Deck 3: Learning Sound Patterns

Question 1

Based on the results of Mehler et al.'s 1988 study of language recognition patterns in newborns, you would expect to find that

A) Arabic babies can differentiate German and French sounds.
B) Russian babies can differentiate Russian and French sounds.
C) French babies cannot differentiate Russian and French sounds.
D) Russian babies cannot differentiate Russian and French sounds.

Answer 1

B

Question 2

In a head-turn preference experiment, researchers alert the child that a sound will emanate from a particular direction by

A) turning on a light in that location.
B) pointing to that location.
C) having the parent, on who's lap the child is positioned, point to that location.
D) increasing and decreasing the volume of the sounds until the child looks in that direction.

Answer 2

A

Question 3

What would be the most effective way to familiarize an infant with the head-turn preference for an experiment that investigates whether the child can differentiate between French and English words?

A) Allow the child to spend several minutes habituating to the experiment room while French and English words are presented at random from speakers in opposite corners of the room.
B) Allow the child to spend several minutes habituating to the experiment room while alternating red and green lights, but no sounds, are presented from opposite corners of the room.
C) Allow the child to spend several minutes habituating to the experiment room while a single light is presented simultaneously with a word in one or the other language from the same side of the room.
D) Allow the child to spend several minutes sitting silently on the parent's lap in the experiment room.

Answer 3

C

Question 4

In Jusczyk and Aslin's 1995 study, 7.5 month old babies could

A) distinguish between a word they previously heard in a sentence and a novel word.
B) not distinguish between a word they previously heard in a sentence and a novel word.
C) distinguish between a word they previously heard in the voice of their parent and a new word uttered by their parent.
D) not distinguish between a word they previously heard in the voice of their parent and a new word uttered by their parent.

Question 5

Based on the results of Bortfeld et al.'s 2005 study, you would predict that Julie, a 6-month-old, would show the most familiarity with which word in the following sentence?
Julie's hair was cut short by the stylist.

A) Hair
B) Cut
C) Short
D) Stylist

Question 6

Based on the phonotactic constraints of the English language, which nonsense word would elicit from English babies a different (longer or shorter) looking time than the others during a head-turn test?

A) Mfoenidg
B) Fsedoq
C) Fendstom
D) Eodzimdk

Question 7

Trochaic stress patterns _______ iambic patterns and place stress on the _______ syllable of a word.

A) are more rare than; first
B) greatly outnumber; last
C) are more rare than; last
D) greatly outnumber; first

Question 8

Which word would be easiest for 7.5-month-old babies of English-speaking parents to segment out of fluid speech? (Stress indicated by capital letters.)

A) WA-ter
B) be-GIN
C) po-TA-to
D) dis-CUSS

Question 9

In Saffran and colleagues' 1996 study, 8-month-olds who were habituated to streams of multi-syllabic artificial words and later tested for recognition of those "words"

A) could distinguish between strings of syllables that made up a word and strings of syllables that did not.
B) could not distinguish between words and non-words.
C) used parental cues to distinguish words from non-words.
D) could distinguish between words and non-words if a researcher pointed, orienting the child.

Question 10

Based on the findings of Saffran et al. (1996), an 8-month-old infant would be capable of segmenting language sounds presented in a continuous stream, without intonation to represent word breaks,

A) only if the stream was presented in her native language.
B) only if he was seated on his parent's lap.
C) in any language, including an artificial language, as long as the streams contained multiple repetitions of the same words in varied order.
D) in any language except artificial languages.

Question 11

According to Saffran et al. (1996), which of the following is true?

A) At 8 months of age, babies show sensitivity to transitional probabilities in their own language, but not one they are unfamiliar with.
B) Transitional probabilities help babies to group syllables into word-like units in the absence of any other cues.
C) Transitional probabilities are useful for identifying the most frequent words but not for predicting which syllables are likely to occur together.
D) Transitional probabilities become uninformative when combined with other cues, such as phonotactic information.

Question 12

To investigate whether an infant is using transitional probability to cluster groups of syllables into word-like units, a researcher would present the infant with a string of _______ during the familiarization phase, and then record their gaze direction and time for words versus non-words in the test phase.

