Competition accumulates in successive retrieval of proper names.

Proper names are especially prone to retrieval failures and tip-of-the-tongue states (TOTs)-a phenomenon wherein a person has a strong feeling of knowing a word but cannot retrieve it. Current research provides mixed evidence regarding whether related names facilitate or compete with target-name retrieval. We examined this question in two experiments using a novel paradigm where participants either read a prime name aloud (Experiment 1) or classified a written prime name as famous or non-famous (Experiment 2) prior to naming a celebrity picture. Successful retrievals decreased with increasing trial number (and was dependent on the number of previously presented similar famous people) in both experiments, revealing a form of accumulating interference between multiple famous names. However, trial number had no effect on TOTs, and within each trial famous prime names increased TOTs only in Experiment 2. These results can be explained within a framework that assumes competition for selection at the point of lexical retrieval, such that successful retrievals decrease after successive retrievals of proper names of depicted faces of semantically similar people. By contrast, the effects of written prime words only occur when prime names are sufficiently processed, and do not provide evidence for competition but may reflect improved retrieval relative to a "don't know" response.

Different language control mechanisms in comprehension and production: Evidence from paragraph reading.

Chinese-English bilinguals read paragraphs with language switches using a rapid serial visual presentation paradigm silently while ERPs were measured (Experiment 1) or read them aloud (Experiment 2). Each paragraph was written in either Chinese or English with several function or content words switched to the other language. In Experiment 1, language switches elicited an early, long-lasting positivity when switching from the dominant language to the nondominant language, but when switching to the dominant language, the positivity started later, and was never larger than when switching to the nondominant language. In addition, switch effects on function words were not significantly larger than those on content words in any analyses. In Experiment 2, participants produced more cross-language intrusion errors when switching to the dominant than to the nondominant language, and more errors on function than content words. These results implicate different control mechanisms in bilingual language selection across comprehension and production.

Shared vs separate structural representations: Evidence from cumulative cross-language structural priming.

How do bilingual speakers represent the information that guides the assembly of words into sentences for their two languages? The shared-syntax account argues that bilinguals have a single, shared representation of the sentence structures that exist in both languages. Structural priming has been shown to be equal within and across languages, providing support for the shared-syntax account. However, equivalent levels of structural priming within and across languages could be observed even if structural representations are separate and connected, due to frequent switches between languages, which is a property of standard structural priming paradigms. Here, we investigated whether cumulative structural priming (i.e., structural priming across blocks rather than trial-by-trial), which does not involve frequent switches between languages, also shows equivalent levels of structural priming within- and cross-languages. Mixed results point towards a possibility that cumulative structural priming can be more persistent within- compared to cross-languages, suggesting a separate-and-connected account of bilingual structural representations. We discuss these results in terms of the current literature on bilingual structural representations and highlight the value of diversity in paradigms and less-studied languages.

Cross-clause planning in Nungon (Papua New Guinea): Eye-tracking evidence.

Hundreds of languages worldwide use a sentence structure known as the "clause chain," in which 20 or more clauses can be stacked to form a sentence. The Papuan language Nungon is among a subset of clause chaining languages that require "switch-reference" suffixes on nonfinal verbs in chains. These suffixes announce whether the subject of each upcoming clause will differ from the subject of the previous clause. We examine two major issues in psycholinguistics: predictive processing in comprehension, and advance planning in production. Whereas previous work on other languages has demonstrated that sentence planning can be incremental, switch-reference marking would seem to prohibit strictly incremental planning, as it requires speakers to plan the next clause before they can finish producing the current one. This suggests an intriguing possibility: planning strategies may be fundamentally different in Nungon. We used a mobile eye-tracker and solar-powered laptops in a remote village in Papua, New Guinea, to track Nungon speakers' gaze in two experiments: comprehension and production. Curiously, during comprehension, fixation data failed to find evidence that switch-reference marking is used for predictive processing. However, during production, we found evidence for advance planning of switch-reference markers, and, by extension, the subjects they presage. We propose that this degree of advance syntactic planning pushes the boundaries of what is known about sentence planning, drawing on data from a novel morpheme type in an understudied language.

Beyond input: Language learners produce novel relative clause types without exposure.

