Name that tune.
Song title? Performer(s)?
R.G. Bias | rbias@ischool.utexas.edu |
1
Psycholinguistics
“The Knower”
1/31/10
R.G. Bias | rbias@ischool.utexas.edu |
2
Objectives
After this class you will be able to (it is my
hope!):
 Describe some reasons why speech perception
is hard.
 Describe how we still do it, seemingly easily.
 Understand the Stroop Effect.
 Understand much about how we read.
 Know what “phonological recoding” is.
 Demonstrate an even DEEPER appreciation for
how we can use behavioral data to make
inferences about brain function.
R.G. Bias | rbias@ischool.utexas.edu |
Psycholinguistics
 The psychology of language.
 What goes on from the time I get an idea
until you have the same idea,
– Whether I speak my idea (speech production,
auditory science, speech perception)
– Or write my idea (motor movements, visual
system, reading)
R.G. Bias | rbias@ischool.utexas.edu |
Last week . . .




We talked of selective attention.
Get this – the Stroop Effect.
I need a volunteer.
http://www.david.tam.name/SelfTests/Stro
opEffects.html
R.G. Bias | rbias@ischool.utexas.edu |
Speech perception . . .
 . . . is EASY!!
 I need three volunteers to each read just a
few words out loud.
R.G. Bias | rbias@ischool.utexas.edu |
Did anyone NOT hear . . .
 DOG
 FISHING ROD
 LADDER
 So, speech perception must be easy, eh?
R.G. Bias | rbias@ischool.utexas.edu |
Yeah, consider this:
 To understand ONE word, you need to :
– Transform sound waves into neural signals
(remember – tympanic membrane, middle ear bones
[auditory ossicles], cochlea, basilar membrane, hair
cells).
– Apply “pattern recognition routines” to figure out what
letter a particular pattern of sounds represents.
– Hold early letters in working memory to put together
one word’s worth of letters.
– Look up the meaning of that word in your mental
lexicon.
R.G. Bias | rbias@ischool.utexas.edu |
Furthermore . . .
 . . . adults speaking English speak about 15
speech sounds (letters, but when spoken
“phonemes”) per second, thus about 900 per
minute.
 You gotta pick out those sounds (from the
speaker) from other ambient noise.
 Plus, there are NOT blank spots between words,
in the acoustical stimulus. (Notice how hard it is
to parse individual words in a language you
don’t speak?!)
 PLUS . . .
R.G. Bias | rbias@ischool.utexas.edu |
Variability in Phoneme
Pronunciation!!
 Differences in pitch and tone of different speakers. (Men vs.
women. Adults vs. kids. Tall people vs. short people. Native
English speakers vs. not.)
 Even an individual doesn’t always pronounce a phoneme the same
way.
 Plus, coarticulation effects – your articulators (lips, tongue, jaw) are
different positions when you START to utter a particular phoneme,
depending upon the context, and you’re preparing to pronounce the
next phoneme. And soooo . . .
– The phoneme sounds different from word to word!
– So all those /d/ phonemes you perceived as the same are actually
QUITE different, acoustically (physically) – they’re firin’ different patterns
of hair cells!
 Speech perception is a miracle! How do we do it?
R.G. Bias | rbias@ischool.utexas.edu |
How do we do it?
 Word boundaries – we use our knowledge of our
language to insert those word boundaries that aren’t
really there.
 Visual cues
 Context. We are “active listeners.” More o’ this “topdown” perception – we use our knowledge of language,
and the context of the utterance, to perceive “ambiguous
stimuli.”
– For example – Warren and Warren (1970) study on “phonemic
restoration” – a cough replaced the asterisk below, but people
had no problem getting the “right” word.
• “It was found that the *eel was on the axle.”
• “It was found that the *eel was on the shoe.”
• “It was found that the *eel was on the orange.”
– So phonemic restoration is a sort of illusion.
R.G. Bias | rbias@ischool.utexas.edu |
So, in speech perception . . .
 . . . we receive a less-than-crisp acoustic
signal, this non-unique speech stimulus,
and IMPOSE meaning on it by . . .
– Building in those word boundaries
– Utilizing visual cues, when available, and
– Attending to context
R.G. Bias | rbias@ischool.utexas.edu |
The Psychology of Reading
 Except for fairly rare cases of “phonetic
symbolism” (onomatopoeia) words have
no inherent meaning.
– (And rarer cases of “orthographic
symbolism”!!)
 So, READING is the interpreting of words,
the acts that go on to impose meaning,
from within, on external visual stimuli.
