Neural correlates of semantic-driven syntactic parsing in sentence comprehension.

For sentence comprehension, information carried by semantic relations between constituents must be combined with other information to decode the constituent structure of a sentence, due to atypical and noisy situations of language use. Neural correlates of decoding sentence structure by semantic information have remained largely unexplored. In this functional MRI study, we examine the neural basis of semantic-driven syntactic parsing during sentence reading and compare it with that of other types of syntactic parsing driven by word order and case marking. Chinese transitive sentences of various structures were investigated, differing in word order, case making, and agent-patient semantic relations (i.e., same vs. different in animacy). For the non-canonical unmarked sentences without usable case marking, a semantic-driven effect triggered by agent-patient ambiguity was found in the left inferior frontal gyrus opercularis (IFGoper) and left inferior parietal lobule, with the activity not being modulated by naturalness factors of the sentences. The comparison between each type of non-canonical sentences with canonical sentences revealed that the non-canonicity effect engaged the left posterior frontal and temporal regions, in line with previous studies. No extra neural activity was found responsive to case marking within the non-canonical sentences. A word order effect across all types of sentences was also found in the left IFGoper, suggesting a common neural substrate between different types of parsing. The semantic-driven effect was also observed for the non-canonical marked sentences but not for the canonical sentences, suggesting that semantic information is used in decoding sentence structure in addition to case marking. The current findings illustrate the neural correlates of syntactic parsing with semantics, and provide neural evidence of how semantics facilitates syntax together with other information.

Morphological decomposition in Chinese compound word recognition: Electrophysiological evidence.

The present study examined the effect of both morphological complexity and semantic transparency in Chinese compound word recognition. Using a visual lexical decision task, our electrophysiological results showed that transparent and opaque compounds induced stronger Left Anterior Negativity (LAN) than monomorphemic words. This result suggests that Chinese compounds might be decomposed into their constituent morphemes at the lemma level, whereas monomorphemic words are accessed as a whole-word lemma directly from the form level. In addition, transparent and opaque compounds produced a similar N400 as each other, suggesting that transparency did not show an effect on the involvement of constituent morphemes during access to the whole-word lemma. Two behavioral experiments additionally showed similar patterns to the EEG results. These findings support morphological decomposition for compounds at the lemma level as proposed by the full-parsing model, and no evidence is found to support the role of transparency during Chinese compound word recognition.

Taking the Book from the Bookshelf: Masked Constituent Priming Effects from Compound Words and Nonwords.

Recent evidence from visual word recognition points to the important role of embedded words, suggesting that embedded words are activated independently of whether they are accompanied by an affix or a non-affix. The goal of the present research was to more closely examine the mechanisms involved in embedded word activation, particularly with respect to the "edge-alignedness" of the embedded word. We conducted two experiments that used masked priming in combination with lexical decision. In Experiment 1, monomorphemic target words were either preceded by a compound word prime (e.g., textbook-BOOK/textbook-TEXT), a compound-nonword prime (e.g., pilebook-BOOK/textpile-TEXT), a non-compound nonword prime (e.g., pimebook-BOOK/textpime-TEXT) or an unrelated prime (e.g., textjail-BOOK/jailbook-TEXT). The results revealed significant priming effects, not only in the compound word and compound-nonword conditions, but also in the non-compound nonword condition, suggesting that embedded words (e.g., book) were activated independently of whether they occurred in combination with a real morpheme (e.g., pilebook) or a non-morphemic constituent (e.g., pimebook). Priming in the compound word condition was greater than in the two nonword conditions, indicating that participants benefited from the whole-word representation of real compound words. Constituent priming occurred independently of whether the target word was the first or the second embedded constituent of the prime (e.g., textbook-BOOK vs. textbook-TEXT). In Experiment 2, significant priming effects were found for edge-aligned embedded constituents (e.g., pimebook-BOOK), but not for mid-embedded (e.g., pibookme-BOOK) or the outer-embedded constituents (e.g., bopimeok-BOOK), suggesting that edge-alignedness is a key factor determining the activation of embedded words.

What Cross-morphemic Letter Transposition in Derived Nonwords Tells us about Lexical Processing.

