Deck 11: Language

Question 1

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.

Answer 1

invent a sign language themselves.

Question 2

When we look at a record of the physical energy produced by conversational speech in a person's native language,we see that the speech signal

A)has breaks between phonemes.
B)has breaks between morphemes.
C)has breaks between words.
D)is continuous.

Answer 2

is continuous.

Question 3

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 3

Communication

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

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 6

The word "bad" hasphoneme(s).

A)one
B)two
C)three
D)four

Question 7

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 8

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 9

In the phonemic restoration effect,participants "fill in" the missing phoneme based on all of the following EXCEPT

A)the context produced by the sentence.
B)the portion of the word that was presented.
C)the meaning of the words that follow the missing phoneme.
D)a mental "skimming" of the lexicon to find likely words.

Question 10

You are conducting a study on how fluency influences the phonemic restoration effect.You study two groups of non-native English speakers,one with a year of English classes and the other with 10 years.All of your stimuli are in English.Who would you expect to show the greatest phonemic restoration effect?

A)The group with one year of English instruction
B)The group with 10 years of English instruction
C)The two groups would show equal phonemic restoration effects
D)Neither group would show an effect because they are non-native English speakers

Question 11

A phoneme refers to

A)the property of combining words into unique sentences.
B)the first word produced by infants,usually during their second year.
C)a mental grouping of words being heard during "inner audition."
D)the shortest segment of speech that,if changed,changes the meaning of a word.

Question 12

An experiment on the phonemic restoration effect would most likely include

A)an extraneous cough.
B)two similar-sounding letters (e.g. ,"T" and "C").
C)a categorical perception task.
D)a garden-path sentence.

Question 13

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

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 14

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 15

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 theproperty of language.

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

Question 16

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.

Question 17

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

Question 18

"Kitchen tables" consists ofmorphemes.

A)two
B)three
C)four
D)five

Question 19

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 langauge
C)Language symbols must have high discriminability
D)Languge has a structure that is governed by rules

Question 20

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 21

Syntax is

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

Question 22

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 corner of the room.
C)The cats won't bake.
D)The Eskimos were frightened by the walrus.

Question 23

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 ofin how we understand sentences in real-life situations.

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

Question 24

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 non-words "pibble,girk"
D)Correctly spelled words "speech,potato" and misspelled words "speach,potatoe"

Question 25

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 forbecause of theeffect.

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

Question 26

Which of the following is NOT influenced by meaning?

A)Word frequency effect
B)Word superiority effect
C)Phonemic restoration effect
D)The lexical decision task

Question 27

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 28

The interactionist 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 29

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 30

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 31

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 32

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 non-word.

Question 33

Within the realm of conversational speech,knowledge refers to

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

Question 34

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 theapproach to parsing.

A)semantic
B)temporary ambiguity
C)syntax-first
D)interactionist

Question 35

The crucial question in comparing syntax-first and interactionist approaches to parsing isis involved.

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

Question 36

Most of the coherence in text is created by

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

Question 37

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 38

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 non-words 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 39

In an eye movement study,Rayner and coworkers had participants read sentences that contained either a high- or low- frequency target word.For example,the sentence "Sam wore the horrid coat though hisgirlfriend complained," contained either the target word "pretty" or "demure." Results showed the participants'was shorter for the target word.

A)lexical distinction;pretty
B)lexical distinction;demure
C)fixation;pretty
D)fixation;demure

Question 40

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 support

A)the syntax-first approach to parsing.
B)the interactionist approach to parsing.
C)the garden-path model to parsing.
D)both syntax-first and interactionist approaches to parsing.

Question 41

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 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

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 44

When two people engage in a conversation,if one person produces a specific grammatical construction in 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 45

Describe the interactionist approach to parsing,and the methods and results of eye movement research that support it.

Question 46

A psycholinguist conducts an experiment with a group of participants from a small village in Asia and another from a small village in South America.She asked the groups to describe the bands of color they saw in a rainbow and found they reported the same number of bands as their language possessed primary color words.These results

A)support the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis.
B)contradict the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis.
C)support the word frequency effect.
D)contradict the word frequency effect.

Question 47

Thestates that the nature of a culture's language can affect the way people think.

A)interactionist approach
B)Sapir-Whorf hypothesis
C)given-new contract
D)cooperative principle

Question 48

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 49

According to the idea of ,when we read a sentence like,"Carmelo 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 Carmelo'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 50

Give an example of a garden-path sentence.Explain the syntax-first and interactionist approaches to parsing such sentences.

Question 51

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 52

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 53

Discuss how people perceive separate words in spoken sentences.Describe speech segmentation and discuss the role of context in this process.

Question 54

Describe how lexical ambiguity can be studied using a priming lexical decision task.Define lexical ambiguity and give an example of a sentence or text passage containing an ambiguous word.Mention three test stimuli to be used in the lexical decision task.Discuss lexical decision results for synchronous presentation with the ambiguous word and delayed presentation (200 ms after the ambiguous word).What do these results indicate about our processing of ambiguous words?

Question 55

Define the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis and describe the experiments on color perception that support it.

Question 56

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.