Deck 10: Language

Question 1

Language errors in which a person substitutes words that are related in meaning for one another are called

A)lemma confusions.
B)syntactic substitutions.
C)semantic paraphasias.
D)orthographic intrusions.

Answer 1

C

Question 2

Which of the following statements represents the LEAST consensus among psycholinguists?

A)Semantic knowledge is propositional and not perceptual.
B)Having a mental store of word meanings is crucial to language comprehension.
C)Syntactic priming occurs during language comprehension.
D)Psycholinguistic questions can be addressed using event-related potentials.

Answer 2

A

Question 3

When you are shown the written word "neuroscience" and you read it aloud,you are translating ________ information into ________ information about this word.

A)syntactic / semantic
B)semantic / orthographic
C)orthographic / phonological
D)phonological / syntactic

Answer 3

C

Question 4

Which of the following best describes a case that depends primarily on prosodic aspects of language?

A)The ability to recognize the characteristic rise that occurs at the end of a sentence in a speaker's voice when she asks a question
B)The ability to discriminate between homophones like "blue" and "blew" when they are used in sentences
C)The ability to pronounce "head" correctly,even though it is an irregular word
D)The ability to retrieve the correct name associated with a familiar pictured face

Question 5

People with deep dyslexia are comparable to people with Wernicke's aphasia in that they also

A)have great difficulty in producing fluent speech.
B)commit semantic paraphasias,but in reading rather than in spontaneous speech.
C)have deficits in auditory perception for speech and nonspeech sounds.
D)have an impairment in correctly perceiving the prosodic components of speech.

Question 6

Written Chinese uses a(n)________ system in which symbols usually represent morphemes,whereas written German uses a(n)________ system in which symbols represent phonemes.

A)alphabetic / syllabic
B)syllabic / semantic
C)semantic / logographic
D)logographic / alphabetic

Question 7

An aphasic person whose only language symptom is that she commits many semantic paraphasia errors probably has a deficit involving the

A)orthographic processing of words.
B)syntactic processing of words.
C)mental lexicon.
D)prosodic patterns of speech.

Question 8

Damasio and colleagues (1996)were confident that their results were specific to word retrieval processes rather than involving a general object recognition problem because

A)all of the patients in the study had brain lesions limited to the left hemisphere.
B)all of the patients in the study had already been diagnosed with some form of visual agnosia.
C)responses were included in scoring the naming task only if the patients could describe features of the item other than its name.
D)responses were included in scoring the naming task only if the patients could accurately copy and draw the stimulus items.

Question 9

Segmenting the boundaries between words is a particularly difficult computational problem in

A)reading.
B)writing.
C)speech perception.
D)prosody.

Question 10

Damasio and colleagues (1996)examined the effects of damage to three brain regions in the inferior temporal lobe: TP,IT,and IT+ (moving anterior to posterior).Which of the following did they find?

A)Damage to the left temporal pole (TP)was correlated with deficits in retrieving words for tools.
B)Damage to the left inferotemporal region (IT)was correlated with deficits in retrieving words for specific people.
C)Damage to the left posterior inferotemporal/anterior occipital region (IT+)was correlated with deficits in retrieving words for tools.
D)Damage to the right inferotemporal region (IT)was correlated with deficits in retrieving words for specific people.

Question 11

The term auditory neighborhood refers to

A)the range of frequencies stimulated at the cochlea by a pure sine wave tone.
B)a region of tonotopically organized cortex in the superior temporal lobe.
C)the number of words that differ from a target word by only one phoneme.
D)a set of words that are morphological inflections and derivations of each other.

Question 12

The mental lexicon is thought to be organized as a semantic network in which word meanings are connected to each other,as in the diagram here.Based on what you know about how strength of association between word meanings is represented in semantic networks,determine which of the following statements regarding the network is TRUE.

A)Jackal is a less frequently accessed animal word than cat.
B)The association between dog and jackal is weaker than the association between cat and jackal.
C)Jackal is a less frequently accessed animal word than dog.
D)The association between dog and cat is stronger than the association between animal and cat.

