This summary contains notes from all the lectures as well as a summary of all the required readings for the course. With this summary, I received an eight, so everything is included!
Inhoudsopgave.......................................................................................................................1
Psychology of language lectures......................................................................................... 3
Lecture 1: Introduction........................................................................................................3
Lecture 2: Some aspects of language acquisition..............................................................6
Lecture 3: Introduction........................................................................................................9
Lecture 4: Language and Memory................................................................................... 14
Lecture 5: Aspects of the theory of speech production.................................................... 19
Lecture 6:Speech Comprehension en Parsing Strategies............................................... 23
Lecture 7: Down syndrome, williams syndrome, SLI and Dyslexia, Linguistic Savant.....25
Lecture 8: Vragen............................................................................................................. 28
Psychology of language readings...................................................................................... 30
Chapter 1: Language........................................................................................................30
What is language?......................................................................................................30
How do languages differ?...........................................................................................30
How has English changed?........................................................................................31
How has language changed?.....................................................................................31
Where did language come from?............................................................................... 31
How do we do psycholinguistics?...............................................................................32
What is an explanation?............................................................................................. 32
What is a statistical model?........................................................................................ 33
What are the issues in psycholinguistics?..................................................................33
Begrippen................................................................................................................... 34
Chapter 3: Children.......................................................................................................... 36
What are the early sentences?...................................................................................36
Is there a critical period for language acquisition?..................................................... 36
Begrippen................................................................................................................... 36
Psycholinguistics: introduction and applications.............................................................. 38
2.1 Thinking about the brain: A quick history............................................................. 38
2.2 What Does It Mean to Say That the Brain Processes Information?..................... 38
2.5 Brain Areas for Specialised Functions................................................................. 39
2.5.1 Areas for Primary Motor and Sensory Functions.........................................39
Aphasia: In Louise Cummings..........................................................................................40
13.1 Introduction.........................................................................................................40
13.4 Aphasia syndromes............................................................................................43
Begrippen................................................................................................................... 43
Chapter 6: Words............................................................................................................. 45
6.1 How do we recognise spoken words?..................................................................45
6.2 How do we read?................................................................................................. 46
6.3 What’s the dual-route model of reading?..............................................................46
6.4 What does brain damage tell us about reading?..................................................47
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, 6.5 What are the problems with the dual-route model?..............................................47
6.6 What’s the triangle model of reading?.................................................................. 48
6.7 Do we have to sound a word to understand it?.................................................... 48
6.8 Does speed reading work?...................................................................................48
6.9 What is the alphabetic principle?..........................................................................49
6.10 What is phonological awareness?......................................................................49
6.11 What is the best way of learning to read?...........................................................49
6.12 What is developmental dyslexia?....................................................................... 49
6.13 What causes developmental dyslexia................................................................ 50
6.13 How do we understand ambiguous words?....................................................... 50
Begrippen................................................................................................................... 51
Chapter 8: Words............................................................................................................. 53
8.1 Can we learn from our mistakes?.........................................................................53
8.2 What is the Garrett model of speech production?................................................ 53
8.3 How do we retrieve words?.................................................................................. 54
8.4 Why are words sometimes on the tip of our tongue?........................................... 55
8.5 How do we plan syntax?...................................................................................... 55
8.6 How do we control conversations?.......................................................................56
8.7 How does brain damage affect language?........................................................... 56
Begrippen................................................................................................................... 57
Chapter 7: Understanding................................................................................................ 59
7.1 What is grammatical ambiguity?.......................................................................... 59
7.2 How do we deal with temporary ambiguity?.........................................................59
7.3 How do we decide where to attach phrases?.......................................................59
7.4 How do multiple constraints operate?.................................................................. 60
7.5 What do we remember of what we understand?..................................................61
7.6 How do we make use of context?........................................................................ 61
Begrippen................................................................................................................... 61
Chapter 4: Thought.......................................................................................................... 62
4.1 What is thought?.................................................................................................. 62
4.2 Is language development dependent on cognitive development?....................... 62
4.3 Is language development dependent on social development?............................ 63
4.4 Is language a special, separate module?.............................................................63
4.4 What is the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis?................................................................... 63
4.5 What can we learn from how people name colours?........................................... 64
Begrippen................................................................................................................... 64
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,Psychology of language lectures
Lecture 1: Introduction
Behaviourist = Reject the study of the human mind as something scientifically possible.
