Syllabus

Topics (in chronological order)

  1. Types of phonological knowledge

  2. Measuring phonological knowledge

  3. Lab learned phonology and visual concepts

  4. Setting up a web-based learning study

  5. Computational models of phonological and visual concept learning

  6. Phonotactics and word segmentation

  7. Learning categories/features

Dates, slides/handouts, readings

Wed. Sept 4, Mon. Sept 9

Types of phonological knowledge – categories, features, phonotactics, alternations

We will spend the first two classes establishing a common understanding of some phonological terminology, and especially of what broad types of (mostly unconscious) knowledge humans have of phonological systems. We’ll talk about two papers that discuss phonotactic knowledge (the more recent ones), and one paper that discusses knowledge of alternations. We recognize that these will be tough going for those of you without a background in linguistics, and we will be spending a lot of time in these classes on the background concepts necessary to understand them.

Daland, Robert, Bruce Hayes, James White, Marc Garellek, Andrea Davis & Ingrid Norrmann (2011). Explaining sonority projection effects. Phonology 28. 197–234.

Ernestus, M., & Baayen, R. H. (2003). Predicting the unpredictable: The phonological interpretation of neutralized segments in Dutch. Language, 79(1), 5-38.

Kager, René and Joe Pater. 2012. Phonotactics as phonology: Knowledge of a complex restriction in Dutch. Phonology 29, 81-111.

Background reading for non-phonologists – the first 8 pages of this short text on English consonants prepared for an undergraduate class.

Slides and files

9/4 Slidesexcel file

9/9 Slides

Wed. Sept 11, Mon. Sept 16

Measuring phonological knowledge with ERPs

We will talk about the three major paradigms for using event-related potentials to study phonological knowledge: violations, oddball (MMN), and priming. I will also present an approach to using ERPs to study phonological learning. In doing so, we’ll go over the technical details of designing and evaluating ERP experiments that are somewhat unique to studying phonology (or at least different from studying syntax and semantics). Each paper uses one of the major paradigms we’ll discuss. They also provide examples of types of questions about phonological processing that ERPs can be used to address.

Connolly, J., & Phillips, N. (1994). Event-related potential components reflect phonological and semantic processing of the terminal word of spoken sentences. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 6, 256-266.

Näätänen, R., Lehtokoski, A., Lennes, M., Cheour, M., Huotilainen, M., Iivonen A., Vainio, M., Alku, P., Ilmoniemi, R., Luuk, A., Allik, J., Sinkkonen, J., & Alho, K. (1997). Language-specific phoneme representations revealed by electric and magnetic brain responses. Nature, 385, 432-434.

Breen, M., Kingston, J., & Sanders, L. (2013). Perceptual representations of phonotactically illegal syllables. Attention, Perception, & Psychophysics, 75, 101-120.

Slides and files

ppt of Sanders_ERPmethods

pdf of Sanders_ERPmethods

Wed. Sept 18

Introduction to phonological and visual concept learning, lab-learned phonotactics and alternations

Moreton, Elliott, Joe Pater and Katya Pertsova. Phonological concept learning. Ms, University of North Carolina and University of Massachusetts Amherst. (newest version)

Moreton, Elliott and Joe Pater. 2012. Structure and substance in artificial-phonology learning. Part 1: StructurePart II: SubstanceLanguage and Linguistics Compass 6 (11): 686–701 and 702–718.

Joe’s 9/18 slides

R script and input files for MPP learning simulation (.zip file)

Mon. Sept 23

Overview – visual concept learning

Shepard et al. 1961

Kurtz et al. 2013

Joe’s 9/23 slides

Wed. Sept 25

Link to google form

PsyScope experiment .zip file (get PsyScope here, and feel free to ask me for help in running and modifying these experiments)

Kurtz et al. stimuli .zip file

Mon. Sept 30

Student presentations

Lena – Newport, E. L., & Aslin, R. N. (2004). Learning at a distance I. Statistical learning of non-adjacent dependencies. Cognitive psychology, 48(2), 127-162.

Ben – Ferry, A. L., Hespos, S. J., & Waxman, S. R. (2013). Nonhuman primate vocalizations support categorization in very young human infants. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 1–5.

Ashley- Goldstein, M.H., & Schwade, J.A. (2008). Social feedback to infants’ babbling facilitates rapid phonological learningPsychological Science, 19(5), 515-523.

