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Winter 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 orthographic-phonological regularity will have less
effect on naming times for _____ than for _____. 2.Experiments using functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) have shown that when
participants listen to sentences, the flow of blood to both Wernicke's Area and Broca's
Area increases as grammatical complexity increases. By the logic of the _____ technique
this suggests that both of these areas are involved in processing the grammatical
structure of a sentence. 3. Because McCloskey and Glucksberg (1979) found that the presence of _____ does not
attenuate the semantic distance (or typicality) effect, Smith, Shoben, and Rips (1974)
feature based model of semantic memory was disconfirmed. 4. A _____ is the smallest unit of meaning in language. 5. In McClelland & Rumelhart's (1985) distributed memory model, the _____ is used
to modify the strengths of the connections between processing units. 6. The best example of a concept or category is known as the _____. 7.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. 8. When a word in a lexical decision task (e.g., "cream") is preceded by
another word with a related meaning (e.g., "ice"), reaction time decreases. This
effect is called _____. 9. McClelland and Rumelhart (1981) found that the difference in activation levels
between high- and low-frequency words in their Interactive Activation Model increases over
processing cycles when both are equally consistent with the input. They refer to this as
the _____ effect. 10. _____ explicitly assumes that the structures and processes underlying language
comprehension are independent of the structures and processes that mediate other cognitive
abilities? 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 Word Superiority Effect To demonstrate the Word Supperiority Effect, I would 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 could 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"). 12. Naming Time I would present participants with words on a computer screen and ask them to quickly and accurately pronounce each word as it appeared. Naming Time could then be defined a the time (in msec.) that elapsed between the presentation of the letters and the detection of a response by a voice-activated relay. 13. 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. 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. Lexical Decision Reaction Time I would present participants with letter strings on a computer screen and ask them to press one key if the letters form a word, or another key if they do not. Lexical decision reaction time could then be defined a the time between the presentation of the letters and the pressing of a key (as measured by the computer). 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. Some authors have argued that syntactic information might be able to direct lexical access in ways that semantic information cannot. This suggests that when you hear the sentence, "I am going to fly to San Francisco in two weeks." you never access the syntactically inappropriate "insect" meaning of the word "fly". 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 results would you expect if the hypothesis is false? Grading Criteria:
Example Answer: To test this hypothesis I would first generate a list of ambiguous words, such as "fly" which have one noun meaning and one verb meaning. I would then generate two target words for each ambiguous word, one a close associate of its noun meaning (e.g., "insects") and the other a close associate of its verb meaning (e.g., "airport"). I would try to match these two associates for length and frequency. The experiment would use Swinney's cross-modality priming procedure. Participants would listen to sentences containing the ambiguous words. Immediately after each ambiguous word they would be shown one of the associates and would be asked to press a button marked YES to indicate that it is, in fact, a word. They would also hear "filler" sentences during which they would be shown non-words that would require a NO response. The independent variable in this study would be defined by the relationship between the ambiguous word and its associate. On half the trials, the associate would be related to the syntactically appropriate meaning of the ambiguous word (the consistent condition). On the remaining trials, the associate would be related to the inappropriate meaning (the inconsistent condition). The dependent variable would be the lexical decision time, the time that elapses between the presentation of the associate and the correct button-press response. If the hypothesis is true, I would expect to would expect faster decision times in the consistent condition. If the hypothesis is false, I would expect no difference. |
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