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

Question 1

In the sentence, "Chris called up the psychology professor," what is the surface structure?

A) "Chris called professor."
B) "The psychology professor was called up by Chris."
C) "Chris called up the psychology professor."
D) "Chris (subject) called up (verb) the psychology professor (object)."

Answer 1

C

Question 2

________ refers to how we combine morphemes into words, whereas ________ refers to how we organize words into sentences.

A) morphology; syntax
B) pragmatics; syntax
C) syntax; morphology
D) syntax; grammar

Answer 2

A

Question 3

Which of the following topics would be most relevant for a psychologist who favors the cognitive-functional approach to language?

A) What kind of cues do listeners pick up on when determining whether a speaker is very enthusiastic about an idea, rather than just mildly enthusiastic?
B) What kinds of rules do people use when they want to determine the deep structure of an ambiguous sentence?
C) What is the function of each of the language areas of the brain, with respect to reading a question and formulating an answer?
D) When do listeners take a modular approach to language, and when do they integrate language with other cognitive processes (e.g., memory and problem solving)?

Answer 3

A

Question 4

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

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 5

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

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

Question 6

Which of the following statements about the passive voice is correct?

A) A sentence using the passive voice typically has a very different meaning than a sentence using the active voice.
B) We use the passive voice and the active voice equally often in English.
C) People understand a sentence more quickly if the sentence is active, rather than passive.
D) Writing manuals often encourage scientists to write in the passive voice in order to appear more scholarly.

Question 7

The basic units of meaning in a language are known as

A) words.
B) phonemes.
C) morphemes.
D) syntax.

Question 8

According to the cognitive-functional approach to language,

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 9

According to the research on understanding sentences,

A) negative sentences are easier to understand than affirmative sentences.
B) when a sentence has several negative terms, people's understanding of the sentence is only slightly better than guessing or chance level.
C) ambiguous sentences are easy to understand, unless they are in the passive voice.
D) the voice of a sentence (active vs. passive) does not influence understanding.

Question 10

According to the introduction on language comprehension (Chapter 9),

A) language requires very little active processing of information; language comprehension is primarily automatic.
B) language can be described in terms of a relatively small number of specific tasks.
C) language is not closely related to other cognitive tasks.
D) we consult our background knowledge, which is related to language, so we can understand complex ideas.

Question 11

According to Chomsky's approach to language,

A) the words that are actually spoken are called deep structure.
B) if two sentences have similar surface structure, they must also have similar deep structure.
C) ambiguity arises when a surface structure has two different deep structures.
D) when two different surface structures have the same deep structure, the two surface structures are called prototypes.

Question 12

Which of the following is an example of a phoneme?

A) Psychology
B) "I before E, except after C"
C) th
D) Dogs bark

Question 13

You have learned that if you want to combine a noun such as girl with a verb such as run, the noun precedes the verb, and you must add an s to form girl runs. The rules that govern this kind of procedure are known as

A) semantics.
B) phonemics.
C) pragmatics.
D) grammar.

Question 14

According to Chapter 9,

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 15

Which of the following sentences should be easiest to comprehend?

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 16

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

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

Question 17

A key point in Noam Chomsky's approach to psycholinguistics is an emphasis on

A) how children learn language by operant conditioning.
B) how each language in the world has its own unique set of rules about syntax.
C) how humans have language skills that are inborn.
D) how language is closely connected with other cognitive skills.

Question 18

Units of language such as pre-, sound and -s are known as

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

Question 19

Chapter 9 discussed Noam Chomsky's theories about language. According to this discussion,

A) Chomsky's theories emphasize that humans have inborn skills in language.
B) Chomsky's theories were useful to behaviorists, because his theories made predictions about observable language behavior.
C) Chomsky argues that children's language acquisition is possible because of their sophisticated working memory.
D) Chomsky argues that children's language skills depend on the linguistic rules that their parents teach them.

Question 20

The cognitive-functional approach to language emphasizes that

A) speakers typically use language skillfully, which helps listeners to pay attention to the most important part of a message.
B) speakers realize that people are especially skilled at understanding nested language.
C) linguistic information is processed by isolated parts of the brain that are not connected with other brain regions.
D) the right hemisphere of the brain functions differently than the left hemisphere.

Question 21

You hear that a friend works in a "small machinery store," and you do not know whether "small" describes the size of the store or the size of the machinery in the store. This situation is called

A) indirect access.
B) a nested structure.
C) pragmatics.
D) ambiguity.

Question 22

Which of the following students' statements provides the best summary of the information on aphasia?

