Topics (in chronological order)
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Types of phonological knowledge
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Measuring phonological knowledge
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Lab learned phonology and visual concepts
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Setting up a web-based learning study
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Computational models of phonological and visual concept learning
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Phonotactics and word segmentation
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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 Slides, excel 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: Structure, Part II: Substance. Language and Linguistics Compass 6 (11): 686–701 and 702–718.
R script and input files for MPP learning simulation (.zip file)
Mon. Sept 23
Overview – visual concept learning
Wed. Sept 25
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 learning. Psychological 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.
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
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
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 Rules. Current 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 infants. Cognitive 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 learning. Journal of Memory and Language 67 (1):165-183. [Draft (pdf), December 2011]
Mon. Nov 18
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
Wed. Dec 4
Final presentations
James and Megan
Course evaluations
Mon. Dec. 16
Final papers due by midnight