Cognitive Psychology: Language, Memory, and Speech Perception | Study notes Psycholinguistics

Psycholinguistics

-an interdisciplinary field of study (psychology and linguistics)

-Language in the mind = Studies mental representations and processes in language use

• How do people learn a language (or two)?

• How do people use language to understand each other?

• How language is represented and processed in the mind? (and the brain – neurolinguistics)

-Two underlying questions:

1 What knowledge of language is needed for us to use language? = Linguistics

2 What cognitive processes are involved in language use? = Cognitive psychology

-Language:

1Phonology - Language sound systems

2Semantics - Meanings of words and sentences.

3Syntax - How words are arranged to form a sentence.

4Pragmatics - Social rules in language use.

-Cognitive processes:

a)perception

b)memory

c)thinking

-Research methods in Psycholinguistics:

a)Observation

b)Experiments

c)Neuroimaging studies

The Components of Psycholinguistics

-Developmental psycholinguistics: How language is acquired during development? (1st, 2nd, in childhood or later etc.)

-Experimental psycholinguistics: How people comprehend and produce language? (both in speech and in writing)

-Applied psycholinguistics: How psycholinguistics can be applied to other areas of life?

-used in pedagogy, learning, language development, speech therapy, criminology, computational linguistics (model language use

in PC)

Cognitive Psychology

-It is the study of perception, attention, memory, language, and thinking in humans...how we know about the world.

language itself is its object

It studies processes that play a crucial role in lg. learning and lg. use.

-Another perspective: the scientific study of the human mind and information processing

Information processing

-Language processing = information processing

-Information processing model = computer analogy

Sensory Memory

-not conscious!

-Information from the five senses

-Sensory register

-Large capacity

-Short duration – lot of inf lost

-Role of attention and perception

-Person #1: "What time is it?" Person #2: "What did you say? Oh, 2:30."

Attention

-selectively concentrating on one aspect of the environment while ignoring other things.

-Or: the allocation of processing resources.

-Function: selects information and patterns that make their way to STM / WM

-Focused Auditory Attention

 many conversations in the background, but only listen to one.

 distinguishing: picking up on a number of features: Speaker’s voice Speaker’s location Content of speech

Divided attention:

oEasy for some things: Driving and talking

oHard for other things: Patting head and rubbing stomach

Factors affecting dual task performance

-Task similarity:

-Easy to do things which are dissimilar (drive & talk).

-doing different things with items in the same modality = difficult

How can you multi-task?

-some processing becomes automatic (experts!)

-Automatic processes do not tax attention:

oFast

odo not reduce capacity for performing other tasks

ounavailable to consciousness

ounavoidable

-Language processing!

What is the difference between sensing and perceiving?

-Perception = organization, identification, and interpretation of sensory information in order to represent and understand what we

have seen, heard etc. – pattern recognition

-Both visual and auditory

Partial preview of the text

Download Cognitive Psychology: Language, Memory, and Speech Perception and more Study notes Psycholinguistics in PDF only on Docsity!