Syntax famously consists of abstract hierarchical representations, essentially instructions for combining words into larger units like sentences. Less famously, most theories of syntax also assume a higher level of abstract representation. Representations at this level comprise instructions for creating the hierarchical representations used to create sentences. To date, however there is no experimental evidence for this additional level of abstraction. Here, we explain why the existence of such representations would imply that, under certain circumstances, speakers should be able to produce structures they have never been exposed to, and we test this prediction directly. We ask: Given the right type of input, can speakers learn a syntactic structure without direct exposure? In particular, different types of relative clauses have different surface word orders. These may be represented in two ways: with many individual representations or one general representation. If the latter, then learning one type of relative clause amounts to learning all types. We teach participants a novel grammar for only some relative clause types (e.g., just subject relative clauses) and test their knowledge of other types (e.g., object relative clauses). Across experiments, participants consistently produced untrained types, implicating the existence of this higher level of abstract syntactic knowledge.

Learning structural alternations: What guides learners' generalization?

Some word-order alternations observed across the world's languages are constrained by specific verb choice, whereas one type of word-order alternation (i.e., scrambling) frequently seen in free word order languages is not lexically-dependent on the verb. Three novel-language learning experiments explore whether speakers latently respect this generalization. If learners show conservativeness that closely reflects statistics from the input, then it would support usage-based and statistical accounts; alternatively, if learners have linguistic biases that allow them to generalize beyond statistics and show generalization similar to typological patterns, then it would support an internal bias account. In each of the three experiments, two groups of English monolinguals learned a Korean-English hybrid language with structural alternations analogous to those found in different categories of natural languages, as defined by whether the language allows scrambling and whether alternations are lexically-dependent on the verb. Learners' generalization patterns in subsequent picture description and acceptability judgment tasks were analyzed. Comprehension data consistently showed that the group which learned alternations found in natural languages with relatively rigid word orders tended to be more verb-wise conservative than the group that learned alternations found in languages with relatively free word orders. Production data trended in the same direction as the comprehension data. Thus, our results suggest that learners have linguistic biases that mirror typological differences that help learners go beyond simple statistics tracking.

Beyond linear order: The role of argument structure in speaking.

The current study examines how speakers plan sentences in which two words that form hierarchical dependency relationships - arguments and verbs - appear far apart in linear distance, to investigate how linear and hierarchical aspects of sentences simultaneously shape sentence planning processes. The results of six extended picture-word interference experiments suggest that speakers retrieve sentence-final verbs before the articulation of their sentence-initial patient or theme arguments, but not agent arguments, and before retrieving sentence-medial nouns inside modifiers. These results suggest that the time-course of sentence planning reflects hierarchically-defined dependency relationships over and above linear structure.

Translation Distractors Facilitate Production in Single- and Mixed-Language Picture Naming.

In the picture-word interference (PWI) task, semantically related distractors slow production, while translation-equivalent distractors speed it, possibly implying a language-specific bilingual production system (Costa, Miozzo & Caramazza, 1999). However, in most previous PWI studies bilinguals responded in just one language, an artificial task restriction. We investigated translation facilitation effects in PWI with language switching. Spanish-English bilinguals named pictures in single- or mixed-language-response blocks, with distractors in the target language (Experiment 1), or in the non-target language (Experiment 2). Both experiments replicated previously reported translation facilitation effects in both single-language and mixed-language-response blocks. However, language dominance was reversed in mixed-language response blocks, implying inhibition of the dominant language and competition between languages. These results may be explained by a language non-specific selection model in which bilinguals do not restrict selection to one language, with translation facilitation being caused by facilitation at the semantic level offsetting competition at the lexical level.

Shared syntax between comprehension and production: Multi-paradigm evidence that resumptive pronouns hinder comprehension.

Language comprehension and production are generally assumed to use the same representations, but resumption poses a problem for this view: This structure is regularly produced, but judged highly unacceptable. Production-based solutions to this paradox explain resumption in terms of processing pressures, whereas the Facilitation Hypothesis suggests resumption is produced to help listeners comprehend. Previous research purported to support the Facilitation Hypothesis did not test its keystone prediction: that resumption improves accuracy of interpretation. Here, we test this prediction directly, controlling for factors that previous work did not. Results show that resumption in fact hinders comprehension in the same sentences that native speakers produced, a finding which replicated across four high-powered experiments with varying paradigms: sentence-picture matching (N=300), self-paced reading (N=96), visual world eye-tracking (N=96), and multiple-choice comprehension question (N=150). These findings are consistent with production-based accounts, indicating that comprehension and production may indeed share representations, although our findings point toward a limit on the degree of overlap. Methodologically speaking, the findings highlight the importance of measuring interpretation when studying comprehension.