Question 13

________ specifically refers to the variations in the pitch of a speaker's voice that convey emotion and emphasis in speech.

A)Phonology
B)Prosody
C)Speech segmentation
D)Orthography

Question 14

An aphasic person who makes semantic paraphasia errors in her speech might say "________" when she actually intends to say "________."

A)kit / cat
B)am / is
C)cow / horse
D)spin / snip

Question 15

________ is to the meaning of a word as ________ is to the spelling of a word.

A)Orthography / phonology
B)Phonology / prosody
C)Prosody / semantics
D)Semantics / orthography

Question 16

The term ________ refers to the collective store of information about the semantics,syntax,orthography,and phonology of words.

A)word form
B)acquired dyslexia
C)mental lexicon
D)prosody

Question 17

The symptoms of all of the following neurological language syndromes suggest the disruption of an organized semantic network in which word meanings are stored,EXCEPT

A)Wernicke's aphasia.
B)deep dyslexia.
C)progressive semantic dementia.
D)conduction aphasia.

Question 18

Your text uses the word bank to illustrate the idea of words that

A)have many phonological neighbors.
B)have many semantic neighbors.
C)have more than one pronunciation.
D)have more than one meaning.

Question 19

Which of the following statements regarding the organization of semantic networks is FALSE?

A)The most frequently associated nodes have the largest distances between them in the network.
B)Concepts that have strong associations to each other in meaning have strong connections.
C)If one node is activated,the greatest amount of spreading activation will accrue in its closest neighbors.
D)Spreading activation is greater between nodes that are accessed together frequently than between nodes that are accessed together infrequently.

Question 20

According to Levelt,information-specific networks exist for word forms at the ________ level and for the grammatical properties of words at the ________ level.

A)N400 / P600
B)lexeme / lemma
C)semantic / parsing
D)frontal / temporal

Question 21

A patient with dysarthria has trouble

A)controlling the muscles that articulate speech sounds.
B)activating word-form representations based on conceptual knowledge.
C)converting knowledge about written characters into their sounds.
D)segmenting speech into separate words.

Question 22

Which of the following best describes the three main components of word or lexical processing in the correct order,according to most modular models of word recognition?

A)Lexical access -> lexical integration -> lexical selection
B)Lexical access -> lexical selection -> lexical integration
C)Lexical selection -> lexical access -> lexical integration
D)Lexical selection -> lexical integration -> lexical access

Question 23

Van Turrennout and colleagues (1999)conducted an event-related potential (ERP)study in which Dutch participants viewed pictures and responded according to the (syntactic)gender of the items,but withheld some of their responses based on the initial sound of the word.They found that the lateralized readiness potential was ________ on the trials in which participants withheld their responses,suggesting that the Levelt theory,in which ________,is correct.

A)reduced / lemma information is accessed before phonological information
B)reduced / phonological information is accessed before lemma information
C)unaffected / lemma information is accessed before phonological information
D)unaffected / phonological information is accessed before lemma information

Question 24

The principle of minimal attachment argues that syntactic analysis of a sentence

A)proceeds in such a way that the smallest number of syntactic nodes must be computed.
B)begins as soon as the first speech sound in the sentence is perceived.
C)is primarily based on the analysis of the lexemes that constitute that sentence.
D)requires the use of specific,distinct information-processing modules in the brain.

Question 25

A person's symptoms include poor spoken and written comprehension but fluent and reasonably grammatical speech output.What is the most probable diagnosis?

A)Acquired alexia
B)Conduction aphasia
C)Wernicke's aphasia
D)Broca's aphasia

Question 26

Patient "Tan" studied by the neurologist Broca had great difficulty in generating spontaneous speech and was unable to utter any word other than the nonsense syllable "tan." Postmortem autopsy of Tan's brain revealed

A)abnormal EEG signals from the left frontal operculum.
B)softening of tissue in the left inferior frontal cortex.
C)cerebral hemorrhage in the right inferior frontal lobes.
D)demyelination in a region of the left anterior frontal lobes.

