PSY 369: Psycholinguistics

1. PSY 369: Psycholinguistics Lexical selection

2. Lexical access • How do we retrieve the linguistic information from Long-term memory? • What factors are involved in retrieving information from the lexicon? • Models of lexical retrieval

3. Input Search for a match dog cat cap wolf tree cat yarn cat claw fur hat Recognizing a word

4. Input cat Recognizing a word Search for a match dog cap wolf tree yarn cat cat claw fur hat

5. Select word Retrieve lexical information Input Cat noun Animal, pet, Meows, furry, Purrs, etc. cat cat Recognizing a word Search for a match dog cap wolf tree yarn cat cat claw fur hat

6. Lexical access • Factors affecting lexical access • Frequency • Semantic priming • Role of prior context • Phonological structure • Morphological structure • Lexical ambiguity

7. Word frequency Gambastya Revery Voitle Chard Wefe Cratily Decoy Puldow Raflot • Lexical Decision Task: Oriole Vuluble Chalt Awry Signet Trave Crock Cryptic Ewe Mulvow Governor Bless Tuglety Gare Relief Ruftily History Pindle Develop Gardot Busy Effort Garvola Match Sard Pleasant Coin

8. Word frequency Gambastya Revery Voitle Chard Wefe Cratily Decoy Puldow Raflot • Lexical Decision Task: Low frequency High(er) frequency Oriole Vuluble Chalt Awry Signet Trave Crock Cryptic Ewe Mulvow Governor Bless Tuglety Gare Relief Ruftily History Pindle Develop Gardot Busy Effort Garvola Match Sard Pleasant Coin • Lexical Decision is dependent on word frequency

9. Word frequency • Eyemovement studies: The kite fell on the dog

10. Word frequency • Eyemovement studies: The kite fell on the dog

11. Word frequency • Eyemovement studies: The kite fell on the dog

12. Word frequency • Eyemovement studies: • Subjects spend about 80 msecs longer fixating on low-frequency words than high-frequency words The kite fell on the dog

13. Semantic priming • Meyer & Schvaneveldt (1971) • Lexical Decision Task PrimeTargetTime Nurse Butter 940 msecs Bread Butter 855 msecs • Evidence that associative relations influence lexical access

14. Role of prior context Listen to short paragraph. At some point during the Paragraph a string of letters will appear on the screen. Decide if it is an English word or not. Say ‘yes’ or ‘no’ as quickly as you can.

15. Role of prior context ant

16. Role of prior context • Swinney (1979) • Hear: “Rumor had it that, for years, the government bulding has been plagued with problems. The man was not surprised when he found several spiders, roaches and other bugs in the corner of his room.” • Lexical Decision task Context related: ant Context inappropriate: spy Context unrelated sew • Results and conclusions • Within 400 msecs of hearing "bugs", both ant and spy are primed • After 700 msecs, only ant is primed

17. Lexical ambiguity • Hogaboam and Pefetti (1975) • Words can have multiple interpretations • The role of frequency of meaning • Task, is the last word ambiguous? • The jealous husband read the letter (dominant meaning) • The antique typewriter was missing a letter (subordinate meaning) • Participants are faster on the second sentence.

18. Morphological structure • Snodgrass and Jarvell (1972) • Do we strip off the prefixes and suffixes of a word for lexical access? • Lexical Decision Task: • Response times greater for affixed words than words without affixes • Evidence suggests that there is a stage where prefixes are stripped.

19. Models of lexical access • Serial comparison models • Search model (Forster, 1976, 1979, 1987, 1989) • Parallel comparison models • Logogen model (Morton, 1969) • Cohort model (Marslen-Wilson, 1987, 1990)

20. Logogen model (Morton 1969) Auditory stimuli Visual stimuli Auditory analysis Visual analysis Context system Semantic Attributes Logogen system Available Responses Output buffer Responses

21. Logogen model • The lexical entry for each word comes with a logogen • The lexical entry only becomes available once the logogen ‘fires’ • When does a logogen fire? • When you read/hear the word

22. Think of a logogen as being like a ‘strength-o-meter’ at a fairground When the bell rings, the logogen has ‘fired’

23. ‘cat’ [kæt] • What makes the logogen fire? • seeing/hearing the word • What happens once the logogen has fired? • access to lexical entry!

24. ‘cat’ [kæt] ‘cot’ [kot] Low freq takes longer • So how does this help us to explain the frequency effect? • High frequency words have a lower threshold for firing • e.g., cat vs. cot

25. ‘doctor’ [doktə] ‘nurse’ [nə:s] Spreading activation network doctor nurse nurse doctor • Spreading activation from doctor lowers the threshold for nurse to fire • So nurse take less time to fire

26. Visual input Auditory input Pointers Access codes /kat/ cat Decreasing frequency Entries in order of mat cat mouse Mental lexicon Search model

27. Cohort model • Specifically for auditory word recognition • Speakers can recognize a word very rapidly • Usually within 200-250 msec • Recognition point (uniqueness point) - point at which a word is unambiguously different from other words and can be recognized • Three stages of word recognition 1) activate a set of possible candidates 2) narrow the search to one candidate 3) integrate single candidate into semantic and syntactic context

28. Cohort model • Prior context: “I took the car for a …” /s/ /sp/ /spi/ /spin/ … soap spinach psychologist spin spit sun spank … spinach spin spit spank … spinach spin spit … spin time

29. There are other models out there (TRACE, FLMP, various connectionist models, and more) • The models have there advantages and disadvantages