PSY 369: Psycholinguistics

1. PSY 369: Psycholinguistics Language Production: Introduction (and finishing up comprehension)

2. Announcements • Homeworks 1 & 2 graded and entered • Let me know if you did it but there is no grade • Homework 3 – nearly done • Homework 4 (due March 25) – collection of speech errors • New homework options were posted yesterday. Both are journal summary types. • 1.1, 1.2 – comprehension related • 2.1, 2.2, 2.3 – production related

3. Homework 4 (Due March 25) • 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.

4. Discourse in memory • Brief summary from last time: • Local structure • Discourse is coherent if its elements are easily related. • Coherence is achieved with cohesive ties between sentences. • Global structure • Schemas are used to structure comprehension and memory • Effects of Genre, discourse structures

5. Effects of Genre • Not all kinds of discourse follow the same structure • Different effects, purposes, etc. • Expository discourse • Convey info about a subject (e.g., textbook, lecture) • Narrative discourse • Tell a story: Introduce characters & settings, establish a goal, etc. • APA style • Newspaper articles

6. Narrative structure Once there was a woman. She saw a tiger’s cave. She wanted a tiger’s whisker. She put food in front of the cave. The tiger came out. She pulled out a whisker. • The story has a structure, a story grammar

7. Setting Episode Event Reaction Goal Overt Response Action Consequence Event Event Narrative structure • Story grammar - can depict with a tree structure Story Once there was a woman. She saw a tiger’s cave. She wanted a tiger’s whisker. She put food in front of the cave. The tiger came out. She pulled out a whisker.

8. Read more slowly but are better remembered. • High hierarchy statements • Lower in the hierarchy. Narrative structure Thorndyke (1977) • Level effect • Comprehensibility and recall were tied to inherent plot structure, independent of passage content She wanted a tiger’s whisker. The tiger came out.

9. Narrative structure Trabasso & Suh (1993) • Test to see if discourse structure effects whether inferences are made • Task: Think aloud task • Read through the story aloud (one sentence at a time) and talk aloud about their understanding of that sentence

10. Sequential version Hierarchical version Trabasso & Suh (1993) Once there was a girl named Betty. One day, Betty found that her mother’s birthday was coming soon. Betty really wanted to give her mother a present. Betty went to the department store. Betty found a pretty purse. Betty bought the purse. Her mother was very happy. Betty found that everything was too expensive. Betty could not buy anything. Betty felt sorry. Several days later, Betty saw her friend knitting. Betty was good at knitting. Betty decided to knit a sweater. Betty selected a pattern from a magazine. Betty followed the instructions in the article. Finally, Betty finished a beautiful sweater. Betty pressed the sweater. Betty folded the sweater carefully. How does this sentence connect up with the rest of the story? Betty put it in the closet for the next time she was going out. Betty was very happy. Betty gave the sweater to her mother. Her mother was excited when she saw the present.

11. Hierarchical version S Once there was a girl named Betty. One day, Betty found that her mother’s birthday was coming soon. Betty really wanted to give her mother a present. Betty went to the department store. Betty found that everything was too expensive. Betty could not buy anything. Betty felt sorry. Several days later, Betty saw her friend knitting. S Betty was good at knitting. Betty decided to knit a sweater. Betty selected a pattern from a magazine. Betty followed the instructions in the article. Finally, Betty finished a beautiful sweater. Betty pressed the sweater. Betty folded the sweater carefully. Betty gave the sweater to her mother. Her mother was excited when she saw the present. Trabasso & Suh (1993) E G A G A A O O A O A R O E R S = Setting E = Event R = Reaction G = Goal O = Overt Response A = Action

12. Hierarchical version S Once there was a girl named Betty. One day, Betty found that her mother’s birthday was coming soon. Betty really wanted to give her mother a present. Betty went to the department store. Betty found that everything was too expensive. Betty could not buy anything. Betty felt sorry. Several days later, Betty saw her friend knitting. S Betty was good at knitting. Betty decided to knit a sweater. Betty selected a pattern from a magazine. Betty followed the instructions in the article. Finally, Betty finished a beautiful sweater. Betty pressed the sweater. Betty folded the sweater carefully. Betty gave the sweater to her mother. Her mother was excited when she saw the present. Trabasso & Suh (1993) E G A G A A O O A O A R O E R Is a superordinate goal that motivates the subgoal of the next episode S E G A O O R A A O R E S G A A O

