PSYC 100 Final Exam Notes (Weeks 13-
24) 2024/2025 Exam Questions Marking
Scheme New Update | A+ Rated
What are the three key properties of human language? Explain them. - 🧠
ANSWER ✔✔Semanticity: the extent to which a form of communication
can meaningfully represent ideas, events, and objects symbolically. Most
words are symbols that have arbitrary sounds
Generativity: we can express any given idea in numerous ways. Form of
communication can be considered "language" if it has generativity.
Displacement: ability to use language to convey messages that are not tied
to the immediate context but instead communicate info about events in
past, future, or another location.
What is a phoneme? - 🧠 ANSWER ✔✔the smallest unit of speech
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,What is a morpheme? - 🧠 ANSWER ✔✔the smallest unit of meaning,
either free or bound
What is syntax? - 🧠 ANSWER ✔✔determines how we combine words to
form phrases and sentences to obtain the meaning we wish to convey
What are semantics? - 🧠 ANSWER ✔✔refers to the meaning of words and
the rules that govern those meanings. Can be crucial for comprehension.
What are pragmatics (referring to language)? - 🧠 ANSWER ✔✔refers to
knowledge of the world as it relates to understanding and using language.
Has to do with social communicative aspect of language.
What does one need to do in order to understand what someone is saying?
- 🧠 ANSWER ✔✔one needs to recognize phonemes, identify words and
associate them to meanings, analyze syntax and interpret the utterance in
context
What are articulators? - 🧠 ANSWER ✔✔mouth structures that make
speech sounds (jaw, tongue, lips, soft palate)
How do we recognize speech? - 🧠 ANSWER ✔✔by relying on experience
with language and our knowledge of pragmatics
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,What is categorical perception? What is the difference between auditory
and speech perception? - 🧠 ANSWER ✔✔Tendency of perceivers to
disregard physical differences between stimuli and perceive them as the
same, such that a continuous change in a physical attribute is perceived
not as continuous but as a discrete change at a category boundary.
Auditory categorical perception depends on your ability to ignore acoustic
variability in speech sounds that is irrelevant in your language, while
making use of meaningful variability to distinguish phonemes
Speech perception "system" highlights phonemic contrasts that are used in
the language you speak and minimizes contrasts that aren't meaningful.
This allows perceptual system to dismiss or ignore meaningless variability
in speech
Explain how people learn to read - 🧠 ANSWER ✔✔A reader can approach
a written text by sounding out (phonetic reading) or reading by sight.
Knowledge of morphology can help the reader to break words into smaller
units. Reader's vocab also plays a part in comprehending a text (unless a
word is in your vocab it might as well be nonsense). Knowledge of the
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STATEMENT. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
, world is essential for interpreting written language in context . Before
learning to read people need to be able to map the visual symbol system
onto the auditory symbol system
What is the sequence of language development milestones? List and
describe each. - 🧠 ANSWER ✔✔Cooing: begins at 8-10 weeks. First
speech like sound.
Babbling: occurs around 7 months. Begin to mix vowel and consonant
sounds. As they become better babblers their speech takes on more of the
sounds, intonations and rhythms of the language spoken around them.
Single word stage: most infants will produce their first discernable word by
10 and 15 months. Over and underextend words.
Two-word stage: Speech is telegraphic (only essential words in a logical
order). By 18 months they should have a vocab of about 50 words and will
have a vocab spurt.
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STATEMENT. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
24) 2024/2025 Exam Questions Marking
Scheme New Update | A+ Rated
What are the three key properties of human language? Explain them. - 🧠
ANSWER ✔✔Semanticity: the extent to which a form of communication
can meaningfully represent ideas, events, and objects symbolically. Most
words are symbols that have arbitrary sounds
Generativity: we can express any given idea in numerous ways. Form of
communication can be considered "language" if it has generativity.
Displacement: ability to use language to convey messages that are not tied
to the immediate context but instead communicate info about events in
past, future, or another location.
What is a phoneme? - 🧠 ANSWER ✔✔the smallest unit of speech
COPYRIGHT©NINJANERD 2025/2026. YEAR PUBLISHED 2025. COMPANY REGISTRATION NUMBER: 619652435. TERMS OF USE. PRIVACY
1
STATEMENT. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
,What is a morpheme? - 🧠 ANSWER ✔✔the smallest unit of meaning,
either free or bound
What is syntax? - 🧠 ANSWER ✔✔determines how we combine words to
form phrases and sentences to obtain the meaning we wish to convey
What are semantics? - 🧠 ANSWER ✔✔refers to the meaning of words and
the rules that govern those meanings. Can be crucial for comprehension.
What are pragmatics (referring to language)? - 🧠 ANSWER ✔✔refers to
knowledge of the world as it relates to understanding and using language.
Has to do with social communicative aspect of language.
What does one need to do in order to understand what someone is saying?
- 🧠 ANSWER ✔✔one needs to recognize phonemes, identify words and
associate them to meanings, analyze syntax and interpret the utterance in
context
What are articulators? - 🧠 ANSWER ✔✔mouth structures that make
speech sounds (jaw, tongue, lips, soft palate)
How do we recognize speech? - 🧠 ANSWER ✔✔by relying on experience
with language and our knowledge of pragmatics
COPYRIGHT©NINJANERD 2025/2026. YEAR PUBLISHED 2025. COMPANY REGISTRATION NUMBER: 619652435. TERMS OF USE. PRIVACY
2
STATEMENT. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
,What is categorical perception? What is the difference between auditory
and speech perception? - 🧠 ANSWER ✔✔Tendency of perceivers to
disregard physical differences between stimuli and perceive them as the
same, such that a continuous change in a physical attribute is perceived
not as continuous but as a discrete change at a category boundary.
Auditory categorical perception depends on your ability to ignore acoustic
variability in speech sounds that is irrelevant in your language, while
making use of meaningful variability to distinguish phonemes
Speech perception "system" highlights phonemic contrasts that are used in
the language you speak and minimizes contrasts that aren't meaningful.
This allows perceptual system to dismiss or ignore meaningless variability
in speech
Explain how people learn to read - 🧠 ANSWER ✔✔A reader can approach
a written text by sounding out (phonetic reading) or reading by sight.
Knowledge of morphology can help the reader to break words into smaller
units. Reader's vocab also plays a part in comprehending a text (unless a
word is in your vocab it might as well be nonsense). Knowledge of the
COPYRIGHT©NINJANERD 2025/2026. YEAR PUBLISHED 2025. COMPANY REGISTRATION NUMBER: 619652435. TERMS OF USE. PRIVACY
3
STATEMENT. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
, world is essential for interpreting written language in context . Before
learning to read people need to be able to map the visual symbol system
onto the auditory symbol system
What is the sequence of language development milestones? List and
describe each. - 🧠 ANSWER ✔✔Cooing: begins at 8-10 weeks. First
speech like sound.
Babbling: occurs around 7 months. Begin to mix vowel and consonant
sounds. As they become better babblers their speech takes on more of the
sounds, intonations and rhythms of the language spoken around them.
Single word stage: most infants will produce their first discernable word by
10 and 15 months. Over and underextend words.
Two-word stage: Speech is telegraphic (only essential words in a logical
order). By 18 months they should have a vocab of about 50 words and will
have a vocab spurt.
COPYRIGHT©NINJANERD 2025/2026. YEAR PUBLISHED 2025. COMPANY REGISTRATION NUMBER: 619652435. TERMS OF USE. PRIVACY
4
STATEMENT. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
