Introduction to Psycholinguistics

Matt Traxler is Professor of Psychology at the University of California, Davis. He edited The Handbook of Psycholinguistics (with Morton Ann Gernsbacher, 2006). He currently serves as associate editor on the Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology and Language and Linguistics Compass. He is also a consulting editor at the Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition. When Dr. Traxler is not at work at the university, he will often be found stalking the wily rainbow trout.

List of Illustrations xi

Acknowledgments xv

Preface xxi

1 An Introduction to Language Science 1

Language Characteristics 2

Grammar, Language Origins, and Non-Human Communication Systems 6

Research on communication abilities in apes 7

“Monkeys don’t talk” 12

Language origins 14

Language and Thought 18

Whorf, linguistic determinism, and linguistic relativity 21

Whorf makes a comeback 23

A Description of the Language-Processing System 27

Summary and Conclusions 28

Test Yourself 29

2 Speech Production and Comprehension 37

Speech Production 38

Speech errors 43

Access interruptus: Tip-of-the-tongue experiences 45

Picture naming and picture–word interference studies 46

The spreading activation model of speech production 48

Potential limitations of lemma theory 50

Self-monitoring and self-repair 51

Articulation 51

Foreign Accent Syndrome Revisited 53

Speech Perception 54

Coarticulation effects on speech perception 56

The motor theory of speech perception 58

The McGurk effect: Visual gestures affect speech perception 61

Mirror neurons: The motor theory enjoys a renaissance 63

The mirror neuron theory of speech perception jumps the shark 65

Other problems for mirror neuron/motor theory 66

The general auditory approach to speech perception 68

Summary and Conclusions 70

Test Yourself 71

3 Word Processing 79

The Anatomy of a Word: How We Mentally Represent Word Form 80

Lexical Semantics 81

Associationist accounts of word meaning: HAL and LSA 87

The symbol grounding problem 89

Embodied semantics 90

Lexical Access 97

First-generation models 99

Second-generation models 105

Third-generation models: Distributed features and distributed cohort 113

Lexical Ambiguity Resolution 116

Does context influence meaning selection for ambiguous words? 117

The Neural Basis of Lexical Representation and Lexical Access 119

How are word meanings represented in the brain? 123

Summary and Conclusions 128

Test Yourself 128

4 Sentence Processing 141

Models of Parsing: Two-Stage Models 147

Models of Parsing: Constraint-Based Models 151

Story context effects 152

Subcategory frequency effects 153

Cross-linguistic frequency data 157

Semantic effects 159

Prosody 161

Visual context effects 164

Interim Summary 166

Argument Structure Hypothesis 166

Limitations, Criticisms, and Some Alternative Parsing Theories 171

Construal 172

Race-based parsing 173

Good-enough parsing 175

Parsing Long-Distance Dependencies 177

Summary and Conclusions 180

Test Yourself 181

5 Discourse Processing 187

Construction–Integration Theory 188

Construction and integration 192

The Structure Building Framework 199

The Event Indexing Model 204

Modeling space, time, protagonists, and motivation 206

Causation, Cohesion, and Coherence in Discourse Encoding and Memory 210

The Role of General World Knowledge in Discourse Processing 214

Building Situation Models 217

Inferencing: Memory-Based Account of Discourse Processing: Minimalist vs. Constructionist Inferencing 220

The Neural Basis of Discourse Comprehension 223

Summary and Conclusions 229

Test Yourself 230

6 Reference 241

Characteristics of Referents That Make Co-Reference Easier 243

Characteristics of Anaphors That Make Co-Reference Easier 249

The Relationship between an Anaphor and Possible Referents Affects Anaphor Resolution 251

