Dr. Zenzi Griffin
| |
|
|
Dr. Zenzi Griffin |
|
Research Courses |
Griffin, Z. M. (in press).The eyes are right when the mouth is wrong. Psychological Science. [preprint pdf] When describing visual scenes, speakers typically gaze at objects while preparing their names. To further study the relationship between eye movements and speech, a corpus of self-corrected speech errors was analyzed. If errors result from rushed word preparation, insufficient visual information, or failure to check prepared names against objects, speakers should spend less time gazing at referents before uttering errors than before correct names. Counter to predictions, gazes to referents before errors (e.g., an axe before saying "ham-" [hammer]) highly resembled gazes before correct names (“axe”). However, speakers gazed at referents for more time after initiating erroneous than correct names, apparently while they prepared corrections. Assuming that gaze nonetheless reflects word preparation, errors were not associated with insufficient preparation. Nor were errors systematically associated with decreased inspection of objects. Like gesture (McNeill, 1985), gaze may accurately reflect a speaker’s intentions even when the accompanying speech does not. Ferreira, V. S., & Griffin, Z.
M.
(2003). Phonological influences on lexical (mis)selection. Psychological
Science, 14, 86-90. Griffin, Z. M. (2002). Recency effects for meaning and form in word selection. Brain and Language, 80, 465-487. [preprint pdf] People often repeat recently used words. Three experiments examined the contribution of phonological availability to selecting words. Homophones such as week and weak were used to test whether word selection could be influenced by recent use of a word's phonological form albeit with a different meaning, as some interactive activation models of word production may predict. Across a range of time intervals, recent production of a homophone failed to significantly increase production of its twin as a sentence completion. However, speakers were significantly more likely to complete a sentence with an unambiguous word if they recently read or generated the word as a completion to a sentence. This increase in response probability was unaffected by word frequency. The results constrain the degree to which phonological availability or fedback activation between the lexical entries of homophones may effect lexical selection in spoken word production.. Griffin, Z. M., & Bock, K. (1998). Constraint, word frequency, and the relationship between lexical processing levels in spoken word production. Journalof Memory and Language,38, 313-338 . Producing a word to express a meaning requires the processes of lexical selection and phonological encoding. We argue that lexical selection is influenced by contextual constraint and phonological encoding by word frequency, and we use these variables to assess the processing relations between selection and encoding. In two experiments we examined latencies to name pictures presented within sentences. The sentences varied in degree of constraint, whereas the target picture-names varied in frequency. In both experiments, targets that followed constraining sentences showed substantially reduced frequency effects. When the targets followed incongruent sentence frames, the frequency effect returned. The results offer new support for the predictions of cascade theories of word production.
|
|