Speaker Demographics Modulate Listeners' Neural Correlates of Spoken Word Processing.

In language comprehension, listeners expect a speaker to be consistent in their word choice for labeling the same object. For instance, if a speaker previously refers to a piece of furniture as a "couch," in subsequent references, listeners would expect the speaker to repeat this label instead of switching to an alternative label such as "sofa." Moreover, it has been found that speakers' demographic backgrounds, often inferred from their voice, influence how listeners process their language. The question in focus, therefore, is whether speaker demographics influence how listeners expect the speaker to repeat or switch labels. In this study, we used ERPs to investigate whether listeners expect a child speaker to be less likely to switch labels compared to an adult speaker, given the common belief that children are less flexible in language use. In the experiment, we used 80 pictures with alternative labels in Mandarin Chinese (e.g., yi1sheng1 vs. dai4fu, "doctor"). Each picture was presented twice over two experimental phases: In the establishment phase, participants listened to an adult or a child naming a picture with one of the labels and decided whether the label matched the picture they saw; in the test phase, participants listened to the same speaker naming the same picture by either repeating the original label or switching to an alternative label and, again, decided whether the label matched the picture they saw. ERP results in the test phase revealed that, compared to repeated labels, switched labels elicited an N400 effect (300-600 msec after label onset) and a P600 effect (600-1000 msec after label onset). Critically, the N400 effect was larger when listeners were exposed to the child speaker than to the adult speaker, suggesting that listeners found a switched label harder to comprehend when it was produced by a child speaker than an adult speaker. Our study shows that the perceived speaker demographic backgrounds influence listeners' neural responses to spoken words, particularly in relation to their expectations regarding the speaker's label switching behavior. This finding contributes to a broader understanding of the relationship between social cognition and language processing.

The Chinese lexicon of deaf readers: A database of character decisions and a comparison between deaf and hearing readers.

We present a psycholinguistic study investigating lexical effects on simplified Chinese character recognition by deaf readers. Prior research suggests that deaf readers exhibit efficient orthographic processing and decreased reliance on speech-based phonology in word recognition compared to hearing readers. In this large-scale character decision study (25 participants, each evaluating 2500 real characters and 2500 pseudo-characters), we analyzed various factors influencing character recognition accuracy and speed in deaf readers. Deaf participants demonstrated greater accuracy and faster recognition when characters were more frequent, were acquired earlier, had more strokes, displayed higher orthographic complexity, were more imageable in reference, or were less concrete in reference. Comparison with a previous study of hearing readers revealed that the facilitative effect of frequency on character decision accuracy was stronger for deaf readers than hearing readers. The effect of orthographic-phonological regularity differed significantly for the two groups, indicating that deaf readers rely more on orthographic structure and less on phonological information during character recognition. Notably, increased stroke counts (i.e., higher orthographic complexity) hindered hearing readers but facilitated recognition processes in deaf readers, suggesting that deaf readers excel at recognizing characters based on orthographic structure. The database generated from this large-scale character decision study offers a valuable resource for further research and practical applications in deaf education and literacy.

Cross-dimensional magnitude interaction is modulated by representational noise: evidence from space-time interaction.

Magnitudes along different dimensions (e.g., space and time) tend to interact with each other in perception, with some magnitude dimensions more susceptible to cross-dimensional interference than others. What causes such asymmetries in cross-dimensional magnitude interaction is being debated. The current study investigated whether the representational noise of magnitudes modulates the (a)symmetry in space-time interaction. In three experiments using different formats of length, we showed that dynamic unfilled lengths resulted in a higher representational noise than either static unfilled length or static filled length. Correspondingly, we observed that the time-on-space effect was larger for dynamic unfilled lengths than for static unfilled length or static filled length (and it did not differ between the latter two). Further correlational analyses showed that the susceptibility of a target dimension to the influence of a concurrent dimension increased as a function of participants' representational noise in the target dimension (e.g., the noisier length representations, the larger the time-on-space effect). In all, our study showed that the representational noise of space and time modulates the way the two dimensions interact. These findings suggest that cross-dimensional magnitude interactions arise as a result of memory interference, with noisier magnitudes being more prone to being nudged by concurrent magnitudes in other dimensions. Such memory interference can be seen as a result of Bayesian inference with correlated priors between magnitude dimensions.

Objective ages of acquisition for 3300+ simplified Chinese characters.