According to an obligatory decomposition account of polymorphemic word recognition, a nonword that is composed of a real word plus derivational affix (e.g., teachen) should prime its stem (TEACH) to the same extent that a truly suffixed word does (e.g., teacher). The stem will be activated in both cases after the suffix is removed prior to the lexical status of the letter-string being of relevance. Importantly, disruption to the stem and suffix through letter transposition should have the same impact on the nonwords and words, with teacehn and teacehr equally priming TEACH. However, an experiment by Diependaele, Morris, Serota, Bertrand, and Grainger (2013) found that the equivalent priming for nonwords and words only occurred when they were intact. When letters were transposed, only the truly derived words showed priming. Since such a result cannot be handled by an obligatory decomposition account, it is important to replicate it. Therefore, the present study repeated the conditions of Diependaele et al. (2013), along with a nonword condition where the stem was followed by a non-suffix (e.g., teachin or teacihn). It was found that priming was maintained across all conditions regardless of letter transposition, hence maintaining obligatory decomposition as a viable account. However, the findings with the non-suffixed nonwords led to the conclusion that morphological structure does not control decomposition, but rather, has its impact after form-based components of the letter-string have been activated.

Influences of Cognitive Processing Capacities on Speech Perception in Young Adults.

Foreign accent in speech often presents listeners with challenging listening conditions. Consequently, listeners may need to draw on additional cognitive resources in order to perceive and comprehend such speech. Previous research has shown that, for older adults, executive functions predicted perception of speech material spoken in a novel, artificially created (and therefore unfamiliar) accent. The present study investigates the influences of executive functions, information processing speed, and working memory on perception of unfamiliar foreign accented speech, in healthy young adults. The results showed that the executive processes of inhibition and switching, as well as information processing speed predict response times to both accented and standard sentence stimuli, while inhibition and information processing speed predict speed of responding to accented word stimuli. Inhibition and switching further predict accuracy in responding to accented word and standard sentence stimuli that has increased processing demand (i.e., nonwords and sentences with unexpected semantic content). These findings suggest that stronger abilities in aspects of cognitive functioning may be helpful for matching variable pronunciations of speech sounds to stored representations, for example by being able to manage the activation of incorrect competing representations and shifting to other possible matches.

Syllabic parsing in children: a developmental study using visual word-spotting in Spanish.

Some inconsistency is observed in the results from studies of reading development regarding the role of the syllable in visual word recognition, perhaps due to a disparity between the tasks used. We adopted a word-spotting paradigm, with Spanish children of second grade (mean age: 7 years) and sixth grade (mean age: 11 years). The children were asked to detect one-syllable words that could be found at the beginning of pseudo-words, with the boundary between the word and the remaining letters being manipulated. The end of the embedded word could either match the syllabic boundary (e.g. the word FIN in the pseudo-word FINLO, where the syllable boundary is between N and L) or not (e.g. FINUS, where the syllable boundary is located between I and N). The results showed that children of both grades were faster in the syllabic than the non-syllabic condition, and that the magnitude of this effect was the same regardless of reading ability. The results suggest an early universality in the use of syllables in Spanish, regardless of reading level.

The Bilingual Switching Advantage: Sometimes Related to Bilingual Proficiency, Sometimes Not.

This study investigated the relationship between bilingualism and task switching ability using a standardized measure of switching and an objective measure of bilingual language proficiency. Heritage Language (HL) speaking Spanish-English and Mandarin-English bilinguals and English speaking monolinguals completed all four subtests of the Color-Word Interference Test (CWIT), an English verbal fluency task, and a picture naming test (the Multilingual Naming Test) in English. Bilinguals also named pictures in their HL to assess HL proficiency. Spanish-English bilinguals were advantaged in task switching, exhibiting significantly smaller switching cost than monolinguals, but were disadvantaged in verbal fluency and picture naming. Additionally, performance on these cognitive and linguistic tasks was related to degree of HL proficiency, so that increased ability to name pictures in Spanish was associated with greater switching advantage, and greater disadvantage in both verbal fluency and picture naming. Mandarin-English bilinguals, who differed from the Spanish-English bilinguals on several demographic and language-use characteristics, exhibited a smaller but statistically significant switching advantage, but no linguistic disadvantage, and no clear relationship between HL proficiency and the switching advantage. Together these findings demonstrate an explicit link between objectively measured bilingual language proficiency and both bilingual advantages and disadvantages, while also showing that consequences of bilingualism for cognitive and linguistic task performance can vary across different language combinations.

The effects of semantic transparency and base frequency on the recognition of English complex words.