Question 27

People with Broca's aphasia may have subtle deficits in their ability to comprehend language based on its grammatical structure.This symptom is called

A)aphemia.
B)alexia.
C)agrammatism.
D)semantic dementia.

Question 28

The French neurologist Broca was among the first researchers to notice that language deficits resulting from brain injury are often accompanied by hemiparesis on the ________ of the body,which indicates that the ________ hemisphere is especially critical to language function.

A)left / left
B)left / right
C)right / left
D)right / right

Question 29

The speech of people with Broca's aphasia is usually slow and effortful and consists of primarily concrete words,while words that serve grammatical functions are omitted.This type of speech output is called

A)word salad.
B)telegraphic speech.
C)spectral speech.
D)paraphasic speech.

Question 30

A current controversy regarding the usefulness of Broca's aphasia as a diagnostic category focuses on the observation that

A)there is no strict correspondence between lesions of Broca's area and the symptoms classically associated with Broca's aphasia.
B)Broca's aphasia is far too frequently diagnosed and may actually subsume other subtypes of aphasia.
C)Broca's aphasia has been found to occur as a result of right hemisphere injury just as often as left hemisphere injury.
D)Broca's aphasia is usually a secondary aphasia rather than a selective deficit.

Question 31

________ models of syntactic analysis are based on the idea that sentences have a preferred interpretation and that these preferred interpretations are initially based on the structure,rather than the meaning,of a sentence.

A)Lexical selection
B)Cohort
C)Garden-path
D)Tip-of-the-tongue

Question 32

The observation that we can understand the speech of different speakers,regardless of variations in the pitches of the speakers' voices,the speakers' rates of speech,and the speakers' dialects,indicates that

A)the prosodic components of speech have little functional significance in speech comprehension.
B)the recognition of spoken words depends on orthography rather than other aspects of language.
C)speech comprehension involves semantic analysis of words rather than phonological analysis of words.
D)speech recognition cannot rely on the direct matching of specific sounds to language representations in memory.

Question 33

Under certain circumstances,when the conceptual representation of an item is activated,there is subsequent difficulty activating the corresponding word form in the mental lexicon,even though other information about the item can be accessed.This phenomenon is called

A)minimal attachment.
B)dysarthria.
C)lemma interference.
D)the tip-of-the-tongue phenomenon.

Question 34

According to Marslen-Wilson and Tyler's (1980)cohort model of word recognition,

A)word recognition processes in speech are triggered as soon as the very first speech sound in a word is perceived.
B)word recognition processing begins only after all of the sounds that make up a word have been perceived.
C)word recognition depends on the ability to match sounds directly to word representations in memory.
D)words can be identified based on their prosodic information alone.

Question 35

Which of the following sentences would a person with Broca's aphasia be most likely to misunderstand?

A)"The shirt that Michael bought yesterday is too small for him."
B)"The woman whom Richard met yesterday is leaving for Vancouver."
C)"The dog that George petted yesterday bit him and then ran away."
D)People with Broca's aphasia would not be likely to misunderstand any of these sentences because they have only expressive deficits.

Question 36

According to Levelt's (1989)model of speech production,two main processing stages are involved in generating a meaningful utterance.In the ________ stage,the speaker determines what he or she intends to express to the listener;in the ________ stage,word choices and the grammatical role that each word will play are determined.

A)microplanning / macroplanning
B)macroplanning / lemma
C)microplanning / lemma
D)macroplanning / microplanning

Question 37

A major issue in the study of word recognition involves the extent to which relatively low-level sensory representations interact with relatively high-level information,such as the context in which a word appears.A modular model of word comprehension would be most likely to argue that

A)there is a great degree of interaction between low-level and high-level representations.
B)processing at each level is independent,and there is little or no interaction between them.
C)certain levels may interact freely,whereas others cannot.
D)the degree to which the levels of word processing interact with each other depends on the type of word being processed.

Question 38

________ is a general term for deficits in language comprehension and production that occur as the result of brain injury.