We report the construction of two age-of-acquisition (AoA) norms for 3300+ characters in simplified Chinese, which make up about 99% of the texts used in daily life. We determined a character's AoA according to the time in which the character is formally learned in two sets of leading textbooks of Chinese in compulsory education, published respectively on the basis of the 2001 and 2011 national curriculum. Apart from having a significantly larger coverage of characters than previous norms, the current norms also outperformed them in explaining accuracy and reaction times in four large-scale databases for character decision, character naming, or character handwriting, even after controlling for the effects of frequency, number of meanings, and number of strokes. The explanatory advantage of the current norms suggests that, compared to earlier norms, the current norms capture more up-to-date character AoAs; these findings also highlight the diachronic nature of some lexical variables such as AoA and frequency. The developed objective AoA norms can be used for subsequent research on Chinese character recognition or production.

Chinese character handwriting: A large-scale behavioral study and a database.

We report on a psycholinguistic database of Chinese character handwriting based on a large-scale study that involved 203 participants, each handwriting 200 characters randomly sampled from a cohort of 1,600 characters. Apart from collecting writing latencies, durations, and accuracy, we also compiled 14 lexical variables for each character. Regressions showed that frequency, age of acquisition, and the word context (in which a character appears) are all-around and influential predictors of orthographic access (as reflected in writing latency), motor execution of handwriting (as reflected in writing duration), and accuracy. In addition, phonological factors (phonogram status, spelling regularity, and homophone density) impacted orthographic access but not handwriting execution. Semantic factors (imageability and concreteness) only affected accuracy. These results suggest, among other things, that phonology is consulted in orthographic access while handwriting. As the first of its kind, this database can be used as a source of secondary data analyses and a tool for stimulus construction in handwriting research.

Cross-dimensional magnitude interactions arise from memory interference.

Magnitudes from different dimensions (e.g., space and time) interact with each other in perception, but how these interactions occur remains unclear. In four experiments, we investigated whether cross-dimensional magnitude interactions arise from memory interference. In Experiment 1, participants perceived a constant-length line consisting of two line segments of complementary lengths and presented for a variable stimulus duration; then they received a cue about which of the two segment lengths to later reproduce. Participants were to first reproduce the stimulus duration and then the cued length. Reproduced durations increased as a function of the cued length if the cue was given before duration was retrieved from memory for reproduction (i.e. before duration reproduction; Experiment 1) but not if it was given after the duration memory had been retrieved from memory (i.e. after the start of duration reproduction; Experiment 2). These findings demonstrate that space-time interaction arises as a result of memory interference when length and duration information co-exist in working memory. Experiment 3 further demonstrated spatial interference on duration memories from memories of filled lengths (i.e. solid line segments) but not from noisier memories of unfilled lengths (demarcated empty spatial intervals), thus highlighting the role of memory noise in space-time interaction. Finally, Experiment 4 showed that time also exerted memory interference on space when space was presented as (relatively noisy) unfilled lengths. Taken together, these findings suggest that cross-dimensional magnitude interactions arise as a result of memory interference and the extent and direction of the interaction depend on the relative memory noises of the target and interfering dimensions. We propose a Bayesian model whereby the estimation of a magnitude is based on the integration of the noisily encoded percept of the target magnitude and the prior knowledge that magnitudes co-vary across dimensions (e.g., space and time). We discuss implications for cross-dimensional magnitude interactions in general.

Accent modulates access to word meaning: Evidence for a speaker-model account of spoken word recognition.

Speech carries accent information relevant to determining the speaker's linguistic and social background. A series of web-based experiments demonstrate that accent cues can modulate access to word meaning. In Experiments 1-3, British participants were more likely to retrieve the American dominant meaning (e.g., hat meaning of "bonnet") in a word association task if they heard the words in an American than a British accent. In addition, results from a speeded semantic decision task (Experiment 4) and sentence comprehension task (Experiment 5) confirm that accent modulates on-line meaning retrieval such that comprehension of ambiguous words is easier when the relevant word meaning is dominant in the speaker's dialect. Critically, neutral-accent speech items, created by morphing British- and American-accented recordings, were interpreted in a similar way to accented words when embedded in a context of accented words (Experiment 2). This finding indicates that listeners do not use accent to guide meaning retrieval on a word-by-word basis; instead they use accent information to determine the dialectic identity of a speaker and then use their experience of that dialect to guide meaning access for all words spoken by that person. These results motivate a speaker-model account of spoken word recognition in which comprehenders determine key characteristics of their interlocutor and use this knowledge to guide word meaning access.

Microscopic and macroscopic approaches to the mental representations of second languages.

With a particular reference to second language (L2), we discuss (1) how structural priming can be used to tap into L2 representations and their relationships with first and target language representations; and (2) how complex networks additionally can be used to reveal the global and local patterning of L2 linguistic features and L2 developmental trajectories.

