PSYCHOLINGUISTICS

The Comprehension of Sounds and

The Comprehension of Words
Abstract

The purpose of this essay is to explain about two parts of ‘Language

Comprehension’, those are ‘Comprehension of Sounds’ and ‘Comprehension of
Words’. In the beginning of this essay we’d like to introduce about the meaning of
comprehension itself that we need to learn in understanding the language. Then, the
explanation of Comprehension of sounds that consist of Phoneme Restoration Effect
which help people in recognize the first letter of the word that they can’t hear
properly, and there is VOT(Voice onset Timing) that help people in distinguish the
‘stop consonants’ words. Moreover, there is the explanation of the Comprehension of
Words that also include the Parallel Distributed Processing (PDP) which help people
to understand in spoken and written language, and it has two kinds of phenomenon;
those are the ‘tip-of-the-tongue’ that happened when we try to retrieve a word that we
think we know but we can’t recall the word at that moment, and ‘Bathtub Effect’
when we just able to remember the first or the last syllable of the words. From this
essay, we will able to understand more about the Language Comprehension and it
parts.

A. Introduction

Comprehension : Understanding what we hear and read

In learning language, we are able to know what the comprehension means is.
Comprehension understands what we hear and what we read. Language
comprehension appears to be a very simple and natural process for speakers, listeners
or readers. For instance, people make use of words in different ways depending on
communicative situations and their intentions. Consequently, the recipients of oral or
written speech must be able to differentiate between the nuances these words convey
and the discourse environment within which they are used, to be able to comprehend
the meaning and intent of any speech act (e.g., Searle 1969). In this paper, researcher
describes comprehension of sound and comprehension of words.
 The points are; comprehension is the power of understanding and also
Comprehension is not processed in a linear sequence. We process chunks of
information, not individual words and not meaning in isolation. So, in learning
language we need to comprehend not just knowing than we understand but we need
some others information to process.

B. Comprehension of Sounds.
1. Phoneme Restoration Effect.

Comprehension is not the passive recording of whatever is heard or

seen, listeners are not recorders even readers video camera which are simple
item-by-item analysis of words in a linear order that are able to record all
things accurately.

A great deal of information were used by listeners and speakers other

than actual language being produced to help them in making out the
linguistics symbol they hear and see. What we hear is effected by
psycholinguistics variables and is not just the precise insight of the order of
sounds or words that knock our ears.Phonemic restoration is a powerful
auditory illusion in which listeners "hear" parts of words that are not really
there.
This perceptual restoration effect clearly indicates that the sounds we hear are
not copies of physical sounds. Phonemic restoration effect is a perceptual
phenomenon where under certain conditions, sounds actually missing from a speech
signal can be restored by the brain and may appear to be heard. The effect occurs
when missing phonemes in an auditory signal are replaced with a masking noise,
resulting in the brain filling in absent phonemes. The effect can be so strong that
some listeners may not even notice that there are phonemes missing. This effect is
commonly observed in a conversation with heavy background noise, making it
difficult to properly hear every phoneme being spoken. Different factors can change
the strength of the effect, including age and gender.The phonemic restoration effect
involves two aspects, they are apparent continuity and increased intelligibility. The
former aspect is not restricted to speech. The apparent continuity of a sound disrupted
by an extraneous noise can be observed for various types of sounds, including
music[4], environmental sounds, and pure tones.
2. VOT (Voice onset Timing).

VOT is included in the comprehension of sounds; the example is when we

called someone’s name that has similar sounding names – ‘Penny’ and ‘Benny’. What
phonemic information that we can use to distinguish ‘Penny’ and ‘Benny’? And we
realize that these names have identical pronunciation except the initial consonant.

There is the main feature in English language that has been found by the
phoneticians which English speakers have, that use in distinguish those names, it
called ‘Voice Onset Timing (VOT)’ of that initial consonant. VOT is the brief burst
of air which precedes the articulation of all stop consonants. Provides phonetic
information listeners use to distinguish between sounds like [p] and [b], [p] is 50
millisecond (1/20 second) later than [b].

