Language I: Introduction to Language and Language Comprehension

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Language I Introduction to Language and
Language Comprehension

• Chapter 9

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Introduction

• human language is probably one of the most
  complex processes to be found anywhere on our
  planet
• psycholinguistics

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The Nature of Language

• phoneme
• morpheme
• syntax
• grammar
• semantics
• pragmatics

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The Nature of Language

• Pragmatics - Social Language Use
• the context of communication
• Components of communication (speech acts)
• Locution the literal meaning of an utterance
• Illocution -- the intention of the speaker
• Perlocution -- how it was received by the
  listener
• Direct Locution Illocution Please turn
  on the light.
• Indirect Locution ? Illocution It is getting
  dark in here.
• Lets go for a coffee (indirect request)
• I have class (Iindirect rejection)

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The Nature of Language

• A Caution Psycholinguistics Is English-Centered
• 6,000-7,000 spoken languages
• languages differ in terms of
• the meaning of changes in pitch
• use of passive voice
• whether nouns have grammatical gender
• brain processing

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The Nature of Language

• Background on the Structure of Language
• phrase structure
• constituents
• nouns
• verbs
• working memory

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Constituents
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Phrase Structure
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Phrase Schema

• The small dog will bark loudly.

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The Nature of Language

• A Brief History of Psycholinguistics
• Chomsky's Approach
• language abilities explained in terms of a
  complex system of rules and principles
  represented in the minds of speakers
• humans have innate language skills
• language is modular (language is special, not
  processed the same as other cognitive tasks)
• surface structure vs. deep structure of sentences
• ambiguous sentences

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The Nature of Language

• A Brief History of Psycholinguistics
• Reactions to Chomsky's Theory
• early enthusiasm and later revisions
• research failed to support the prediction that
  people would take longer to process sentences
  requiring numerous transformations
• later theories provided constraints on language
  learner's inborn knowledge
• information conveyed in individual words

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The Nature of Language

• A Brief History of Psycholinguistics
• Psycholinguistic Theories Emphasizing Meaning
• emphasis on human mind rather than on structure
  of language
• semantics

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The Nature of Language

• A Brief History of Psycholinguistics
• Psycholinguistic Theories Emphasizing Meaning
• Cognitive-Functional Approach (usage-based
  linguistics)Tomasello
• the function of human language in everyday life
  is to communicate meaning to other individuals
• cognitive processes intertwined with language
  comprehension and production
• children use flexible strategies to create
  increasingly complex language
• adults use language strategically

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The Nature of Language

• Factors Affecting Comprehension
• Negatives
• negative statements require more processing time
  than affirmative statements
• It was never the case that Mr. Jones was not
  incompetent.
• Few people strongly deny that the world is not
  flat. p. 196
• affirmative statements produce fewer errors
• The Passive Voice
• active form of a sentence is easier to understand
  than the passive form

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The Nature of Language

• Factors Affecting Comprehension
• Nested Structures
• can result in memory overload
• Ambiguity
• Ambiguous Words
• people pause longer when they are processing an
  ambiguous word
• when people encounter a potential ambiguity, the
  activation builds up for all the well-known
  meanings of the ambiguous item
• Rose took her money to the bank and threw it in
  the water.

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The Nature of Language

• Factors Affecting Comprehension
• Ambiguity
• Ambiguous Words
• People are likely to choose one particular
  meaning
• 1. if that meaning is more common than the
  alternate meaning
• 2. if the rest of the sentence is consistent with
  that meaning

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The Nature of Language

• Factors Affecting Comprehension
• Ambiguity
• Ambiguous Sentence Structure
• wandering down the wrong path
• we can usually understand ambiguous language, but
  we respond more quickly and more accurately when
  the language is straightforward

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The Nature of Language

• In Depth Neurolinguistics
• Neurolinguistics
• Individuals with Aphasia
• aphasia
• Broca's area/Broca's aphasiaexpressive-language
  deficit
• Wernicke's area/Wernicke's aphasiareceptive-langu
  age deficit
• both kinds of aphasia can decrease grammatical
  accuracy

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Brocas Area Wernickes Area
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The Nature of Language

• In Depth Neurolinguistics
• Hemispheric Specialization
• Lateralization
• Right-handed 95 left hemisphere
• Left-haded 50-50
• the left-hemisphere's role in language
• the right-hemisphere's role in language
• the hemispheres working together

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The Nature of Language

• In Depth Neurolinguistics
• the left-hemisphere's role in language
• Understanding speech
• Determining meaning and cause-effect
  relationships
• Processing verbal/written images

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The Nature of Language

• In Depth Neurolinguistics
• the right-hemisphere's role in language
• Interpret emotional tone of speech
• Understand humor and non-obvious relationships

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The Nature of Language

• In Depth Neurolinguistics
• Neuroimaging Research with Normal Individuals
• functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI)
• left temporal lobe
• Gernsbacher and Robertson (2005)"A"/"The" study
• virtually identical patterns of activation in
  left hemisphere
• right hemisphere response differently to
  connected language ("the" sentences) than to
  disconnected language ("a" sentences)