Psycholinguistics

an interdisciplinary field of study (psychology and linguistics)
Language in the mind = Studies mental representations and processes in language use
- How do people learn a language (or two)?
- How do people use language to understand each other?
- How language is represented and processed in the mind? (and the brain – neurolinguistics)
Two underlying questions: 1 What knowledge of language is needed for us to use language? = Linguistics 2 What cognitive processes are involved in language use? = Cognitive psychology - Language: 1 Phonology - Language sound systems 2 Semantics - Meanings of words and sentences. 3 Syntax - How words are arranged to form a sentence. 4 Pragmatics - Social rules in language use. - Cognitive processes: a)perception b)memory c)thinking - Research methods in Psycholinguistics: a)Observation b)Experiments c)Neuroimaging studies The Components of Psycholinguistics
Developmental psycholinguistics : How language is acquired during development? (1st, 2nd, in childhood or later etc.)
Experimental psycholinguistics : How people comprehend and produce language? (both in speech and in writing)
Applied psycholinguistics : How psycholinguistics can be applied to other areas of life?
used in pedagogy, learning, language development, speech therapy, criminology, computational linguistics (model language use in PC) Cognitive Psychology
It is the study of perception, attention, memory, language, and thinking in humans...how we know about the world.  language itself is its object  It studies processes that play a crucial role in lg. learning and lg. use.
Another perspective : the scientific study of the human mind and information processing Information processing
Language processing = information processing
Information processing model = computer analogy Sensory Memory
not conscious!
Information from the five senses
Sensory register
Large capacity
Short duration – lot of inf lost
Role of attention and perception
Person #1: "What time is it?" Person #2: "What did you say? Oh, 2:30." Attention
selectively concentrating on one aspect of the environment while ignoring other things.
Or: the allocation of processing resources.
Function: selects information and patterns that make their way to STM / WM
Focused Auditory Attention  many conversations in the background, but only listen to one.  distinguishing: picking up on a number of features: Speaker’s voice Speaker’s location Content of speech Divided attention: o Easy for some things: Driving and talking o Hard for other things: Patting head and rubbing stomach Factors affecting dual task performance
Task similarity:
Easy to do things which are dissimilar (drive & talk).
doing different things with items in the same modality = difficult How can you multi-task?
some processing becomes automatic (experts!)
Automatic processes do not tax attention: o Fast o do not reduce capacity for performing other tasks o unavailable to consciousness o unavoidable
Language processing! What is the difference between sensing and perceiving?
Perception = organization, identification, and interpretation of sensory information in order to represent and understand what we have seen, heard etc. – pattern recognition
Both visual and auditory

Why are they important in language processing? Schema theory
We actively process information in our world. – use our schemas to recognize patterns in the world
If information is missing, the brain fills in the blanks.
This can result in mistakes – distortions
Auditory: think of lyrics (pop music) What is STM? (Short-term memory)
The part of memory where you store information at the present moment / for a very short time (some seconds!) for conscious processing
Similar to RAM in computers
Common misconception: STM = what you remember from the past 2 days
it contains information one is currently thinking about or has recently thought about
within 30–60 seconds, some say: only 15 sec
Capacity: 7 ± 2 items (Miller’s law) Some say: more realistic (4 ± 1) chunking
Function : - Maintenance of current information, often by rehearsal (e.g. saying a phone number over and over again.) - Problems with the classic STM-model: o Unitary system : research showed that some people – problems with auditory STM but not with visual (or vice versa) o Does not explain processing (e.g. mental arithmetics) The Working Memory model - Central Executive
- Does work in the WM: o allocates attention o selects buffers for information o transforms and manipulates inf a) Phonological Loop - Holds auditory info
  1. Articulatory Loop - Rehearsal: inner speech – AS or LTM
  2. Acoustic Stor e - Simple storage of acoustic info (decay after 2 sec) b) Episodic Buffer - Holds and combines chunks of information from PhL, VSS and LTM c) Visuo-Spatial Scratchpad - Holds visual and spatial inf. - Testing working memory
- Forward and backward digit span
- Forward and backward syllables/words/non-words
- Remembering nonsense words that get longer
- Serial order is important, too!
- 1-back, 2-back, n-back tasks
- Quite a few other techniques exist! - The significance of WM
- Correlates with o Reading comprehension o (mathematical) problem solving o IQ o Success of foreign lg learning But how do we transfer information from WM to LTM?
Atkinson and Shiffrin proposed Rehearsal (repeating information)
Sometimes true, but not always supported by experiments
Too simple
Also: people with average WM and outstanding LTM….. ???
Why is it then that people with large WM often have an LTM advantage? o WHAT they do with the information counts Levels of Processing Theory
The deeper we understand information the more we retain.
Different ways of processing will aid recall
People with „good” LTM – engage in deep processing o Process the same information in several ways o Easier for people with large WM o You can do it with average WM too o Family background important
Important in language learning (vocabulary) Long Term Memory 1 Explicit (declarative) a)Semantic memory - facts, general knowledge (network) b)Episodic memory - personal experience 2 Implicit (procedural) a)Motor skills b)Cognitive skills c)Conditioned responses, habits Semantic memory
Semantic network: semantically related concepts are linked
„relatedness = co-occurance”
propositional networks: o Representing factual statements in the mind o Events, relations can be represented

