The neurocognitive system that stores general world knowledge
Semantic
our mental dictionary, a representational system for the words of our language.
Lexical memory (Lexicon)
the transfer of activation from one node to an associated node.
spreading activation
a unit of memory
node
participants must judge as quickly as they can whether or not a string of letters is a word or not.
lexical decision task
the effect of one word or idea on the processing of a related word or idea.
Semantic priming
participants are asked to decide as quickly as possible if a sentence is true or false.
Sentence verification task
A mental construct that contains information associated with a specific idea.
Concept
is a mental construct referring to a set of objects
or ideas that are grouped together or are associated with each other.
Category
States that prototypes form the central feature in our representation of categories
Prototype theory
defined as the most typical member of a particular category.
Prototype
that membership in a category may be defined by each item’s general similarity other members in the category rather than by a specific list of features
Family resemblance
categories are classified by maintaining a large number of specific instances of a category that are associated with each other in semantic memory.
Exemplar theory
states that we maintain a list of features for each
category.
Feature comparison theory
generalized knowledge about an event, a person, or a situation.
schema
are well-learned sequences of events associated with
common activities.
scripts
the study of the psychological processes involved in human language.
psycholinguistics
smallest unit of grammar that represents a full meaning.
Word
refers to word order within a language and other aspects of grammar.
Syntax
refers to language use
pragmatics
the study of meaning
semantics
is the study of sounds and how they are used in a language.
phonology
the details of speech sounds and how we make them
Phonetics
refers to how words are constructed within a particular language
Morphology
a hypothetical entity containing only semantic and syntactical information without any information concerning the phonology of the word.
Lemma
The level of representation that stores the phonology of a word, that is, how the word sounds.
Lexeme
Participants remembered more schema-______
items than schema –_______ items.
consistent/ inconsistent
occur when we substitute a word with a similar meaning for another word, regardless of how the words sound.
word-exchange errors
similar but incorrect phonological structure is
retrieved but the word retrieved has no obvious semantic or syntactical connection to the desired word.
Sound substitutions
True/ False
Our cultural schemas influence our memory of the
story.
True
argues that there is a common semantic level of representation, that is, meaning is shared.
The shared semantic representational system then connects to lemma-level representations for each
language.
Single-store theory
postulates that meaning is represented separately for each language.
Dual-store view (separate store)
similar to semantic priming except that the prime and the target word are in different languages.
Cross-language semantic priming
allow young children to extract meaning and start learning words from stimuli that are often ambiguous
language aquisition device (LAD)
refers to the patterns of speech that co-occur, that
is, aspect of language that always accompanies each other.
Distributional information
the rules that allow a child to rapidly learn the meaning of words in his or her language
Fast mapping
States that words refer to categories, which share meaning.
Taxonomic constraint
occurs when a person has already mastered their native language and then begins learning a second language.
Second language aquisition
words are translated from the speaker’s native language into the new language. Grammar is taught in the native language, and reading and writing are emphasized.
Traditional method
the language learner is surrounded by native speakers of the to-be-learned language usually in a foreign country. People are
instructed not to use the learner’s native language.
Submersion method
all instruction is in the to-be-learned language, but outside of the classroom, the student returns to his or her native language. (produces best results)
Immersion method
speaking and listening skills are taught rather than traditional vocabulary and grammar.