A) Uma: "People with Broca's aphasia have trouble expressing language; their language comprehension is normal."
B) John: "Contrary to popular opinion, Broca's aphasia and Wernicke's aphasia are virtually identical."
C) Lata: "People with Wernicke's aphasia produce large quantities of speech, but it often doesn't make sense; they also have trouble understanding speech."
D) Suzanne: "People with Wernicke's aphasia can understand instructions that involve a sequence of actions; people with Broca's aphasia cannot understand this kind of message."

Question 23

Suppose that you ask a stranger what time it is, and he produces several wordy sentences that don't seem to make sense. Without knowing additional information, you would suspect that he has

A) Wernicke's aphasia.
B) Broca's aphasia.
C) retrograde amnesia.
D) dyslexia.

Question 24

When a sentence in a written passage contains an ambiguous word,

A) people typically do not notice the ambiguity until they have finished reading the entire sentence.
B) people apparently access only the best-known meaning of that word.
C) people are highly unlikely to notice that the word may be ambiguous.
D) people typically pause while they process the ambiguous word.

Question 25

According to the good-enough processing approach,

A) we frequently process only part of a sentence.
B) we initially process only one meaning of an ambiguous word.
C) we frequently misinterpret sentences because we misrepresent syntactical ambiguities.
D) people work hard to create the most accurate, detailed interpretation of every sentence that they read or hear.

Question 26

Neurolinguists have demonstrated that _________ is active when people complete a Stroop task, and also when people process syntactically ambiguous sentences.

A) Wernicke's area
B) Broca's area
C) the right temporal lobe
D) the right frontal lobe

Question 27

In a self-paced reading task, participants read either Sentence A: "The teacher that criticized the student apologized" or Sentence B: "The teacher that the student criticized apologized." Because of the more complex syntax, participants who read Sentence B should show greater reaction time than participants who read Sentence A to which of the following words?

A) teacher
B) criticized
C) student
D) apologized

Question 28

Eye tracking studies such as the experiment by Tanenhaus and colleagues suggest that our interpretation of the grammar of a sentence

A) depends primarily on our level of experience with the language's syntax.
B) depends on the linguistic context of the sentence within a paragraph or story.
C) can be influenced by nonlinguistic context such as the visual environment.
D) cannot be influenced by nonlinguistic environments unless one's knowledge of the language is weak.

Question 29

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

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

Question 30

According to the current explanation for how we process an ambiguous word,

A) we typically ignore ambiguity until after we have completely processed the sentence.
B) context constrains the activation of alternative meanings from the very beginning of processing. Therefore, many alternative meanings are never really considered.
C) activation builds up equally for all meanings of an ambiguous item.
D) initially activation builds up for the most familiar meanings of a word; then context helps to eliminate the irrelevant meanings.

Question 31

In general, the right hemisphere of the brain is more likely than the left hemisphere to emphasize

A) speech perception.
B) the interpretation of the emotional tone of a message.
C) the division of a word into morphemes.
D) the concrete information conveyed in a sentence.

Question 32

During the past decade, researchers have increasingly used the ____ technique to investigate language in humans.

A) lesioning
B) ERP
C) functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI)
D) eye tracking

Question 33

Suppose that a friend asks you, "Is it true that the left hemisphere of the brain handles all language processing tasks?" Your response should be,

A) "Yes, because research shows that the right hemisphere processes spatial information, rather than linguistic information."
B) "No, because the current research shows that both hemispheres are equally important in processing language."
C) "Sort of, because the left hemisphere handles syntax and semantics, whereas, the right hemisphere handles speech perception."
D) "Sort of, because the left hemisphere typically handles a majority of language processing for most people, but the right hemisphere is important in interpreting abstract information."

Question 34

Suppose that you are working with an elderly woman who had a stroke. She is looking at her radio, and you ask her if the radio is broken. With great effort, she says, "Not working." Based on this information, you would most likely suspect that she has

A) pragmatic difficulties.
B) Broca's aphasia.
C) Wernicke's aphasia.
D) retrograde amnesia.

Question 35

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

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 36

According to the discussion of neurolinguistics,

A) for most people-but not all-language is primarily localized in the left hemisphere of the brain.
B) for most people-but not all-language is primarily localized in the right hemisphere of the brain.
C) for most right-handers, language is localized in the right hemisphere of the brain.
D) for most people, language is processed almost identically by both hemispheres.

Question 37

Which of the following techniques is used to provide precise information about the time-course of linguistic processing events?