2 Positional processing Grammatical encoding – positional processing

Organize lemmas into an ordered string 1 Constituent assembly creates a sentence frame for the message: (determiner) N 1 V[past] (determiner) N 2 2 Lemmas for the content words are accessed and inserted into the frames 3 Function words and grammatical endings specified 4 Lexemes accessed à phonetic plan generated Evidence for the distinction between functional and positional processing
Comes from speech errors:
You must be too tight for them. X
(They must be too tight for you.)
Wrong functional roles have been assigned to the pronouns. (functional processing error)
It is not a simple ordering problem!!! = Grammatical marking is appropriate
A simple ordering error would be: o You must be too tight for they. Finding words
Transforming thoughts into words
Two levels: 1 retrieval of the abstract word form (lemma) 2 retrieving the form of the actual word (spoken – phonological form; written – visual form)
Separation supported by brain imaging studies What do pauses tell us about lexical retrieval?
Indicate retrieval problems
Some words are easier to retrieve: frequency
Another factor: predictability (depends on context)
The two are not the same! E.g. soup – broth: Which one is more frequent?
But: „Too many cooks spoil the ……”
Pauses are more likely and longer if the word is rare and/or unpredictable Measuring the likelihood of content words in an utterance
Shannon guessing game: try to guess the next word in the sentence. Number of guesses counted
„Look back a year, and remember how disquieting European politics... „
Then go on to the next word etc.
The lower the ratio of correct guesses to incorrect guesses for a word, the lower the likelihood of that word in that context. Speech errors – another source of data
Shed light on the mechanisms of word selection
Cause (being tired, anxious etc.) not interesting for psycholinguist
Mis-selection is relevant for us now (substitution and blends) Substitutions and blends
Involve words that are semantically related
Substitutions: - one word replaces another likely to involve antonyms
Blends - two words are merged
Synonyms or near-synonyms Levels of processing different for the two
Blends : concept level problem o two related concepts activate two related lemmas o Competition in speakers mind – competition not resolved
Substitution: lemma level problem o Remember semantic memory? o Related words stored next to each other – for some reason, another (neighbouring) lemma gets activated o Possible reasons: a) it is more frequent b) it is easier to imagine c) target word temporarily unavailable (inhibition) Malapropism
The word produced is similar phonologically to the target word but has a different meaning. - RARE
It is only a speech error if the word with the correct meaning was intended!!!
If these two vectors are equivocal, then…
If these two vectors are equivalent, then…
Target word gets activated – its component sounds too à component sounds activate the wrong words
Reasons behind: frequency, context (words fits in context, already activated to some extent) Morphological and phonological encoding
Interestingly, words must be built up: o Morphologically (put together meaningful parts) o Phonologically (put together sounds)
How do we know? o Tip-of-the-tongue (TOT) o Other speech errors Tip-of-the-tongue
Lemma activated, but word form cannot be constructed (for some reason)