A visual lexical decision task was used to examine the interaction between base frequency (i.e., the cumulative frequencies of morphologically related forms) and semantic transparency for a list of derived words. Linear mixed effects models revealed that high base frequency facilitates the recognition of the complex word (i.e., a base frequency effect), but the magnitude of this declines with semantic transparency. These results suggest that the extent to which the constituents of a complex word contribute to its recognition is dictated by semantic transparency. The implications of these findings are discussed in the context of localist-connectionist models of morphological processing.

Coda optimization in the segmentation of English polysyllabic letter-strings.

A word-spotting experiment is reported whereby participants determined whether a polysyllabic pseudoword began with a real word or not. All target words ended in a single consonant (e.g., slam) which either did or did not form a complex coda with the consonant that followed it. When it did (e.g., the mp of slampora), target detection was harder than when the target was followed by a vowel (e.g., slamorpa). When it did not (e.g., the mc of slamcora), target detection was easier. These results demonstrate a bias toward maximization of the coda when segmenting a polysyllabic letter-string which is argued to reflect the way in which polysyllabic words are represented in the mental lexicon.

Orthographic influences when processing spoken pseudowords: theoretical implications.

When we hear an utterance, is the orthographic representation of that utterance activated when it is being processed? Orthographic influences have been previously examined in relation to spoken pseudoword processing in three different paradigms. Unlike real word processing, no orthographic effects with pseudowords have been observed in a phoneme goodness ratings task, and there is a mixed outcome in studies looking for spelling-sound consistency effects. In contrast, the orthography of spoken pseudohomographs has been shown to be activated, given that they prime their homographic base word. Explanations are sought for the findings in these three paradigms, leading to an exploration of theoretical models of spoken word recognition.

The efficiency of attentional networks in early and late bilinguals: the role of age of acquisition.

Previous studies have demonstrated a bilingual advantage in the efficiency of executive attention. A question remains, however, about the impact of the age of L2 acquisition and relative balance of the two languages on the enhancement of executive functions in bilinguals, and whether this is modulated by the similarity of the bilingual's two languages. The present study explores these issues by comparing the efficiency of attentional networks amongst three groups of young adults living in Australia: English monolinguals and early and late Chinese-English bilinguals. We also address the impact of bilingualism on hemispheric lateralization of cognitive functions, which is of interest since a recent study on early bilinguals revealed reduced hemispheric asymmetry in attentional functioning. In the present study, participants performed a modified version of the lateralized attention network test. Both early and late bilinguals were found to have more efficient executive network than monolinguals. The late bilinguals, who were also reported to be more balanced in the proficiency and usage of their two languages, showed the greatest advantage in conflict resolution, whereas early bilinguals seemed to show enhanced monitoring processes. These group differences were observed when controlling for non-verbal intelligence and socioeconomic status. Such results suggest that specific factors of language experience may differentially influence the mechanisms of cognitive control. Since the bilinguals had distinct language sets, it seems that the influence of bilingualism on executive functions is present regardless of the similarity between the two languages. As for hemispheric lateralization, although the results were not clear-cut, they suggest the reduced lateralization in early bilinguals.

Subsyllabic structure reflected in letter confusability effects in Korean word recognition.

Korean subsyllabic structure was investigated by observing the pattern of responses arising from letter transpositions within a syllable in the Hangul script. Experiment 1 revealed no confusions when the onset and coda of one syllable of a disyllabic word were transposed. This was also the case in Experiment 2, where the transposition took place within a syllable having a coda composed of two consonants. However, confusion with the baseword was observed when the two consonants within the complex coda were themselves transposed. These results are taken to support the view that Hangul (and possibly all concatenating orthographic scripts) is processed based on its onset, vowel, and coda structure.

Orthographically influenced abstract phonological representation: evidence from non-rhotic speakers.

It is typically assumed that when orthography is translated silently into phonology (i.e., when reading silently), the phonological representation is equivalent to the spoken form or, at least, the surface phonemic form. The research presented here demonstrates that the phonological representation is likely to be more abstract than this, and is orthographically influenced. For example, the claim is made that the word "corn" has an underlying /r/ in its phonological representation, even in non-rhotic dialects. The evidence comes from difficulties observed in judgements about the homophony with a target word of a pseudohomophone whose phonology does not match the putative abstract representation of that word. For example, it is hard to say that the pseudohomophone "cawn" is homophonic with "corn". The conclusion that orthography can shape phonological representation is antithetical to both computational models of the conversion of print to sound and linguistic accounts of phonology.

The processing of morpheme-like units in monomorphemic words.

