PSY 369: Psycholinguistics
Review for Exam 1
Cohort model

Three stages of word recognition
1) Contact: Activate a set of possible candidates based
on initial phonemes
2) Selection: Narrow the search to one candidate
using further bottom-up and some top-down
information

Recognition point (uniqueness point) - point at which
a word is unambiguously different from other words
and can be recognized
3) Integration: combine the single candidate into
semantic and syntactic context
Semantic priming effects happen in this stage
Cohort model

Prior context: “I took the car for a …”
/s/
Stage 1
…
soap
spinach
psychologist
spin
spit
sun
spank
…
/sp/
spinach
spin
spit
spank
…
time
Stage 2
/spi/
spinach
spin
spit
…
/spin/
spin
Stage 3
Comparing the models

Each model can account for major findings (e.g., frequency,
semantic priming, context), but they do so in different ways.
 Information flow
Search model is serial and bottom-up
 Logogen is parallel and interactive (information flows up and
down)
 Cohort is bottom-up & parallel initially, then interactive at a later
stage
The decision process
 Logogen model – activation increases with no effort
 In the cohort model, words must be actively rejected from the
cohort
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Homework 1

Two banks in neighboring towns were reported robbed by the state
police yesterday.

Purpose of question 2:

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Gain insight to the complexity of a single sentence
It feels easy to understand it,
But, look how hard it is to consciously analyze the different levels of
linguistic information
Homework 1

2a) Phonology - useful website:
http://www.antimoon.com/how/pronunc-soundsipa.htm

Notice, not a one-to-one correspondence between letters and phonemes
3 letters, 2 sounds
two
banks
in diff letters, same sounds
diff letters, same sounds
neighboring
towns
were
reported
robbed
by
the
state
police
yesterday
/t/ /u:/
/b/ /ei/ /N/ /k/ /s/
/i/ /n/
/n/ /ei/ /b/ /o:/ /r/ /i/ /N/
/t/ /au/ /n/ /z/
/w/ /e:/ /r/
/r/ /i:/ /p/ /o:/ /r/ /t/ /e/ /d/
/r/ /a:/ /b/ /d/
/b/ /ai/
/TH/ /^/
/s/ /t/ /ei/ /t/
/p/ /Ou/ /l/ /I:/ /s/
/j/ /e/ /s/ /t/ /e:/ /r/ /d/ /ei/
Homework 1

2b) Morphology
two
banks
in
neighboring
towns
were
reported
robbed
by
the
state
police
yesterday
Free
two
bank
in
neighbor
town
were
report
rob
by
the
state
police
day
Bound
-s
inflectional
-ing
-s
inflectional
inflectional
-ed
-ed
inflectional
inflectional
yester-
derivational
Homework 1

2c) Syntax: Two banks in neighboring towns were reported robbed by
the state police yesterday.

2 different deep structures --transformations--> arrive at same surface
structure


It was reported by the state police yesterday that two banks in
neighboring towns were robbed.

It was reported that two banks in neighboring towns were robbed by
the state police yesterday.
So the tree structures end up attaching the prepositional phrase to one
verb or the other in the resulting surface structure.
Homework 1

2d&e) Lexical Ambiguity: Two banks in neighboring towns were
reported robbed by the state police yesterday.

2 different meanings: RIVER bank, MONEY bank
How do we know which meaning?




Frequency of meaning?
Content of rest of the sentence? “robbed”, do we hold both interpretations
until it gets resolved here (6 words later)?
Prior Context?
A) May is discussing a local newspaper story with her co-worker, Ash,
over lunch.
B) May, a bank manager, wonders aloud whether she should upgrade the
security system in the bank. Ash, the assistant manager says
Homework 1

Input
Two banks
in
neighboring
towns were
reported
robbed by
the state
police
yesterday.
2f,g,&h) introspect about comprehension processes involved
Language
perception
b
a
n
k
s
/b/
/ae/
/n/
/k/
/s/
Word/morpheme
recognition
dog
bank bank
wolf
tree
yarn
cat
claw
fur
hat
Syntactic
analysis
Semantic &
pragmatic
analysis
S
NP
two banks
VP
PP
V
were
In neighboring towns
NP
Exam 1 Review

