Lexical cues and discourse integration: An ERP study of the N400 and P600 components.

In a sentence reading ERP study in Swedish we investigated the roles of the N400 and P600 components. By manipulating ease of lexical retrieval and discourse integration of the critical words in four conditions (contextually primed/non-primed and degree of contextual fit), we explored these components from a sentence processing perspective. The results indicate that the N400 indexes lexical retrieval and access of stored conceptual knowledge, whereas the P600 component indexes pragmatic processes, such as integration of a word into the discourse context, or the information structural status of the word. The results support single-stream models of sentence processing where lexical retrieval and integration do not take place in parallel, as in multi-stream models.

The relationship between working memory capacity, bilingualism, and ambiguous relative clause attachment.

Working memory (WM) capacity has been shown to influence how readers resolve syntactic ambiguities. Building on the work of Swets et al. (2007, Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 136[1], 64-81), the goal of the present study was to assess the effects of working memory and language proficiency on first language (L1) relative clause attachment decisions across three different language samples: English monolinguals, L1-L2 Spanish-English heritage bilinguals, and L1-L2 Mandarin-English bilinguals. Binomial logistic regression analyses demonstrated that low WM span is associated with a preference to attach ambiguous relative clauses higher in the syntactic structure, as reported by Swets et al. (2007), and contrary to a recency strategy. We also observed that proficiency in L1 and L2 have little effect, suggesting that relative clause attachment preferences primarily reflect the properties of the language and the working memory capacity of the comprehender.

Assessment of verb and sentence processing deficits in stroke-induced aphasia: the Italian version of the Northwestern Assessment of Verbs and Sentences (NAVS-I).

Background: The Northwestern Assessment of Verbs and Sentences (NAVS) assesses verb and sentence production and comprehension in aphasia. Results from the original English version and from its adaptation to German have shown that the NAVS is able to capture effects of verb-argument structure (VAS) complexity (i.e., lower accuracy for two- and three-argument vs. one-argument verbs) and syntactic complexity (i.e., lower accuracy for non-canonical vs. canonical sentences) in both agrammatic participants and individuals with mild (residual) forms of aphasia. The NAVS has been recently adapted to Italian (NAVS-I) and tested on a group of healthy participants, with results showing longer reaction times to complex vs. simple verbs and sentences. Aims: The present study aimed to test the ability of NAVS-I to i) capture verb/sentence production and comprehension deficits in Italian-speaking individuals with agrammatism or with fluent aphasia, and ii) differentiate individuals with aphasia from healthy age-matched participants, with the overall goal to validate its use in clinical practice. Methods & Procedures: Forty-four healthy participants and 28 individuals with aphasia (10 with agrammatic speech production) were administered the NAVS-I, which includes tasks assessing production and comprehension of verbs requiring one, two or three arguments, as well as production and comprehension of canonical and non-canonical sentences. Outcomes & Results: On the Verb Naming Task (VNT), better production of one- (vs. two- and three-) argument verbs was found in the agrammatic group, whereas, verb production in the fluent group was solely predicted by word length and imageability. No effects of argument optionality (i.e., greater difficulty for optionally transitive verbs than for 1-argument verbs) were found. Sentence-level tasks found no differences between the agrammatic and the fluent group in production or comprehension of both canonical and non-canonical sentences; rather, sentence comprehension accuracy was predicted by demographic variables and by aphasia severity. At the individual level, performance on the NAVS-I was significantly different from that of healthy speakers in 26/28 patients. Conclusions: Data show that the NAVS-I is able to capture effects of argument structure complexity in verb production, and effects of syntactic complexity in sentence production and comprehension. In addition, our results point to verb production as the task with greater capability to differentiate agrammatism from other (fluent) forms of aphasia. The study provides support for the use of the NAVS-I in the diagnosis of aphasia, as it is able to detect language deficits at the individual level, even in participants with mild (residual) forms of aphasia.

The effects of restrictiveness on relative clause processing in Farsi.

