Use of verb information in syntactic parsing: Evidence from eye movements and word-by-word self-paced reading.

We investigated whether readers use verb information to aid in their initial parsing of temporarily ambiguous sentences. In the first experiment, subjects' eye movements were recorded. In the second and third experiments, subjects read sentences by using a noncumulative and cumulative word-by-word self-paced paradigm, respectively. The results of the first two experiments supported L. Frazier and K. Rayner's (see record 1982-20309-001) garden-path model of sentence comprehension: Verb information did not influence the initial operation of the parser. The third experiment indicated that the cumulative version of the self-paced paradigm is not appropriate for studying on-line parsing. We conclude that verb information is not used by the parser to modify its initial parsing strategies, although it may be used to guide subsequent reanalysis. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The effects of plausibility on the learning of controversial statements.

"Two closely related experiments were conducted to test the following hypotheses: (a) prosegregation Ss learn plausible prosegregation and implausible antisegregation statements with less difficulty than they learn plausible antisegregation and implausible prosegregation statements; (b) the reverse is true of the antisegregation Ss; and (c) those with neutral or intermediate beliefs learn all types of statements equally well. Each hypothesis was confirmed." 20 references. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Shared syntactic representations in bilinguals: Evidence for the role of word-order repetition.

Studies on syntactic priming strongly suggest that bilinguals can store a single integrated representation of constructions that are similar in both languages (e.g., Spanish and English passives; R. J. Hartsuiker, M. J. Pickering, & E. Veltkamp, 2004). However, they may store 2 separate representations of constructions that involve different word orders (e.g., German and English passives; H. Loebell & K. Bock, 2003). In 5 experiments, the authors investigated within- and between-languages priming of Dutch, English, and German relative clauses. The authors found priming within Dutch (Experiment 1) and within English as a 2nd language (Experiments 2 and 4). An important finding is that priming occurred from Dutch to German (Experiment 5), which both have verb-final relative clauses; but it did not occur between Dutch and English (Experiments 3 and 4), which differ in relative-clause word order. The results suggest that word-order repetition is needed for the construction of integrated syntactic representations. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Emergence of action categories in the child: Evidence from verb meanings.

In adults, action categories encompass 2 kinds of instances: self-action and observed action. This article proposes a model of how adult action categories emerge in children whose early categories are specific to self- or observed action. The model posits that these categories are extended to encompass both kinds of instances as children develop the ability to note parallels between themselves and others as initiators of action. For adults, these parallels involve goals, causal efficacy, and movement. It is argued that parallels involving movement, which are directly observable, would be noted first and that parallels involving causes and goals, which are not directly observable and require inferences about internal states of other people, would be noted only later. Three studies of children's verb meanings were carried out to examine the development of action categories and to evaluate the proposed model. 103 preschoolers served as Ss. Findings show that verbs first encode children's own actions and only later encode the observed actions of other people. Further, verbs that encode characteristic movements (e.g., "walk") are extended to encompass observed action earlier than verbs that encode change (e.g., "open"), supporting the proposed model. (28 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Word recognition and syntactic attachment in reading: Evidence for a staged architecture.

In 3 experiments, the author examined how readers' eye movements are influenced by joint manipulations of a word's frequency and the syntactic fit of the word in its context. In the critical conditions of the first 2 experiments, a high- or low-frequency verb was used to disambiguate a garden-path sentence, while in the last experiment, a high- or low-frequency verb constituted a phrase structure violation. The frequency manipulation always influenced the early eye movement measures of first-fixation duration and gaze duration. The context manipulation had a delayed effect in Experiment 1, influencing only the probability of a regressive eye movement from later in the sentence. However, the context manipulation influenced the same early eye movement measures as the frequency effect in Experiments 2 and 3, though there was no statistical interaction between the effects of these variables. The context manipulation also influenced the probability of a regressive eye movement from the verb, though the frequency manipulation did not. These results are shown to confirm predictions emerging from the serial, staged architecture for lexical and integrative processing of the E–Z Reader 10 model of eye movement control in reading (Reichle, Warren, & McConnell, 2009). It is argued, more generally, that the results provide an important constraint on how the relationship between visual word recognition and syntactic attachment is treated in processing models. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Responses to anomalous gestural sequences by a language-trained dolphin: Evidence for processing of semantic relations and syntactic information.

Examined the responses of a bottlenosed dolphin (Tursiops truncatus) to "normal" (semantically and syntactically correct) sequences of gestures and to anomalous sequences given within an artificial gestural language highly familiar to the animal. Anomalous sequences violated the semantic rules or syntactic constraints of the language. The dolphin discriminated anomalous from normal sequences in that rejections (refusals to respond) occurred to some anomalous sequences but never to normal sequences. Rejections rarely occurred, however, if the anomalous sequence contained a subset of gestures that would comprise a normal unit if joined together. Such units were typically perceived by the dolphin and responded to even if they consisted of gestures that were not sequentially adjacent. All semantic elements of a sequence were processed by the dolphin in relation to other elements before the dolphin organized its final response. The results show the importance of both semantic properties and semantic relations of the referents of the gestures and of syntactic (ordering) constraints in the dolphin's interpretations of the anomalies. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Brain potentials elicited by garden-path sentences: Evidence of the application of verb information during parsing.