According to Wikipedia; VOT or Voice Onset Timing is the feature of the

production of ‘stop consonants’. Wikipedia also described that VOT is “the length of
time that passes between the release of a stop consonant and on set of voicing, the
vibration of the vocal folds, or, according to authors, periodicity”. Stop consonants
consist of eight phonemes—([t], [d]) or body, ([k], [g]) or lips, and ([p], [b]) or
glottis. Stop consonant is defined in Wikipedia as a consonant in which the vocal tract
is blocked so that all airflow ceases.

So we can say that; to differentiate those are phonemes in ‘stop consonants’,

English speakers may use ‘VOT or Voice onset timing’. According to categorical
perception of VOT; VOT is an ability that children are born with, but it is also
influenced by the linguistics environment where the children raised in. For example,
even the child is the native speaker of English but if he/she raised in non-English
speakers environment, it may influenced his/her ability in distinguish the stop
consonants or in using VOT. Then another example is, when that child is the non
native speaker, he/she may got some difficulties in differentiate those phonemes in
English and in his/her own mother tongue.

Moreover, for the language learners, whether the children who learn their first
language, or anyone who learn the second language; their ability in distinguish VOT
in stop consonant also influenced by their opportunities in hearing or speaking those
sounds and other sounds, and their real nature ability cause we know every person has
different ability in learning.

C. Comprehension of Words.

Parallel Distributed Processing (PDP):

• The representation of information is distributed (not local).

• Memory and knowledge are stored in the connections between units.

• Learning can occur with gradual changes in connection strength by

experience.

And there are two phenomenons that happened in PDP;

1. TOT (The-tip-of-the-tongue).
Tip of tongue that is called TOT phenomenon is we try to
retrieve a word we think we know, but we just cannot recall the word
at that moment. Consider the following example:
What's the name of that stuff I wanted to tell your mother to use? "
"Wait a second. I know."
"It's on the tip of my tongue," she said.
"Wait a second. I know."
 "You know the stuff I mean."
"The sleep stuff or the indigestion?"
"It's on the tip of my tongue."
"Wait a second. Wait a second. I know."
(Don DeLillo, Underworld, Scribner, 1997)
"You know, the actor guy! Oh, what is his name? See, the thing is, the
thing is, the thing is that when I say his name, you'll go, 'Yes! The
actor guy, love him, adore him.. .. 'But I can not think of his name. It's
on the tip of my tongue. You know who I mean. He's got the hair, the
eyes, a bit of a nose, and a mouth, and it's all held together with, like, a
face! "(Frank Woodley, The Adventures of Lano & Woodley, 1997).
According to Wikipedia Tip of the tongue (or TOT) is the
phenomenon of failing to retrieve a word from memory, combined
with partial recall and the feeling that retrieval is imminent. The
phenomenon's name comes from the saying, "It's on the tip of my
tongue." The tip of the tongue phenomenon reveals that lexical access
occurs in stages.
Then, The cause of this is unknown but possibilities include
using a different retrieval strategy when having an emotional TOT
experience rather than a non-emotional TOT experience, fluency at the
time of retrieval, and strength of memory and an occasional tip-of-the-
tongue state is normal for people of all ages. TOT becomes more
frequent as people age. TOT is only a medical condition when it
becomes frequent enough to interfere with learning or daily life. This
disorder is called anomic aphasia when acquired by brain damage,
usually from a head injury, stroke, or dementia.
2. Bath-tub Effect.

Prestidigitation—Pretension—Presbyterian—predilection
 These words are somewhat good matches. The TOT words we are
trying to memorize which is ended by –ion’ sound like the lexes above.
Regularly, we have fuzzy recalls of the beginning and ending of the words
and seemly missing the middle one, which is what we call Bathtub effect.