Wed. Oct.2

Student presentations

Tina – Lewandowsky, S. (2011). Working memory capacity and categorization: Individual differences and models. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 37, 720–738. doi:10.1037/a0022639

Monica – Norris, D., McQueen, J. M., & Cutler, A. (2003). Perceptual learning in speech. Cognitive Psychology, 47(2), 204-238.

Josh – McMurray, B., Dennhardt, J. L., & Struck-Marcell, A. (2008). Context effects on musical chord categorization: Different forms of top-down feedback in speech and music? Cognitive Science, 32(5), 893-920.

Mon. Oct 7

ERP and lab learned phonology, multiple systems models of learning and memory

Please make sure to read Ashby and Maddox 2005, and do as much of the further reading on multiple systems as you can/want to – this includes the paper Tina presented, which seems to argue against some of Ashby et al.’s proposals. I’ve also linked to slides from Claire’s presentation of the “Phonolearn” study, which is the only public version of this study right now.

Ashby and Maddox 2005

Lewandowsky, S. (2011). Working memory capacity and categorization: Individual differences and models. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 37, 720–738. doi:10.1037/a0022639

Ullman, M. T. (2004). Contributions of neural memory circuits to language: The declarative/procedural model. Cognition, 92(1-2). 231-270.

Ullman, M.T. (2012). The declarative/procedural model. In P. Robinson (Ed.), Routledge Encyclopedia of Second Language Acquisition. Routledge. 160-164.

Wong PCM, Ettlinger M, Zheng J (2013) Linguistic Grammar Learning and DRD2-TAQ-IA Polymorphism. PLoS ONE 8(5): e64983. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0064983

Moore-Cantwell, Claire, Joe Pater, Robert Staubs, Benjamin Zobel and Lisa Sanders. 2013. ERP indices of lab-learned phonotactics. Talk presented April 6th at the Rutgers/UMass/MIT Phonology Workshop (RUMMIT), University of Massachusetts Amherst.

Wed. Oct 9

Neither of the readings are required before class, but both are well worth getting to at some point.

More on multiple systems

Newell, B.R., Dunn, J.C., & Kalish, M. (2011). Systems of category learning: Fact or fantasy? In B.H. Ross (Ed) The Psychology of Learning & Motivation Vol 54,. 167-215 PDF

Web-based experimentation

See e-mail of October 6th on how to access some sample SurveyMan experiments in the sandbox. We’ll talk about what SurveyMan can and can’t do, about limits and advantages of web-based experimentation in general, and we’ll walk through an installation of Surveyman.

Crump MJC, McDonnell JV, Gureckis TM (2013) Evaluating Amazon’s Mechanical Turk as a Tool for Experimental Behavioral Research. PLoS ONE 8(3): e57410. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0057410

Tues. Oct 15

Student presentations – Experimental proposals due

Charisse- Hirotani et al (2013). Joint attention helps infants learn new words: Event related potential evidence. Neuroreport 20(6): 600-605. doi:10.1097/WNR.0b013e32832a0a7c

Megan – Marcus et al (1999).  Rule Learning by Seven-Month-Old Infants. Science. 1999 Jan 1;283(5398):77-80.

James – Kurtz, K.J. (2004). The Divergent Autoencoder (DIVA) account of human category learning. Proceedings of the Cognitive Science Society, 2004

Wed. Oct 16

Student presentations

Amanda – Albright & Hayes (2002). Modeling English Past Tense Intuitions with Minimal Generalization. In Maxwell, Michael (ed) Proceedings of the Sixth Meeting of the ACL Special Interest Group in Computational Phonology. Philadelphia, July 2002. ACL. available: http://web.mit.edu/albright/www/papers/AlbrightHayes02.pdf

Lisa – Minda, Desroches, and Church (2008). Learning rule-described and non-rule-described categories: A comparison of children and adults. JEP:LMC, 34, 1518-1533.

Mon. Oct 21, Wed. Oct 23

Models of phonology and of learning

Joe’s slides.

Gerhard Jaeger 2007. Maximum Entropy Models and Stochastic Optimality Theory, in Annie Zaenen, Jane Simpson, Tracy Holloway King, Jane Grimshaw, Joan Maling, and Chris Manning (eds.), Architectures, Rules, and Preferences. Variations on Themes by Joan W. Bresnan, CSLI Publications, Stanford, 467-479.

