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Summer 99, Exam 2 |
Part 1: Multiple Choice. Circle the letter corresponding to the correct answer. Only one answer is correct for each question. (1 point each)1. Seidenberg & McClelland's (1989) parallel distributed processing model of word
recognition and naming predicts that _____ will have less effect on naming times for high
frequency words than for low frequency words. 2.In Farah & McClelland's (1991) model of semantic memory impairment each concept
is represented by a pattern of activation across a set of _____ features or nodes. 3. Because McCloskey & Glucksberg (1979) found that the presence of negative
sentences with high feature overlap (e.g., "A dolphin is a fish.") does not
attenuate the _____ effect, Smith, Shoben, & Rips' (1974) feature based model of
semantic memory was disconfirmed. 4. Some patients who have suffered brain damage are unable to name living things (e.g.,
"dog" or "owl") but have no trouble naming human artifacts (e.g.,
"hammer" or "chair"). Others show exactly the opposite pattern. This
is an example of _____. 5. In the sentence, "The ugly, old buzzard consumed the rotting, smelly
carcass." the proposition (UGLY BUZZARD) shares an argument with the proposition
_____. 6. When a word in a lexical decision task (e.g., "bat") is preceded by
another word with a related meaning (e.g., "ball"), reaction time _____. This
effect is called priming. 7. _____ explicitly assumes that the structures and processes underlying language
comprehension are independent of the structures and processes that mediate our other
cognitive abilities. 8. The sentences "Lexical access is an interactive process." and
"Lexical access involves both bottom-up and top-down processing." have the same
_____ but different _____. 9. Which of the following models uses distributed representations of concepts? 10. The best example of a concept or category is known as the _____. Part 2: Definitions. In just 1 or 2 sentences, give an operational definition for each of the following concepts. Your definition may come from an experiment you are familiar with or you may make up your own definition (as long as it accurately defines the concept and is operational). (2 points each)Grading Criteria:
11. The Semantic Distance Effect I would begin by asking 20 people to name three exemplars of each of 20 superordinate categories such as "tools" and "animals" and would use their responses to select one typical member of each category that was included by at least 15 people and one atypical member that was included by fewer than 5 people. I would then ask 20 new people to verify as quicikly as possible (by pressing buttons labeled TRUE and FALSE) the truth of sentences of the form "A(n) S is a P." (where P would be one of the superordinate categories and S would be either the typical or atypical member of that category). I would measure the time that elapses between the presentation of each sentence and the pressing of the TRUE button and would use the difference in reaction time between the typical and atypical members of the categories to define the semantic distance effect. 12. Strength of the Associative Connection between Two Concepts I would ask 100 participants to quickly name the first three words they think of when they hear a word corresponding to one concept. The strength of the association between that concept and a second concept could then be defined as the percentage of participants whose responses include a word corresponding to the second concept. 13. The Neighborhood of the Word "Just" The neighborhood of the word "just" can be defined as all the monosyllabic words in the latest edition of Webster's Dictonary that end in "ust". This would include words like "dust," "rust" and "crust." 14.Sentence Verification Time As in a typical sentence verification experiment, I would ask show participants some sentences on a computer screen and ask them to indicate whether each is true or false by pressing a YES or NO button as quickly as possible. Sentence Verification Time could then be defined as the time that elapses between the presentation of a sentence, and a correct button press. 15.Psychological Distance Between Two Words in a Sentence To measure the psychological distance between two words in a sentence I would present the sentence to a group of participants along with several other sentences then ask them to make speeded recognition judgements (by pushing a YES or NO button as quickly as possible in response to words presented on a computer screen). I would measure recognition time for the second word in the sentence under two conditions, when it is predeeded by a the first word and when it is preceeded by a word from a different sentence, and use the difference between these two times as my measure of the psychological distance between the two words in the sentence. Part 3: Short Essay. Answer each of the following questions in half a page or less. Be sure to use operational definitions and/or examples were they are appropriate. (5 points each16. Some psychologists have argued that morphologically complex words (such as "unhappy") are not represented in the lexicon. They argue that such words are recognized by accessing and then combining their constituent parts (e.g. "un" and "happy"). Design an experiment to test this hypothesis. Be sure to specify (using operational definitions) what your independent and dependent variables would be. What pattern of results would you expect to see if the hypothesis is true? What pattern would you expect to see if it is false? (Hint: You may wish to consider frequency effects.) Grading Criteria:
Example Answer: To test this hypothesis I would first generate two lists of morphologically complex words. One list would include only high frequency words (among the 2,000 most common words in the English language according to published norms) while the other list would include only low frequency words (not among the 2,000 most common English words). The frequency of the morphemes out of which the words are constructed would be identical for the two lists. I would then present the words to participants, one at a time, on a computer monitor and ask them to pronounce each word out loud as quickly as possible. I would use the computer to measure the time that elapses between the presentation of each word, and the detection of a naming response. This would be my dependent variable. The independent variable would be word frequency (high versus low). If the hypothesis is true, the average naming time should be the same for both groups of words (because of the equal frequencies of their parts). If the hypothesis is false, high frequency words should exhibit shorter naming times than low frequency words. 17. Early in the course we discussed the importance of converging operations, using multiple experimental procedures to test the same theory or hypothesis (this is also discussed in Stanovich). Give an example from the psychology of language where psychologists were led astray because they failed to make use of converging operations. Give another example where converging operations were used successfully. Be sure to explain your examples. Grading Criteria:
Example Answer: An excellent example of what happens when psychologists fail to use converging operations can be found in the literature on semantic memory. Between the time of the Collins & Quillion (1969) model and McCloskey & Glucksberg's (1979) model, virtually all research in this area made use of the exact same experimental procedure, the sentence verification task. Unfortunately, the success of McCloskey & Glucksberg's model makes it clear that the differences in reaction time observed in this task are determined by the complexity of the decision task that follows retrieval from semantic memory. As a result, these experiments tell us little, if anything, about how information is represented in, and retrieved from semantic memory. At the other end of the spectrum, we find research on the psychological reality of propositions. Here psychologists have used a variety of experimental procedures such as free recall, cued recall, measures of reading time, and priming in a probe recognition procedure. Because all of these procedures lead us to the conslusion that propositions are used to represent the meaning of a sentence (or text) in memory, this conclusion is now widely accepted. |
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