Give subjects definitions of uncommon words – TOT often induced
Subjects could often tell: o The beginning/end of the word o Number of syllables o Which syllable is stressed o Rhyming words o Grammatical gender Inferred assumption
There is word-sketch we should fill when we activate words
TOT: some essential parts unavailable (phonemes and their exact order) What about words consisting of several morphemes?
Are affixed/suffixed words constructed or stored as a whole?
She already trunked two packs. X
She already packed two trunks.
Sentence structure indicated where inflectional morphemes should be inserted.
If words mixed up, then suffix attached to wrong word.
à free and bound morphemes stored separately, then put together Difference between derivational and inflectional morphemes
Inflectional morphemes: verbs, nouns, adjectives with a marker
Derivation: affixes and suffixes to form new words
Any guesses?
Inflections: stored and activated separately
Derivations: more controversial – many of them stored as a whole (particularly complex ones, and where meaning is not transparently related to stem – e.g. accountant)
But: in an experimental situation subjects can form the opposites of non-words!
Also: there are speech errors when we use an incorrect prefix: inclear* (unclear) How we understand spoken language? „Mirror of production” 1 Reconstructing phonological representation 2 Retrieving lexical items 3 Create syntactic representation (parsing) General difficulties
Variability: the „same” phoneme is actually different, depending on who produces it and when + the phonetic context
Extreme problem for computers!
How can we recognize the phoneme [a] always as an [a]???
Not one template but several exemplars are stored in LTM – speaker characteristics (age, sex, socioling. Background) + phonemic environment
Also: both bottom-up and top down processing used by humans! Basic issues in speech perception
- Human hearing system is best in the frequency range of speech sounds (600-4000HZ) – we are tuned to speech
- The mind treats language and non-language signals separately (immediately differentiates between the two)
- Phoneme restoration effect
- Cough is treated (and interpreted) as a separate stream of sounds Phoneme restoration effect
Stronger with real words than with nonsense words
If word level information ambiguous, the word matching the sentence context is restored
E.g. It was found that the [#i:l] was on the table. (heel, meal or deal?)
It is also a proof of top down processing! Multiple cues to speech sounds
Several auditory signals help us identify a phoneme:  Characteristics of the phoneme (voicing, silence during lip closure - plosives like [p] etc.)  Properties of the burst noise (in plosives) etc.  Changes in the characteristics of the preceding vowel  Changes in the length of the preceding vowel
Cues must be integrated
Sometimes visual cues – McGurk effect
Haptic (touch) cues – puff-of-air effect Coarticulation
Neighbouring sounds influence each other: articulation of one sound is dependent upon what sound preceds/follows it
What do you hear? Tapes or capes?
[t] and [k] manipulated artificially to get a list of in-between sounds
Subjects presented with Christmas [#apes] and foolish [#apes]
When in-between sounds presented, the phoneme identified by subjects depended on what the preceding word (last sound matters) was! (same sound!!!) Categorical perception
If sounds on a continuum presented, we tend not to hear e.g. 5 different sounds, but 2 (we put them into two categories)
Identification and discrimination tasks
Consonants can be placed on a continuum: [ba] and [da] generated by computer So how do we make sense of all this? (Summary)

Question : When do we analyze the syntactic structure of a sentence? When the speaker has finished the sentence?
NO – it would put an incredible load on WM (some sentences 30-40 words long)
Incremental processing: We start processing as soon as information arrives o Build hypotheses à modify if necessary Ambiguous sentences
The man hit the dog with the leash.
Retired priest may marry Springsteen (authentic headline)
Panda maiting fails; veterinarian takes over (authentic headline)
Kids make nutritious snacks (authentic headline) Several approaches to sentence processing 1 Serial (modular approaches ): a)Build one model based on syntactic information only b)Try to modify it as long as possible 2 Interactive analysis : use both semantics and syntax to build the „best” structure 3 Parallel analysis : build more than one alternative structure at the same time. Parsing principles
Seem to be universal, but applied in a different way in different languages
Agglutinating languages (Hung): primary analysis – affixes and inflections, secondary – word order
Analysing languages (Eng): primary – word order Summary 1 Reconstructing phonological representation:
- Overcoming difficulties (of variability)
- Several characteristics of human speech recognition (phoneme restoration, McGurk etc.) 2 Retrieving lexical items (Cohort model) 3 Create syntactic representation (parsing)
- Serial, interactive and parallel models Reading and literacy, Psycholinguistic processes
How do our eyes move when we read?
Is it a smooth, continuous movement? No
„jump” (= saccade) from one fixation point to the next.
Louis Émile Javal (19th) c.
Saccade: jump – nothing is seen – 20-40ms o 7-9 character jump (up to 20)
Fixation: 100-500ms (avg: 200-250), 4-5 letters + peripheral vision Eye movements
The eye behavior is constrained mainly by the cognitive processes and visual influence.
The eye tracking technique provides a possibility to study the reading processes in an ecologically natural situation. Letter recognition
Template matching theory: there is a template in our mind (‘A’) and we match the incoming stimuli to that template. (one-to-one match) Pattern recognition
Prototype theory : central feautures must match but there can be „peripheral” differences. – flexibility
Bottom-up processing
What you have seen in the words: top-down processing
Let’s move on to words. What does this demonstrate?
We (experienced readers) do not read letter by letter, building up words from individual letters Models of Word identification 1. 1 Dual Route Cascaded (DRC) model 1 Two ways a word’s pronuniciation can be generated: a) grapheme-to-phoneme conversion (with the help of rules) b) Direct mapping of spelling to pronunciation (sight-reading, whole word recognition) 2 Both the orthographic and phonological forms of words are represented holistically in the lexicon; the assembled and direct routes operate in parallel → pronunciation of a word jointly determined by both routes Models of word identification 2.
The connectionist model – will not cover in detail
Word features processed at the same time in the mind Sentence processing
When Fred eats food gets thrown.
The girl told the story cried.
I convinced her children are noisy.
The horse raced past the barn fell. Etc.
„Garden-path sentences” = grammatically correct sentences that start in such a way that a reader's most likely interpretation is an incorrect one What happens when you are led down the garden-path?
While Anna dressed the baby spit up on the bed.
You start along a path = construct a syntactic structure
Spit = „stumble” – regressive eye-movements (does not fit the structure you built)
Reanalysis begins A modified version of the same sentence

