Chapter: Chapter 10: Language II: Language Production and Bilingualism
Multiple Choice
1. One reason why there are more psychological studies on language comprehension than on language
production is that:
a) language production is not as action oriented or behavioristic.
b) it is difficult to manipulate the ideas that a person wishes to say or write.
c) there is much more language produced than there is language comprehended.
d) it is difficult to record and analyze language that is comprehended.
Ans: b
Feedback: See page 337
2. Which of the following is a slip-of-the-tongue error, as described by the text?
a) sound error
b) morpheme error
c) word error
d) All are errors.
Ans: d
Feedback: See pages 338 - 340
3. Research reveals that if a person is unable to retrieve a word in response to a definition (e.g., "a
pendulum-like instrument designed to mark exact time by regular ticking"):
a) presenting a word that is completely unrelated in meaning will often help.
b) making the person engage in a demanding working memory task will often help.
c) hand gestures may sometimes activate relevant information.
d) nothing will help immediately because the person must wait for activation to subside.
Ans: c
Feedback: See page 340
4. When people speak, they begin in:
a) a bottom-up fashion.
b) a top-down fashion.
c) a prosodic fashion.
d) a bombastic fashion.
Ans: b
Feedback: See page 342
5. The prosody of an utterance is the:
a) melody of its intonation, rhythm, and emphasis.
b) social impact of the utterance on the listener.
c) sequence of phonemes used in the utterance.
d) gist, or overall meaning, of the message.
Ans: a
Feedback: See page 342
6. A psychological understanding of slip-of-the-tongue errors:
a) has not advanced much beyond the initial ideas of Sigmund Freud on what are now called Freudian
slips.
b) advanced considerably when behavioral psychologists studied speech production in terms of
imitation.
c) reveals that such errors are attempts by the right cerebral hemisphere to control the left cerebral
hemisphere.
d) has been advanced with a connectionist theory that includes spreading activation.
Ans: d
Feedback: See page 339
7. Knowledge of the social rules that underlie language use (speech communication) is called:
a) syntactics.
b) morphemics.
c) semantics.
d) pragmatics.
Ans: d
Feedback: See page 344
8. The assumption that participants in a conversation have similar background knowledge is known as
a) common ground.
b) pragmatics.
c) directness.
d) framing.
Ans: a
Feedback: See page 344
9. Issues such as common ground and directives relate to an aspect of language called:
a) reinforcement.
b) inquiry.
c) pragmatics.
d) creativity.
Ans: c
Feedback: See page 344
10. A large-scale view of writing focuses on three phases:
a) planning (prewriting), sentence generating, and revising.
b) generating phonemes, generating morphemes, and generating words.
c) attending, thinking, and writing.
d) simplifying, complexifying, and unifying.
Ans: a
Feedback: See page 349
11. Which concept from cognitive psychology is important for writing?
a) working memory
b) attention
c) long-term memory
d) All are important.
Ans: d
Feedback: See pages 350 - 351
12. Cognitive psychological research on writing:
a) reveals that a person can proofread his or her own writing better than someone else's writing.
b) is more extensive than cognitive psychological research on reading.
c) supports the value of outlining a paper before beginning to write.
d) suggests that spending a lot of time on revisions is not helpful.
Ans: c
Feedback: See pages 351 - 352
13. Recent research on bilingualism reveals that:
a) bilingualism produces cognitive deficits because the brain must store two linguistic systems.
b) bilinguals often display better cognitive skills.
c) bilingual children show a deficit on selective-attention tasks when they must inhibit an obvious
response.
d) as people develop bilingual ability, they lose some of their expertise in their first language.
Ans: b
Feedback: See page 358
14. The critical period hypothesis asserts that a person's ability to acquire a second language is based on
a biologically based "deadline." Recent research related to this hypothesis:
a) does not support it.
b) supports it in the case of language comprehension but not in the case of language production.
c) supports it in the case of language production but not in the case of language comprehension.
d) strongly supports it.
Ans: a
Feedback: See page 360
15. For which characteristics of language does age of acquisition of a second language matter most?
a) vocabulary
b) phonology
c) grammar
d) Both vocabulary and phonology.
Ans: b
Feedback: See pages 360 - 363
16. The age of acquisition of a second language affects:
a) nothing that relates to the production of speech.
b) the extent of the vocabulary in the second language that is possible.
c) the use of nouns much more than the use of pronouns.
d) the speaker’s accent in the second language.
Ans: d
Feedback: See page 360
17. Simultaneous interpreters (often misnamed “simultaneous translators”):
a) seem to have superb working-memory skills.
b) have difficulty dividing their attention between tasks.
c) find it difficult to recall words, both in terms of their reading span and their speaking span..
d) All of the above are correct.
Ans: a
Feedback: See pages 363 - 364