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Basic Reading Processes

• Reading requires virtually every cognitive
  process
• Reading is remarkably efficient and accurate
• Many challenges including (in English) irregular
  pronunciations due to lack of one-to-one
  correspondence between alphabet and speech sounds
  (phonemes)
• Cf Spanish, Turkish

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Basic Reading Processes

• Comparing Written and Spoken Language
• 1. Reading is visual and is spread out across
  space, whereas speech is auditory and is spread
  out across time.
• 2. Readers can control the rate of input, whereas
  listeners usually cannot.
• 3. Readers can re-scan the written input, whereas
  listeners must rely much more heavily on their
  working memory.

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Basic Reading Processes

• Comparing Written and Spoken Language
• 4. Writing is relatively standardized and error
  free, whereas variability, errors, sloppy
  pronunciation, and interfering stimuli are common
  in speech.
• 5. Writing shows discrete boundaries between
  words, whereas speech does not.
• 6. Writing is confined to the words on a page,
  whereas speech is supplemented by additional
  auditory cuessuch as stressed words and
  variations in pacethat enrich the linguistic
  message.

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Basic Reading Processes

• Comparing Written and Spoken Language
• 7. Children require elaborate teaching to master
  written language, whereas they learn spoken
  language very easily.
• 8. Adults who can read tend to learn new words
  more quickly when they appear in a written form,
  rather than a spoken form.

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Basic Reading Processes

• Comparing Written and Spoken Language
• Both written and spoken language require us to
  understand words and appreciate the meaning of
  sentences.
• For adults, scores on reading comprehension tests
  are highly correlated with scores on oral
  comprehension tests

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Basic Reading Processes

• Discovering the Meaning of Unfamiliar Words
• Context
• perceiving familiar words
• resolving the meaning of ambiguous words
• discovering the meaning of unfamiliar words

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Basic Reading Processes

• Discovering the Meaning of Unfamiliar Words
• Sternberg and Powell (1983)
• context can provide several kinds of information
  cues about the meaning of an unknown word (e.g.,
  when and where an unknown item occurs)
• words that appear in a rich context of different
  cues are more likely to be accurately defined

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Basic Reading Processes

• Discovering the Meaning of Unfamiliar Words
• Sternberg and Powell (1983) (continued)
• large individual differences
• ability to use contextual cues and provide
  accurate definitions for unfamiliar words
  correlated with tests of vocabulary, reading
  comprehension, and general intelligence

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Basic Reading Processes

• Reading and Working Memory
• readers who have a relatively large
  working-memory span can quickly process ambiguous
  sentences
• people with large working-memory spans are
  especially skilled in reading difficult passages
  and solving complex verbal problems
• working memory helps us to understand complicated
  sentences

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Basic Reading Processes

• Two Pathways for Reading Words
• How do we look at a pattern of letters and
  actually recognize that word?
• Dual-route approach to readingskilled readers
  employ both a direct-access route (recognize word
  directly through vision) and an indirect-access
  route (recognize word by first sounding out the
  word)

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Basic Reading Processes

• Two Pathways for Reading Words
• Research on the Dual-Route Approach
• Bradshaw and Nettleton (1974)direct-access
  approach
• pairs of words with similar spelling, but
  different sounds
• read first word silently and then pronounce
  second word out loud
• no interference indicated by no hesitation in
  pronouncing second word
• suggests that we do not silently pronounce each
  word during normal reading

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Basic Reading Processes

• Two Pathways for Reading Words
• Research on the Dual-Route Approach
• Luo and coauthors (1998)indirect-access approach
• pairs of words judged related or unrelated in
  meaning
• students made errors on pairs where the second
  word sounds like a word that is semantically
  related to the first word (e.g., LION-BARE)
• suggests they were silently pronouncing the word
  pairs when they made the judgments
• few errors on pairs where the second word looked
  like a related word (e.g., LION-BEAN)

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Basic Reading Processes

• Two Pathways for Reading Words
• Research on the Dual-Route Approach
• Word sounds may be especially important when
  children begin to read. Children with high
  phonological awareness have superior reading
  skills.
• Children vs. adultstongue twisters

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Basic Reading Processes

• Two Pathways for Reading Words
• Research on the Dual-Route Approach
• Dual-route Approach
• flexible
• argues that the characteristics of the reading
  material determine whether access is indirect or
  direct
• argues that characteristics of the reader also
  determine whether access is indirect or direct
• individual differences

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Basic Reading Processes

• Two Pathways for Reading Words
• Implications for Teaching Reading to Children
• Whole-word approach (direct access)
• argues readers can directly connect the written
  wordas an entire unitwith the meaning that this
  word represents
• argues that children should not learn to
  emphasize the way a word sounds
• emphasizes context within a sentences
• problemeven skilled adult readers achieve only
  about 25 accuracy when they look at an
  incomplete sentence and guess which word is
  missing