A) lesioning
B) ERP
C) functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI)
D) eye tracking

Question 38

When processing language, we begin making judgments about what the sentence means before we have heard (or read) the entire sentence. This is referred to as

A) passive voicing.
B) lexical ambiguity.
C) incremental interpretation.
D) transformation.

Question 39

Leslie is participating in an experiment in which she presses the spacebar on a computer keyboard in order to see one word of a sentence at a time. Her reaction time to process each individual word is measured. This procedure is an example of a

A) self-paced reading task.
B) off-line language processing task.
C) lexical masking task.
D) syntactic processing task.

Question 40

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

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

Question 41

According to the research on the indirect-access route in reading,

A) readers cannot translate visual stimuli into sounds unless they have the benefit of context.
B) children who can identify sounds in a word are likely to earn high scores on standardized reading tests.
C) training in semantic skills is just as likely as training in phoneme skills to improve children's ability to identify words.
D) in general, children's reading skills are somewhat poorer if they have been trained in phonics skills.

Question 42

If you use the direct-access route while reading,

A) you can recognize a word directly from its component sounds.
B) you directly access easy words through the visual route; you directly access difficult words through the auditory route.
C) your teacher probably emphasized how a word is pronounced.
D) you can recognize a word based on the visual stimulus of the letters in a word.

Question 43

English is more challenging than many other world languages because:

A) English words are much longer.
B) English grammar is more challenging.
C) English words are more difficult to recognize when they are spoken.
D) English words have a greater number of irregular pronunciations.

Question 44

The whole-word approach to teaching reading emphasizes that

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 45

Which of the following students provides the most widely accepted perspective on word recognition?

A) Irving: "Beginning readers typically use the direct-access route; mature readers typically use the indirect-access route."
B) Isidoro: "Readers of all skill levels typically use the direct-access route.
C) Anna: "Beginning readers are likely to operate according to the Atkinson-Shiffrin model; mature readers consistently use the direct-access route."
D) Jeanne: "Most theorists acknowledge that the dual-route explanation of reading is most consistent with the research."

Question 46

When the fMRI technique is used in studying language comprehension,

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 47

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

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 48

Which of the following students provides the most accurate statement comparing reading and the comprehension of spoken language?

A) Courtney: "The processes of reading and comprehending spoken language are remarkably similar, and involve the same brain processes."
B) Tomas: "Readers can see discrete boundaries between words, whereas listeners often encounter unclear boundaries in spoken language."
C) Maria-Carla: "Children require elaborate teaching to master both written and spoken languages."
D) Eric: "Adult readers typically learn new words more quickly when they appear in a spoken form, rather than a written form."

Question 49

According to the introductory discussion of the reading process,

A) reading appears to be a modular process.
B) the average adult reads at the rate of about 100 words per minute.
C) reading is a process that relies on a variety of other cognitive skills.
D) most people can introspect accurately about the cognitive processes required when they read an isolated sentence.

Question 50

Which of the following students provides the most accurate summary of the whole-language approach to reading?

A) Matthias: "Teachers should emphasize the meaning of a story, so that children would be eager to learn to read."
B) Mark: "Teachers should emphasize the gestalt of each word, in other words, the whole word, rather than just a collection of letters."
C) Becca: "Teachers should read interesting books to children, so that children can appreciate how stories are constructed."
D) KayLyn: "Teachers should provide extensive background information on a story, before the children try to read the text."

Question 51

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

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.

Question 52

In contrast to written language, spoken language is especially likely

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 53

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?

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

Question 54

Adults tend to read tongue twisters more slowly than other sentences of the same length and complexity. This observation

A) supports the constructive approach to language.
B) illustrates the importance of word boundaries in a reading task.
C) illustrates the importance of context in determining the meaning of a word.
D) supports the indirect-access route approach reading.

Question 55

Which of the following students provides the most accurate statement about neurolinguistics research?

A) Augusto: "In right-handed people, language is processed almost exclusively by the right hemisphere."
B) Heidi: "Right-handed people and left-handed people show very similar patterns of hemispheric specialization."
C) Esther: "Virtually all language tasks are performed by the left hemisphere of the brain; the right hemisphere does not play a substantial role in language processing."
D) Laura: "The left hemisphere handles most language tasks, but the right hemisphere processes some abstract components."

Question 56

In contrast to spoken language, written language is more likely

A) to be spread out across time.
B) to allow re-scanning of the input.
C) to be supplemented by nonverbal cues.
D) to reveal a continuous flow of input, without discrete boundaries between the units.

Question 57

When readers use the direct-access route to recognizing written words,

A) they learn to distinguish between a letter's distinctive features and its characteristic sound.
B) they translate the visual stimuli into sound before locating a word's meaning.
C) they recognize each word's syntactic function before they recognize its meaning.
D) they recognize a word from the visual stimulus without having to translate first into sound.

