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Spring 00, Final |
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Part 1: Multiple Choice. Circle the letter corresponding to the correct answer. Only one answer is correct for each question. (1 point each) 1. According to the _____ the language that you speak determines how you perceive,
think about, and remember the world around you. 2. If Rumelhart and McClelland (1982) had found that letters are just as
difficult to recognize in unpronounceable non-words that share letter combinations with
real words (e.g., "SLNT") as they are in unpronounceable non-words that don't
share letter combinations with real words (e.g., "XLQJ"), then _____
would have been falsified. 3. According to the _____ listeners or readers attempt to interpret sentences in terms
of the simplest syntactic structure (i.e., the one with the fewest nodes in the phrase
structure tree) that is consistent with the input. 4. Seidenberg & McClelland's (1989) parallel distributed processing model of word
recognition and naming predicts that orthographic-phonological regularity will have _____
effect on naming times for words with small neighborhoods than for with large
neighborhoods. 5. 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. 6. The initial "construction" phase of processing in Kintsch's (1988)
Construction-Integration model of discourse understanding is _____. 7. A _____ is the smallest unit of a language that carries definable meaning or
grammatical function. 8. Farah & McClelland's (1991) model of semantic memory impairment uses _____
representations of concepts. 9. If Neisser (1967) had found that it takes longer to search for two target letters
than to search for just one, then _____ would have been disconfirmed. 10. In a(n) _____ the literal and contextual meanings of an utterance are not
the same. 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) 11. The Neighborhood of the Word "Bike" The neighborhood of any word can be defined as all the words in the latest edition of Webster's Dictonary that that differ from that word by just one or two letters and have the same number of syllables. Thus, the neighborhood of the word "bike" would include words like "hike," "like" and "pike." 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 to indicate whether or not individual probe words occurred in one of the sentences. 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 another sentence, then use the difference between these two times as my measure of the psychological distance between the two words. 13. The Codability of State Fair Food Items I would present photographs of different food items from the Fair (e.g., pronto pups, cotton candy, cheese curds, and pork chops on a stick) to participants on a computer monitor and ask them to generate a name for each item as quickly as possible. The average naming latency (the time that elapses between the presentation of a picture and the detection of a naming response by a voice key attached to a microphone) could be used to measure codability. 14. The Word Superiority Effect To demonstrate the Word Superiority Effect, we could ask people to look at a fixation point on a computer screen then name, as quickly as possible, letters that appear in its place. The Word Superiority Effect can then be defined as the difference in letter naming times (the time that elapses between presenting a letter and detecting the naming response) between letters presented alone (e.g., "O") and letters presented in the context of a word (e.g., "DOG"). 15. 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 boy ate the bagel." --> "The bagel ate the boy."). 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. Part 3: Short Essay. Answer each of the following questions using no more than half of a page for each. (5 points each) 16. Describe the semantic distance effect and explain how it falsifies Collins & Quillian’s (1969) model of semantic memory. Be sure to include examples.
Example Answer: People can verify that more typical members belong to a category more quickly than they can verify that less typical members belong to the same category. For example, people respond TRUE more quickly to the sentence "A robin is a bird" than to "A penguin is a bird". This is called the semantic distance effect. Collins & Quillian (1969) claim that the time required to verify sentences like these is determined by the number of levels seperating the first and second terms (e.g., "robin" and "bird") in their hierarchical network model. Because "robin" and "penguin" are both one level away from "bird" they should, according to this model, take the same amount of time to verify. The fact that they don't falsifies the model. 17. 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?
Example Answer: 18. Compare the representational and processing assumptions found in McClelland & Rumelhart's (1981) Interactive Activation Model to those in Waltz & Pollack's (1985) massively parallel model of sentence interpretation. Be sure to point out at least one similarity and at least one difference between these two models.
Example Answer: 19. What is a "think aloud" protocol? According to Ericsson & Simon (1980) what conditions must be met before we can trust a "think aloud" protocol?
Example Answer: A "think aloud" protocol is a record of what people say when they are asked to "think out loud" while engaged in some cognitive task such as solving a logic problem or writing an essay. According to Ericsson & Simon (1980) we should only trust a "think aloud" protocols when the following conditions are met: (1) They are treated as data rather than as an explanations. (2) They are concurrent rather than retrospective. (3) The researcher can demonstrate that "thinking aloud" does not interfere with the primary task. (4) The researcher can demonstrate a connection between the contents of the verbal protocols and some additional, more objective, performance measure. (5) We have converging evidence which supports the same conclusions as the verbal protocols. |
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