Cognitive Psychology, 2nd Ed.
Chapter 11
Language Production
Speech Production
2-3 words per second with 3-12
dysfluencies per minute, using a
vocabulary of 45,000 words.
Errors can reveal processing units
(“Easier for a camel to go through the
knee of an ideal”).
Speech Production
Agrammatic speech found in the telegraphic
language of Broca’s aphasia reveals problems
in grammatical encoding
(dog…boat…uh…water).
Neologisms and pseudogrammatic utterances
found in Wernicke’s aphasia reveal lexicalsemantic failures (It’s a girl uncurl on a boat.
A dog is another dog on a boatum).
Sentence Generation
Grammatical encoding refers to the selection
of the lexical entries to be used from among
those in the speakers vocabulary and to the
assembly of a syntactic frame.
Phonological encoding referes to the
assembly of sound forms and the intonation
to be executed during articulation.
Lexical Representations
A lemma is an abstract representation of the
word that specifies its semantic and
grammatical features (e.g., goat and sheep
share semantic features and are both nouns
but differ in grammatical gender).
A lexeme is a representation of the
phonological or sound structure of the word
(goat and sheep are totally different at the
level of sounds).
Stages of Grammatical Encoding
handing him some broccoli.”)
(“She is
Functional processing selects lemmas
and assigns each to a grammatical
function or case role. Example error:
“He is handing her some broccoli.”
Positional processing assigns the output
to a phrase structure tree. Example
error: “She was hand himming some
broccoli”.
Phonological Encoding
Failures of phonological encoding are
common in the speech of young children (fis
is spoken when fish is needed).
Suprasegmental phonology provides the
variations in intonation and pauses. Consider
the difference in normal speech and the slow
rate, high pitch, and large intonation changes
of “motherese.”
Articulation
Phonetics is the study of how speech
sounds are actually produced by the
human vocal tract.
Consonants involve constriction of air
flow whereas the mouth is open with
vowels allowing unimpeded phonation.
Articulation of English
Consonants
Place refers to the position of air flow
constriction in the mouth (e.g. bilabial).
Manner refers to the way sound is emitted
(e.g., stops involve complete constriction at
the place of articulation).
Voicing refers to whether the vocal cords
vibrate (voiced) or not. Voice onset time may
differ (ba—immediate vs. pa—60 ms delay).
Cascade vs. Interaction:
Grammatical and Phonological Encoding
By phonologically biasing the production
system, people commit Spoonerisms (e.g.,
saying barn door instead of darn boor).
Of interest, such errors occur three times
more often for real words (30%) than for
nonwords (10%), such as saying beal dack
instead of deal back.
The lexical bias effect supports a
connectionist architecture with backward
interaction.
Writing Systems
Ideographic writing systems date to
10,000 years ago in Sumeria.
Phonetic writing first appeared 3,500
years ago in the Sinai desert. A small
number of letters are used to code
sounds rather than large numbers of
ideographs.
Writing Processes
Planning refers to retrieving/creating ideas,
organizing ideas, and setting goals.
Reviewing refers to reading the text being
produced and evaluating and editing it.
Translating or generating refers to the
linguistic processes to encode sentences and
links between sentences. Motor transcription
is closely linked in time, just as articulation is
in speech.
Spelling Processes
Orthography, the mapping of sounds to
written symbols, must be specified only in
writing unless you spell orally.
Dissociation in acquired dysgraphia shows
damage to direct orthographic lexicon to
grapheme path. J.G. could spell nonwords
but failed to spell irregular words (“none”
rather than “known.”). Only the phoneme to
grapheme conversion path was intact.
Knowledge-Transforming
Content problems concern what to say and
rhetorical problems concern how to say it.
Children tell what they want to say about
content but do not reflect on how to say it.
Adults reflect on content and rhetorical
problem spaces concurrently. They may
transform knowledge as a result (i.e.,
changing what you think as a result of trying
to express your thoughts).
“How do I know what I think until I see what
I say.” E. M. Forster
Challenges of writing
Recursive interaction of planning,
translating, and reviewing.
Heavy load on working memory.
Necessity of maintaining multiple
representations of the author’s intent,
the actual text produced, and the
reader’s perspective.
Writer’s Block
“Writing is easy. All you do is stare at a
blank sheet of paper until drops of
blood form on your forehead.”
—Gene Fowler
Inability to produce text caused by
evaluation anxiety, cognitive overload,
maladaptive planning strategies, and
other process dysfunctions.