PSYCH 240 1ST Edition Lecture 15 Outline of Last Lecture: Semantic Networks I. Memory for Inferred InformationII. Eyewitness Testimony Outline of Current Lecture: Episodic MemoryI. Major Features of LanguageII. Language ComprehensionIII. Language and the BrainCurrent Lecture: Lecture 15: Language (March 25, 2015)I. Major Features of Languagea. Structure: language can be divided into two tasks: 1. Complicated sentences can be comprehensiblea. “Daddy, what did you bring that book that I don’t want to be read to out of up for?”2. Simple sentences can be incomprehensiblea. “The horse raced past the barn fell.”b. Two basic tasks of Language: i. Production: speaking and writing1. Idea2. Sentence3. Words4. Coordinated vocal articulation5. Soundsii. Comprehension1. Sounds 2. Words 3. Phrases/sentences4. Ideas iii. People communicate ideas by constructing and deconstructing arbitrary intermediate sounds (language)c. Properties of Languagei. Symbolicii. Arbitrary (mostly)These notes represent a detailed interpretation of the professor’s lecture. GradeBuddy is best used as a supplement to your own notes, not as a substitute.1. Why is it cat versus neko versus gato?a. The sounds are all completely different; yet, they mean the same thingb. It’s not the physical combination of sounds that are giving it meaningc. It’s just a common set of conventions that speakers of a language adopt2. Kiki or Bouba Experimenta. Are sounds totally arbitrary?i. No, they’re probably not TOTALLY arbitraryii. The sounds of SOME words convey little about the meaningiii. But for MOST words, the sounds conveys nothing about the meaningiii. Generatived. Hierarchical taxonomy of languagei. One of the most striking things about language is that different levels are involved in both production and comprehension. Levels are arranged in hierarchy. ii. Levels of Hierarchy1. Speakinga. Start w/ thought or ideab. Make it into a sentencec. Transform the sentence into sounds2. Listeninga. Hear soundsb. Group them into wordsc. Make the words into a sentenced. Understand the idea behind the sentence*mapping btwn sounds and meaning is arbitrary- diff languages use diff sounds, diff words, and diff rulesfor word order3. Phonemes: Smallest unit of speech sound (lowest level of hierarchy)a. Around 40 in Englishb. Range from 11 to around 60 across languages (out of 100 total)c. Different phonemes in diff languagesi. L vs. R in Japaneseii. Tonal differences (Chinese)iii. Clucking sounds (Xhosa – South Africa)d. Rules of Orderi. Fpibs not okayii. Pritos okayiii. Tlitos not okay4. Morphemes: smallest unit that signals meaninga. Prefixes, suffixes, roots (-ed, -s, syn-)b. Can be entire wordsc. 50-80,000 morphemesd. location matters (teams/steam)e. rules of a language say how they can be combinedf. “atoms” of meaning5. Words: combination of one or more morphemesa. Specific rules: “lifted” vs. “goed”b. Adults know several hundred thousand words6. Language Structure: Sentences and Phrasesi. Phrase: organized grouping of wordsii. Syntax: rules that determine word orderb. Words alone are not enough to unambiguously convey meaning:i. The French bottle smells1. (The French bottle) (smells)  (bad wine?)2. (The French) (bottle) (smells)  (perfume-makers?)c. different meanings for different phrase structuresd. phonological inflection cues that distinguish these may be subtleiii. Problems with Hierarchy1. Ambiguity: results when the same wording corresponds to more than one meaninga. Lexical ambiguity: word has two different meaningsi. He was bothered by the cold. ii. She noticed the port.iii. Time flies like an arrow, but fruit flies like a bananab. Syntactic Ambiguity: words can be grouped together into more than one phrase structurei. Pat talked about partying with Jerry Springer.ii. I saw the gorilla in my pajamas.1. (How it got in my pajamas, I’ll never know)II. Language Comprehensiona. How do we process language? i. Hear soundsii. Identify phonemes from soundsiii. Identify morphemes and words from phonemesiv. Lexical access (get info about words including meaning from memory)v. Put words into phrases and figure out phrase structure of sentencevi. Compute the meaning of the sentence based on words and phrase structurevii. Figure out how the sentence fits into context of overall conversationb. Role of vision in speech perception (McGurk Effect)i. The phoneme you hear depends on visual inputii. In most conversations, people around the world look at some part of the person’s faceiii. This has only been demonstrated for speech sounds1. More consistent with hypothesis that speech perception is special than the ordinary (see book)c. Language processing is predictive, N400i. We’re constantly predicting what is coming1. “Today it’s hot, but yesterday it was…”2. “To fix this I need to find a hammer and some…”ii. Your brain uses these predictions to process language more efficiently 1. Some words are used together more often than others2. Predictable vs. Unpredictable Words a. Some words follow each other more often than othersb. The farther in the sentence you get, the more constrained the likely possibilitiesc. Cloze probability: How often does the final word finish that particular sentence?i. If cloze probability is low, it doesn’t match the prediction, and more processing is neededd. EEGi. First, because neuroscientists love to be confusing, negative voltages are plotted up. At the left side, you can see where it says target word onset. That is showingwhen the final word of the sentence appeared. The blueline is the brain activity for a normal sentence (i.e., “A grape is a fruit.) Cloze probability for that sentence is relatively high. The red line shows the activity for a sentence like “A grape is a flashlight.” You can see that peak around 400 ms is the N400. iii. N400: is an ERP response to unexpected words. It represents the extra processing of the word that you didn’t expect to be there. 1. Typically is a negative voltage peaking around 400ms after the word (hence N400)2. Reacts to the statistical likelihood of words, not the semantic contenta. “A grape is a flashlight” results in N400b. “A grape is fruit” doesn’t give oned. Lexical access (lexicon = mental dictionary)i. When does context have its effect?1. Hypothesis 1: Get all word meanings from the lexicon, context operates later2. Hypothesis 2: Context allows us to get only the correct word