Investigating differences in general comprehension skill.

For adults, skill at comprehending written language correlates highly with skill at comprehending spoken language. Does this general comprehension skill extend beyond language-based modalities? And if it does, what cognitive processes and mechanisms differentiate individuals who are more versus less proficient in general comprehension skill? In our first experiment, we found that skill in comprehending written and auditory stories correlates highly with skill in comprehending nonverbal, picture stories. This finding supports the hypothesis that general comprehension skill extends beyond language. We also found support for the hypotheses that poorer access to recently comprehended information marks less proficient general comprehension skill (Experiment 2) because less skilled comprehenders develop too many mental substructures during comprehension (Experiment 3), perhaps because they inefficiently suppress irrelevant information (Experiment 4). Thus, the cognitive processes and mechanisms involved in capturing and representing the structure of comprehensible information provide one source of individual differences in general comprehension skill. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Measurement of narrative discourse ability in children with language disorders

Narratives from three studies differing in subject pools, elicitation procedures, and story content were analyzed using seven variables hypothesized to measure a variety of language abilities used in narrative production. Two questions were addressed: (a) To what extent did multiple variables represent common factors? and (b) To what extent did these variables distinguish children with language disorder from their nondisordered peers? Results indicated that: (a) The seven variables represented two factors; Factor I measured global organization of content (i.e., episode structure), and Factor II measured within- and across-sentence structure (i.e., grammatical sentence structure, within subordinate clause productivity, and textual cohesion), and (b) regardless of study, only the variables representing Factor II were selected as the most effective in predicting group membership.     

Prosodic influences on the resolution of temporary ambiguity during on-line sentence processing

We present three experiments designed to investigate the role of prosody during sentence processing. The first investigated the question of whether an utterance's prosodic contour influences its comprehension on-line. We spliced the beginning and end portions of direct object and embedded clause sentences and observed the consequent effects on comprehension using a dual-task procedure to measure processing load. Our second experiment sought to determine whether the constituent structure of these sentences could be reliably predicted using prosodic information. We found that the duration and F0 contour associated with the main-clause verb and the following NP reliably distinguished between the direct object and embedded clause constructions. In the final experiment, we manipulated the duration of the main-clause verb and found that subjects used this information to guide their initial parse during on-line sentence comprehension. The need for a model of sentence processing that addresses the use of prosodic information is discussed.     

Information processing speed and sentence comprehension in Parkinson's disease.

This study tests the hypothesis that sentence comprehension difficulty in Parkinson's disease (PD) is related in part to altered information processing speed that plays a crucial role in grammatical processing. The authors measured information processing speed in 32 PD patients without dementia using a lexical list-priming paradigm in which the interstimulus interval (ISI) between the prime and the target varied. Sentence comprehension accuracy was also assessed in 22 of these patients. Sentence comprehension accuracy for object-relative center-embedded sentences was impaired in a subgroup of PD patients. This subgroup of PD patients primed at an abnormally long ISI. Similarly, only PD patients who primed at a long ISI had greater difficulty understanding sentences with an object-relative clause than a subject-relative clause. Findings suggest that slowed information processing speed contributes to sentence comprehension difficulty in PD. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Effects of explicitness, clause order, and reversibility on children's comprehension of causal relationships.

Three experiments investigated possible age- and ability-related differences in the effects of explicitness, reversibility, and clause order on children's comprehension of causal relationships. Ss were 80 3rd graders, 156 5th graders, and 156 8th graders. At each grade level, Ss of all ability levels read passages containing reversible and irreversible relationships in 1 of 4 experimental formats: explicit with normal clause order, explicit with reversed clause order, implicit with normal clause order, and implicit with reversed clause order. Each passage was followed by a set of prompted-recall questions designed to measure comprehension of the causal relationships. Significant effects for reversibility were found at all 3 grade levels. Significant efects for explicitness were found for the 5th- and 8th-grade samples only. Significant effects for clause order were found for the 3rd- and 5th-grade samples only, with comprehension scores being significantly higher for the groups reading the relationships in the reversed clause order. No significant interactions with ability were found. It is concluded that further research should examine the exact compensatory strategies used by readers when connective comprehension is difficult. (25 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Secondary metabolites play primary roles in human affairs

Three hypotheses concerning the functional source of aphasic patients' difficulty comprehending semantically reversible sentences were tested using declarative sentences in active and passive voice and sentences with center-embedded relative clauses. Each of the three hypotheses is predicated on relative patterns of impairment and sparing of patient performance on these (and other) sentence types, yet the three hypotheses make somewhat different predictions about performance patterns across these types. Results from 5 Broca's aphasic patients were not consistent with the predictions of the linguistically motivated Trace Deletion Hypothesis or of a hypothesis based on an impairment involving grammatical morphemes. The hypothesis that aphasic comprehension impairments reflect a general limitation of working memory capacity was given partial support by the ordinal pattern of difficulty for a mixed group of 10 patients, but failed to account for patterns obtained from individual patients. Results are interpreted as having relevance for methodological as well as theoretical aspects of research on aphasic sentence comprehension.     

Processing narrative time shifts.