Event-related potentials were recorded from 13 scalp locations while participants read sentences containing a syntactic ambiguity. In Exp 1, syntactically disambiguating words that were inconsistent with the "favored" syntactic analysis elicited a positive-going brain potential (P600). Exp 2 examined whether syntactic ambiguities are resolved by application of a phrase-structure-based minimal attachment principle or by word-specific subcategorization information. P600 amplitude was a function of subcategorization biases rather than syntactic complexity. These findings indicate that such biases exist and can influence the parser under certain conditions and that P600 amplitude is a function of the perceived syntactic well-formedness of the sentence. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Transitions in learning: Evidence for simultaneously activated strategies.

Children in transition with respect to a concept, when asked to explain that concept, often convey one strategy in speech and a different one in gesture. Are both strategies activated when that child solves problems instantiating the concept? While solving a math task, discordant children (who produced different strategies in gesture and speech on a pretest) and concordant children (who produced a single strategy) were given a word recall task. All of the children solved the math task incorrectly. However, if discordant children are activating 2 strategies to arrive at these incorrect solutions, they should expend more effort on this task than concordant children, and consequently have less capacity left over for word-recall and perform less well on it. This prediction was confirmed, suggesting that the transitional state is characterized by dual representations, both of which are activated when attempting to explain or solve a problem. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The time course of plausibility effects on eye movements in reading: Evidence from noun-noun compounds.

Readers' eye movements were monitored as they read sentences containing noun-noun compounds that varied in frequency (e.g., elevator mechanic, mountain lion). The left constituent of the compound was either plausible or implausible as a head noun at the point at which it appeared, whereas the compound as a whole was always plausible. When the head noun analysis of the left constituent was implausible, reading times on this word were inflated, beginning with the first fixation. This finding is consistent with previous demonstrations of very rapid effects of plausibility on eye movements. Compound frequency did not modulate the plausibility effect, and all disruption was resolved by the time readers' eyes moved to the next word. These findings suggest (contra Kennison, 2005) that the parser initially analyzes a singular noun as a head instead of a modifier. In addition, the findings confirm that the very rapid effect of plausibility on eye movements is not due to strategic factors, because in the present experiment, unlike in previous demonstrations, this effect appeared in sentences that were globally plausible. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

On consciousness in syntactic learning and judgment: A reply to Reber, Allen, and Regan.

Responds to comments by A. S. Reber et al (see record 1986-03030-001) on the present authors' (see record 1985-29949-001) analysis of consciousness and abstraction in the case of syntactical learning and judgment. The methodological criticism of Reber et al is rejected, and it is asserted that assessment at the moment of judgment rather than recall maximizes the validity of reports of rules in consciousness at many moments of judgment. Broader issues discussed include judgment after early learning and after automatization, correlated grammars and consciousness, the scope and mental abstractness of rules, conscious and unconscious control, and intuition. (35 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

When is it best to hear a verb? The effects of the timing and focus of verb models on children''s learning of verbs

Recent neurophysiological studies of the saccadic ocular motor system have lent support to the hypothesis that this system uses a motor error signal in retinotopic coordinates to direct saccades to both visual and auditory targets. With visual targets, the coordinates of the sensory and motor error signals will be identical unless the eyes move between the time of target presentation and the time of saccade onset. However, targets from other modalities must undergo different sensory-motor transformations to access the same motor error map. Because auditory targets are initially localized in head-centered coordinates, analyzing the metrics of saccades from different starting positions allows a determination of whether the coordinates of the motor signals are those of the sensory system. We studied six human subjects who made saccades to visual or auditory targets from a central fixation point or from one at 10 degrees to the right or left of the midline of the head. Although the latencies of saccades to visual targets increased as stimulus eccentricity increased, the latencies of saccades to auditory targets decreased as stimulus eccentricity increased. The longest auditory latencies were for the smallest values of motor error (the difference between target position and fixation eye position) or desired saccade size, regardless of the position of the auditory target relative to the head or the amplitude of the executed saccade. Similarly, differences in initial eye position did not affect the accuracy of saccades of the same desired size. When saccadic error was plotted as a function of motor error, the curves obtained at the different fixation positions overlapped completely. Thus, saccadic programs in the central nervous system compensated for eye position regardless of the modality of the saccade target, supporting the hypothesis that the saccadic ocular motor system uses motor error signals to direct saccades to auditory targets.     

In defense of "bootstrapping": Erratum.