Question 58

Research on word recognition suggests that

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 59

Chapter 9 describes the mirror system. This system could be relevant in neurolinguistics because mirror neurons:

A) are especially important when we want to produce language.
B) may allow some access to languages other than English.
C) may be especially active when we listen to speech in a noisy setting.
D) illustrate a new strategy for assessing lateralization.

Question 60

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

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 61

The constructionist view of discourse comprehension is most likely to emphasize

A) a character's emotions and motivations.
B) the meaning of each sentence, rather than inferences.
C) the phonemes represented in the text.
D) the fact that readers typically use a shallow level of processing.

Question 62

The phrase "theory of mind" refers to our tendency to

A) try to figure out the mental state of other people in our lives.
B) try to figure out our own motivation for our actions.
C) analyze behavior in terms of rewards and punishments.
D) emphasize the surface structure of language over the deep structure.

Question 63

What general conclusion can we reach about making inferences during reading?

A) People are generally reluctant to make inferences unless they are convinced that the inference is justified.
B) People consistently make inferences, especially if they have relatively poor metacomprehension skills.
C) People often make inferences, especially if they have expertise in the topic.
D) People are generally reluctant to make inferences unless someone specifically urges them to do so.

Question 64

Imagine that you are reading a short story about two students named Chris and Freddie. As you read this story, you find that you are trying to figure out why Chris is avoiding Freddie, and how Freddie must feel about this avoidance. These cognitive efforts would be most consistent with which of the following views of reading?

A) The indirect-access route
B) The phonetic module hypothesis
C) The constructionist view of inferences.
D) Chomsky's approach to psycholinguistics

Question 65

People are especially likely to draw inferences during reading

A) when researchers examine backward inferences rather than forward inferences.
B) when readers have a large working-memory capacity.
C) when they learned to read according to the whole-word approach.
D) when they read scientific texts.

Question 66

Which of the following research topics would be most likely to emphasize the discourse aspect of language?

A) Do people create shorter sentences when requesting something from a friend, rather than a stranger?
B) At what age do children begin to create two-word phrases?
C) Does the phonics approach increase children's ability to pronounce English words?
D) Under what circumstances will students be able to identify a theme in a short story?

Question 67

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

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 68

Inferences drawn beyond the level of a paragraph-for example, inferences based on the genre of the book that we are reading, or based on our preferences for how we want a story to end-are called

A) higher-level inferences.
B) discourse-level inferences.
C) metacognitive inferences.
D) bottom-up processes.

Question 69

Which of the following students provides the best summary about teaching metacomprehension skills?

A) Martina: "The research suggests that teachers should encourage metacomprehension skills, beginning in first grade."
B) Johnny: "If students reach college without learning metacomprehension skills, it's probably too late for them to master these techniques."
C) Souren: "Educators are now developing programs to teach metacomprehension skills to students before they reach high school.
D) Suzanne: "The research suggests that children already know metacomprehension skills, if they initially learned to read using the phonics method."

Question 70

Which of the following statements is true about children's reading comprehension skills?

A) Children have the appropriate skills for metacomprehension at an early age.
B) Reading skills improve when children try to relate the text to nearby photos.
C) Older children, teenagers and adults can think about their reading and listening strategies in order to improve them.
D) Once children reach middle school, it is too late to begin to teach metacomprehension strategies.

Question 71

The discussion of reading comprehension emphasized that people draw inferences during reading. For example, when people were reading a passage that contradicted an inference, they usually took longer to read it

A) if the goal sentence was located near the contradictory material, rather than far away.
B) only if they were allowed a long processing time between reading the passage and judging it.
C) in both the "near" and the "far" conditions.
D) if they were novices, rather than experts.

Question 72

Imagine that you are listening to a reading researcher, who is discussing the approach that should use for elementary school children in the United States. Which of the following arguments are you most likely to hear?

A) "The phonics approach is best because it is most likely to encourage children's motivation."
B) "The whole-word approach is best because English has a close correspondence between a word's spelling and its sound."
C) "Neither the phonics nor the whole-word approach is effective, so the reading teachers are searching for a new approach."
D) "The phonics and the whole-word approach should be combined, because each approach provides some benefits."

Question 73

When we make an inference during reading, we use our _____ in order to access information that is not explicitly stated in the written text.

A) phonetic knowledge
B) syntactic knowledge
C) world knowledge
D) logical reasoning ability

Question 74

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

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

Question 75

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

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.