with infants to detect differences in transitional probabilities to auditory stimuli.

Question 14

Which of the following words can be characterized as having a voiced word onset?

Accepted Answer

A)   Baby
B)   Pall
C)   Fate
D)   Stop

Question 15

To investigate whether an infant is using transitional probability to cluster groups of syllables into word-like units, a researcher would present the infant with a string of _______ during the familiarization phase, and then record their gaze direction and time for words versus non-words in the test phase.

Accepted Answer

A)   familiar words from their native language
B)   words and non-words from a novel language
C)   continuous sequences of words from a novel language appearing in various orders
D)   sequences of syllables in any language that contain intonation and tonal cues

Question 16

Trochaic stress patterns _______ iambic patterns and place stress on the _______ syllable of a word.

Accepted Answer

A)   are more rare than; first
B)   greatly outnumber; last
C)   are more rare than; last
D)   greatly outnumber; first

Question 17

The [l] sound in the words let and slate would be referred to as a(n)

Accepted Answer

A)   phoneme because it sounds significantly different across the two words.
B)   allophone because it is a variant of the same phoneme in the two words.
C)   allophone because it sounds significantly different across the two words.
D)   bilabial because it is produced by obstructing airflow.

Question 18

The different pronunciation of the plural marker -s? ?in the words dogs and cats illustrates which type of sound pattern?

Accepted Answer

A)   One feature of a sound affects the same feature of a neighboring sound.
B)   One feature of a sound affects a different feature of a neighboring sound.
C)   One feature of a sound affects the same feature several syllables over.
D)   One feature of a sound affects a different feature several syllables over.

Question 19

What would be the most effective way to familiarize an infant with the head-turn preference for an experiment that investigates whether the child can differentiate between French and English words?

Accepted Answer

A)   Allow the child to spend several minutes habituating to the experiment room while French and English words are presented at random from speakers in opposite corners of the room.
B)   Allow the child to spend several minutes habituating to the experiment room while alternating red and green lights, but no sounds, are presented from opposite corners of the room.
C)   Allow the child to spend several minutes habituating to the experiment room while a single light is presented simultaneously with a word in one or the other language from the same side of the room.
D)   Allow the child to spend several minutes sitting silently on the parent's lap in the experiment room.

Question 20

In an experiment evaluating human and non-human organisms' ability to use statistical cues in environmental stimuli, you would expect to find that _______ can pick out language-specific cues from streaming speech.

Accepted Answer

A)   human infants and monkeys, but not rats,
B)   rats and monkeys, but not human infants,
C)   only human infants
D)   human infants, monkeys, and rats

Exam 3: Learning Sound Patterns

While Japanese speakers consider the relation between /r/ and /l/ to be fluid and thus_, English speakers treat the two as distinct _.