This study examined how the chronological distance between 2 consecutively narrated story events affects the on-line comprehension and mental representation of these events. College students read short narrative passages from a computer screen and responded to recognition probes. The results of 4 experiments consistently demonstrated that readers used temporal information to construct situation models while comprehending narratives. First, sentence reading times increased when there was a narrative time shift (e.g., as denoted by an hour later) as opposed to when there was no narrative time shift (e.g., as denoted by a moment later). Second, information from the previously narrated event was less accessible when it was followed by a time shift than when it was not. Third, 2 events that were separated by a narrative time shift were less strongly connected in long-term memory than 2 events that were not separated by a narrative time shift. The results suggest that readers use a strong iconicity assumption during story comprehension. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Seeing, acting, understanding: Motor resonance in language comprehension.

Observing actions and understanding sentences about actions activates corresponding motor processes in the observer-comprehender. In 5 experiments, the authors addressed 2 novel questions regarding language-based motor resonance. The 1st question asks whether visual motion that is associated with an action produces motor resonance in sentence comprehension. The 2nd question asks whether motor resonance is modulated during sentence comprehension. The authors' experiments provide an affirmative response to both questions. A rotating visual stimulus affects both actual manual rotation and the comprehension of manual rotation sentences. Motor resonance is modulated by the linguistic input and is a rather immediate and localized phenomenon. The results are discussed in the context of theories of action observation and mental simulation. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Plausibility and recovery from garden paths: An eye-tracking study.

Three eye-tracking experiments investigated plausibility effects on recovery from misanalysis in sentence comprehension. On the initially favored analysis, a noun phrase served as the object of the preceding verb. On the ultimately correct analysis, it served as the subject of a main clause in Experiments 1 and 3 and of a complement clause in Experiment 2. If the object analysis was implausible, disruption occurred during processing of the noun phrase. If it was plausible, disruption occurred after disambiguation. In Experiment 3, discourse context affected plausibility of the initial analysis and subsequent reanalysis. The authors argue that readers performed substantial semantic processing on the initial analysis and committed strongly when it was plausible. Experiment 3 showed that these effects were not due to selectional restrictions or word co-occurrences and that the interpretation of the target sentence was not computed in isolation. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Younger and older adults' on-line processing of syntactically ambiguous sentences.

Off-line studies of younger and older adults' processing of syntactically complex sentences have shown that there is a consistent negative relationship between task performance and working memory for older adults. However, it is not evident from these studies whether working memory affects the immediate syntactic analysis of a sentence, off-line processes, or both. In the current study an on-line reading paradigm was used to examine the working memory capacity-constrained sentence processing model from M. C. MacDonald, M. A. Just, and P. A. Carpenter (1992). Working memory span, type of syntactic ambiguity (ambiguous vs. unambiguous), and type of syntactic ambiguity resolution (main verb vs. relative clause) interacted to influence younger and older adults' on-line reading times and off-line sentence comprehension. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

The levels of main urinary metabolite of prostaglandin F1alpha and F2alpha in human subjects measured by radioimmunoassay

Previous researchers have suggested that TMR children lack the competence to process negation. Questions about the appropriateness of using reversible sentences to test comprehension and observations on TMR children's imitative processing of simple affirmative and negative sentences led to an experimental reexamination of the earlier findings. Institutionalized students ranging in age from 10 to 21 years with a mean IQ of 30 were asked to evaluate 16 picture pairs, 8 each for nonreversible and reversible sentences. Nonreversible sentences, both positive and negative, were interpreted correctly more often than reversible sentences. There was a significant correlation between comprehension and mental age. The results were interpreted as substantiating the adverse effect of sentence reversibility on comprehension and as evidence for the position that retarded children develop basic grammatical structures including negation at a relatively late age, but in normal interrelationship and sequence with other language and cognitive abilities.     

Comprehension of grammatical and emotional prosody is impaired in Alzheimer's disease.

Previous research has demonstrated impairment in comprehension of emotional prosody in individuals diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease (AD). The present pilot study further explored the prosodic processing impairment in AD, aiming to extend our knowledge to encompass both grammatical and emotional prosody processing. As expected, impairments were seen in emotional prosody. AD individuals were also found to be impaired in detecting sentence modality, suggesting that impairments in affective prosody processing in AD may be ascribed to a more general prosodic processing impairment, specifically in comprehending prosodic information signaled across the sentence level. AD participants were at a very mild stage of the disease, suggesting that prosody impairments occur early in the disease course. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Syntactic analysis during language comprehension.

Recent research has demonstrated the psychological reality of syntactic structure in language comprehension. A syntactic structure is a representation of the linear and hierarchical relations among words. It is proposed that such a structure must be created and then semantically interpreted in order for a listener or reader to understand a sentence. Some psychologists have claimed that comprehenders do not rely on purely syntactic strategies to parse sentences; instead, comprehenders use a variety of semantic heuristics and bypass syntactic analysis altogether. Work that my colleagues and I have conducted suggests that comprehenders do use syntactic strategies to parse sentences. In particular, evidence shows that comprehenders attempt to construct the simplest syntactic structure possible, and only revise that interpretation if the sentence becomes syntactically or semantically anomalous. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Semantic priming during sentence processing by young and older adults.