13. Sequential version S Once there was a girl named Betty. One day, Betty found that her mother’s birthday was coming soon. Betty really wanted to give her mother a present. Betty went to the department store. Betty found a pretty purse. Betty bought the purse. Her mother was very happy. Several days later, Betty saw her friend knitting. S Betty was good at knitting. Betty decided to knit a sweater. Betty selected a pattern from a magazine. Betty followed the instructions in the article. Finally, Betty finished a beautiful sweater. Betty pressed the sweater. Betty folded the sweater carefully. Betty put it in the closet for the next time she was going out. Bertty was very happy. Trabasso & Suh (1993) E G A G A A O O A O A R O E R The goal is already filled, so not related to the subgoal of the next episode S E G A O O R E S G A A O A A O

14. Trabasso & Suh (1993) • Results • Participants mentioned the superordinate goal in the hierarchical condition • But not the sequential condition • Conclusions: Story grammar structure matters • Strongly support the hypothesis that readers do make global causal connections during reading.

15. Discourse in memory • Brief summary from last time: • Local structure • Discourse is coherent if its elements are easily related. • Coherence is achieved with cohesive ties between sentences. • Global structure • Schemas are used to structure comprehension and memory • The discourse structures of different genres can impact comprehension and memory

16. Discourse in memory • Kintsch’s model • The Construction-Integration Model • Discourse occurs in a series of cycles • As each sentence comes in it gets integrated into the discourse • In each cycle • Construction phase - activate relevant concepts • Integration phase - keep only the most relevant elaborations • Multiple levels of representation formed • Surface form, textbase (propositional), situation model

17. Surface form S N VP V NP Jack scanned the newspaper Discourse in memory • Kintsch’s model Jack scanned the newspaper.

18. Surface form Textbase S Examine N VP Newspaper V NP Jack Jack scanned the newspaper Discourse in memory • Kintsch’s model Jack scanned the newspaper.

19. Situational Model Surface form Textbase S Examine N VP Newspaper V NP Jack Jack scanned the newspaper Discourse in memory • Kintsch’s model Jack scanned the newspaper.

20. Discourse in memory • Kintsch and colleagues (1990) It was Friday night and Jack and Melissa were bored, so they decided to catch a movie. Jack scanned the newspaper. He saw that they could just make the nine o’clock showing of the hot new romantic comedy. Off they went. • Did this sentence occur in the paragraph? Jack scanned the newspaper. Jack looked through the newspaper. Jack looked through the movie ads. Jack looked over some editorials.

21. Discourse in memory • Global structure summary: • Schemas are used to structure comprehension and memory • Discourses have internal structures that impact comprehension and memory • Evidence supports the psychological reality of a number of different representations • Propositions & propositional networks • Embodied representations • Inferences • Schemata and scripts • Situation models

22. Language comprehension • Multiple levels of representation involved • e.g., sounds/letters, words, syntax, meaning, discourse • Each level may have sets of rules for how the representations are connected • Potential ambiguity at every level needs to be resolved • Related debates: Bottom-up vs. top-down, modular vs. interactive, serial vs. parallel

23. Some of the big questions • Production forms half of language ability: • Input to comprehension • More difficult problem than comprehension? • Developmental lag • Learning a second language “the horse raced past the barn”

24. What we don’t do Dr. C: How much money is there in my current account and in my deposit account? <SILENCE> Dr. C: Hello? <SILENCE> Computer: Colourless green ideas sleeeeeep furiously. Dr. C: How much money is there in my current account and in my deposit account? <SILENCE> Computer: Your current a-ccount encompasses two hundred dollars. I cannot access how..<SILENCE>.. in your deposit account money much is there.

25. Undesirable features • Meaningless and irrelevant content. • Long silences, strange pausing. • Infelicities of vocabulary and structure: • ‘Your current account encompasses $200’ • ‘I cannot access how in yourdeposit account money much is there.’ • Strange intonation and pronunciation: • ‘Your current a-ccount’ • ‘Sleeeeeep’

26. What we do do • Expressing non-ordered conceptual message via ordered array of sounds. • Start with a message (idea) and partition it, sequence it, and articulate it • Speakers must produce utterances with: • Appropriate meaningful content, lexical items, syntax, & pronunciation, intonation, and phrasing. • And they must do this fluently, in real time.

27. Getting the form right • Hearers: • Details of form can sometimes (often?) be ignored (e.g. missing words, not paying attention). • Speakers: • Have to get every aspect of the form right, whether or not germane to message.

28. Getting the content wrong • Paradox: Adept at getting form right but content wrong: • Subject-verb agreement errors The report about the firesare very long • Less than 5% errors in experiment designed to elicit them (Bock & Miller 1991).