Cognitive control and word recognition speed influence the Stroop effect in bilinguals.

Bilinguals have been shown to be less susceptible to Stroop interference in their first language than monolinguals, though the cause is currently being debated. In two experiments, we explored how cognitive control and word recognition contribute to the Stroop effect by contrasting cognitive control (via a Simon arrow task), word recognition speed (via a Chinese/English word recognition task) and Stroop susceptibility (via a verbal Stroop task) between proficient and non-proficient Chinese-English bilinguals. Compared to non-proficient bilinguals, proficient bilinguals showed better cognitive control at inhibiting irrelevant information, and they were slower at recognising Chinese words but quicker at recognising English words. Critically, we also showed that proficient bilinguals showed a smaller Stroop effect than non-proficient bilinguals in Chinese but a comparable Stroop effect as non-proficient bilinguals in English. The results cannot be accounted for by cognitive control or word recognition speed alone; instead, they are best accommodated by assuming that cognitive control and word recognition speed jointly determine the Stroop effect. Thus, we conclude that enhanced cognitive control and delayed word recognition combine to reduce Stroop effect in bilinguals as compared to monolinguals.

Do you see what I'm singing? Visuospatial movement biases pitch perception.

The nature of the connection between musical and spatial processing is controversial. While pitch may be described in spatial terms such as "high" or "low", it is unclear whether pitch and space are associated but separate dimensions or whether they share representational and processing resources. In the present study, we asked participants to judge whether a target vocal note was the same as (or different from) a preceding cue note. Importantly, target trials were presented as video clips where a singer sometimes gestured upward or downward while singing that target note, thus providing an alternative, concurrent source of spatial information. Our results show that pitch discrimination was significantly biased by the spatial movement in gesture, such that downward gestures made notes seem lower in pitch than they really were, and upward gestures made notes seem higher in pitch. These effects were eliminated by spatial memory load but preserved under verbal memory load conditions. Together, our findings suggest that pitch and space have a shared representation such that the mental representation of pitch is audiospatial in nature.

Systematic mappings of sound to meaning: A theoretical review.

The form of a word sometimes conveys semantic information. For example, the iconic word gurgle sounds like what it means, and busy is easy to identify as an English adjective because it ends in -y. Such links between form and meaning matter because they help people learn and use language. But gurgle also sounds like gargle and burble, and the -y in busy is morphologically and etymologically unrelated to the -y in crazy and watery. Whatever processing effects gurgle and busy have in common likely stem not from iconic, morphological, or etymological relationships but from systematicity more broadly: the phenomenon whereby semantically related words share a phonological or orthographic feature. In this review, we evaluate corpus evidence that spoken languages are systematic (even when controlling for iconicity, morphology, and etymology) and experimental evidence that systematicity impacts word processing (even in lieu of iconic, morphological, and etymological relationships). We conclude by drawing attention to the relationship between systematicity and low-frequency words and, consequently, the role that systematicity plays in natural language processing.

Similar-sounding words flesh out fuzzy meanings.

Most words are low in frequency, yet a prevailing theory of word meaning (the distributional hypothesis: that words with similar meanings occur in similar contexts) and corresponding computational models struggle to represent low-frequency words. We conducted two preregistered experiments to test the hypothesis that similar-sounding words flesh out deficient semantic representations. In Experiment 1, native English speakers made semantic relatedness decisions about a cue (e.g., dodge) followed either by a target that overlaps in form and meaning with a higher frequency word (evade, which overlaps with avoid) or by a control (elude), matched on distributional and formal similarity to the cue. (Participants did not see higher frequency words like avoid.) As predicted, participants decided faster and more often that overlapping targets, compared to controls, were semantically related to cues. In Experiment 2, participants read sentences containing the same cues and targets (e.g., The kids dodged something and She tried to evade/elude the officer). We used MouseView.js to blur the sentences and create a fovea-like aperture directed by the participant's cursor, allowing us to approximate fixation duration. While we did not observe the predicted difference at the target region (e.g., evade/elude), we found a lag effect, with shorter fixations on words following overlapping targets, suggesting easier integration of those meanings. These experiments provide evidence that words with overlapping forms and meanings bolster representations of low-frequency words, which supports approaches to natural language processing that incorporate both formal and distributional information and which revises assumptions about how an optimal language will evolve. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

Speech errors in consecutive interpreting: Effects of language proficiency, working memory, and anxiety.