Reports an error in the original article by R. M. Dawes (American Psychologist, 1972[Aug], Vol 27[8], 773-774). On page 774, the following statement appeared: "Rather than ignore this finding, I used it to illustrate the very first principle I discussed: that linear composites based on paramorphic representations are superior to those based on actuarial analysis". The statement should read: "Rather than ignore this finding, I used it to illustrate the very first principle I discussed: that linear composites based on actuarial predictions are superior to clinical judgments when both are based on the same codable input. Nowhere in the article did I state or imply that linear composites based on paramorphic representations are superior to those based on actuarial analysis". (The following abstract of this article originally appeared in record 1990-56997-001.) Responds to A. G. Weinstein's (1972) comments on R. M. Dawes's (see record 1971-25701-001) findings supporting "bootstrapping" in Dawes's study of graduate admissions. Bootstrapping can be used when actuarial analysis is impossible (e.g., criterion information is lacking or unavailable until after decisions are made). It is not implied that linear composites based on paramorphic representations are superior to those based on actuarial analysis. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Effects of lexical frequency and syntactic complexity in spoken-language comprehension: Evidence from the auditory moving-window technique.

In 2 experiments, a new technique called the auditory moving window was used to investigate aspects of spoken-language processing. Participants paced their way through spoken sentences divided into word or wordlike segments, and their processing time for each segment was recorded. The 1st experiment demonstrated that high-frequency words in spoken sentences require less time to process than do low-frequency words. The 2nd experiment demonstrated that words in syntactically demanding contexts (i.e., the disambiguating word of so-called garden-path sentences) are processed longer than the same words in syntactically simpler contexts. Helpful prosodic information appeared to facilitate reanalysis of garden-path structures but did not seem to prevent the misanalysis. The implications of these findings for issues in spoken-language comprehension are discussed. The authors conclude that the auditory moving-window technique provides a useful tool for addressing largely unexplored issues in spoken-language comprehension. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Exploring cerebral asymmetries for the verb generation task.

This study investigated potential right hemisphere involvement in the verb generation task. Six divided visual field experiments explored cerebral asymmetries for word retrieval in the verb generation task as well as in rhyme generation and immediate and delayed word pronunciation. The typical right visual field/left hemisphere (RVF/LH) advantage was observed for pronunciation and rhyme generation. For verb generation, the RVF/LH advantage was obtained only when stimulus items had a single prepotent response and not when there were multiple response alternatives. A semantic priming experiment suggested that activation for less common, related verbs was maintained for a longer time course within the right than within the left hemisphere. The authors suggest that the right hemisphere may play a role in continued activation of semantically related response alternatives in word generation and discuss methodological implications of their findings. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Absolute pitch in infant auditory learning: Evidence for developmental reorganization.

To what extent do infants represent the absolute pitches of complex auditory stimuli? Two experiments with 8-month-old infants examined the use of absolute and relative pitch cues in a tone-sequence statistical learning task. The results suggest that, given unsegmented stimuli that do not conform to the rules of musical composition, infants are more likely to track patterns of absolute pitches than of relative pitches. A 3rd experiment tested adults with or without musical training on the same statistical learning tasks used in the infant experiments. Unlike the infants, adult listeners relied primarily on relative pitch cues. These results suggest a shift from an initial focus on absolute pitch to the eventual dominance of relative pitch, which, it is argued, is more useful for both music and speech processing. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Spatial attention and implicit sequence learning: Evidence for independent learning of spatial and nonspatial sequences.

This research investigated whether regular spatial orienting sequences can be learned implicitly and independently of response requirements. In a new version of a serial response task introduced by M. J. Nissen and P. Bullemer (1987) participants had to discriminate between objects that could occur at different locations. Independent sequences determined the succession of locations and objects. Even participants who were not aware of any regularities exhibited evidence for learning of both sequences (Experiment 1). Experiment 2 showed that the joint learning of spatial and object sequences was as efficient as learning of single sequences and that it even occurred when learning required memory for past sequence elements and attention was blocked through a secondary tone-counting task. Results are consistent with the idea that independent systems may exist for the implicit acquisition of spatial and nonspatial regularities. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

From conceptual roles to structural relations: Bridging the syntactic cleft.

The distinction between underlying and superficial linguistic structure is a staple of modern cognitive psychology. Despite increasingly diverse conceptions of syntactic relations in linguistic theory, the received view in psycholinguistics has remained one in which the entities assigned to underlying relations may assume different surface relations. This view is examined in the context of language production and evidence is reviewed that the disposition to bind animate entities to the surface subject relation is a basic feature of language use, suggesting that mappings from conceptual categories to syntactic relations form a main support of the bridge from conception to language. Proceeding on this assumption, an evaluation of competing accounts of the mapping process in production is given. Results argue against syntactic relation-changing operations, but favor a division between meaning- and form-related mechanisms. (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 syntactic complexity effect with visual patterns: evidence for the syntactic nature of the memory representation

In a series of 3 experiments, participants learned visual patterns that contained the same number of visual features but varied in the complexity of the interrelations among the features. The results indicate a large and orderly effect of the pattern's syntactic complexity on recognition speed. Evidence is provided that this effect was not due to physical characteristics, target-foil similarity, speed-accuracy trade-off, or level of pattern learning. A multiple-encoding explanation of the effect is described. According to this framework, there is an initial, automatically generated encoding of the pattern as a short-term pictorial representation that becomes the basis for the construction of a second syntactic-propositional encoding. In this model, the participant's "sense of familiarity" for a particular stimulus is associated only with the syntactic-propositional encoding.