Click here for the Chomsky interview on the `failure of AI’, and here is Peter Norvig’s take on a related talk by Chomsky.

Evidence of continued bad blood and misunderstanding between connectionist psycholinguists and generative linguists – Christiansen says “language is like beads on a string”, and Chomsky replies (though he shouldn’t have):

Chomsky, N. (2011). Language and other cognitive systems. What is special about language? Language Learning and Development 7(4), 263–278.

The paper Claire mentioned on a processing model based on OT, courtesy of Amanda:

Misker and Anderson. (2003). Combining Optimality Theory and a Cognitive Architecture. Proceedings of the Fifth International Conference on Cognitive Modeling. (OT in ACT-R paper, http://act-r.psy.cmu.edu/papers/431/MiskerAndersonICCM2003.pdf )

And here’s an overview of phonological research on variation, which explains why it’s hard to separate variation from phonology. It also has a gentle introduction to MaxEnt models in this context:

Coetzee, Andries and Joe Pater. 2011. The place of variation in phonological theory. In John Goldsmith, Jason Riggle, and Alan Yu (eds.), The Handbook of Phonological Theory (2nd ed.). Blackwell. 401-431.

Mon. Oct 28

Word segmentation and statistical learning

Richard N. Aslin and Elissa L. Newport. 2012. Statistical Learning : From Acquiring Specific Items to Forming General RulesCurrent Directions in Psychological Science 2012 21: 170.

Saffran, J. R., Newport, E. L., & Aslin, R. N. (1996). Word segmentation: The role of distributional cues. Journal of Memory and Language, 35, 606-621.

Wed. Oct 30

Johnson, E.K. & Tyler, M. (2010). Testing the limits of statistical learning for word segmentation. Developmental Science, 13, 339-345. [PDF]

Jusczyk PW, Houston DM, Newsome M. 1999. The beginnings of word segmentation in English-learning infantsCognitive Psychology 39:159-207.

November 1-3 Boston University Conference on Language Development

Mon. Nov 4 – Sharon Peperkamp

Skoruppa, K. & Peperkamp, S. (2011). Adaptation to novel accents: Feature-based learning of context-sensitive phonological regularities. Cognitive Science, 35, 348-366.

Wed. Nov 6 – Sharon Peperkamp

November 8-10 Phonology 2013, UMass Amherst

Wed. Nov 13 – Elliott Moreton

Moreton, Elliott (2012). Inter- and intra-dimensional dependencies in implicit phonotactic learningJournal of Memory and Language 67 (1):165-183. [Draft (pdf), December 2011]

Mon. Nov 18

Joe’s slides

Werker, J. (1995). Exploring developmental changes in cross-language speech perception. In L. Gleitman & M. Liberman (eds)Language: An Invitation to Cognitive Science, Vol 1 (2nd edn.), 87-106.

Wang, Y. and Kuhl, P.K. (2003). Evaluating the “critical period” hypothesis: Perceptual learning of Mandarin tones in American adults and American children at 6, 10, and 14 years of age. Proceedings of the 15 th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences, 1537-1540. [paper]

Further reading: Wong PCM, Chandrasekaran B, Zheng J (2012) The Derived Allele of ASPMIs Associated with Lexical Tone Perception. PLoS ONE 7(4): e34243. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0034243

Wed. Nov 20

[Goyet2010] Goyet, L., de Schonen, S., & Nazzi, T. (2010). Words and syllables in fluent speech segmentation by French-learning infants: An ERP study. Brain Research, 1332, 75-89.

[Kooijman2009] Kooijman, V., Hagoort, P., & Cutler, A. (2009). Prosodic structure in early word segmentation: ERP evidence from Dutch ten-month-olds. Infancy, 14, 591-612.

[RiveraGaziola2005] Rivera-Gaziola, M., Silva-Pereyra, J., & Kuhl, P. (2005). Brain potentials to native and non-native speech contrasts in 7- and 11-month-old American infants. Developmental Science, 8, 162-172.

Mon. Nov 25

Final presentations

Ashley and Charisse

Amanda

Weds. Nov. 27

Final presentations

Tina, Ben, and Monica

Mon. Dec 2

Final presentations

Lisa, Josh and Lena

A proposal, summary

Wed. Dec 4

Final presentations

James and Megan

Course evaluations

Mon. Dec. 16

Final papers due by midnight

 

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