Psychology of Language

 

Introduction

Psychology of language is the interconnection between linguistic factors and psychological factors. It helps to understand the psychological and neurobiological aspects that enable humans to acquire, use, comprehend, and produce language. It mainly concentrates on the mechanisms in which languages are processed in the brain.

Dual route models include features of direct access and phonological mediation theories (Harris 1992). While orthographic and phonological activation takes place the discussion surrounding it is about the time that is used to accomplish the different processes. Phonological recoding might take more time than the direct word recognition but this is rarely unnoticed because most of the words can be recognized directly without phonological mediation. Computational models suggest that there is a parallel triggering of phonological information with pother representations. It also suggests that the reading of words and non-words is made possible by the same process through the performance of the network and the non-words remain disputable.

The dual-route models that are developed based on the lexical decision paradigm support phonological recoding only for non-words. Nonetheless, this pattern has not shown phonological impacts for words. Homophones have not been shown as the cause of inaccurate or extended responses than non-homophobic words (Harris 1992). The dual-route models maintain that the impact for non-words takes place when the phonological representation of the pseudo homophone triggers the phonological depiction of its word set. This makes it hard for the subject to decline the pseudo homophone.

Another possibility of the dual-route theory has been suggested in terms of the affirmation version. The explanation to this is that lexical items are triggered at the same time by prelexical orthographic and phonological prompts and phonological recoding is mandatory. Lexical entry is accessed through the activated phonological code (Harris 1992). Before a certain item is chosen, validation occurs in the course of spelling check, and the orthographic depiction of the target is contrasted with the orthographic depiction of a set aside lexical object. If there is a match, word recognition occurs, and if not the other possibility is observed.

Immediate acquiring of the semantic lexicon can make use of elements such as the visual spelling pattern of the word while the phonological mediation will be based on how the written word will be pronounced. Word pronunciation is accomplished by conveying particular word pronunciation in the phonological lexicon, by basing the pronunciation on the way it resembles other words or by congregating the pronunciation with the help of the GPC policies (Aaron 1994). The three possible ways of word recognition which are immediate accessing of meaning, immediate accessing of pronunciation, and the GPC congregation of phonology have been used by experimental psychologists in developing several speculative processes that are likely to be used in acknowledging the word. The recognition of words that are presented visually is made possible through phonological recoding.

            Research shows that orthographic ciphers are triggered in auditory word recognition. A rhyme monitoring task was given to subjects whereby the task was to ascertain a word that rhymed with a probe word. The outcome was that the remissions for ascertaining target rhymes were shorter when the probe word and its rhyming ally were orthographically alike compared to when they were orthographically not similar (Aaron 1994). A color naming pattern to assess the impacts of primes that are phonologically or orthographically alike to select words resulted in remission for giving names to colors. The words printed were extended for both types of primes regardless of whether the primes are represented visually or auditory. Lexical decisions for words were bestowed auditory were affected by how word primes sounded and were spelled.  So a lexical choice for the word mess took a little time ensuing message than ensuing a direct word but such aid was not detected when words only related by sounds. The subject matter in these researches were adults with the skill of reading. Another study that assessed good and poor readers using the rhyme recognition pattern. It shows that orthographic impacts in reading complimented the good and the poor readers on the ascertaining duty with auditory and visual dispensations and the general presentation of the two categories was alike.

A serial discrete model of lexical access supports activation flow rigorously from layer to layer. Despite several lexical nodes being activated, only the selected node spreads activation from the semantic to the phonological layer. Phonological encoding begins after the lexical selection is finished (Trompelt 2010). Levelt’s model presumptions about word form encoding processes are investigated to determine if they remain operational when developing regular and no-regular verbs. This model bestows the most explicit model of the production of morphologically difficult words. The basic architecture of Levelt’s model starts with taking the lemma escort with the correlating set of pointers on the lemma level.

First, the lemma is activated and its diacritic guidelines are set for progressive. Levelt suggests that that correlating morphemes are got from the form lexicon. The lemma points and proliferates activation to the morphemes on the forming stage. Then they are brought to the right serial order and progressed (Trompelt 2010). Word form generation needs the retrieval of the lexical stem and three types of information which are morphological, phonological, and segmental details of the intended word form. Every needed morpheme is then reclaimed from the mental lexicon. Word forms for actuated morphemes hold metrical and segmental information. Metrical information concerning morphemes includes if morphemes are free or bound. Morphemes have a specification of if they are phonological heads or not. They are enumerated for ordering so that progression can proceed successfully. Later, the activated phonological plans can be changed by syllabification procedures to make sure of correct pronunciation. Syllabification ranges depending on the phonological surroundings and results in different phonological words. According to Levelt’s understanding, phonological words are an intonation unit defined in terms of syllabification preceding articulation. They are different from phonological plans for targets because they are adapted to the context. Lastly, the phonological words will be encoded phonetically and gradually transformed into muscle contraction and sound waves.

For difficult and monomorphic words, diacritics must be set at an early stage of formulation. The encoding procedure then moves to select that word form which correlates to these diacritics (Trompelt 2010). Diacritics for an individual and number agreement between the subject and the verb are eternal elements that can be set before grammatical encoding. This information does not depend on the lemma retrieval and is available when it encounters the subject. In the later processing levels, the difference between regular and non-regular intonation is when it arises. For non-regular intonation, one to one delineation is not present between the diacritics and the affixes. For retrieval of regular words, two nodes are involved only at the word-form level. For both the regular intonation and non-regular intonations, the first step is selecting and setting diacritics. Production then continues with selecting the word form that correlates to the diacritics. 

Contrasting this, some activation spreading theories of lexical access suggest that activation flows continuously from layer to layer in a cascaded design. According to Trompelt (2010), activated nodes spread some equivalent activation despite the node that will finally be selected. Phonological information will not only be activated for the selected node. The cascade model only assumes the forward spreading of activation. Activation doesn’t spread from the phonological level back to the lexical levels. Cascade models are hard to test because when curbed with the possible problematic finding of no phonological activation of items that are not selected, they could assume that the activation exists but it is not strong enough to be detected. It blurs the distinctions between the steps by allowing the activation of phonological forms of potential lemmas before the first step has been completed.

Conclusion

Psychology of language helps human beings to acquire and produce language. It helps to understand how different words are processes in the brain. Phonological mediation creates and gives more knowledge of the auditory and visual modalities of written words. It also gives knowledge of how words are pronounced and spelled. Levelt’s model of word production explains how words are produced and what it entails. The theory explains in detail step by step of how phonological words are encoded. It explains that phonological encoding begins only after a lexical node selection.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

References

Aaron, P. G. (1994). Dyslexia and Hyperlexia: Diagnosis and Management of Developmental

Reading Disabilities. Dordrecht : Springer Netherlands

Harris, R. J. (2014). Cognitive Processing in Bilinguals. Amsterdam: Elsevier Science.

Amsterdam : Elsevier Science

Trompelt, H. (2010). Production of regular and non-regular verbs: Evidence for a lexical entry

complexity account. Potsdam: Univ.-Verl.