Examined semantic processing of sentences by 30 younger (mean age 25.1 yrs) and 30 older (mean age 68.5 yrs) adults, using a priming technique. Ss read a sentence and then made a lexical decision about a target presented immediately after the sentence. For both age groups, word targets that were instruments implied by the action of the sentence had faster latencies than unrelated word targets. There was no evidence of inhibition of unrelated targets, suggesting that the facilitation of instrument targets involved automatic processes. Results provide no evidence for age-related changes in semantic processing of sentences, including access to implied information. Older Ss did, however, have poorer memory for the sentences on a recognition test. It is suggested that previous findings by G. Cohen (see PA, Vols 63:747 and 67:958) of age deficits in comprehension may depend on techniques that measure what is remembered rather than what is understood. (35 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Effects of age, speed of processing, and working memory on comprehension of sentences with relative clauses.

Two hundred participants, 50 in each of four age ranges (19–29, 30–49, 50–69, 70–90) were tested for working memory, speed of processing, and the processing of sentences with relative clauses. In Experiment 1, participants read four sentence types (cleft subject, cleft object, subject-subject, subject-object) in a word-by-word, non-cumulative, self-paced reading task and made speeded plausibility judgments about them. In Experiment 2, participants read two types of sentences, one of which contained a doubly center embedded relative clause. Older participants' comprehension was less accurate and there was age-related slowing of online processing times in all but the simplest sentences, which increased in syntactically complex sentences in Experiment 1. This pattern suggests an age-related decrease in the efficiency of parsing and interpretation. Slower speed of processing and lower working memory were associated with longer online processing times only in Experiment 2, suggesting that task-related operations are related to general speed of processing and working memory. Lower working memory was not associated with longer reading times in more complex sentences, consistent with the view that general working memory is not critically involved in online syntactic processing. Longer online processing at the most demanding point in the most demanding sentence was associated with better comprehension, indicating that it reflects effective processing under some certain circumstances. However, the poorer comprehension performance of older individuals indicates that their slower online processing reflects inefficient processing even at these points. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Similarity-based interference during language comprehension: Evidence from eye tracking during reading.

The nature of working memory operation during complex sentence comprehension was studied by means of eye-tracking methodology. Readers had difficulty when the syntax of a sentence required them to hold 2 similar noun phrases (NPs) in working memory before syntactically and semantically integrating either of the NPs with a verb. In sentence structures that placed these NPs at the same linear distances from one another but allowed integration with a verb for 1 of the NPs, the comprehension difficulty was not seen. These results are interpreted as indicating that similarity-based interference occurs online during the comprehension of complex sentences and that the degree of memory accessibility conventionally associated with different types of NPs does not have a strong effect on sentence processing. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Temporal order relations in language comprehension.

The role of temporal orientation (chronological or reverse) and chronological distance (close, intermediate, or distant) in general event knowledge on language comprehension was examined. Experiment 1 used a relation-recognition paradigm in which the comprehension of a target event could be facilitated or disrupted by the temporal orientation implied by the prior information. Experiments 2 and 3 used a sentence-probe-recognition paradigm in which the temporal orientation, the stimulus onset asynchrony, and the chronological distance between the sentence event and the probe event were manipulated, The results demonstrated that readers used temporal information conveyed by their knowledge to construct situation models while comprehending sentences. The internal temporal dimension appeared to be directional and reflected the chronological distance between everyday events. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Sensitivity to syntactic structure: Good versus poor premorbid schizophrenics.

24 16-35 yr old acute schizophrenics with either good or poor premorbid histories were compared with control groups of 24 undergraduates and 12 6th-grade children on their sensitivity to syntactic structure in speech perception. Ss listened to strings of unconnected words, sentences with clicks embedded before, in, or after a clause break, and a passage of connected discourse that was interrupted at specific intervals after either a l- or 2-clause sentence. During designated test pauses they wrote down as many words as they could recall and indicated the location of the click in the sentences. The schizophrenics showed poor overall recall but did not differ from the control groups in the proportion of recall attributable to syntactic structure. (33 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

A cross-linguistic study of grammatical morphology in Spanish- and English-speaking agrammatic patients

To account for cross-linguistic differences in agrammatism, Bates and her colleagues have employed the Competition Model, proposing that the cue validity and cue costs of a grammatical morpheme in a particular language will directly affect how agrammatism is manifested. Using Goodglass et al.'s (1993) Morphosyntax Battery in English and a translated version in Spanish, we analyzed the use of equivalent grammatical structures in production and comprehension by agrammatic speakers of the two languages. Wilcoxon signed-rank tests revealed that the relative order of difficulty in both production and comprehension of various grammatical morphemes was the same for both Spanish- and English-speaking agrammatic patients, with two exceptions (1) the Spanish-speaking agrammatics were relatively better at producing subject-verb agreement, and (2) the Spanish speakers were significantly worse at comprehending both active and passive voice sentences. The Competition Model can explain the performance differences regarding subject-verb agreement and comprehension of active voice sentences, but it cannot account for the differences seen in comprehending passive voice sentences.