PSYCH 375 FINAL EXAM REVIEW
Psycholinguistics - Answer -The interdisciplinary study of how people use languages;
combination of psychology and linguistics
Phonetics - Answer -Study and classification of speech sounds
Phonemes - Answer -Smallest unit of sound (analogous but not identical to letters;
English has 26 letters but ~40 phonemes)
Morphemes - Answer -Basic units of meaning
(analogous but not identical to words; "s" means plural, "-ed" means past tense, "pre-"
means before, etc.)
Syntax - Answer -The rules for combining words into grammatically sensible sentences
in a given language
Semantics - Answer -The set of rules by which we derive meaning from morphemes,
words, and sentences in a given language
Prosody - Answer -Patterns of rhythm and intonation in speech
Surface structure - Answer -The literal ordering of words in a sentence
Deep structure - Answer -The underlying abstract meaning of a sentence
Negatives - Answer -Words that mean no; common negatives: no, not, never, nowhere,
nothing, nobody, no one, neither, scarcely, barely
Can create ambiguity and make language difficult to understand if used more than once
Passive voice - Answer -The subject of the sentence receives the action.
Syntactic complexity - Answer -Embedded clauses; a sentence inside a sentence
Ex. "The woman approached the window, which looked on the rolling green hills of the
English countryside, and lobbed a brick at the gardener"
They tax our working memory
Ambiguity - Answer -The multiple meanings, either intentional or unintentional, of a
word, phrase, sentence, or passage.
, An ambiguous sentence has one surface structure but more than one possible deep
structure
Ex. "Include your children when baking cookies"
Good-enough approach (to language processing) - Answer -Our representation of the
meaning of language input may not match the actual input. Instead, it's "good enough"
to help us communicate.
Ex. "How many of each animal did Moses put into the ark?"
"While Anna dressed the baby played in the crib"
Dual route cascaded model of reading (DRC) - Answer -Sometimes we recognize
words visually (direct access)
Sometimes we have to go from image to sound to meaning (indirect access)
Direct route - Answer -Recognizing words as whole units; going straight from image to
meaning without help from phonology
Indirect route - Answer -Image --> sound --> meaning
"Sounding out" words
Used more by beginning and poor readers, and for infrequent, unusual, or irregular
words
Whole-word approach - Answer -Readers are taught to recognize words as whole units
Uses only direct access
Readers are encouraged to use context clues to figure out what a word is (but children
and even adults are not very good at guessing what word will come next)
Phonics approach - Answer -Readers are taught to recognize words by trying to
pronounce the individual letters in the word
Uses the indirect access; "sound it out"
One potential issue is the irregularity of English spelling
Whole-language approach - Answer -Reading instruction should emphasize meaning,
and it should be enjoyable to increase children's enthusiasm about learning to read
Theory of Mind - Answer -Understanding the mental state of other people
Psycholinguistics - Answer -The interdisciplinary study of how people use languages;
combination of psychology and linguistics
Phonetics - Answer -Study and classification of speech sounds
Phonemes - Answer -Smallest unit of sound (analogous but not identical to letters;
English has 26 letters but ~40 phonemes)
Morphemes - Answer -Basic units of meaning
(analogous but not identical to words; "s" means plural, "-ed" means past tense, "pre-"
means before, etc.)
Syntax - Answer -The rules for combining words into grammatically sensible sentences
in a given language
Semantics - Answer -The set of rules by which we derive meaning from morphemes,
words, and sentences in a given language
Prosody - Answer -Patterns of rhythm and intonation in speech
Surface structure - Answer -The literal ordering of words in a sentence
Deep structure - Answer -The underlying abstract meaning of a sentence
Negatives - Answer -Words that mean no; common negatives: no, not, never, nowhere,
nothing, nobody, no one, neither, scarcely, barely
Can create ambiguity and make language difficult to understand if used more than once
Passive voice - Answer -The subject of the sentence receives the action.
Syntactic complexity - Answer -Embedded clauses; a sentence inside a sentence
Ex. "The woman approached the window, which looked on the rolling green hills of the
English countryside, and lobbed a brick at the gardener"
They tax our working memory
Ambiguity - Answer -The multiple meanings, either intentional or unintentional, of a
word, phrase, sentence, or passage.
, An ambiguous sentence has one surface structure but more than one possible deep
structure
Ex. "Include your children when baking cookies"
Good-enough approach (to language processing) - Answer -Our representation of the
meaning of language input may not match the actual input. Instead, it's "good enough"
to help us communicate.
Ex. "How many of each animal did Moses put into the ark?"
"While Anna dressed the baby played in the crib"
Dual route cascaded model of reading (DRC) - Answer -Sometimes we recognize
words visually (direct access)
Sometimes we have to go from image to sound to meaning (indirect access)
Direct route - Answer -Recognizing words as whole units; going straight from image to
meaning without help from phonology
Indirect route - Answer -Image --> sound --> meaning
"Sounding out" words
Used more by beginning and poor readers, and for infrequent, unusual, or irregular
words
Whole-word approach - Answer -Readers are taught to recognize words as whole units
Uses only direct access
Readers are encouraged to use context clues to figure out what a word is (but children
and even adults are not very good at guessing what word will come next)
Phonics approach - Answer -Readers are taught to recognize words by trying to
pronounce the individual letters in the word
Uses the indirect access; "sound it out"
One potential issue is the irregularity of English spelling
Whole-language approach - Answer -Reading instruction should emphasize meaning,
and it should be enjoyable to increase children's enthusiasm about learning to read
Theory of Mind - Answer -Understanding the mental state of other people