Interpreting can be seen as a form of language production, where interpreters extract conceptual information from the source language and express it in the target language. Hence, like language production, interpreting contains speech errors at various (e.g., conceptual, syntactic, lexical and phonological) levels. The current study delved into the impact of language proficiency, working memory, and anxiety on the occurrence of speech errors across these linguistic strata during consecutive interpreting from English (a second language) into Chinese (a first language) by student interpreters. We showed that speech errors in general decreased as a function of the interpreter's proficiency in the source (second) language and increased as a function of the interpreter's anxiety. Conceptual errors, which result from mistaken comprehension of the source language, decreased as a function of language proficiency and working memory. Lexical errors increased as a function of the interpreter's tendency of anxiety. Syntactic errors also decreased as a function of language proficiency and increased as a function of anxiety. Phonological errors were not sensitive to any of the three cognitive traits. We discussed implications for the cognitive processes underlying interpreting and for interpreting training.

Syntactic encoding in written language production by deaf writers: A structural priming study and a comparison with hearing writers.

In three structural priming experiments, we investigated whether deaf and hearing writers differ in the processes and representations underlying written language production. Experiment 1 showed that deaf writers of Mandarin Chinese exhibited comparable extents of structural priming and comparable lexical boosts, suggesting that syntactic encoding in written language production is similarly sensitive to prior lexical-syntactic experience in deaf and hearing writers. Experiment 2 showed that, while hearing writers showed a boost in structural priming when the prime and the target had homographic or heterographic homophone dative verbs compared to unrelated ones, deaf writers showed a homophone boost only with homographic homophone verbs but not with heterographic homophone verbs. This finding suggests that while hearing people develop associated lemmas for homophones due to phonological identity, deaf people do so due to orthographic identity. Finally, Experiment 3 showed no boost in structural priming in deaf writers or hearing writers when the prime and the target had the same verb of the same orthography (i.e., in the same script) than of different orthographies (i.e., between Simplified and Traditional Chinese), suggesting that neither hearing nor deaf people use orthographic identity to reactivate the prime structure. In all, the findings suggest that syntactic encoding in writing employs the same syntactic and lexical representations in deaf and hearing writers, though lexical representations are shaped more by orthography than phonology in deaf writers. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

Interlocutor modelling in comprehending speech from interleaved interlocutors of different dialectic backgrounds.

It has been shown that, in language comprehension, listeners model certain attributes of their interlocutor (e.g., dialectic background, age, gender) and interpret speech against that model; for example, they understand cross-dialectally ambiguous words such as flat and gas for their American English (AE) meanings more often when listening to an AE interlocutor than a British English (BE) interlocutor. This study further investigated whether listeners construct concurrent interlocutor models when communicating with interleaved interlocutors of different dialectic backgrounds, and, if they do, how they choose between concurrent models to interpret words. In two experiments, participants heard a word (e.g., flat) spoken by a BE or AE interlocutor and provided a word associate (indicating which meaning of the word was accessed). When different interlocutors were encountered in separate blocks, participants accessed more AE meanings when listening to an AE rather than a BE interlocutor, and the accent effect was not larger for words pronounced more differently in BE and AE (e.g., fall sounds more distinctly British vs. American than flat does). These results suggest that participants constructed an interlocutor model (e.g., of a BE or an AE speaker) and used it (instead of accent details in a word) to guide word meaning access. When interlocutors were interleaved in the same block, we observed a comparable accent effect, which increased as a function of between-accent differences in pronunciation. These results suggest that participants constructed concurrent interlocutor models and used accent details in a word to select the appropriate interlocutor model. We also observed that the accent effect was comparable for two interleaved interlocutors of the same gender (e.g., a female BE interlocutor and a female AE interlocutor) and for two interleaved interlocutors of different genders (e.g., a female BE interlocutor and a male AE interlocutor). These results suggest that participants did not use gender-related voice details for model selection when accent details were sufficient for interlocutor model selection.

New neighbours make bad fences: Form-based semantic shifts in word learning.

The meanings of words sometimes shift towards those of similar-sounding words. For example, expunge is etymologically related to puncture but now connotes "wiping away," and according to the Oxford English Dictionary, this shift "is probably influenced by phonetic association with sponge." However, evidence for such form-based semantic shifts is anecdotal. We therefore conducted two experiments where participants learned novel words in sentence contexts (e.g., The boss embraiched the team's proposal, so they had to start over) and applied the inferred meanings to ambiguous sentences by providing ratings on a 7-point scale (e.g., Carol embraiched Gerald. How pleased was Gerald?). The inferred meanings of novel words that are spelt like existing words (e.g., embraich, like embrace) shifted towards the meanings of those existing words, relative to control novel words learned in identical contexts (e.g., fline; participants rated Gerald as more pleased to be embraiched than to be flined). These experiments provide the first evidence that newly learned words can indeed undergo form-based semantic shifts. We propose that shifts like these occur during word learning, when words activate rather than inhibit similar-sounding words, and we discuss why they seem to be more common in low-frequency words.

