Part 1: Multiple Choice. Circle the letter corresponding to the correct answer. Only
one answer is correct for each question. (2 points each)
1. MacWhinney, Bates, and Kliegl's (1984) word order strategy suggests that the
agent of the pseudo-sentence _____ is _____.
(a) "The chefs bakes the cake."/"chefs"
(b) "Bake the cake the chef."/"chef"
(c) "The chef the cakes bakes."/"cakes"
2.The initial "construction" phase of processing in Kintsch's (1988)
Construction-Integration model of discourse understanding is _____.
(a) strictly top-down
(b) interactive
(c) strictly bottom-up
3. The goal of _____ is to formulate a small set of rules that can generate all
the grammatical sentences of a language, and no non-sentences.
(a) phrase structure rules
(b) the derivational theory of complexity
(c) a generative grammar
4. _____ sentences like "The horse raced past the barn fell." are locally
ambiguous syntactic structures whose ultimate resolution is toward an unfavored syntactic
representation.
(a) Simple active
(b) Garden path
(c) Derivationally complex
5. Which of the following models explicitly assumes that the structures and
processes underlying language comprehension are independent of the structures and
processes that mediate other cognitive abilities?
(a) Forster's (1981) model of sentence comprehension
(b) Seidenberg & McClelland's (1989) model of word naming
(c) Waltz & Pollack's (1985) model of sentence comprehension
6. Which of the following models assumes that text comprehension is primarily a
bottom-up process?
(a) van Dijk and Kintsch's (1983) cyclical model
(b) Schank and Abelson's (1977) script-based model
(c) Mandler and Johnson's (1977) story grammar model
7. Which of the following symptoms is often associated with damage to the right
cerebral cortex?
(a) inability to understand reversible sentences
(b) the use of long, complicated utterences that make little sense
(c) inability to understand or tell a coherent a story
8. A proposition _____.
(a) is the smallest unit of meaning to which we can assign a truth value
(b) consists of a single predicate and one or more arguments
(c) both of the above
9. According to Grice's Maxim of _____ speakers should tell the truth as they
know it or acknowledge the uncertainty of what they are telling you.
(a) Quality
(b) Manner
(c) Relation
10. Kintsch's (1988) Construction-Integration model of inference making in
discourse comprehension is formulated at the level of analysis that Marr referred to as
the __________.
(a) computational theory
(b) representation and algorithm
(c) hardware implementation
Part 2: Definitions. Describe, in just 1 or 2 sentences, how each of the following
concepts is operationalized in the study indicated. (2 points each)
Grading Criteria:
- 1 pt. for correctly identifying the concept
- 1 pt. for using a procedural definition
11. Reversible versus Nonreversible Sentences
To determine if sentences are reversible or nonreversible I would present them to a
group of participants and ask them to judge whether they still make sense when the agent
and object are reversed (e.g., "The dog ate the bone." --> "The bone ate
the dog."). Those for which a majority responded "yes" could then be
classified as reversible while those for which a majority responded "no" could
be classified as nonreversible.
12. 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.
13. Similarity of Two Sentences
To assess the similarity of two sentences I would include one of them in a list of
to-be-remembered sentences, then ask a group of participants to choose between them in a
two-alternative forced-choice recognition test. The similarity of the two sentences could
then be defined as the percentage of participants who incorrectly choose the sentence that
was not on the study list.
14. Psychological Distance Between Two Events in a Story
To measure the psychological distance between two events in a story I would present the
story to a group of participants along with several other stories then ask them to make
speeded true/false judgements by pushing a TRUE or FALSE button as quickly as possible in
response to test sentences presented on a computer screen. I would measure the reaction
time for the second of the two events under two conditions, when it is preceeded by a the
first event and when it is preceeded by an event from another story, and use the
difference between these two times as my measure of the psychological distance between the
two events.
15. The Codability of Animals
I would present photographs of different animals (e.g., cows, humming birds, sloths, etc.)
to participants on a computer monitor and ask them to generate a name for each as quickly
as possible. The average naming latency (as measured by a computer) could be used to
measure codability.
Part 3: Short Essay. Answer each of the following questions. Use no more than half a
page for each answer and be sure to use examples were they are appropriate. (5 points
each)
16. The English prepositions "in" and "on" are both translated into
Spanish as "en". If the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis is correct, native speakers of
English should, therefore, be more aware of and sensitive to the distinction captured by
"in" and "on" than are native speakers of Spanish. Design an
experiment to test this hypothesis. Be sure to describe the independent and dependent
variables in your experiment. What pattern of results would you expect if the hypothesis
is true? What pattern of results would you expect if it is false?
Grading Criteria:
- 1 pt. for identification of I.V.
- 1 pt. for identification of D.V.
- 1 pt. for correct prediction if hypothesis is true
- 1 pt. for correct prediction if hypothesis is false
- 1 pt. for coherence of answer
Example Answer:
I would use an ABX discrimination task to test this hypothesis. The independent
variable would be the native language of the participants (either English or Spanish). On
each of several trials, they would be shown two pictures that differed along two
dimensions, and one of those dimensions would involve the "in - on"
distinctions. As an example, one picture might show a frog on a box and the other a turtle
in a box. Participants would then be shown a third picture that differed from each
of the first two pictures along one of the dimensions (e.g., a frog in a box) and asked
which of the first two pictures it was most like. The dependent variable would be the
probability of matching on the basis of the spatial relation (in) rather than the other
dimension (the frog). If the hypothesis is true, English speakers should match on the
spatial relation more often than the Spanish speakers. If the hypothesis is false, the two
language groups should not differ from one another.
17.Savin & Perchonock (1965) took advantage of the tradeoff between storage
capacity and processing complexity in short-term memory in their experimental test of the
derivational theory of complexity. How would you change their experiment to test the
hypothesis that syntactic processing is facilitated by by semantic constraint? Be sure to
describe the independent and dependent variables in your modified experiment, using
operational definitions and/or examples where they are appropriate. What pattern of
results would you expect if the hypothesis is true? What pattern of results would you
expect if the hypothesis is false?
Grading Criteria:
- 1 pt. for identification of I.V.
- 1 pt. for identification of D.V.
- 1 pt. for correct prediction if hypothesis is true
- 1 pt for correct prediction if hypothesis is false
- 1 pt. for coherence of the answer
Example Answer:
I would present participants with a list of unrelated sentences. Each sentence would
be followed by a list of eight randomly selected words unrelated to the sentence.
Participants would be required to repeat back each sentence verbatim, then repeat back as
many of the eight words as they could remember. All of the sentences would be passive
sentences taken from Slobin (1966) except for some filler sentences that wouldnot be
scored. The dependent variable would be the number of randomly selected words recalled
correctly (0 - 8). The independent variable would be the reversibility of the sentences
(as in Slobin, 1966). Half of the passive sentences would be reversible, meaning that the
subject and object could potentially reverse roles (as in, "The girl was chased by
the boy."). The other half would be irreversible, meaning that the subject and object
could not change roles (as in, "The bagel was eaten by the boy."). If the
hypothesis is true, I would expect more words to be recalled when the sentence is
irreversible. If the hypothesis is false, I would expect to find no difference between the
reversible and irreversible sentences.
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