The Speaking Brain
The ability to produce, perceive, and comprehend speech is a remarkable human achievement. This chapter considers how familiar spoken words are recognized and how the meaning of words and sentences are derived. Speech recognition is discussed in terms of segmenting the auditory signal into different temporal chunks (corresponding roughly to phoneme, syllable, stress pattern). The idea that the meaning of words is grounded in terms of sensory and motor experiences is introduced. Action-based concepts, according to a grounded/embodied semantics viewpoint, should depend on parts of the brain representing the body and motor production, which are primarily located in the parietal and frontal cortices. The chapter also considers the process of speech production and the extent to which mechanisms related to syntax are independent from semantic-memory.
Multiple Choice Questions
Flashcards
A store of the abstract speech sounds that make up known words
The process of matching a perceptual description of a word on to a stored memory description of that word
In lexical access, a large number of spoken words are initially considered as candidates but words get eliminated as more evidence accumulates
The point at which the acoustic input unambiguously corresponds to only one known word
Not tied to one or more perceptual systems
The extent to which a word can evoke a concrete image; e.g. " table" is high on this measure but " truth" is low
An event-related component in EEG found when a word meaning appears out of context or unexpectedly
A type of noun denoting a unique entity such as people and place names e.g. " Donald Trump" or " Washington DC"
The problem of defining concepts without assuming some pre-existing knowledge
The idea that the body (its movement, or internal state) can be used in cognition (e.g. to understand words, or social situations)
A model of semantic memory that contains both amodal concepts and semantic features that are grounded in sensory, motor and bodily cortex
The hypothesis that semantic features are clustered in the brain according to what they are used for and what their physical properties are
Sensory–functional distinction
A type of aphasia traditionally associated with damage to this area and associated with fluent but nonsensical speech, and poor comprehension
A type of aphasia traditionally associated with damage to this particular area and linked to symptoms such as agrammatism and articulatory deficits
The order and structure of the words within a sentence
Halting, " telegraphic" speech production that is devoid of function words (e.g. of, at, the, and), bound morphemes (e.g. -ing, -s) and often verbs
The process of assigning a syntactic structure to words
A sentence in which the early part biases a syntactic interpretation that turns out to be incorrect
An event-related brain potential (ERP) typically associated with the processing of grammatical anomalies
A stimulus seen previously will be identified faster on a subsequent occasion
In speech production, the selection of a word based on the meaning that one wishes to convey
The substitution of one word for another that is sometimes thought to reflect the hidden intentions of the speaker
A speech error that consists of a word with a similar phonological form to the intended word
A speech error in which initial consonants are swapped between words
Use of words or images without audible or physical speaking
A state in which a person knows, conceptually, the word that he or she wishes to say but is unable to retrieve the corresponding spoken form
Tip-of-the-tongue phenomenon
Word-finding difficulties
A modality-independent word-level entry that specifies the syntactic components of the word
The phonological code that drives articulation
Difficulties in shaping the vocal tract
Impaired muscular contractions of the articulatory apparatus
Useful Links
Different types of aphasia:
www.aphasia.org/stories/different-types-aphasia/