With an eye-tracking experiment, we investigated the processing of Farsi object and subject relative clauses. Since restrictive relative clauses in Farsi are marked and distinguished clearly by the enclitic particle ی /-i/ attached to the head noun, we also compared the processing of restrictive and non-restrictive relative clauses. Seifi (2021) conducted a corpus analysis that showed that object relative clauses are in general less frequent than subject relative clauses. However, while non-restrictive relative clauses are predominantly subject relative clauses, restrictive relative clauses are more balanced in the corpus. In an eye-tracking experiment, Farsi speakers processed restrictive and non-restrictive relative clauses differently. In non-restrictive relative clauses, the effect is similar to that found in most other languages: a clear processing delay in object relative clauses, compared to subject relative clauses. This effect was visible both at the relative clause verb and at the end of the matrix sentence. In restrictive relative clauses, on the other hand, the picture is different: Just as for the non-restrictive relative clauses object relative clauses had long reading times in the relative clause, but at the end of the sentence a reverse effect was found. Thus, the processing data reflected the pattern found in the corpus. We discuss these findings in terms of the distinct functions of restrictive and non-restrictive relative clauses.

Surprisal From Language Models Can Predict ERPs in Processing Predicate-Argument Structures Only if Enriched by an Agent Preference Principle.

Language models based on artificial neural networks increasingly capture key aspects of how humans process sentences. Most notably, model-based surprisals predict event-related potentials such as N400 amplitudes during parsing. Assuming that these models represent realistic estimates of human linguistic experience, their success in modeling language processing raises the possibility that the human processing system relies on no other principles than the general architecture of language models and on sufficient linguistic input. Here, we test this hypothesis on N400 effects observed during the processing of verb-final sentences in German, Basque, and Hindi. By stacking Bayesian generalised additive models, we show that, in each language, N400 amplitudes and topographies in the region of the verb are best predicted when model-based surprisals are complemented by an Agent Preference principle that transiently interprets initial role-ambiguous noun phrases as agents, leading to reanalysis when this interpretation fails. Our findings demonstrate the need for this principle independently of usage frequencies and structural differences between languages. The principle has an unequal force, however. Compared to surprisal, its effect is weakest in German, stronger in Hindi, and still stronger in Basque. This gradient is correlated with the extent to which grammars allow unmarked NPs to be patients, a structural feature that boosts reanalysis effects. We conclude that language models gain more neurobiological plausibility by incorporating an Agent Preference. Conversely, theories of human processing profit from incorporating surprisal estimates in addition to principles like the Agent Preference, which arguably have distinct evolutionary roots.

Processing wh-filler-gap dependencies.

We present experimental evidence showing that different wh-filler-gap dependencies are processed differently, depending on their syntactic licensors. Our studies compared the active storage profiles for why, how, and who (serving as subject or object of the verb). The results of offline and online experiments revealed that these wh-fillers are stored in memory for different durations, and predictably so based on the hypothesised structural distance between each wh-filler and the licensor which determines its grammatical and interpretive functions. Furthermore, the results showed that once the wh-filler is licenced, it is integrated to the current structure, and no longer engenders additional memory costs. Based on these findings, we argue that the mechanism of online sentence processing may employ both storage and integration components in memory.

Correction: Language Experience Predicts Eye Movements During Online Auditory Comprehension.

[This corrects the article DOI: 10.5334/joc.285.].

Processing and Comprehension of Locally Ambiguous Participial Relative Clause Sentences in Russian.

The study tested how the Recency Preference and Predicate Proximity model (Gibson et al. in Cognition 59(1):23-59, 1996, https://doi.org/10.1016/0010-0277(88)90004-2 ) plays out by examining the attachment preferences of native Russian speakers when processing locally ambiguous participial relative clause sentences with three potential NP attachment sites in Russian. Using a self-paced reading task, reading times and noun phrase selection responses were collected. Results showed significantly shorter reading times at the disambiguating region and higher accuracy rate of selection in the high-attaching condition than in the middle- and low-attaching conditions. No significant differences were found between the middle- and low-attaching conditions. We argue that Predicate Proximity is a much stronger factor than Recency Preference in Russian.

Multivariate pattern analysis of EEG reveals nuanced impact of negation on sentence processing in the N400 and later time windows.