A) familiar words from their native language
B) words and non-words from a novel language
C) continuous sequences of words from a novel language appearing in various orders
D) sequences of syllables in any language that contain intonation and tonal cues

Question 13

Implicit knowledge is to explicit knowledge as _______ experience is to _______ experience.

A) unconscious; unconscious
B) conscious; conscious
C) conscious; unconscious
D) unconscious; conscious

Question 14

Babies' seemingly miraculous ability to make sense of undifferentiated speech and segmentation of language is best characterized by their _______ ability to extract meaningful information out of what they hear.

A) conscious
B) unconscious
C) explicit
D) learned

Question 15

In an experiment evaluating human and non-human organisms' ability to use statistical cues in environmental stimuli, you would expect to find that _______ can pick out language-specific cues from streaming speech.

A) human infants and monkeys, but not rats,
B) rats and monkeys, but not human infants,
C) only human infants
D) human infants, monkeys, and rats

Question 16

Teinonen et al. (2009) exposed 2-day old infants to 15 minutes of speech and measured their ERP activity. Based on the findings of this study, you might predict that

A) newborns would be unable to detect differences in transitional probabilities of syllables in a native language.
B) newborns would be able to detect differences in transitional probabilities of syllables in a non-native language.
C) newborns would be unable to detect differences in transitional probabilities of syllables in any language.
D) ERP is not an appropriate measure to use with infants to detect differences in transitional probabilities to auditory stimuli.

Question 17

The [l] sound in the words let and slate would be referred to as a(n)

A) phoneme because it sounds significantly different across the two words.
B) allophone because it is a variant of the same phoneme in the two words.
C) allophone because it sounds significantly different across the two words.
D) bilabial because it is produced by obstructing airflow.

Question 18

A fricative, labiodental, and voiced sound would most likely be made by a

A) p.
B) k.
C) v.
D) t.

Question 19

_______ contains a fricative, whereas _______ contains an affricate.

A) Mole; cola
B) Xylophone; jury
C) Ripe; dole
D) Male; female

Question 20

The word stove contains which types of sounds?

A) Affricate and glide
B) Oral stop and nasal stop
C) Affricate and nasal stop
D) Fricative and glide

Question 21

Which of the following words can be characterized as having a voiced word onset?

A) Baby
B) Pall
C) Fate
D) Stop

Question 22

The phonemic restoration effect suggests that humans

A) have an unlimited phonemic inventory.
B) are able to pay attention to only one stimulus at a time.
C) have a difficult time understanding degraded speech if some part of the utterance is missing.
D) have the ability to understand degraded speech if most of the utterance remains intact.

Question 23

While Japanese speakers consider the relation between /r/ and /l/ to be fluid and thus_______, English speakers treat the two as distinct _______.

A) diphthongic; allophones
B) allophonic; phonemes
C) phonemic; allophones
D) allophonemic; diphthongs

Question 24

Extrapolating from the general principles that motivate the technique used in Eimas et al.'s 1971 study, how would you expect your 1-week-old sister to respond to being shown a new toy she has never seen before?

A) She would begin to cry, fearing the object.
B) She would suck more vigorously on her pacifier.
C) She would suck less vigorously on her pacifier.
D) She would ignore the toy and look away.

Question 25

At what age do babies begin to sort their inventory of sounds based on the separate phonemic categories of the language they are learning?

A) Immediately after birth
B) At about 4 months of age
C) By the end of their first year of life
D) When they begin to learn to talk

Question 26

Which sound pair represents the concept of complementary distribution of allophones?

A) The first sounds in colt and kip
B) The vowels in beet and in bit
C) The last sounds in fan and in ram
D) The last sounds in in let and in led

Question 27

In French, nasalization of vowels indicates _______, whereas in English, the same vowel nasalization indicates _______.

