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1 Dyslexia

When word recognition goes wrong:

  Acquired dyslexia: brain damage (strokes).

  – Surfacedyslexia: can’t read irregular words (yacht).

  – Phonologicaldyslexia: can’t read nonwords (nust).

  – Deep dyslexia: semantic errors (orchestra = symphony)

  Developmental dyslexia: this is most common and poorlyunderstood.

2 Acquired Dyslexia: Dual Routes of Damage

writing

lexicon

(semantics)

phonolgy

direct routeindirect route

writing

lexicon

(semantics)

phonolgy

surface dyslexia

writing

lexicon

(semantics)

phonolgy

phonological dyslexia

Dual route model: reading either by direct access from written

form of word to “lexicon” or indirectly via sound.

Writing to phonology connection can only use general rules: Can’t

pronounce irregular words like “yacht”.Can pronounce regular words like “make”.

Can pronounce nonwords like “nust”.

3 Sentences

Phenomena:

  Parse trees.

  Garden path sentences.

  Syntax cues: word order, key words, context, semantics..

4 Sentences: Parse Trees

S

(subject)

Art N

The boy

V NP

(direct object)

chases the cats

NP VP

How do we parse words into their proper grammatical roles?

This is not explicit, like in grammar school — happensautomatically just to comprehend meaning of sentence.

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5 Time Flies Like an Ambiguous Sentence in your Face.

“Time flies like an arrow.”

What does it mean?

  Time (N) moves quickly (V), as an arrow does (AV).

  Assess the pace (V) of flies (N) as you would assess the pace of 

an arrow (?).

  A particular variety of flies (time (Adj) flies (N)) adore (V)arrows.

“Fruit flies like a banana.” semantics matter.

6 The Garden Path

Important background fact: paths in gardens often lead nowhere.

Garden path sentence: “The horse raced past the barn..fell.”

Psychological implications:

  Interpretation of sentences happens online (as each word is

read).

 

Reading “fell” causes you to go back and re-read prior words.

  Higher working memory capacity = ability to maintain

multiple interpretations for longer; less cost with improbable

interpretations.

7 What Clues do we Use (Blues?)

Semantics: Fruit files vs. time flies..

Word order: “John ....” (assume John is subject).

Key words: “John was hit ... (John is object).The cat that John hit ... (Cat is object)..

Context: Joe: “Did the horse standing by the pond fall, or was it the

one that Warren raced past the barn?

 Jane: “The horse raced past the barn fell”.

8 Texts

How do we represent a textual passage?

1. Surface code: exact wording and syntax.

Available immediately but decays quickly.

2. Textbase: encodes meaning of text in terms of basic

propositional facts, not literal form: gave(boy,girl,ball)

Inferences are added to the textbase as you make them.

3. Situation model: deeper integration of text with prior

semantic knowledge.

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9 Texts: Inferences

Most of the research on texts (discourse processing ) is focused on

automatic inferences made during reading:

  What kinds of inferences are made? For coherency..

  When are they made? During reading? At test?

We don’t have solid answers to these questions..

10 Ape Language

Can nonhuman primates master complexities of language?

First lesson: chips can’t speak!

Solution 1: teach them ASL – Washoe, Nim Chimpsky, Koko.

Solution 2: teach them arbitrary symbols (chips, keyboard): Sarah,

Lana, Kanzi.

Two Key Questions:

1. Can they use arbitrary symbols to refer to things?

2. Can they learn to use grammar?

11 Ape Language: Symbols

Key issue: need to get around simple conditioning arbitrary

stimulus with response.

Two chimps communicating:

1. Chimp 1 sees food hidden in container.

2. Chimp 1 presses symbol on keyboard for hidden food.

3. Chimp 2 sees this symbol, and must request it to get food.

Problem: you can train pigeons to do the same thing!

Better test: generalization, using symbols in novel ways. This does

happen.

12 Ape Language: Grammar

Nim Chimpsky: put “more” before another word (“chocolate”) farmore than chance.

However, he was also imitating a lot.

Top 10 four word sentences (sounds like a healthy chimp to me):Eat drink, eat drinkEat Nim eat NimBanana Nim banana NimDrink Nim drink NimBanana eat me NimBanana me eat bananaBanana me Nim me

Grape eat Nim eatNim eat Nim eatPlay me Nim play

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13 Language and Thought

The Worfian hypothesis:

Strong: cannot have thoughts that language does not allow.

Weak: language favors some thought processes over others.

Evidence:

Eskimos and many words for snow: not true! 

Color: different languages have different words for colors – does

this affect perception of color? Not really.

Counter-factuals: can Chinese people reason about hypotheticals

without the subjunctive tense? Yes..

14 Language and Color Perception

Dani in New Guinea have only 2 color terms: light and dark.

Are they impaired at recognizing 40 different colors? No.

English, Russian (two terms for blue), & Setswana (one term for

 blue & green): still no differences (except very subtle ones).

Conclusion: language does not affect color perception! Worf is

wrong.

15 Language and Counter-factuals

“If my grandmother had balls, she’d be my grandfather.”

Bloom found that only 7% of Chinese, who don’t have thissubjunctive tense, could reason correctly about these kinds of 

statements (compared to 98% of Americans).

But wait, when translated into Chinese, this statement is:

“If my grandmother had balls, but she does not have balls, but if she did have balls, she’d be my grandfather.”

Terry Au gave better translations and the Chinese did perfectly.

Conclusion: language does not affect counter-factual reasoning –

Worf is wrong again!

There may be more subtle effects in reaction time..