Practice Exam #2
psy 310 | Spring 2009
Name:
1. When Valerie first heard the word “cup,” she assumed that it referred to the cup that her
mother was gesturing toward, rather than it having other meanings related to the object,
such as “white,” “handle,” “being held in a hand,” and the like. This example illustrates
a. the mutual-exclusivity assumption
b. the whole object assumption
c. the principle of conventionality
d. underextension
2. When Ana first heard the word “cherry,” she assumed that it referred to the cherries on her
tray, rather than to what she knew already knew were apples, yogurt, and crackers. This
example illustrates
a. the mutual-exclusivity assumption
b. the whole object assumption
c. the principle of conventionality
d. overextension
3. A toddler who calls a cow “doggie” is demonstrating
a. semantic overextension
b. semantic underextension
c. visual-perceptual difficulties
d. inability to deal with arbitrary sign-referent relationships
4. When riding through a country area with her mom and dad, little Abby spotted a herd of
cows. Being from the city, she had never seen a cow before. She pointed out the window
and shouted “doggies!” This is an example of
a. the whole object assumption
b. telegraphic speech.
c. underextension.
d. overextension.
e. overregularization.
5. Toby’s mother usually buys Red Delicious apples because she knows that Toby loves to eat
them. However, when they didn’t have any that looked good at the store, she brought home
Granny Smiths. When she asked Toby to get an apple from the fruit basket for his snack, he
replied, “No apples Mommy.” Toby’s understanding of the meaning of the word apple is an
example of
a. the fis phenomenon.
b. telegraphic speech.
c. underextension.
d. overextension.
e. overregularization.
6. Children exposed to a pidgin language
a. speak the same pidgin as their parents
b. speak a different pidgin from their parents, which develops in their interactions with their
peers
c. come to speak a more systematized creole language
d. none of the above
7. The fact that the word ‘mother’ tends to convey the notion of a person that is nurturing is
part of the word’s
a. sense
b. reference
c. denotation
d. connotation
8. In the word “unties,”
a. both un- and -s are derivational morphemes
b. both un- and -s are inflectional morphemes
c. un- is an inflectional morpheme and -s is a derivational morpheme
d. un- is a derivational morpheme and -s is an inflectional morpheme
9. Which of the following is true?
a. English is a syllable-timed language, where the beat is on each syllable, whereas French
is a stress-timed language, where the beat is only on stressed syllables.
b. French is a syllable-timed language, whereas English is a stress-timed language.
c. Both French and English are syllable-timed languages.
d. Both French and English are stress-timed languages.
10. In a _______ task, participants are asked to indicate when they hear a given syllable as
quickly as possible.
a. semantic verification
b. lexical decision
c. syllable monitoring
d. phoneme monitoring
11. In a lexical decision experiment, a participant must decide
a. if a word is ambiguous or not
b. if a word is a content word or a function word
c. what syntactic category a word belongs to
d. whether a phoneme or letter string is a word or not
12. Studies of lexical ambiguity suggest which of the following conclusions?
a. We automatically activate all meanings of ambiguous words to an equal extent
regardless of context
b. We activate the most common meaning of an ambiguous word, and only consider
alternatives when the frequent meaning is inappropriate in the context
c. We are more likely to activate the meaning that is relevant to the current context if it is
the frequent meaning
d. none of the above
13. Based on Shillcock’s research, which of the following concepts would be activated when you
hear “Ticketmaster.”
a. “concert,” since it is semantically related to the word
b. “slave,” since it is semantically related to the second morpheme in the word
c. “bug,” since it is semantically related to the initial syllable of the word
d. all of the above
e. a and b only
14. We can easily hear “Thuhcatspawlizbloo” as “The cat’s ball is blue” because
a. there is some “tolerance” for pronunciation variations in the speech perception system.
b. we can use the surrounding phonetic context to determine that the initial sound in “pawl”
was articulated in a way to conform to the preceding /s/ sound.
c. neither a nor b is true because we cannot recover the intended utterance given “
Thuhcatspawlizbloo.”
d. both a and b are true
15. The class of models that assumes that words are represented in the internal lexicon within a
network of interconnected nodes are referred to as
a. semantic network models
b. activation models
c. hierarchical models
d. cognitive economy models
16. Which of the following pairs correctly depicts the relationship between the words in terms of
the reaction time to the words in a lexical decision task?
a. RT for low frequency words > RT for high frequency words
b. RT for morphologically simple words > RT for morphologically complex words
c. RT for semantically primed words > RT for unprimed words
d. RT for unambiguous words > RT for ambiguous words
17. According to the logogen model of word access
a. sensory and contextual information consistent with a word raises the word’s activation
and the word is recognized when the activation level meets a certain threshold
b. a set of lexical candidates is activated based on an acoustic-phonetic analysis and one
item gets selected from this set on the basis of additional phonological information and/
or contextual information
c. the lexicon in searched serially according to the sensory properties of the word starting
with high frequency words and a word is recognized when the input matches an item in
the lexicon
d. none of the above
18. According to the cohort model of word access
a. sensory and contextual information consistent with a word raises the word’s activation
and the word is recognized when the activation level meets a certain threshold
b. a set of lexical candidates is activated based on an acoustic-phonetic analysis and one
item gets selected from this set on the basis of additional phonological information and/
or contextual information
c. the lexicon in searched serially according to the sensory properties of the word starting
with high frequency words and a word is recognized when the input matches an item in
the lexicon
d. none of the above
19. Which of these models of word retrieval says that the list of word candidates is narrowed
serially as more phonological information about the word becomes available?
a. the cohort model
b. the autonomous search model
c. the logogen model
d. the connectionist model
20. According to research on the mental lexicon, which of these words is LEAST likely to be
stored as two separate lexical entries?
a. preregister
b. disease
c. disengage
d. perceptible
1. Distinguish between denotative and connotative meaning. Discuss why this distinction is
important if we are to be critical consumers of information presented in the media. Use at
least one of your own examples to illustrate the point.
2. What is a morpheme? What is morphology? What are inflectional morphemes? What are
derivational morphemes? Identify a derivational morphemes and an inflectional morpheme
in the word “reorganizes.”
3. How is spreading activation related to the concept of priming?
4. Explain how Marslen-Wilson and Warren’s “worg” (or, better, “smob”) study was carried out
and what it illustrates about lexical access.
5. How is reaction time used in studies to inform psycholinguists about lexical access?
Describe two different tasks used to investigate lexical access that use reaction time, and
explain how the results from the tasks are used to indicate something about lexical access.
6. Describe Marslen-Wilson’s cohort model of word recognition (lexical access)?
7. Describe one finding (the experimental setup and its results) that supports the idea that all
possible meanings of an ambiguous word are (initially) activated in all contexts.
8. How does word/meaning frequency affect lexical access? Explain how word/meaning
frequency led some researchers to believe that only contextually appropriate meanings of
ambiguous words are activated.
9. How would you design an experiment to determine whether words composed of more than
one morpheme (e.g., untie) are stored in the lexicon like any other word or whether there
are separate lexical entries for each morpheme?