Speech Error Regularities and their Implications in Psycholinguistics

1. PSY 369: Psycholinguistics Language Production: Speech errors cont.

2. Announcements • Homework 7 (Due April 22) • Try to be vigilant for four or five days in noting speech errors made by yourself and others. Write each slip down (carry a small notebook and pencil with you). Then, when you have accumulated a reasonably size sample (aim for 20 to 30, but don't panic if you don't get that many), try to classify each slip in terms of • the unit(s) involved • the type of error • Remember that each error may be interpreted in different ways. For some of them, see if you can come up with more than one possibility.

3. Announcements • Exam 3 • Average was 64.2% • Negatively skewed distribution • Range was very broad, • max = 92% • Min = 36% 5 4 3 2 1 30’s 40’s 50’s 60’s 70’s 80’s 90’s • Extra extra credit opportunity: • Up to 30 points added to your exam score • 2 additional journal summaries (due April 29th) • In resources part of ReggieNet • Taft and Hambly (1986) – 15 pts • Perfetti et al (1987) – 15 pts

4. Speech error regularities • What can we learn from speech errors? • Logic: how the system breaks down, tells us something about how it works • Speech can go wrong in many ways • Different sized units can slip • The ways that they go wrong are not random • Look for regularities in the patterns of errors • It is not always easy to categorize errors

5. Speech errors • Frequency of units in errors • Different sized units can slip • Suggestions of “building blocks” of production Estimates of frequencies of linguistic units in exchange errors (Bock, 1991) Sentence Phrase Word Morpheme > Syllable Syllable VC or CV Cluster Phoneme Feature 10% 20% 30% 40%

6. Speech error regularities • What can we learn from speech errors? • From this we can infer that • Speech is planned in advance. • Accommodation to the phonological environment takes place (plural pronounced /z/ instead of /s/). • Order of processing is • Selection of morpheme  error  application of phonological rule • If we look at this error (a shift or is this an exchange?) “a maniac for weekends.” FOR“a weekend for maniacs.”

7. Speech error regularities • What can we learn from speech errors? • Stress exchange: econ 'om ists FOR e ’con omists • From this we can infer that • Stress may be independent and may simply move from one syllable to another (unlikely explanation). • The exchange may be the result of competing plans resulting in a blend of • e ’con omists and econ 'omics.

8. Speech error regularities • What can we learn from speech errors? • Is this a double substitution (/b/ for /p/ and /t/ for /d/)? • /p/ and /t/ are vocieless plosives and /b/ and /d/ voiced plosives • Better analysed as a shift of the phonetic feature voicing. • “bat a tog”FOR“pat a dog” • From this we can infer that • Indicates that phonetic features are psychologically real - phonetic features must be units in speech production.

9. Speech error regularities • What can we learn from speech errors? • Consonant-vowel rule: consonants never exchange for vowels or vice versa • Suggests that vowels and consonants are separate units in the planning of the phonological form of an utterance. • Errors produce legal non-words. • Suggests that we use phonological rules in production. • Lexical bias effect: spontaneous (and experimentally induced) speech errors are more likely to result in real words than non-words. • Grammaticality effect: when words are substituted or exchanged they typically substitute for a word of the same grammatical class • Observed regularities

10. Speech error regularities • What can we learn from speech errors? • That speech is planned in advance- anticipation and exchange errors indicate speaker has a representation of more than one word. • Substitutions suggest that the lexicon is organised phonologically and semantically. • Strong grammatical component: Appear to occur after syntactic organization as substitutions are always from the same grammatical class (noun for noun, verb for verb etc.). • External influences – situational context may also influence speech production. • Environmental intrusions (e.g., Harley, 1990) • “My bill is gone”for“my mind is gone” while looking at college bill. • Implications for theories of language production

11. Problems with speech errors • Not an on-line technique. • We only remember (or notice) certain types of errors. • People often don’t (notice or) write down errors which are corrected part way through the word, e.g. “wo..wring one”.

12. Problems with speech errors • Even very carefully verified corpora of speech errors tend to list the error and then “the target”. • However, there may be several possible targets. • Saying there is one definitive target may limit conclusions about what type of error has actually occurred. • Evidence that we are not very good at perceiving speech errors.

13. Did you hear what he said?! • The tapes were played to subjects whose task was to record all the errors they heard. Problems with speech errors • How well do we perceive speech errors? • Ferber (1991) • Method: • Transcripts of TV and radio were studied very carefully to pick out all the speech errors. • The errors spotted by the subjects were compared with those that actually occurred.

14. Problems with speech errors • How well do we perceive speech errors? • Ferber (1991) • Results: • Subjects missed 50% of all the errors • And of the half they identified • 50% were incorrectly recorded (i.e. only 25% of speech errors were correctly recorded). • Conclusion: We are bad at perceiving errors.

15. Experimental approaches • Not prey to same problems as observational studies: • Reduces observer bias • Isolates phenomenon of interest • Increases potential for systematic observation • Different problems! • How to control input and output? • Input: ecological validity problem (‘controlling thoughts’) • Output: controlling responses: • Response specification - artificiality • ‘Exuberant responding’ – loss of data

16. Experimental speech errors • Can we examine speech errors in under more controlled conditions? • SLIP technique: speech error elicitation technique • Motley and Baars (1976)

17. Task: • Say the words silently as quickly as you can • Say them aloud if you hear a ring

18. dog bone

19. dust ball

20. dead bug

21. doll bed

22. “darn bore” dog bone dust ball dead bug doll bed barn door

23. Experimental speech errors • This technique has been found to elicit 30% of predicted speech errors. • Lexical Bias effect: error frequency affected by whether the error results in real words or non-words • Some basic findings More likely “wrong loot”FOR“long root” “rawn loof”FOR“lawn roof“