The neurocognitive mechanism underlying negation processing remains controversial. While negation is suggested to modulate the access of word meaning, no such evidence has been observed in the event-related potential (ERP) literature on sentence processing. In the current study, we applied both univariate ERP and multivariate pattern analysis (MVPA) methods to examine the processing of sentence negation. We investigated two types of negative congruent/incongruent sentence pairs with truth-value evaluation (e.g., "A robin is a/not a bird") and without (e.g., "The woman reads a/no book"). In the N400 time window, ERPs consistently showed increased negativity for negative and incongruent conditions. MVPA, on the other hand, revealed nuanced interactions between polarity and congruency. In the later P600 time window, MVPA but not the ERPs revealed an effect of congruency, which may be functionally distinct from the N400 window. We further used cross-decoding to show that the cognitive processes underlying the N400 window for both affirmative and negative sentences are comparable, whereas in the P600 window, only for the truth sentences, negative sentences showed a distinct pattern from their affirmative counterparts. Our results thus speak for a more interactive, but nevertheless serial and biphasic, and potentially construction-specific processing account of negation. We also discuss the advantage of applying MVPA in addition to the classical univariate methods for a better understanding of the neurobiology of negation processing and language comprehension alike.

Elliptical Responses to Direct and Indirect Requests for Information.

We present two studies examining the factors that lead speakers to produce elliptical responses to requests for information. Following Clark and Levelt and Kelter, experimenters called businesses and asked about their closing time (e.g., Can you tell me what time you close?). Participants provided the requested information in full sentence responses (We close at 9) or elliptical responses (At 9). A reanalysis of data from previous experiments using this paradigm shows that participants are more likely to produce an elliptical response when the question is a direct request for information (What time do you close?) than when the question is an indirect request for information (Can you tell me what time you close?). Participants were less likely to produce an elliptical response when they began their answer by providing a yes/no response (e.g., Sure . . . we close at 9). A new experiment replicated these findings, and further showed that elliptical responses were less likely when (1) irrelevant linguistic content was inserted between the question and the participant's response, and (2) participants verbalized signs of difficulty retrieving the requested information. This latter effect is most prominent in response to questions that are seen as very polite (May I ask you what time you close?). We discuss the role that the recoverability of the intended meaning of the ellipsis, the accessibility of potential antecedents for the ellipsis, pragmatic factors, and memory retrieval play in shaping the production of ellipsis.

When and where did it happen? Systematic differences in recall of core and optional sentence information.

This article reports on four experiments aiming to examine immediate post-sentential recall of core sentence information (conveyed by direct objects), and optional/additional information (conveyed by temporal or locative adjuncts). Participants read simple and unambiguous Czech sentences such as Starsí duchodce velmi peclive procetl noviny v nedeli v knihovne: "An older retiree read the newspaper very carefully on Sunday in the library." Sentences always appeared as a whole after pressing a space bar. Immediately after the sentence disappeared, an open-ended (free response) question was presented targeting either the direct object (e.g., newspaper), temporal adjunct (e.g., on Sunday), or locative adjunct (e.g., in the library). Altogether, it was found that the core information (conveyed by the direct object) was recalled almost perfectly, whereas additional information, conveyed by temporal and locative adjuncts, was recalled with significantly lower accuracy rates. Information structure also played a role: if the temporal or locative adjunct was focused, it was recalled better than if it was unfocused. The present article thus shows systematic differences in recall success for different pieces of information. These findings suggest the presence of selective attention mechanisms during early stages of sentence processing. Factors such as syntactic function or information structure influence the degree of attention to different pieces of information conveyed by a sentence. In turn, certain pieces of information may not be consciously accessible already after the sentence is processed.

The effect of word transpositions on grammaticality judgements in first and second language sentence reading.

This study investigated the cross-language influence of a reader's first language (L1, German) grammar knowledge on the syntactic processing of sentences in their second language (L2, English), using a grammaticality judgement task and comparing results with monolingual L1 English-speakers. In Experiment 1, unbalanced bilinguals (N = 82) read sentences in their L1 German and L2 English that were either grammatical in German but not English, grammatical in English but not German, or ungrammatical in both languages. Sentences were presented in mixed-language blocks. Grammaticality judgements were less accurate and slower for ungrammatical L2 sentences that were grammatical in their literal L1 translation, compared with sentences that were ungrammatical in both languages. Experiment 2 replicated these findings with an independent German-English bilingual sample (N = 78), using monolingual language blocks. In Experiment 3, effects were absent in decision accuracy and weaker in decision latency for monolingual English readers (N = 54). A post hoc validation study with an independent sample of L1 English-speakers (n = 21) provided further evidence that the ungrammatical English sentences with German word order were indeed less natural and grammatically acceptable to L1 English-speakers than the grammatical English sentences. These findings suggest that, consistent with competition models of language comprehension, multiple languages are simultaneously active and can compete during syntactic processing. However, due to the complex nature of cross-language comparisons, the cross-language transfer effects are likely to be driven by multiple interacting factors, of which one is cross-language transfer.

