Q.1 Which area of the brain is primarily associated with language production?
Broca's area
Wernicke's area
Occipital lobe
Hippocampus
Explanation - Broca's area, located in the frontal lobe, is crucial for producing speech and constructing grammatically correct sentences.
Correct answer is: Broca's area
Q.2 Wernicke's area is mainly responsible for:
Understanding language
Producing speech
Visual processing
Motor coordination
Explanation - Wernicke's area, located in the temporal lobe, is essential for comprehending spoken and written language.
Correct answer is: Understanding language
Q.3 The 'lexical decision task' is commonly used to study:
Memory encoding
Word recognition
Motor skills
Attention span
Explanation - In the lexical decision task, participants decide as quickly as possible whether a string of letters is a word or a non-word, which helps study word recognition processes.
Correct answer is: Word recognition
Q.4 Which of the following best defines 'phoneme'?
The smallest unit of meaning in language
The smallest distinctive sound in a language
A grammatical rule
A written symbol
Explanation - A phoneme is the smallest unit of sound that can distinguish meaning in a language.
Correct answer is: The smallest distinctive sound in a language
Q.5 Semantic priming demonstrates that:
Exposure to one word speeds recognition of related words
Memory improves with repetition
Motor skills influence speech
Phonemes are processed visually
Explanation - Semantic priming shows that processing a word (like 'doctor') makes recognition of semantically related words (like 'nurse') faster.
Correct answer is: Exposure to one word speeds recognition of related words
Q.6 The 'garden-path sentence' illustrates:
Syntactic ambiguity
Semantic priming
Phonemic awareness
Memory retrieval
Explanation - Garden-path sentences lead the reader to initially interpret the sentence incorrectly due to ambiguous syntax, highlighting sentence parsing processes.
Correct answer is: Syntactic ambiguity
Q.7 Which model suggests that word recognition is a bottom-up process?
Cohort model
Interactive Activation model
Dual-route model
Connectionist model
Explanation - The dual-route model posits that reading can occur via a direct (lexical) route or an indirect (phonological) route, emphasizing bottom-up processing in the latter.
Correct answer is: Dual-route model
Q.8 In speech perception, categorical perception refers to:
Perceiving distinct categories of sounds despite gradual changes
Understanding ambiguous sentences
Memory for words
Reading fluency
Explanation - Categorical perception allows listeners to perceive speech sounds (like 'b' vs 'p') as distinct categories even when acoustic differences are continuous.
Correct answer is: Perceiving distinct categories of sounds despite gradual changes
Q.9 The process of assigning meaning to words and sentences is called:
Semantics
Syntax
Phonology
Pragmatics
Explanation - Semantics deals with the meaning of words, phrases, and sentences in language.
Correct answer is: Semantics
Q.10 Which of the following illustrates the influence of context on word recognition?
The word 'bank' interpreted as 'river bank' in a story about rivers
Recognizing letters visually
Reciting a poem from memory
Listening to a foreign language
Explanation - Context helps disambiguate words with multiple meanings, demonstrating top-down processing in language comprehension.
Correct answer is: The word 'bank' interpreted as 'river bank' in a story about rivers
Q.11 Which cognitive process is primarily involved in understanding ambiguous sentences?
Parsing
Encoding
Phoneme discrimination
Visual imagery
Explanation - Parsing refers to the mental process of analyzing sentence structure to determine meaning, especially when sentences are ambiguous.
Correct answer is: Parsing
Q.12 The cohort model of spoken word recognition emphasizes:
Activation of candidate words as speech unfolds
Immediate understanding of whole sentences
Reading comprehension
Phonemic awareness
Explanation - The cohort model suggests that as each sound is heard, a set of possible words is activated and narrowed down until only one candidate matches the input.
Correct answer is: Activation of candidate words as speech unfolds
Q.13 The 'tip-of-the-tongue' phenomenon is an example of a problem in:
Word retrieval
Phoneme discrimination
Reading fluency
Sentence parsing
Explanation - The tip-of-the-tongue state occurs when a person temporarily cannot retrieve a known word, highlighting limits in lexical access.
Correct answer is: Word retrieval
Q.14 Which theory suggests that language comprehension involves both bottom-up and top-down processes?
Interactive Activation model
Cohort model
Dual-route model
Behaviorist theory
Explanation - The Interactive Activation model explains word recognition by combining bottom-up information from letters and top-down expectations from context.
Correct answer is: Interactive Activation model
Q.15 Which of the following is a morphologically complex word?
Unhappiness
Cat
Run
Dog
Explanation - A morphologically complex word is made up of multiple morphemes, like 'un-', 'happy', and '-ness' in 'unhappiness'.
Correct answer is: Unhappiness
Q.16 Pragmatics in language refers to:
The social use of language in context
Word meaning
Sentence structure
Phoneme discrimination
Explanation - Pragmatics studies how language is used appropriately in social situations, including implied meanings and conversational norms.
Correct answer is: The social use of language in context
Q.17 Eye-tracking studies in reading primarily help researchers understand:
Real-time processing of text
Word memorization
Phoneme production
Speech comprehension
Explanation - Eye-tracking measures where and for how long readers fixate, revealing the cognitive processes during reading and comprehension.
Correct answer is: Real-time processing of text
Q.18 The phenomenon where a word is easier to recognize after repeated exposure is called:
Repetition priming
Syntactic parsing
Categorical perception
Lexical ambiguity
Explanation - Repetition priming occurs when prior exposure to a word facilitates faster or more accurate recognition upon subsequent encounters.
Correct answer is: Repetition priming
Q.19 Which is an example of a function word?
The
Dog
Run
Happiness
Explanation - Function words (like 'the', 'and', 'of') serve grammatical purposes and do not carry substantial meaning on their own.
Correct answer is: The
Q.20 The term 'lexicon' in psycholinguistics refers to:
The mental dictionary of words
Sentence structure rules
Speech sounds
Social use of language
Explanation - The lexicon is a mental store containing information about words, including their meanings, pronunciations, and syntactic properties.
Correct answer is: The mental dictionary of words
Q.21 Garden-path sentences often demonstrate errors in:
Syntactic parsing
Word recognition
Phoneme categorization
Semantic memory
Explanation - Garden-path sentences mislead readers due to complex syntax, revealing how the brain parses sentence structure incrementally.
Correct answer is: Syntactic parsing
Q.22 Which task measures how quickly a person can recognize words?
Lexical decision task
Serial recall task
Stroop task
Categorical perception task
Explanation - The lexical decision task asks participants to distinguish words from non-words, measuring speed and accuracy of word recognition.
Correct answer is: Lexical decision task
Q.23 Which type of ambiguity involves multiple meanings of a word?
Lexical ambiguity
Syntactic ambiguity
Pragmatic ambiguity
Phonological ambiguity
Explanation - Lexical ambiguity occurs when a single word has more than one meaning, like 'bat' (animal) or 'bat' (sports equipment).
Correct answer is: Lexical ambiguity
Q.24 The mental process of mapping sounds onto meaning is called:
Speech perception
Syntactic parsing
Memory encoding
Lexical priming
Explanation - Speech perception involves interpreting acoustic signals (sounds) and associating them with linguistic meaning.
Correct answer is: Speech perception
Q.25 In connectionist models of language, knowledge is represented by:
Patterns of activation across units
Explicit rules only
Grammar trees
Dictionary entries
Explanation - Connectionist models represent language through distributed networks where knowledge emerges from patterns of activation rather than explicit rules.
Correct answer is: Patterns of activation across units