While Anna dressed the baby that was small and cute spit up on the bed.
Reanalysis is more difficult if the head of the misanalysed phrase is distant from the error signal!
The length of the sentence is not important.
Many people do not understand these sentences! Models of syntactic parsing 1.

Garden Path (modular/serial) Models : give priority to the grammatical structure of the Sentence.
- A single parse is constructed – then revised if necessary
- Two basic parsing principles: o Minimal attachment – prefer interpretation with the simplest structure (next slide) o Late closure („Don’t start a new clause!” [unless it’s absolutely needed) Minimal attachment

What is simplest?
Fewest branchings in the tree – count the number of nodes! Models of syntactic parsing 2.

Constrained based (interactive/parallel) models : gramm. Structure is just one factor influencing S interpretation (others are plausability and appropriateness - semantics) „The cop arrested by the detective was guilty of taking bribes.”„The crook arrested
- Not clear which model is more appropriate
- Can be the combination of the two Models of Discourse Processing

Describe processes that are necessary to connect the meaning of individual sentences
Build upon representations provided by the word-identification and the syntactic parsing processes
Kintsch-Van Dijk: construction – integration model The construction-integration model 1 Construction: the literal interpretation of the text created (text-base) additional, related info retrieved from LTM All these integrated into a network of propositions - done on 1 phrase or S at a time – no. of propositions dependent on WM capacity 2 Integration: associations among important propositions strengthened, among less important ones – weakened → textual inconsistencies minimized, less important information eliminated etc. What you need
What we have not stressed yet: o Prior knowledge o Reading goals o Discursive knowledge (frameworks and scripts, discourse or story structures) Inferences (while reading)
Forward/predictive: anticipate events or outcomes
Backward /bridging The role of reading skills and attention
Attention – limited capacity
If attention is required to identify individual letters à less attention available to recognizing words
If attention is required to recognize words à less attention available to building up story context
Key – automaticity (remember the Stroop effect?)
Less experienced readers: rely even more on context than experienced readers (research!) but they „forget” it, because they have to focus on word decoding! Summary
Eye-movements Letter recognition
Word recognition Sentence parsing
Comprehension Language Development Theories Introduction
Children begin developing language at birth as they interact with their caregivers.
Children from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds are exposed to diverse experiences; this diversity creates the concepts to which children attach symbols, or words. The role of the environment in language development
Development of language rests upon several major variables that interact with one another
1. The child’s cultural and linguistic environment is a big influence upon language learning
2. Each child has unique characteristics that she brings to the language learning situation Behaviorist Theory : a)Imitation theory
- Explains acquisition of verbal behaviour
- Imitation is key
- Cannot explain children’s errors
- Cannot explain how we can generate new sentences b)Reinforcement theory
- Verbal behaviours are learned under appropriate conditions of stimulation, response, and reinforcement (praise or ignore)
- But: Parents seldom correct children
- They often check the truth of the statement and not its form.
- When they do correct, it is no use. Theories of Language Acquisition

Cognitive Psychology: Language, Memory, and Speech Perception, Study notes of Psycholinguistics

Related documents

Partial preview of the text

Download Cognitive Psychology: Language, Memory, and Speech Perception and more Study notes Psycholinguistics in PDF only on Docsity!