Chapters 1,2,3,5.
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What is language? Psycholinguistics?
Kinds of linguistic information
Basic cognitive structures and processes
Storing and retrieving information about words
Exam format:
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Multiple choice (similar to quizzes)
Vocabulary matching
Short answer
What is “psycholinguistics”?
Psycho
Linguistics
language
structure
medium of
transmission
phonetics
phonology
grammar
morphology
syntax
pragmatics
use
meaning
(semantics)
lexicon
discourse
What is “psycholinguistics”?
Psycho
Mental Processes
-
Short Term Memory
Long Term Memory
Encoding
Retrieval
Mental Representations
Linguistics
Linguistic Theory
- Phonology
- Morphology
- Syntax
- Semantics
- Rules
Systems of Communication

There are a variety of methods to communicate

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E.g., Dogs bark, Birds sing, Bees dance
People talk - we use language (as well as other methods)
for communication
How does language differ from other systems of
communication? What are the properties of human
language?
Features of Language (Hockett, 1960)

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Arbitrariness
Displacement
Productivity
Discreteness
Semanticity
Duality of patterning
Levels of analysis
language
structure
medium of
transmission
phonetics
phonology
grammar
morphology
syntax
pragmatics
use
meaning
(semantics)
lexicon
discourse
Phonology

The sounds of a language

Phonemes, allophones & phones


Articulatory features
Rules about how to put the sounds together

Rule: If /p/ is used in word initial position you add
aspiration (a puff of air), if word internal don’t aspirate
Morphology

Morpheme – smallest unit that conveys
meaning
“yes”
unhappiness
horses
talking
No internal morphological structure
y, e, s have no meaning in isolation
Internal morphological structure
-s
-ing
happy, horse, talk
plural
unduration
-ness
negative
state/quality
Syntax
• More than surface linear position matters, underlying
structure is important.
S
S
NP
a
dog
VP
NP
V
bites
NP
a
a
man
VP
V
bites
man
Subject
position
Object
position
NP
a
dog
Syntax

Generative Grammar

The pieces:
– Grammatical features of words
• Dog: Noun
• Bite: Verb
– Phrase structure rules - these tell us how to build legal
structures
• S --> NP VP
• VP --> V (NP)
• NP --> (A) (ADJ) N
Syntax

Generative Grammar

Recursion: you can embed structures within
structures

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So we NP’s can be embedded within PP’s which in turn
may be embedded within NP’s.

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NP --> (A) (ADJ) N (PP)
PP --> Prep NP
The dog with the bone of the dinosaur from the cave with the
paintings of the animals with fur bit the man.
Productivity: The result is an infinite number of
syntactic structures from a finite set of pieces
Syntax

Transformational grammar Chomsky (1957, 1965)

Two stages phrase structures for a sentence

Build Deep Structure

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Build from phrase structure rules
One constituent at a time
S --> NP VP
VP --> V (NP)
NP --> (A) (ADJ) N
Convert to Surface Structure

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Built from transformations that operate on the deep
structure
 Adding, deleting, moving
Operate on entire strings of constituents
Semantics

Philosophy of meaning

Sense and reference

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“The world’s most famous athlete.”
“The athlete making the most endorsement income.”
2 distinct senses, 1 reference
Now

Over time the
senses typically
stay the same,
while the
references may
change
In the 90’s
Semantics

Two levels of analysis (and two traditions of
psycholinguistic research)
 Word level (lexical semantics)

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How do we store words?
How are they organized?
How do words relate to meaning?
Sentence level (compositional semantics)

How do word meanings and syntax interact?
Pragmatics

Sentences do more than just state facts,
instead they are uttered to perform actions
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How to do things with words (J. L. Austin, 1955 lectures)
Using registers
Conversational implicatures
Speech acts
Cognitive Psychology
Information ‘flows’ from one memory buffer to the next
Cognitive Psychology
Properties
• sensory specific
• high capacity
• extremely fast decay
Information ‘flows’ from one memory buffer to the next
Cognitive Psychology
Properties
• rapid access
• limited capacity
• fast decay (rehearsal)
Information ‘flows’ from one memory buffer to the next
Cognitive Psychology
Working Memory
Information ‘flows’ from one memory buffer to the next
Working Memory

Working memory instead of STM
Cognitive Psychology
Properties
• Capacity: Unlimited?
• Duration: Decay/
interference
• Organized
Information ‘flows’ from one memory buffer to the next
Long term memory: Organization