29. Getting the content wrong • Paradox: Adept at getting form right but content wrong: • Serious structural anomalies (unparseable) I cannot access how in your deposit account money much is there. • 0.5% utterances (Deese 1984).

30. Getting the content wrong • Paradox: Adept at getting form right but content wrong: • Sound/word errors Can you put the desk back on my book when you’ve finished with it? It’ll get fast a lot hotter if you put the burner on. • Garnham et al 1982: • Sound errors 3.2/10,000 words • Word errors 5.1/10,000 words

31. Methodologies • Production is intrinsically more difficult subject to study than language comprehension • Not susceptible to experimental study? • Yes it is, but requires careful and clever methods • Historically: observational methods • Recently: experimental methods

32. What’s the problem? • Comprehension: • Can control input precisely • Moving from language to conceptual representation • Production: • How do we control input? • Moving from (unobservable) conceptual representation to language • BUT: end product is observable in production but not comprehension

33. Common Measures • What people say: • Under which circumstances do they produce particular words, utterances etc • May be intended, or may be errors • How frequently do they do this • Time course: • How quickly do people produce language • Neurophysiological: • How is language production represented in the brain?

34. Fluent speech: • Sentence types, verb forms, prosodic markers, etc (Deese, 1984) • Distribution of extraposed structures (Arnold, Wasow,Losongco & Ginstrom, 2000) • Distribution of thuh vs thee (Clark & Fox-Tree, 1997) • Distribution of reduced phonological forms (Bard et al., 2001) Methodologies: Observational • Naturally occurring speech

35. Disfluent speech: • Scope of utterance planning (Ford & Holmes, 1978; Beattie, 1983) • Error detection and correction (Levelt, 1983) Methodologies: Observational • Naturally occurring speech

36. "The law I sign today directs new funds and new focus to the task of collecting vital intelligence on terrorist threats and on weapons of mass production.” George W. Bush • "There's an old saying in Tennessee - I know it's in Texas, probably in Tennessee - that says, fool me once, shame on—shame on you. Fool me—you can't get fooled again." George W. Bush • "For seven and a half years I've worked alongside President Reagan.We've had triumphs. Made some mistakes. We've had some sex ... uh...setbacks.” George Bush Sr. Methodologies: Observational • Naturally occurring speech errors

37. 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

38. Picture naming & description Name these pictures “swan”

39. Picture naming & description Name these pictures “swing”

40. Picture naming & description Describe the action in this picture “The girl is throwing a ball to the boy” “The girl is throwing the boy a ball”

41. Picture-word interference task Name the picture (While ignoring the word) tiger

42. Neurophysiological Measures • Recent technological developments allow research on neurophysiological aspects of production. • ERPs, fMRI, PET, • Which areas of the brain are involved? • What is the time course of processing? • Are different areas/processes/timecourses associated with different aspects of production?

43. The case of Speech Errors • What errors tell us about correct speech: • Observational and experimental approaches Recommended reading: Um… Slips, Stumbles, and Verbal Blunders, and What they Mean, by Michael Erard (2007)

44. Reverend Dr. William Archibald Spooner, 1844-1930. Lecturer, tutor, and dean at Oxford university famous for speech errors Some famous examples: Speech Errors -”Spoonerisms” Nosey little cook FOR ...Cosy little nook Cattle ships and bruisers FOR ...Battle ships and cruisers ..we’ll have the hags flung out FOR ... ..we’ll have the flags hung out FOR ... .. you’ve wasted two terms you’ve tasted two worms” kisstomary to cuss the bride. FOR ...customary to kiss the bride

45. Speech errors • Shift:one segment disappears from its appropriate location and appears somewhere else. The thing that shifts moves from one element to another of the same type ..in case she decideFOR ...in case she decides to hits it. to hit it

46. Speech errors • Exchange: in effect double shifts, since 2 linguistic units change places You have hissed all my mystery lectures FOR .. You have missed all my history lectures your model renosed. FOR ..your nose remodelled.

47. Speech errors • Anticipation: in anticipation of a forthcoming segment, we replace an earlier segment with the later segment It's a meal mystery FOR .. It's a real mystery ..bake my bike. FOR .. take my bike.

48. Speech errors give the goy FOR .. give the boy • Perseverance: an earlier segment replaces a later one (while also being articulated in its correct location) ..he pulled a pantrum. FOR ..he pulled a tantrum.

49. Speech errors I didn’t explain it clarefully enough • Addition: something is added to the target utterance FOR I didn’t explain it carefully enough.

50. Speech errors • Blends: occur when more than one word is being considered, and the two blend into a single item didn’t bother me FOR didn’t bother me in the sleast. in the least/slightest.