Visual word recognition is a process that, both hierarchically and in parallel, draws on different types of information ranging from perceptual to orthographic to semantic. A central question concerns when and how these different types of information come online and interact after a word form is initially perceived. Numerous studies addressing aspects of this question have been conducted with a variety of techniques [e. g., behaviour, eye-tracking, event-related potentials (ERPs)], and divergent theoretical models, suggesting different overall speeds of word processing, have coalesced around clusters of mostly method-specific results. Here, we examine the time course of influence of variables ranging from relatively perceptual (e. g., bigram frequency) to relatively semantic (e. g., the number of lexical associates) on ERP responses, analysed at the single-item level. Our results, in combination with a critical review of the literature, suggest methodological, analytic and theoretical factors that may have led to inconsistency in results of past studies; we will argue that consideration of these factors may lead to a reconciliation between divergent views of the speed of word recognition.
Speech is typically a multimodal phenomenon, yet few studies have focused on the exclusive contributions of visual cues to language acquisition. To address this gap, we investigated whether visual prosodic information can facilitate speech segmentation. Previous research has demonstrated that language learners can use lexical stress and pitch cues to segment speech and that learners can extract this information from talking faces. Thus, we created an artificial speech stream that contained minimal segmentation cues and paired it with two synchronous facial displays in which visual prosody was either informative or uninformative for identifying word boundaries. Across three familiarisation conditions (audio stream alone, facial streams alone, and paired audiovisual), learning occurred only when the facial displays were informative to word boundaries, suggesting that facial cues can help learners solve the early challenges of language acquisition.
Most theories of coreference specify linguistic factors that modulate antecedent accessibility in memory; however, whether nonlinguistic factors also affect coreferential access is unknown. Here we examined the impact of a nonlinguistic generation task (letter-transposition) on the repeated-name penalty, a processing difficulty observed when coreferential repeated names refer to syntactically prominent (and thus more accessible) antecedents. In Experiment 1, generation improved online (event-related potentials) and offline (recognition memory) accessibility of names in word lists. In Experiment 2, we manipulated generation and syntactic prominence of antecedent names in sentences; both improved online and offline accessibility, but only syntactic prominence elicited a repeated-name penalty. Our results have three important implications: (1) the form of a referential expression interacts with an antecedent's status in the discourse model during coreference; (2) availability in memory and referential accessibility are separable; and (3) theories of coreference must better integrate known properties of the human memory system.
Three experiments investigated factors contributing to syntactic priming during on-line comprehension. In all of the experiments, a prime sentence containing a reduced relative clause was presented prior to a target sentence that contained the same structure. Previous studies have shown that people respond more quickly when a syntactically related prime sentence immediately precedes a target. In the current study, ERP and eye-tracking measures were used to assess whether priming in sentence comprehension persists when one or more unrelated filler sentences appear between the prime and the target. In experiment 1, a reduced P600 was found to target sentences both when there were no intervening unrelated fillers, and when there was one unrelated filler between the prime and the target. Thus, processing the prime sentence facilitated processing of the syntactic form of the target sentence. In experiments 2 and 3, eye-tracking experiments showed that target sentence processing was facilitated when three filler sentences intervened between the prime and the target. These experiments show that priming effects in comprehension can be observed when unrelated material appears after a prime sentence and before the target. We interpret the results with respect to residual activation and implicit learning accounts of priming.
Ageing affects the ability to retrieve words for production, despite maintenance of lexical knowledge. In this study, we investigate the influence of lexical variables on picture naming accuracy and latency in adults ranging in age from 22 to 86 years. In particular, we explored the influence of phonological neighbourhood density, which has been shown to exert competitive effects on word recognition, but to facilitate word production, a finding with implications for models of the lexicon. Naming responses were slower and less accurate for older participants, as expected. Target frequency also played a strong role, with facilitative frequency effects becoming stronger with age. Neighbourhood density interacted with age, such that naming was slower for high-density than low-density items, but only for older subjects. Explaining this finding within an interactive activation model suggests that, as we age, the ability of activated neighbours to facilitate target production diminishes, while their activation puts them in competition with the target.
Two partially independent issues are addressed in two auditory rating studies: under what circumstances is a sub-string of a sentence identified as a stand-alone sentence, and under what circumstances do globally ill-formed but ‘locally coherent’ analyses emerge? A new type of locally coherent structure is established in Experiment 1, where a that-less complement clause is at least temporarily analysed as a stand-alone sentence when it corresponds to a prosodic phrase. In Experiment 2, reduced relative-clause structures like those in studies by Tabor and colleagues were investigated. As in Experiment 1, the root sentence (mis-)analyses emerged most frequently when the locally coherent clause corresponded to a prosodic phrase. However, a substantial number of locally coherent analyses emerged even without prosodic help, especially in examples with for-datives (which do not grammatically permit a reduced relative-clause structure for some speakers). Overall, the results suggest that prosodic grouping of constituents encourages analysis of a sub-string as a root sentence, and raise the question of whether all local coherence structures involve analysis of an utterance-final sub-string as a root sentence.