24. Experimental speech errors • Influence of semantics (Motley, 1980) • Some basic findings • Hypothesis: • If preceded by phonologically and semantically biasing material (PS) • If preceded by only phonologically biasing material (P). Predicted to be more likely

25. Experimental speech errors • Influence of semantics (Motley, 1980) • Some basic findings • Method: 2 matched lists • 20 word pairs as targets for errors • e.g. bad mug  mad bug • Each preceded by 4 - 7 neutral “filler” word pairs red cars rainy days small cats mashed buns mangy bears angry insect angled inset • Then 4 interference word pairs • 2 phonological PLUS ornery fly older flu bad mug • 2 semantic (SP) or • semantically neutral controls (P)

26. Experimental speech errors • Results: More errors in the Semantic and Phonological (SP) condition than in the Phonological (P) condition. • Conclusion: • Semantic interference may contribute to a distortion of the sound of a speaker’s intended utterance • Some basic findings • Influence of semantics (Motley, 1980)

27. Experimental Freudian slips? • Motley & Baars (1979) • Hypothesis: Spoonerisms more likely when the resulting content is congruous with the situational context. • Method: 90 males, same procedure previously used by Motley, 1980 (SLIP). • 3 Conditions: • “Electricity” - expecting to get shocked • “Sex” - researcher provocatively attired female • Neutral

28. Experimental Freudian slips? • Same word pairs in all conditions • spoonerism targets were non-words (e.g. goxi furl foxy girl), targets preceded by 3 phonologically biasing word pairs not semantically related to target words • Some resulting errors were sexually related (S), some were electrically related (E) • Bine foddy -> “fine body” • Had bock -> “bad shock”

30. car tires

31. cat toys

32. can tops

33. cup trays

34. “cool tits” tool kits

35. Experimental Freudian slips? • Results (number of errors, by type): • Electricity set: 69 E, 31 S • Sex set: 36 E, 76 S • Neutral set: 44 E, 41 S • Hence errors were in the expected direction. • Conclusion: subjects’ speech encoding systems are sensitive to semantic influences from their situational cognitive set.

36. Experimental Freudian slips? • Hypothesis: subjects with high levels of sex anxiety will make more “sex” spoonerisms than those with low sex anxiety. • Method: • 36 males selected on the basis of high, medium, & low sex anxiety (Mosher Sex-Guilt Inventory). • SLIP task same as previous experiment but with 2 additional Sex targets and 9 Neutral targets.

37. Experimental Freudian slips? • Results: looked at difference scores (Sex - Neutral) • High sex anxiety > medium > low. • Overall: Sex spoonerisms > Neutral spoonerisms. • Conclusion: appears to support Freud’s view of sexual anxiety being revealed in Slips of the Tongue • BUT: the experimenters (Baars and Motley) went on to show that any type of anxiety, not just sexual produced similar results. • SO: anxiety was at play but it was more general, so the priming was more global.

38. Experimental speech errors • Many of the same effects found in naturalistic errors are found in experimental errors • Lexical Bias effect: error frequency affected by whether the error results in real words or non-words (Motley & Baars, 1976) • Motley, (1980a) Semantic effects on phonological exchange speech errors • Can isolate particular factors and get a lot of errors • This technique has been found to elicit 30% of predicted speech errors. (Motley & Baars, 1976) • Motley, (1980b) Situational contexts can affect frequency and type of error • Some basic findings

39. From thought to speech • General Model of Language Production • What do speech errors suggest? • Fromkin (1971) • Garrett (1975) • (And experiments too) Jane threw the ball to Bill

40. Syntactic level Morphemic level Phonemic level Articulation From thought to speech Message level • General Model of Language Production • Ordered sequence of independent planning units • Four levels of processing are typically proposed • Typically they are ordered this way (but there is debate about the independence of the different levels) • Note the similarity to models of comprehension

41. Syntactic level Morphemic level Phonemic level Articulation From thought to speech Message level • Propositions to be communicated • Selection and organization of lexical items • Morphologically complex words are constructed • Sound structure of each word is built

42. From thought to speech Message level • Propositions to be communicated • Not a lot known about this step • Typically thought to be shared with comprehension processes, semantic networks, situational models, etc. Syntactic level Morphemic level Phonemic level Articulation

43. From thought to speech Message level • Grammatical class constraint • Most substitutions, exchanges, and blends involve words of the same grammatical class • Slots and frames • A syntactic framework is constructed, and then lexical items are inserted into the slots Syntactic level Morphemic level Phonemic level Articulation

44. From thought to speech Rachel Emily Ross It was such a happy moment when Ross kissed Rachel…

45. From thought to speech Rachel Emily Ross … Oops! I mean “kissed Emily.”

46. SYNTACTIC FRAME S NP VP N V(past) N From thought to speech • LEXICON • ROSS • KISS • EMILY • RACHEL Spreading activation

47. SYNTACTIC FRAME S NP VP N V(past) N From thought to speech • Grammatical class constraint: • LEXICON • ROSS • KISS • EMILY • RACHEL If the word isn’t the right grammatical class, it won’t “fit” into the slot.

48. From thought to speech Message level • Grammatical class constraint • Most substitutions, exchanges, and blends involve words of the same grammatical class • Slots and frames • A syntactic framework is constructed, and then lexical items are inserted into the slots • Other evidence • Syntactic priming Syntactic level Morphemic level Phonemic level Articulation

49. Syntactic priming • Bock (1986): syntactic persistance tested by picture naming Hear and repeat a sentence Describe the picture

50. Syntactic priming • a: The ghost sold the werewolf a flower • Bock (1986): syntactic persistance tested by picture naming • b: The ghost sold a flower to the werewolf • a: The girl gave the teacher the flowers • b: The girl gave the flowers to the teacher