How do people interpret implausible sentences?

People sometimes interpret implausible sentences nonliterally, for example treating The mother gave the candle the daughter as meaning the daughter receiving the candle. But how do they do so? We contrasted a nonliteral syntactic analysis account, according to which people compute a syntactic analysis appropriate for this nonliteral meaning, with a nonliteral semantic interpretation account, according to which they arrive at this meaning via purely semantic processing. The former but not the latter account postulates that people consider not only a literal-but-implausible double-object (DO) analysis in comprehending The mother gave the candle the daughter, but also a nonliteral-but-plausible prepositional-object (PO) analysis (i.e., including to before the daughter). In three structural priming experiments, participants heard a plausible or implausible DO or PO prime sentence. They then answered a comprehension question first or described a picture of a dative event first. In accord with the nonliteral syntactic analysis account, priming was reduced following implausible sentences than following plausible sentences and following nonliterally interpreted implausible sentences than literally interpreted implausible sentences. The results suggest that comprehenders constructed a nonliteral syntactic analysis, which we argue was predicted early in the sentence.

Cross-dimensional magnitude interactions reflect statistical correlations among physical dimensions: Evidence from space-time interaction.

Magnitudes of different physical dimensions have been assumed to be processed by a common metric in order to account for interactions between different dimensions (e.g., space, time). This paper tested a different hypothesis, that these cross-dimensional interactions reflect people's experience of statistical correlations among physical dimensions. In the experiment, we manipulated the correlation between space (length) and time (duration). A stimulus consisting of two vertical bars that demarcated a variable stimulus length was presented for a variable stimulus duration; participants were to reproduce either the stimulus length or the stimulus duration. Critically, to reproduce a stimulus length, participants held down the spacebar to grow or shrink (in a blocked design) a length to the stimulus length such that space (i.e. reproduced length) positively or negatively co-varied with time. Reproduced lengths did not vary as a function of stimulus duration under positive space-time correlation but decreased as a function of stimulus duration under negative space-time correlation; reproduced durations increased as a function of stimulus length under positive space-time correlation but this space-on-time effect appeared to be attenuated under negative space-time correlation. These findings are consistent with a Bayesian inference account whereby cross-dimensional interactions reflect people's prior belief/knowledge of cross-dimensional statistical correlation, which itself tunes to recent input.

A pre-registered, multi-lab non-replication of the action-sentence compatibility effect (ACE).

The Action-sentence Compatibility Effect (ACE) is a well-known demonstration of the role of motor activity in the comprehension of language. Participants are asked to make sensibility judgments on sentences by producing movements toward the body or away from the body. The ACE is the finding that movements are faster when the direction of the movement (e.g., toward) matches the direction of the action in the to-be-judged sentence (e.g., Art gave you the pen describes action toward you). We report on a pre-registered, multi-lab replication of one version of the ACE. The results show that none of the 18 labs involved in the study observed a reliable ACE, and that the meta-analytic estimate of the size of the ACE was essentially zero.

On the tip of the pen: Effects of character-level lexical variables and handwriter-level individual differences on orthographic retrieval difficulties in Chinese handwriting.

In the past few decades, Chinese speakers have suffered from difficulties in handwriting, which include tip-of-the-pen (TOP) states (knowing a character but failing to fully handwrite it) and character amnesia in general (a general inability to handwrite a character despite being able to recognise it). The current study presents a systematic empirical investigation of the effects of character-level lexical characteristics and handwriter-level individual differences on TOP, character amnesia, and partial orthographic access in TOP states. Using a spelling-to-dictation task, we had 64 participants to handwrite 200 simplified Chinese characters. We showed that, at the lexical level, participants experienced more TOP and character amnesia in handwriting if a character was less frequent, was acquired later in life, was embedded in a less familiar word, or had more strokes; TOP but not character amnesia was additionally affected by phonetic radical order and spelling regularity. At the handwriter level, people also experienced more TOP and character amnesia if they had more digital exposure, less pen exposure, or less print exposure. In a TOP state, partial orthographic access was more likely if a character was acquired later in life, had fewer strokes, or had a left-right or top-down composition or, if a handwriter had less digital exposure.