A) the presence of a diphthong; the absence of a diphthong
B) minimal perceptual boundaries between allophones; distinct boundaries between phonemes
C) distinct perceptual boundaries between phonemes; minimal boundaries between allophones
D) the absence of a diphthong; the presence of a diphthong

Question 28

Based on White et al.'s 2008 study, you would predict that the 8.5-month-old baby of English-speaking parents would

A) use the fact that [t] and [t^h] are in complementary distribution as a cue to learn that they are variants of the same phoneme.
B) ignore the fact that /d/ and /t/ can appear in the same phonetic environments when learning which sounds represent different phonemes.
C) be able to distinguish between words with voiced and unvoiced fricatives (e.g., zip, sip) but not between words with voiced and unvoiced stops (e.g., bony, pony).
D) be able to predict the voicing of a fricative such as /z/ in zip based on the previous word presented before zip.

Question 29

Phonetic assimilation occurs

A) when phonemes change into allophones.
B) when allophones change into phonemes.
C) when sounds are affected by other sounds that are adjacent to them.
D) when words from a foreign language become "adopted" into the home language.

Question 30

The most natural grouping of phonemes is

A) p and d.
B) f and z.
C) f and s.
D) v and t.

Question 31

Saffran and Thiessen's 2003 study on pattern induction by infant language learners helped demonstrate that

A) that babies quickly learn phonotactic constraints reflecting unnatural categories.
B) testing requires use of real, not artificial, languages.
C) babies do not start life with any bias for certain kinds of statistical regularities in the sounds of speech.
D) evidence for learning biases in favor of natural patterns of language.

Question 32

The different pronunciation of the plural marker -s? ?in the words dogs and cats illustrates which type of sound pattern?

A) One feature of a sound affects the same feature of a neighboring sound.
B) One feature of a sound affects a different feature of a neighboring sound.
C) One feature of a sound affects the same feature several syllables over.
D) One feature of a sound affects a different feature several syllables over.

Question 33

Dupoux et al.'s 1999 research showed that native speakers of a certain language insert illusory sounds to change syllable sequences that are "illegal" in their language to a legal sequence. These findings illustrate the power of

A) the sonority sequencing principle.
B) phonotactic expectations.
C) dissimilation processes.
D) unnatural patterns.

Question 34

Refer to the graph to answer this question.
This graph illustrates sensitivity to the sonority sequencing principle in different languages. These findings suggest that

A) phonotactic constraints are learned.
B) some languages feature stronger phonotactic constraints than others.
C) there are universal biases for certain phonotactic constraints.
D) speakers of different languages have different perceptions of the same sounds.

Question 35

How do researchers use head-turning behavior to identify differences in babies' perception of familiar and novel words?

Question 36

Discuss how Jusczyk and Aslin's 1995 methodology allowed them to investigate infants' abilities to perceive word breaks in sentences. Do the results indicate that infants have this capability? Explain.

Question 37

Jusczyk and Aslin (1995) found that babies as young as 6 months of age could not segment words in sentences, whereas Bortfeld (2005) found that they could. How would you account for this difference?

Question 38

Illustrate how Saffran et al.'s 1996 experiments demonstrated that 8-month-olds can segment completely novel speech that does not contain any clues such as intonation or phonotactic information.

Question 39

Refer to the figure.
Based on the results in the table, what can you conclude about the ability of an 8-month-old to detect words presented to him during the familiarization phase?

Question 40

Refer to the figure.
Hauser et al. (2001) conducted an experiment with tamarin monkeys that was very similar to Saffran et al.'s 1996 study investigating transitional probabilities. They found that after listening to a 20-minute stream of words from the same artificial language studied by Saffran et al., the tamarins oriented to a speaker more often when it played sequences of syllables that straddled a word boundary than when it played a sequence of syllables that made up a complete word. Compare this finding to the results reported by Saffran et al. (see Figure 4.2). What do these results suggest about the use of statistical cues for segmenting words?

Question 41

Design a simple experiment that could demonstrate the phonemic restoration effect.

Question 42

Identify and describe the major dimensions of speech sound distinctions.

Question 43

In Jusczyk et al.'s 1999 study, the researchers reported that 10.5-month-olds detected the phonetic difference between night rate and nitrates. Using the principle of assimilation, describe how infants are able to make this distinction.

Question 44

Describe what a backward transitional probability (TP) is and provide an example. Explain how an infant might use this information to decide if the word baby is a noun.

Question 45

Explain how artificial languages are used to uncover possible learning biases.

Question 46

Explain what constitutes a natural grouping of sounds as opposed to less natural one.