SHS 367 EXAM 2 QUESTIONS AND
ANSWERS WITH FULL SOLUTIONS,
UPDATED 2026, SUCCESSFULLY
GRADED A+
Cognitive Processing Styles
These terms describe the "flow" and "relationship" of information during tasks like
reading or listening.
Serial Processing: Processing one thing at a time. It’s like a factory
assembly line where one step must finish before the next begins.
Parallel Processing: Processing multiple things at a time. Your brain
handles different streams of data (like sound and sight) simultaneously.
Modular Processing: Independent processing. One system (like syntax)
operates without needing input from another (like semantics) in the moment.
Interactive Processing: Dependent processing. Different systems influence
each other; your understanding of a word's meaning helps you understand its
grammar.
Direction of Information Flow
Bottom-Up Processing: Influenced directly by the stimulus. You hear
sounds, and those sounds build into words. It is data-driven.
Top-Down Processing: Influenced by memories and knowledge. You use
context to "fill in the blanks" of what you hear. For example, if you hear
"The eel is on the axle," your brain uses knowledge of cars to hear "wheel."
The Physics of Speech
Vowels vs. Consonants
Vowels: Characterized by unobstructed airflow. The vocal tract is
relatively open.
, Consonants: Characterized by obstructed airflow. The articulators (lips,
tongue, teeth) create some level of constriction or closure.
The Spectrogram A spectrogram is a 3D-style graph that allows us to "see"
speech. It maps three specific variables:
1. X-Axis: Time.
2. Y-Axis: Frequency (low pitch at the bottom, high at the top).
3. Intensity: Represented by the darkness of the bands (Formants). The darker
the area, the more energy is present at that frequency.
Parallel Transmission -ANSWER✔✔refers to the fact that different phonemes of
the same syllable are encoded into speech signals simultaneously
Segmentation Problem -ANSWER✔✔its acoustically difficult to tell where words
begin and end (why other languages seem so fast because we hear it as one long
segment and there are no breaks on a spectrogram)
Lack of Invariance Problem -ANSWER✔✔there's no one-to-one correspondence
between the acoustic cues and the phonemes perceived ex:butter, boy, and boil all
have b's but on a spectrogram, the b sound will be different frequencies
Psychological definition of a phoneme -ANSWER✔✔a category of sounds that we
perceive to be the same sound
Sources of variability -ANSWER✔✔-coarticulation=the overlapping articulation
of phonemes (how we say a sound is affected by the phonemes around it)
-Variability within speakers= Sloppy Speech
-Variability between speakers=due to gender, dialect/accent, pitch, speed, age
Categorical Perception -ANSWER✔✔tone judgement for non-speech sounds
ANSWERS WITH FULL SOLUTIONS,
UPDATED 2026, SUCCESSFULLY
GRADED A+
Cognitive Processing Styles
These terms describe the "flow" and "relationship" of information during tasks like
reading or listening.
Serial Processing: Processing one thing at a time. It’s like a factory
assembly line where one step must finish before the next begins.
Parallel Processing: Processing multiple things at a time. Your brain
handles different streams of data (like sound and sight) simultaneously.
Modular Processing: Independent processing. One system (like syntax)
operates without needing input from another (like semantics) in the moment.
Interactive Processing: Dependent processing. Different systems influence
each other; your understanding of a word's meaning helps you understand its
grammar.
Direction of Information Flow
Bottom-Up Processing: Influenced directly by the stimulus. You hear
sounds, and those sounds build into words. It is data-driven.
Top-Down Processing: Influenced by memories and knowledge. You use
context to "fill in the blanks" of what you hear. For example, if you hear
"The eel is on the axle," your brain uses knowledge of cars to hear "wheel."
The Physics of Speech
Vowels vs. Consonants
Vowels: Characterized by unobstructed airflow. The vocal tract is
relatively open.
, Consonants: Characterized by obstructed airflow. The articulators (lips,
tongue, teeth) create some level of constriction or closure.
The Spectrogram A spectrogram is a 3D-style graph that allows us to "see"
speech. It maps three specific variables:
1. X-Axis: Time.
2. Y-Axis: Frequency (low pitch at the bottom, high at the top).
3. Intensity: Represented by the darkness of the bands (Formants). The darker
the area, the more energy is present at that frequency.
Parallel Transmission -ANSWER✔✔refers to the fact that different phonemes of
the same syllable are encoded into speech signals simultaneously
Segmentation Problem -ANSWER✔✔its acoustically difficult to tell where words
begin and end (why other languages seem so fast because we hear it as one long
segment and there are no breaks on a spectrogram)
Lack of Invariance Problem -ANSWER✔✔there's no one-to-one correspondence
between the acoustic cues and the phonemes perceived ex:butter, boy, and boil all
have b's but on a spectrogram, the b sound will be different frequencies
Psychological definition of a phoneme -ANSWER✔✔a category of sounds that we
perceive to be the same sound
Sources of variability -ANSWER✔✔-coarticulation=the overlapping articulation
of phonemes (how we say a sound is affected by the phonemes around it)
-Variability within speakers= Sloppy Speech
-Variability between speakers=due to gender, dialect/accent, pitch, speed, age
Categorical Perception -ANSWER✔✔tone judgement for non-speech sounds