The word virus is not normally considered polymorphemic, yet it is clearly both semantically and orthographically related to the word viral. Thus, the subunit vir takes on the role of a bound morpheme. In contrast, the words future and futile also share a subunit (fut), but are semantically unrelated. The reported experiment demonstrates facilitation in a masked priming experiment for the semantically related pairs that share an initial orthographic subunit (e.g., virus-viral), but not for the semantically unrelated pairs (e.g., future-futile). Whether the subunit was pronounced the same way in the prime and target was shown to be irrelevant. Furthermore, semantic relatedness was insufficient to produce priming when orthography was not shared. It was concluded that, while the units of processing within the orthographic system may be the same for the two types of item, their representation at a higher level may depend on the correlation between form with meaning. For example, virus and viral might share a higher level representation and thus facilitate each other, whereas future and futile might be represented separately at that higher level and even compete with each other.

Morphological decomposition and the reverse base frequency effect.

If recognition of a polymorphemic word always takes place via its decomposition into stem and affix, then the higher the frequency of its stem (i.e., base frequency) the easier the lexical decision response should be when frequency of the word itself (i.e., surface frequency) is controlled. Past experiments have demonstrated such a base frequency effect, but not under all circumstances. Thus, a dual pathway notion has become dominant as an account of morphological processing whereby both decomposition and whole-word access is possible. Two experiments are reported here that demonstrate how an obligatory decomposition account can handle the absence of base frequency effects. In particular, it is shown that the later stage of recombining the stem and affix is harder for high base frequency words than for lower base frequency words when matched on surface frequency, and that this can counterbalance the advantage of easier access to the higher frequency stem. When the combination stage is crucial for discriminating the word items from the nonword items, a reverse base frequency effect emerges, revealing the disadvantage at this stage for high base frequency words. Such an effect is hard for the dual-pathway account to explain, but follows naturally from the idea of obligatory decomposition.

The nature of the mental representation of radicals in Chinese: a priming study.

Using a priming procedure, 4 experiments were carried out to investigate the effects of a short preexposure of a prime that was a radical or contained radicals identical to the target. Significant facilitation was found when the target contained the prime as a radical, although only for low-frequency targets which did not arise merely as a result of graphical similarity. Facilitation also occurred when the prime and target shared a radical in the same position but not when in different positions. When the prime and target had exactly the same radicals but in different positions, however, the priming effect was inhibitory. This set of results suggests that simple characters (radicals) and complex characters are represented at a different level.

Sonority constraints on onset-rime cohesion: evidence from native and bilingual Filipino readers of English.

Research in English suggests that syllables can be analyzed in terms of two subunits-the onset (defined as the initial consonant or consonant cluster) and the rime (the unit formed by the vowel and following consonant/s). This study investigated whether nonnative readers of English, which in the case of the present study were native Filipino speakers, also make use of onset-rime units, particularly when some features of their native language (namely infixation and reduplication) appear to foster no awareness of such units. In two lexical decision experiments, monosyllabic English words were presented, divided in between their first and second consonants (e.g., B LIND), at their onset-rime boundary (e.g., BL IND), or at their antibody boundary (e.g., BLI ND). Results indicated that the processes of infixation and reduplication did not affect the English word processing of native Filipino speakers. Rather, results for both native Filipino and native English speakers suggest that onsets composed of an "s + consonant" sequence (e.g., STAMP) are less cohesive than onsets comprised of a stop-liquid sequence (e.g., BLIND). It was concluded that not only may sonority constraints underlie onset cohesiveness, but that such phonetic properties may also be involved in visual word recognition.

Orthographic processing of polysyllabic words by native and nonnative English speakers.

How polysyllabic English words are analyzed in silent reading was examined in three experiments by comparing lexical decision responses to words physically split on the screen. The gap was compatible either with the Maximal Onset Principle or the Maximal Coda Principle. The former corresponds to the spoken syllable (e.g., ca det), except when the word has a stressed short first vowel (e.g., ra dish), while the reverse is true for the latter (giving cad et and rad ish). Native English speakers demonstrated a general preference for the Max Coda analysis and a correlation with reading ability when such an analysis did not correspond with the spoken syllable. Native Japanese speakers, on the other hand, showed a Max Onset preference regardless of the type of word, while native Mandarin Chinese speakers showed no preference at all. It is concluded that a maximization of the coda is the optimal representation of polysyllabic words in English and that poorer native readers are more influenced by phonology than are better readers. The way that nonnative readers mentally represent polysyllabic English words is affected by the way such words are structured in their native language, which may not lead to optimal English processing.