Rational Sentence Interpretation in Mandarin Chinese.

Previous work has shown that English native speakers interpret sentences as predicted by a noisy-channel model: They integrate both the real-world plausibility of the meaning-the prior-and the likelihood that the intended sentence may be corrupted into the perceived sentence. In this study, we test the noisy-channel model in Mandarin Chinese, a language taxonomically different from English. We present native Mandarin speakers sentences in a written modality (Experiment 1) and an auditory modality (Experiment 2) in three pairs of syntactic alternations. The critical materials are literally implausible but require differing numbers and types of edits in order to form more plausible sentences. Each sentence is followed by a comprehension question that allows us to infer whether the speakers interpreted the item literally, or made an inference toward a more likely meaning. Similar to previous research on related English constructions, Mandarin participants made the most inferences for implausible materials that could be inferred as plausible by deleting a single morpheme or inserting a single morpheme. Participants were less likely to infer a plausible meaning for materials that could be inferred as plausible by making an exchange across a preposition. And participants were least likely to infer a plausible meaning for materials that could be inferred as plausible by making an exchange across a main verb. Moreover, we found more inferences in written materials than spoken materials, possibly a result of a lack of word boundaries in written Chinese. Overall, the fact that the results were so similar to those found in related constructions in English suggests that the noisy-channel proposal is robust.

Using lexical semantic cues to mitigate interference effects during real-time sentence processing in aphasia.

We examined the auditory sentence processing of neurologically unimpaired listeners and individuals with aphasia on canonical sentence structures in real-time using a visual-world eye-tracking paradigm. The canonical sentence constructions contained multiple noun phrases and an unaccusative verb, the latter of which formed a long-distance dependency link between the unaccusative verb and its single argument (which was base generated in the object position and then displaced to the subject position). To explore the likelihood of similarity-based interference during the real time linking of the verb and the sentence's subject noun, we manipulated the animacy feature of the noun phrases (matched or mismatched). The study's objectives were to examine whether (a) reducing the similarity-based interference by mismatching animacy features would modulate the encoding and retrieval dynamics of noun phrases in real-time; and (b) whether individuals with aphasia would demonstrate on time sensitivity to this lexical-semantic cue. Results revealed a significant effect of this manipulation in individuals both with and without aphasia. In other words, the mismatch in the representational features of the noun phrases increased the distinctiveness of the unaccusative verb's subject target at the time of syntactic retrieval (verb offset) for individuals in both groups. Moreover, individuals with aphasia were shown to be sensitive to the lexical-semantic cue, even though they appeared to process it slower than unimpaired listeners. This study extends to the cue-based retrieval model by providing new insight on the real-time mechanisms underpinning sentence comprehension.

Number Agreement Attraction in Czech Comprehension: Negligible Facilitation Effects.

Number agreement attraction in comprehension has been extensively studied in various languages and it has been claimed that attraction effects are generally present across languages. In this paper, four experiments on Czech are presented, each examining a different structure. The Bayesian hierarchical models and Bayes factor analysis pointed towards no agreement attraction effects in three of the experiments. Only in one experiment an effect interpretable as signaling agreement attraction was observed. Its size, however, was so small that it did not translate into a clear preference for models with agreement attraction. The data from the four experiments were further compared to available data from several other languages (English, Armenian, Arabic, and Spanish). The emerging picture is that in Czech, agreement attraction effects are negligible in size if they appear at all. This presents a serious challenge to current theoretical explanations of agreement attraction effects.

Neural correlates of pronoun processing: An activation likelihood estimation meta-analysis.