Their goal is solely to come up with a theory of how a certain behaviour is determined by
certain external stimuli. They think that we cannot study the mind scientifically.
Cognitivists = Want to understand the underlying mental processes.
Optical illusions = What we think about the world isn’t necessarily what the world is. The
brain does something with the physical input. We take the information and the mysterious
‘black box’ does something with it. So the brain actively contributes and interprets what is
perceived.
Cognition = There are processes in the mind that connect us with the world. It is not
(always) consciousness.
Modularity = If cognition is collected from cognitive
consciousness. Do they obey different rules? Or is
there one big system that rules everything? If you
believe in different systems you believe in modularity.
Those systems can communicate with each other.
So they can influence each other.
McGurk effect = It demonstrates that different
modalities (e.g. vision and language) interact and can influence each other. It is relevant
because although different modalities appear to be distinct, they do interact with each and
can even influence the final interpretation of stimuli. The effect works even though you know
that the effect is there. Our mind does something and we still don’t know exactly how it
works.
Psychology of language = It is a science of what we know when we know language, and
how we implement this unconscious knowledge in real time.
Cultural/social aspect: language use.
Biological aspect: knowledge of language.
Language faculty = In the mind there is a system, maybe a neural network, that analyses
our spoken system when we hear sound. It is dedicated to translating your thoughts into an
acoustic wave. That happens in speech production. Human language capacity is a property
of the brain. There are language-specific rules that are instantiated in certain areas of the
brain.
Computational theory of the mind = The idea that was born in the 1950's was that we tried
to make an analogy that we thought the mind is what the brain wants.
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, Mind: Analogous to software.
Brain: Analogous to hardware.
Software = A set of instructions that tells a computer exactly what to do.
Hardware = The physical part of the computer that causes the processing of data.
Three levels of understanding (David Marr):
1. Computations = WHAT is done. Operation that is context free. There is a rule that is
independent of its context.
a. Theoretical linguistics = Tries to uncover the rules of the nature of human
language.
b. For example: 15 × 5
2. Algorithm = HOW it is done. How the rules of language are going from words to a
context.
a. For example: you can calculate 15 × 5 in three ways:
1. 15 + 15 + 15 + 15 + 15 = ...
2. (15 × 10) / 2 = ...
3. (10 × 5) + (5 × 5) = ...
3. Implementation = BY WHAT MEANS it is done.
a. For example: Patterns of neural activation. Relevant brain structures.
Unification problem = The problem of how to connect the three levels so that they are
compatible with each other. The three levels: Implementation, algorithm, computation.
Phonology = The study of the categorical organisation of speech sounds in languages; how
speech sounds are organised in the mind and used to convey meaning.
Phoneme = The unit of analysis. Are language specific. So some languages have a lot and
others a few. It is difficult to quantify. There are constraints on possible and impossible
structures, on possible and impossible computations.
Distinctive phonemes = Something distinguishable in a given language (c.f.
‘worm’’vs. ‘warm’).
Sing languages also have phonemes. They are not acoustic signals but particular
shapes.
Morpheme = The smallest meaningful unit of speech.
For example: S. There is a difference between cat and cats. So the ‘s’ changes
meaning.
Free morpheme = If the morpheme can exist on its own. Bijvoorbeeld, lidwoorden.
Bound morpheme = If the morpheme cannot exist on its own. So the ‘s’. The bound
morpheme is a common thing that people with brain damage find difficult to use.
Functional morpheme = They don’t carry specific meaning. They don’t refer to
specific objects. Ze hebben een taalinterne functie.
So for example: a, the, have, is, -ing, -ed, -able
Lexical morpheme = A morpheme that can actually stand on its own without the aid
of other morphemes to imply meaning. In order to do so, a lexical morpheme must be
a full word. So for example: Girl, house, yellow, open. Lexicaal is een vrij morfeme.
Click languages = A click is a phoneme that can also be a morpheme.
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