Binding Theory 253

Psycholinguistic Theories of Anaphoric Reference 256

The memory focus model 256

Centering theory 256

Informational load hypothesis 258

Summary and Conclusions 260

Test Yourself 260

7 Non-Literal Language Processing 267

Types of Non-Literal Language 268

The Standard Pragmatic View 268

Metaphor 275

Class inclusion and dual reference 279

Conceptual mapping and meaning 281

The structural similarity view 283

The career of metaphor hypothesis 284

Why Metaphor? 285

Metonymy and Underspecification 287

Idioms and Frozen Metaphors 289

Embodiment and the Interpretation of Non-Literal Language 292

The Neural Basis of Non-Literal Language Interpretation 293

Summary and Conclusions 297

Test Yourself 298

8 Dialogue 305

Gricean Maxims 306

Dialogue is Interactive 308

Common Ground 309

Audience Design 312

Egocentric production 315

Effects of Listeners’ Perspective-Taking on Comprehension 317

Summary and Conclusions 320

Test Yourself 321

9 Language Development in Infancy and Early Childhood 325

Prenatal Learning 325

Babies suck 327

Infant Perception and Categorization of Phonemes 329

Solving the Segmentation Problem 333

Infant-directed speech 338

Statistical Learning and Speech Segmentation 339

Interim Summary 343

Learning Word Meanings 344

Syntactic bootstrapping 349

Acquisition of Morphological and Syntactic Knowledge 351

Acquisition of word category knowledge 352

Acquisition of morphological knowledge 354

Acquisition of phrase structure knowledge 356

Summary and Conclusions 358

Test Yourself 360

10 Reading 369

Speed Reading? 369

Eye Movement Control and Reading 370

The perceptual span 372

Oculomotor and Cognitive Control Theories of Reading 376

E-Z reader 378

Parallel attention models and parafoveal-on-foveal effects 381

Cognitive Processing in Reading I 384

Different writing systems and scripts 384

Learning to read 388

Cognitive Processing in Reading II: Visual Word Processing 390

Dual-route and DRC models 391

Single-route models 393

Neighborhood effects 395

Non-word pronunciation 397

Dyslexia: Single-Deficit Models 398

Dyslexia: Dual-Route and Single-Route Explanations 400

Summary and Conclusions 404

Test Yourself 404

11 Bilingual Language Processing 415

Mary Potter and the Secrets of Bilingualism 416

Languages are Simultaneously Active During Comprehension and Production 419

Competition in production 423

Effects of fluency, balance, and language similarity on competition 425

Shared syntactic structure representations 426

Models of Language Control in Bilingual Speakers 429

BIA+ 431

Inhibitory control 431

Context effects and the zooming in hypothesis 432

Bilingualism and Executive Control 434

Teaching Techniques and Individual Differences in Second Language Learning 436

The Neural Bases of Bilingualism 438

Summary and Conclusions 439

Test Yourself 440

12 Sign Language 447

Characteristics of Signed Languages 448

Sign language morphology 453

Lexical Access in Sign Language 455

Sign Language Acquisition and Language Evolution 456

Reading in Deaf Signers 460

The Neural Basis of Sign Language: Left-Hemisphere Contributions to Production and Comprehension 460

Does the Right Hemisphere Play a Special Role in Sign Language? 462

Why is language left lateralized? 464

The Effects of Deafness and Learning Sign Language on Cognitive Processing 466

Perspective taking and sign language 468

Cochlear Implants 469

Outcomes for CI users 470

Summary and Conclusions 472

Test Yourself 473

13 Aphasia 479

Aphasiology: What Happens to Language When the Brain is Damaged? 480

The classic WLG model 482

Problems with the classic WLG model 487

Broca’s Aphasia, Wernicke’s Aphasia, and Syntactic Parsing 492

The trace deletion hypothesis 496

Evidence against the trace deletion hypothesis 499

The mapping hypothesis 501

The resource restriction hypothesis 502

The slowed syntax hypothesis 502

Treatment and Recovery from Aphasia 503

Summary and Conclusions 507

Test Yourself 508

14 Right-Hemisphere Language Function 515

Speech Perception and Production 516

Word Processing 523

The coarse coding hypothesis 526

Right-Hemisphere Contributions to Discourse Comprehension and Production 531

Right-Hemisphere Contributions to Non-Literal Language Understanding 533

What You Can Do with One Hemisphere 534

Why Lateralization? 537

Summary and Conclusions 538

Test Yourself 538

Name Index 547

Subject Index 559