In the target article, Hickok asserts that auditory and somatosensory feedback control operate at different levels in the speech production hierarchy, with somatosensory feedback control involved in lower-level phonemic processing and auditory feedback control involved in higher-level syllabic processing. This assertion is based in part on a characterization of phonemes as timeless feature bundles. In this commentary I argue that the linguistic conception of phonemes as timeless feature bundles is insufficient for characterizing the production of phonemes by the motor system, and I review evidence that auditory feedback control is used even at the sub-phonemic level of speech production, contrary to its role in the hierarchical state feedback control model.
Bilinguals experience more tip-of-the-tongue (TOT) states than monolinguals, but it is not known if this is caused in part dual-language activation (i.e., co-activation of representations from the bilinguals' two languages). In two translation-priming experiments, bilinguals were given three Spanish primes and produced either semantically( Experiment 1) or phonologically-related Spanish words (Experiment 2) to each. They then named a picture in English. On critical trials, one of the primes was the Spanish translation of the English picture name. Translation primes significantly increased TOTs regardless of task, and also speeded correct retrievals but only with the semantic task. In both experiments translation-primed TOTs were significantly more likely to resolve spontaneously. These results illustrate an effect of non-dominant language activation on dominant-language retrieval, as well as imply that TOTs can arise during (not after) lexical retrieval, at a level of processing where translation equivalent lexical representations normally interact (possibly competing for selection, or mutually activating each other, or both depending on the locus of retrieval failure).
There is no disagreement that an integrated model to understanding speech production is an important research goal. In order to achieve that goal, we have to re-examine our assumptions in light of data and theoretical constructs from other traditions. We also have to recognize that early stages of an integrated model will sacrifice some within-tradition explanatory power for broader, cross-discipline explanatory power.
Speech production has been studied within a number of traditions including linguistics, psycholinguistics, motor control, neuropsychology, and neuroscience. These traditions have had limited interaction, ostensibly because they target different levels of speech production or different dimensions such as representation, processing, or implementation. However, closer examination of reveals a substantial convergence of ideas across the traditions and recent proposals have suggested that an integrated approach may help move the field forward. The present article reviews one such attempt at integration, the state feedback control model and its descendent, the hierarchical state feedback control model. Also considered is how phoneme-level representations might fit in the context of the model.
This comment offers observations that support Hickok's claim that phoneme sized representations are involved more in speech production than speech perception, but notes that languages may vary with regard to the importance of the phoneme.
While the referent of a nonreflexive pronoun clearly depends on context, the nature of these contextual restrictions is controversial. The present study seeks to characterise one representation that guides pronoun resolution. Our focus is an effect known as “implicit causality”. In causal dependant clauses, the preferred referent of a pronoun varies systematically with the verb in the main clause (contrast Sally frightened Mary because she … with Sally feared Mary because she…). A number of researchers have tried to explain and predict such biases with reference to semantic classes of verbs. However, such studies have focused on a small number of specially selected verbs. In Experiment 1, we find that existing taxonomies perform near chance at predicting pronoun-resolution bias on a large set of representative verbs. However, a more fine-grained taxonomy recently proposed in the linguistics literature does significantly better. In Experiment 2, we tested all 264 verbs in two of the narrowly defined verb classes from this new taxonomy, finding that pronoun-resolution biases were categorically different. These findings suggest that the semantic structure of verbs tightly constrains the interpretation of pronouns in causal sentences, raising challenges for theories which posit that implicit causality biases reflect world knowledge or arbitrary lexical features.
Judgments of linguistic unacceptability may theoretically arise from either grammatical deviance or significant processing difficulty. Acceptability data are thus naturally ambiguous in theories that explicitly distinguish formal and functional constraints. Here, we consider this source ambiguity problem in the context of Superiority effects: the dispreference for ordering a wh-phrase in front of a syntactically "superior" wh-phrase in multiple wh-questions, e.g. What did who buy? More specifically, we consider the acceptability contrast between such examples and so-called D-linked examples, e.g. Which toys did which parents buy? Evidence from acceptability and self-paced reading experiments demonstrates that (i) judgments and processing times for Superiority violations vary in parallel, as determined by the kind of wh-phrases they contain, (ii) judgments increase with exposure while processing times decrease, (iii) reading times are highly predictive of acceptability judgments for the same items, and (iv) the effects of the complexity of the wh-phrases combine in both acceptability judgments and reading times. This evidence supports the conclusion that D-linking effects are likely reducible to independently motivated cognitive mechanisms whose effects emerge in a wide range of sentence contexts. This in turn suggests that Superiority effects, in general, may owe their character to differential processing difficulty.
Experimental research on word processing has generally focused on properties that are associated to a concept in long-term memory (e.g., basketballround). The present study addresses a related issue: the accessibility of emergent properties or conceptual properties that have to be inferred in a given context (e.g., basketballfloats). This investigation sheds light on a current debate in cognitive pragmatics about the number of pragmatic systems that are there (Carston, 2002a, 2007; Recanati, 2004, 2007). Two experiments using a self-paced reading task suggest that inferential processes are fully integrated in the processing system. Emergent properties are accessed early on in processing, without delaying later discourse integration processes. I conclude that the theoretical distinction between explicit and implicit meaning is not paralleled by that between associative and inferential processes.