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Different memory components,
each storing different kinds of
information.
Declarative

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episodic - memories about events
semantic - knowledge of facts
The Multiple Memory
Stores Theory
Declarative

episodic
Procedural - memories about how
to do things (e.g., the thing that
makes you improve at riding a bike
with practice.
Procedural

semantic
Storing linguistic information

How are words stored? What are they made up of?
How are word related to each other? How do we use
them?
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Mental lexicon The representation of words in long term
memory
Lexical Access: How do we activate (retrieve) the
meanings (and other properties) of words?
Conceptualizer
Thought
Formulator
Grammatical
Encoding
Phonological
Encoding
Articulator
Semantic
Analysis
Lexicon
Syntactic
Analysis
Word
Recognition
Letter/phoneme
Recognition
Lexical primitives

Word primitives horse
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horses
Need a lot of representations
Fast retrieval
Morpheme primitives horse
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barn
barns
-s
barn
Economical - fewer representations
Slow retrieval - some assembly required
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Decomposition during comprehension
Composition during production
Lexical organization

How are the lexical representations
organized?
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Alphabetically?
Initial phoneme?
Semantic categories?
Grammatical class?
Something more flexible, depending on your
needs?
Lexical organization
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Factors that affect organization
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Phonology
Frequency
Imageability, concreteness, abstractness
Grammatical class
Semantics
Lexical organization

Factors that affect organization
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Phonology
Frequency
Imageability, concreteness, abstractness
Grammatical class
Semantics
Lexical organization

Another possibility is that there are multiple levels of
representation, with different organizations at each level
Meaning based representations
Grammatical based representations
Sound based representations
Semantic Networks

Semantic Networks

Words can be represented as an interconnected network
of sense relations

Each word is a particular node

Connections among nodes represent semantic relationships
Semantic Networks

Hierarchical Models Collins and Quillian (1969)
Animal
Bird
Robin
has feathers
can fly
has wings
eats worms Ostrich
has a red breast
has skin
can move around
breathes
Fish
has fins
can swim
has gills
has long legs
is fast
can’t fly
Semantic Networks

Prototypes Rosch, (1973)
 Some members of a category are better instances of the
category than others
 Fruit: apple vs. pomegranate
 What makes a prototype?
 More central semantic features
 What type of dog is a prototypical dog
 What are the features of it?
 We are faster at retrieving prototypes of a category than
other members of the category
Semantic Networks

Spreading activation Collins &
Loftus (1975)
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street
Words represented in lexicon
as a network of relationships
Organization is a web of
interconnected nodes in which
connections can represent:
blue
 categorical relations
 degree of association
tulips
 typicality
vehicle
car
bus
truck
house
orange
flowers
Fire
engine
fire
red
apple
roses
fruit
pear
Lexical access

How do we retrieve the linguistic
information from Long-term memory?

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What factors are involved in retrieving
information from the lexicon?
Models of lexical retrieval
Recognizing a word
Input
Search for a match
cat
cat
dog
cap
wolf
tree
yarn
cat
claw
fur
hat
Select
word
Retrieve
lexical
information
Cat
cat
noun
Animal, pet,
Meows, furry,
Purrs, etc.
Lexical access
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Factors affecting lexical access
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Frequency
Semantic priming
Role of prior context
Phonological structure
Morphological structure
Lexical ambiguity
Models of lexical access
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Serial comparison models
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Search model (Forster, 1976, 1979, 1987, 1989)
Parallel comparison models
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Logogen model (Morton, 1969)
Cohort model (Marslen-Wilson, 1987, 1990)
Logogen model (Morton 1969)
Auditory
stimuli
Visual
stimuli
Auditory
analysis
Visual
analysis
‘cat
’
Context
system
Semantic
Attributes
Logogen
system
Available Responses
Output
buffer
Responses
‘cot’
Search model
Visual input
Pointers
Decreasing frequency
Entries in order of
Access
codes
Auditory input
/kat/
cat
Mental lexicon mat
cat
mouse
Cohort model

Prior context: “I took the car for a …”
/s/
/sp/
…
soap
spinach
psychologist
spin
spit
sun
spank
…
spinach
spin
spit
spank
…
time
/spi/
spinach
spin
spit
…
/spin/
spin