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Basic Reading Processes

• Two Pathways for Reading Words
• Implications for Teaching Reading to Children
• Phonics approach (indirect access)
• readers recognize words by trying to pronounce
  the individual letters in the word
• "sound it out"
• argues that speech sound is a necessary
  intermediate step in reading
• emphasizes developing children's awareness of
  phonemes
• phonics training helps children who have reading
  problems

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Basic Reading Processes

• Two Pathways for Reading Words
• Implications for Teaching Reading to Children
• Most educators and researchers support some sort
  of compromise
• Whole-language approachreading instruction
  should emphasize meaning, and it should be
  enjoyable, to increase children's enthusiasm
  about learning to read.
• The issue of basic literacy

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Understanding Discourse

• discourselanguage units larger than a sentence
• Frederick Bartlett's research
• importance of context, general background
  knowledge, expertise, scripts, and schemas

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Understanding Discourse

• Forming an Integrated Representation of the Text
• How do we gather information together and
  remember the various concepts to form an
  integrated and stable message?
• subtle linguistic cues (e.g., "A" vs. "The") p.
  302
• mental models (e.g., of a character in a story)

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Understanding Discourse

• Drawing Inferences During Reading
• make an inference during readingdraw on our
  world knowledge in order to activate information
  that is not explicitly stated in a written passage

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Understanding Discourse

• Drawing Inferences During Reading
• The Constructionist View of Inferences
• Constructionist view of inferencesreaders
  usually draw inferences about
• the causes of events and
• the relationships between events

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Understanding Discourse

• Drawing Inferences During Reading
• The Constructionist View of Inferences
• Huitema and coauthors (1993)
• brief story
• far/near placement of test sentence from
  statement of goal
• consistent/inconsistent relationship between goal
  and test sentence
• measure reading time for test sentence
• reading time longer for inconsistent statements

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The Constructionist View of Inferences
Figure 9.3 Amount of Time Taken to Read the
Crucial Line in the Study by Huitema and
colleagues (1993)
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Understanding Discourse

• Drawing Inferences During Reading
• The Constructionist View of Inferences
• Readers
• try to connect material within a text passage
• consult information stored in long-term memory
• try to construct an internally consistent
  representation

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Understanding Discourse

• Drawing Inferences During Reading
• Factors That Encourage Inferences
• individual differences
• failure to activate relevant information
• working-memory capacity
• metacomprehension skills
• expertise
• scientific texts

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Understanding Discourse

• Drawing Inferences During Reading
• Higher-Level Inferences
• mental preferences for a particular outcome may
  interfere with judgments about how the story
  actually turned out

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Understanding Discourse

• Teaching Metacomprehension Skills
• metacomprehensionyour thoughts about
  comprehension
• Contemplating your own reading strategies
• relevant background knowledge
• reading every sentences vs. skimming
• monitoring your understanding
• noticing when your mind wanders

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Understanding Discourse

• Teaching Metacomprehension Skills
• Teaching students to
• think out loud
• summarize
• make predictions
• describe puzzling sentences

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Understanding Discourse

• Individual Differences Test Anxiety and Reading
  Comprehension
• high test anxiety and poor test performance
• thought intrusions

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Understanding Discourse

• Individual Differences Test Anxiety and Reading
  Comprehension
• Cassady (2004)test anxiety as decreasing
  students' skills in understanding the information
  in their textbooks
• read several paragraphs from a textbook two times
• Cognitive Test Anxiety scale
• multiple-choice test on textbook material
• repeat with different material and study-skills
  survey

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Understanding Discourse

• Individual Differences Test Anxiety and Reading
  Comprehension
• Cassady (2004) (continued)
• people who were highly anxious tended to perform
  poorly on the reading-comprehension test
• people who were highly anxious tended to report
  poorer study skills
• study skills not strongly correlated with scores
  on the multiple-choice test

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Understanding Discourse

• Individual Differences Test Anxiety and Reading
  Comprehension
• People with high scores on the Cognitive Test
  Anxiety scale also made more errors in
  summarizing textbook material and more errors on
  a test of ability to make correct inferences.

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Understanding Discourse

• Artificial Intelligence and Reading
• artificial intelligencethe area of computer
  science that attempts to construct computers that
  can demonstrate human-like cognitive processes
• natural languageordinary human language with all
  its sloppiness, ambiguities and complexities

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Understanding Discourse

• Artificial Intelligence and Reading
• The FRUMP Project
• FRUMPFast Reading Understanding and Memory
  Program
• summarize newspaper stories by applying scripts
• humans draw numerous inferences that artificial
  intelligence systems cannot access

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Understanding Discourse

• Artificial Intelligence and Reading
• More Recent Projects
• Landauer and colleagueslatent semantic analysis
  (LSA)
• perform sophisticated language tasks
• provide tutoring sessions
• grade essays
• cannot match human grader
• cannot assess creativity
• masters just a small component of language
  comprehension