This study tests the hypothesis that second language (L2) learners move developmentally from decomposition of inflected words with less complex stem allomorphy to words with more complex stem allomorphy in lexical access. Robust auditory priming effects were observed for three types of Russian high- and low-frequency inflected verbs with graded regularity treated as complexity and productivity in stem allomorphy in native speakers (NS) of Russian. Similar effects were found in American L2 learners of Russian at three proficiency levels for high-frequency verbs. Low-frequency verbs showed an interaction of the degree of regularity with proficiency level, with priming effects present for regular verbs at all three proficiency levels, semi-regular verbs at two higher levels, and irregular verbs only at the highest level. Lemma and surface frequency effects were observed in irregular verbs only in L2 learners. Results suggest that in Russian, a highly inflected language, auditory lexical access occurs in two stages: first, decomposition into stem and inflectional affix, and second, access of the stem representation at the lemma level, which can occur directly or by further decomposing the stem into root and suffix (the nesting doll pattern). The first stage takes place automatically both in NS and L2 learners for all productive inflections, while the second is gradually acquired by late learners, from productive and less complex to unproductive and more complex stem allomorphy. This developmental tendency is in contrast to the claims that late second language learners store and access regularly inflected words undecomposed and supports the view that L2 learners beyond low proficiency levels process inflectional morphology.
We examined whether iconicity in American Sign Language (ASL) enhances translation performance for new learners and proficient signers. Fifteen hearing nonsigners and 15 proficient ASL-English bilinguals performed a translation recognition task and a production translation task. Nonsigners were taught 28 ASL verbs (14 iconic; 14 noniconic) prior to performing these tasks. Only new learners benefited from sign iconicity, recognising iconic translations faster and more accurately and exhibiting faster forward (English-ASL) and backward (ASL-English) translation times for iconic signs. In contrast, proficient ASL-English bilinguals exhibited slower recognition and translation times for iconic signs. We suggest iconicity aids memorisation in the early stages of adult sign language learning, but for fluent L2 signers, iconicity interacts with other variables that slow translation (specifically, the iconic signs had more translation equivalents than the noniconic signs). Iconicity may also have slowed translation performance by forcing conceptual mediation for iconic signs, which is slower than translating via direct lexical links.
For several decades, context effects in picture naming and word reading have been extensively investigated. However, researchers have found no agreement on the explanation of the effects. Whereas it has long been assumed that several types of effect reflect competition in word selection, recently it has been argued that these effects reflect the exclusion of articulatory responses from an output buffer. Here, we first critically evaluate the findings on context effects in picture naming that have been taken as evidence against the competition account, and we argue that the findings are, in fact, compatible with the competition account. Moreover, some of the findings appear to challenge rather than support the response exclusion account. Next, we compare the response exclusion and competition accounts with respect to their ability to explain data on word reading. It appears that response exclusion does not account well for context effects on word reading times, whereas computer simulations reveal that a competition model like WEAVER++ accounts for the findings.
The Arabic language is acquired by its native speakers both as a regional spoken Arabic dialect, acquired in early childhood as a first language, and as the more formal variety known as Modern Standard Arabic (MSA), typically acquired later in childhood. These varieties of Arabic show a range of linguistic similarities and differences. Since previous psycholinguistic research in Arabic has primarily used MSA, it remains to be established whether the same cognitive properties hold for the dialects. Here we focus on the morphological level, and ask whether roots and word patterns play similar or different roles in MSA and in the regional dialect known as Southern Tunisian Arabic (STA). In two intra-modal auditory-auditory priming experiments, we found similar results with strong priming effects for roots and patterns in both varieties. Despite differences in the timing and nature of the acquisition of MSA and STA, root and word pattern priming was clearly distinguishable from form-based and semantic-based priming in both varieties. The implication of these results for theories of Arabic diglossia and theories of morphological processing are discussed.
In this paper, we report on an eye-tracking study investigating the processing of English VP-ellipsis (John took the rubbish out. Fred did [] too) (VPE) and VP-anaphora (John took the rubbish out. Fred did it too) (VPA) constructions, with syntactically parallel versus nonparallel antecedent clauses (e.g., The rubbish was taken out by John. Fred did [] too/Fred did it too). The results show first that VPE involves greater processing costs than VPA overall. Second, although the structural nonparallelism of the antecedent clause elicited a processing cost for both anaphor types, there was a difference in the timing and the strength of this parallelism effect: it was earlier and more fleeting for VPA, as evidenced by regression path times, whereas the effect occurred later with VPE completions, showing up in second and total fixation times measures, and continuing on into the reading of the adjacent text. Taking the observed differences between the processing of the two anaphor types together with other research findings in the literature, we argue that our data support the idea that in the case of VPE, the VP from the antecedent clause necessitates more computation at the elision site before it is linked to its antecedent than is the case for VPA.