For instance, when we have a conversation with our friends and we are
supposed to tell them about it. Unfortunately, our brain is able to remember
the last or the first sound only, like:

“What is that? I forget the street, but it contains ‘sih’ in the end = cendrawa-sih”

“They have been there, what they said just now, on jalan ‘panjat’ what yaa? I can’t
remember the rest = panjat = panjai-tan”.

Then, why this kind of occurrence is called Bathtub effect? What is the
relevant between words and bathtub effect itself?

The bathtub effect is perhaps most commonly finding in the literature

on memory for words. People remember the beginning and end of words
better than the middles, as if the word person lying in a bathtub, with their
head out of the water at one and their feet out at the other. Just as in a bathtub
the head is further out of the water and more prominent than the feet. So, the
beginning of words is easily to be remembered rather than the ends.

In malaprorism-cases in which a similar sounding word has been

wrongly picked as in cylinders for ‘syllables’, anecdote for ‘antidote’,
facilities for ‘faculties’ the effect is even deeper. (Jean Aitchison, Words in
the Mind: An Introduction to the Mental Lexicon, 4th ed. John Wiley & Sons,
2012)

Certain position in words (initial, final) are more ‘salient’ as are

positions such us the beginning and the end of the sentence. The consequence
 is the so-called bathtub effect (based on the speaker will easily to remember
the beginning and the ends of words…) Rhyme is affected by this truth.
Alliteration in English has been claimed to be the mark of identical syllable
onsets in word initial position and not of mere sound repetition anywhere in
the utterance.

The direct result of this fact is that sound differences placed in initial
or final positions should be weighted heavier than the sound differences
placed in medial positions. (Salvatore Attardo, Linguistic Theories of Humor.
Water de Grutyer, 1994)

Since, we can only remember the first or the last sound of words, sure it is
between bottom and up.

PREDILECTIONterm is the one example we can figure out. Pre=Up,

dilect=Middle, ion=Bottom

So that is why those circumstances called Bathtub Effect in Psycholinguistics.

D. Conclusion.

So, in learning the language, we need more than just understanding; we need
to comprehend. Comprehension in language learning means more. Comprehension is
not the passive recording of whatever is heard or seen, comprehension is the power of
understanding and also Comprehension is not processed in a linear sequence. We
process chunks of information, not individual words and not meaning in isolation.

In the process of comprehend the sounds and words, we found some

phenomenon that has been described above. The Comprehension of sounds that
consist of Phoneme Restoration Effect which help people in recognize the first letter
of the word that they can’t hear properly, and there is VOT(Voice onset Timing) that
help people in distinguish the ‘stop consonants’ words. than, there is the explanation
of the Comprehension of Words that also include the Parallel Distributed Processing
(PDP) which help people to understand in spoken and written language, and it has
two kinds of phenomenon; those are the ‘tip-of-the-tongue’ that happened when we
try to retrieve a word that we think we know but we can’t recall the word at that
moment, and ‘Bathtub Effect’ when we just able to remember the first or the last
syllable of the words.
 References

Aitchison, Jean. (2012). Words in the Mind: An Introduction to the Mental Lexicon,
4th ed. John Wiley & Sons. grammar.about.com

Attardo, Salvatore. (1994). Linguistic Theories of Humor. Water de Grutyer.

grammar.about.com

Nordquist, Richard. (2014). tip-of-the-tongue phenomenon (TOT).

http://grammar.about.com/od/tz/g/tipofthetongueterm.ht
m

Scovel, Thomas. (nd.). Psycholinguistics. In H.G.Widdowson Editor(1994). Oxford,

UK: Oxford University Press

Wikipedia. (2016, September 02). Stop consonant.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stop_consonant

Wikipedia. (2016, December 31). Tip of the tongue.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tip-of-the-tongue

Wikipedia. (2016, July 26). Voice-onset time. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voice-

onset_time