A)Alexia
B)Aphasia
C)Agrammatism
D)Anomia

Question 39

Disruptions of language that occur as a consequence of brain injury that are side effects of primary problems in other cognitive domains such as attention,memory,or perception are called

A)aphemia.
B)acquired alexias.
C)secondary aphasias.
D)paraphasias.

Question 40

The German neurologist Wernicke found that injury to this region of the brain resulted in poor language comprehension and nonsensical but relatively fluent speech.

A)The left arcuate fasciculus
B)The left posterior and superior temporal lobe
C)The right inferior frontal lobe
D)The right medial temporal lobe

Question 41

A person with conduction aphasia is most likely to have difficulty in

A)comprehending spoken language.
B)speaking fluently.
C)repeating spoken language.
D)understanding function words like "if" or "but."

Question 42

Phonemes are the smallest units of sound that make a difference to meaning.

Question 43

In Hagoort's language model,the "memory" component is mediated by the ________,the "unification" component by the ________,and the "control" component by the ________.

A)inferior frontal cortex / temporal lobe / lateral frontal cortex
B)inferior frontal cortex / lateral frontal cortex / temporal lobe
C)temporal lobe / lateral frontal cortex / inferior frontal cortex
D)temporal lobe / inferior frontal gyrus / lateral frontal cortex

Question 44

An early ERP component associated with morphosyntactic violations is the

A)LAN.
B)N400.
C)MMN.
D)P600.

Question 45

The three primary ways in which words are symbolized in different writing systems are alphabetic,syllabic,and logographic.

Question 46

What role does the right hemisphere play in language comprehension? Describe two experimental techniques that would allow you to dissociate the contribution of the right hemisphere from that of the left.

Question 47

The P600,also known as the SPS,is an ERP component that is sensitive to the violation of expectations based on

A)the physical appearance of words.
B)the pronunciation of words.
C)semantics.
D)syntax.

Question 48

The information that a listener derives from the speech rhythm and pitch of the speaker's voice is referred to as morphological.

Question 49

The immediate assignment of syntactic structure of incoming words is known as parsing.

Question 50

A patient's symptoms include poor spoken and written comprehension but fluent and reasonably grammatical speech output.Which part of this person's brain is most likely damaged?

A)The anterior language areas in the right hemisphere
B)The posterior language areas in the right hemisphere
C)The anterior language areas in the left hemisphere
D)The posterior language areas in the left hemisphere

Question 51

Which of the following sentences illustrates a violation of thematic roles?

A)"The dog are biting the mailman."
B)"The mailman was bitten by the dog."
C)"The box is biting the mailman."
D)"The dog is biting the box."

Question 52

Researchers like Kutas and Hillyard (1980)have found that the N400 ERP component is sensitive to

A)the physical appearance of words.
B)the phonological perception of words.
C)the semantic content of words.
D)the grammatical categorization of words.

Question 53

Saying the word "horse" when intending to say the word "cow" is an example of a semantic paraphasia.

Question 54

Modular models of language comprehension argue for a high degree of interactivity between different specialized modules.

Question 55

The Spanish language has a relatively deep orthography in comparison to English.

Question 56

Listening to a sentence like "He spread the warm bread with socks" will evoke a P600 brain potential.

Question 57

Recent studies have shown that the lesion associated with persistent severe Wernicke's aphasia may have to include not only Wernicke's area itself,but also

A)Broca's area.
B)the analogous region of cortex in the right hemisphere.
C)the white matter tracts below Wernicke's area.
D)the arcuate fasciculus.

Question 58

A normal adult speaker has passive knowledge of about 50,000 words.

Question 59

What are some characteristics that Fodor associated with the term modular? What kinds of experimental evidence support or challenge the view that language processing is modular?

Question 60

Lexical priming effects are mediated entirely by implicit or automatic processes.

Question 61

What is the difference between Broca's aphasia and Wernicke's aphasia? Where are Broca's area and Wernicke's area located in the brain?

Question 62

Describe Hagoort's model of language,including its three functional components and the brain areas to which they relate.

Question 63

How can the event-related potential (ERP)technique be applied to language? Describe two ERP components that have been studied in a psycholinguistic context,and give examples of the kinds of stimuli that elicit them.