Pronouns are unique linguistic devices that allow for the expression of referential relationships. Despite their communicative utility, the neural correlates of the operations involved in reference assignment and/or resolution, are not well-understood. The present study synthesized the neuroimaging literature on pronoun processing to test extant theories of pronoun comprehension. Following the PRISMA guidelines and thebest-practice recommendations for neuroimaging meta-analyses, a systematic literature search and record assessment were performed. As a result, 16 fMRI studies were included in the meta-analysis, and were coded in Scribe 3.6 for inclusion in the BrainMap database. The activation coordinates for the contrasts of interest were transformed into Talairach space and submitted to an Activation Likelihood Estimation (ALE) meta-analysis in GingerALE 3.0.1. The results indicated that pronoun processing had functional convergence in the left posterior middle and superior temporal gyri, potentially reflecting the retrieval, prediction and integration roles of these areas for pronoun processing.

When Native Speakers Are Not "Native-Like:" Chunking Ability Predicts (Lack of) Sensitivity to Gender Agreement During Online Processing.

Previous work on individual differences has revealed limitations in the ability of existing measures (e.g., working memory) to predict language processing. Recent evidence suggests that an individual's sensitivity to detect the statistical regularities present in language (i.e., "chunk sensitivity") may significantly modulate online sentence processing. We investigated whether individual chunk sensitivity predicted the online processing of gender cues, a core linguistic feature of Spanish. In a self-paced reading task, we examined native speakers' processing of relative clauses in which gender cues were variably exploited to induce processing costs. Even after considering the effect of working memory and cognitive control, the results revealed a significant effect of chunking ability in modulating online sentence processing. Critically, higher-chunking ability speakers' reading times showed online sensitivity to core linguistic cues online; while low-chunking ability readers showed no sensitivity to manipulations, indicating shallow real-time processing of their native language.

The State of Cognitive Control in Language Processing.

Understanding language requires readers and listeners to cull meaning from fast-unfolding messages that often contain conflicting cues pointing to incompatible ways of interpreting the input (e.g., "The cat was chased by the mouse"). This article reviews mounting evidence from multiple methods demonstrating that cognitive control plays an essential role in resolving conflict during language comprehension. How does cognitive control accomplish this task? Psycholinguistic proposals have conspicuously failed to address this question. We introduce an account in which cognitive control aids language processing when cues conflict by sending top-down biasing signals that strengthen the interpretation supported by the most reliable evidence available. We also provide a computationally plausible model that solves the critical problem of how cognitive control "knows" which way to direct its biasing signal by allowing linguistic knowledge itself to issue crucial guidance. Such a mental architecture can explain a range of experimental findings, including how moment-to-moment shifts in cognitive-control state-its level of activity within a person-directly impact how quickly and successfully language comprehension is achieved.

Expectations modulate retrieval interference during ellipsis resolution.

Memory operations during language comprehension are subject to interference: retrieval is harder when items are linguistically similar to each other. We test how such interference effects might be modulated by linguistic expectations. Theories differ in how these factors might interact; we consider three possibilities: (i) predictability determines the need for retrieval, (ii) predictability affects cue-preference during retrieval, or (iii) word predictability moderates the effect of noise in memory during retrieval. We first demonstrate that expectations for a target word modulate retrieval interference in Mandarin noun-phrase ellipsis in an electroencephalography (EEG) experiment. This result obtains in globally ungrammatical sentences - termed "facilitatory interference." Such a pattern is inconsistent with theories that focus only on the need for retrieval. To tease apart cue-preferences from noisy-memory representations, we operationalize the latter using a Transformer neural network language model. Confronting the model with our stimuli reveals an interference effect, consistent with prior work, but that effect does not interact with predictability in contrast to human EEG results. Together, these data are most consistent with the hypothesis that the predictability of target items affects cue-preferences during retrieval.

Reading(,) with and without commas.

All major writing systems mandate the use of commas to separate clauses and list items. However, casual writers often omit mandatory commas. Little empirical or theoretical research has been done on the effect that omitting mandatory commas has on eye movement control during reading. We present an eye-tracking experiment in Spanish, a language with a clear standard as to mandatory comma use. Sentences were presented with or without mandatory commas while readers' eye movements were recorded. There was a local increase in the go-past time for the pre-comma region when commas were presented, which was balanced out by shorter first-pass and second-pass times on the subsequent regions. In global sentence reading time, there was no evidence for an advantage of presenting commas. These findings suggest that, even when commas are mandatory, their effect is primarily to shift when processing takes place rather than to facilitate processing overall.