R.G. Bias | rbias@ischool.utexas.edu |
Some facts about reading
 Eyes of the mature reader move rhythmically across the page (from
left to right).
 Eye movement consists of fixations, saccades, regressions, and
return sweeps.
 No information is taken in during saccades (10-25 msec),
regressions (same duration), or return sweeps (40 msec).
 During fixation (250 msec) a visual pattern is reflected onto the
retina.
 Span of perception = amount of print seen during a single fixation.
 Span of perception = 12 letter spaces for good readers, 6 for poor
readers.
R.G. Bias | rbias@ischool.utexas.edu |
More facts
 Span of recognition – 1.21 words for senior high, 1.33 words for
college readers.
 So, 7 to 8 fixations per line of print.
 As content gets tougher, duration of fixations, not number, changes
(increases).
 Regressive movements aren’t systematic. Used when attention is
faltering.
 College readers have 1 regressive movement per 3 or 4 lines of
print. Immature readers have 3 or 4 regressions per line.
R.G. Bias | rbias@ischool.utexas.edu |
Iconic Memory
 Remember in Week 1 I mentioned a two-stage memory process –
STM and LTM.
 A third stage, Iconic Memory: The unidentified, “pre-categorical”
pattern of lines, curves and angles; formed in about 100 msec.
Lasts just about 500 msec.
– Echoic Memory lasts about 2 sec.
 Icon can hold up to 20 letter spaces.
 Pattern recognition routines are applied to the lines, curves.
 It takes about 10 – 20 msec to read each letter out of the iconic
memory.
 Neural signal takes about 30 msec to go from the retina to the visual
cortex.
R.G. Bias | rbias@ischool.utexas.edu |
Iconic Memory (cont’d.)
 At some point, thanks to pattern recognition routines, letters are
read out.
 Letters are transformed into abstract phonemic representations.
 The abstract phonemes are used to search the mental lexicon.
 About 300 msec after the eye has fallen upon the page, the first
word is “understood,” i.e., placed in Primary Memory (STM, Working
Memory).
 Syntactic and semantic rules are applied to gain the meaning of the
sentence.
R.G. Bias | rbias@ischool.utexas.edu |
How do you know, Randolph?
 Psycholinguists employ a variety of methods to acquire
this data about human behavior.
 One question: Why do we think readers routinely
transform the visual representation into a phonological
representation?
– Cognitive economy – all (healthy) new readers come
to the task as skilled hearers.
– “I thought you said something about data?”
R.G. Bias | rbias@ischool.utexas.edu |
Rubenstein et al. (1971)
 Used a lexical decision task (word/nonword?).
 Two types of nonwords – homophonous (with real
words), like burd and nonhomophonous like rolt. Equally
“wordlike.”
 Longer latencies for burd.
 Similarly, longer for real homophones like meat.
 Pointed to “false matches” in the mental lexicon.
R.G. Bias | rbias@ischool.utexas.edu |
More Data
 McCusker et al. (1977) proofreading experiment
– Homophonous typos (e.g., furst) went undetected
more often than nonhomophonous typos (e.g., farst).
 Gough and Cosky (1977) used the Stroop task.
– Nonwords homophonous with color words (e.g,. bloo) led to
more interference than control words (e.g., blot) or nonwords
nonhomophonous with color words (e.g., blop).
 I found readers took longer to process words with
irregular “spelling-to-sound rules” (e.g., pint) than words
with regular rules (e.g., hint) (Bias, 1978).
R.G. Bias | rbias@ischool.utexas.edu |
The Point
 The reasons for this somewhat esoteric
discourse on the psychology of reading
are:
– To communicate the complexity that is human
information processing
– The illustrate the ways scientists go about
answering questions about info processing
– To sensitize you to the sorts of things known
about human behavior
R.G. Bias | rbias@ischool.utexas.edu |
SO WHAT?
 Given that we’re so all-fired complex, what
does this have to say about how we
design computer interfaces?
– Depth cues.
– Color perception.
– Effects of context on perception.
– What’s easy to read?
– Recognition vs. recall.
R.G. Bias | rbias@ischool.utexas.edu |
Resources
 Matlin, M. W. (2009). Cognition.
Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley and Sons, Inc.
 Bias, R. G. (1978). Phonological recoding
of words in isolation and prose.
Unpublished doctoral dissertation. The
University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX.
(Wink.)
 http://www.david.tam.name/SelfTests/Stro
opEffects.html
R.G. Bias | rbias@ischool.utexas.edu |
 Today’s song was “Ten Thousand Words”
by The Avett Brothers.
 Why do you suppose we chose to play it
before THIS class?
R.G. Bias | rbias@ischool.utexas.edu | 24