Minimal Overlap in Language Control Across Production And Comprehension: Evidence from Read-Aloud Versus Eye-Tracking Tasks.

Bilinguals are remarkable at language control-switching between languages only when they want. However, language control in production can involve switch costs. That is, switching to another language takes longer than staying in the same language. Moreover, bilinguals sometimes produce language intrusion errors, mistakenly producing words in an unintended language (e.g., Spanish-English bilinguals saying "pero" instead of "but"). Switch costs are also found in comprehension. For example, reading times are longer when bilinguals read sentences with language switches compared to sentences with no language switches. Given that both production and comprehension involve switch costs, some language-control mechanisms might be shared across modalities. To test this, we compared language switch costs found in eye-movement measures during silent sentence reading (comprehension) and intrusion errors produced when reading aloud switched words in mixed-language paragraphs (production). Bilinguals who made more intrusion errors during the read-aloud task did not show different switch cost patterns in most measures in the silent-reading task, except on skipping rates. We suggest that language switching is mostly controlled by separate, modality-specific processes in production and comprehension, although some points of overlap might indicate the role of domain general control and how it can influence individual differences in bilingual language control.

Toward a Database of Intracranial Electrophysiology during Natural Language Presentation.

Intracranial electrophysiology (iEEG) studies using cognitive tasks contribute to the understanding of the neural basis of language. However, though iEEG is recorded continuously during clinical treatment, due to patient considerations task time is limited. To increase the usefulness of iEEG recordings for language study, we provided patients with a tablet pre-loaded with media filled with natural language, wirelessly synchronized to clinical iEEG. This iEEG data collected and time-locked to natural language presentation is particularly applicable for studying the neural basis of combining words into larger contexts. We validate this approach with pilot analyses involving words heard during a movie, tagging syntactic properties and verb contextual probabilities. Event-related averages of high-frequency power (70-170Hz) identified bilateral perisylvian electrodes with differential responses to syntactic class and a linear regression identified activity associated with contextual probabilities, demonstrating the usefulness of aligning media to iEEG. We imagine future multi-site collaborations building an 'intracranial neurolinguistic corpus'.

Repeat After Us: Syntactic Alignment is Not Partner-Specific.

Conversational partners match each other's speech, a process known as alignment. Such alignment can be partner-specific, when speakers match particular partners' production distributions, or partner-independent, when speakers match aggregated linguistic statistics across their input. However, partner-specificity has only been assessed in situations where it had clear communicative utility, and non-alignment might cause communicative difficulty. Here, we investigate whether speakers align partner-specifically even without a communicative need, and thus whether the mechanism driving alignment is sensitive to communicative and social factors of the linguistic context. In five experiments, participants interacted with two experimenters, each with unique and systematic syntactic preferences (e.g., Experimenter A only produced double object datives and Experimenter B only produced prepositional datives). Across multiple exposure conditions, participants engaged in partner-independent but not partner-specific alignment. Thus, when partner-specificity does not add communicative utility, speakers align to aggregate, partner-independent statistical distributions, supporting a communicatively-modulated mechanism underlying alignment.

Beyond linear order: The role of argument structure in speaking.

The current study examines how speakers plan sentences in which two words that form hierarchical dependency relationships - arguments and verbs - appear far apart in linear distance, to investigate how linear and hierarchical aspects of sentences simultaneously shape sentence planning processes. The results of six extended picture-word interference experiments suggest that speakers retrieve sentence-final verbs before the articulation of their sentence-initial patient or theme arguments, but not agent arguments, and before retrieving sentence-medial nouns inside modifiers. These results suggest that the time-course of sentence planning reflects hierarchically-defined dependency relationships over and above linear structure.

Perceptual features predict word frequency asymmetry across modalities.

The relationships between word frequency and various perceptual features have been used to study the cognitive processes involved in word production and recognition, as well as patterns in language use over time. However, little work has been done comparing spoken and written frequencies against each other, which leaves open the question of whether there are modality-specific relationships between perceptual features and frequency. Words have different frequencies in speech and written texts, with some words occurring disproportionately more often in one modality than the other. In the present study, we investigated whether perceptual features predict this frequency asymmetry across modalities. Our results suggest that perceptual features such as length, neighborhood density, and positional probability differentially affect speech and writing, which reveals different online processing constraints and considerations for communicative efficiency across the two modalities. These modality-specific effects exist above and beyond formality differences. This work provides arguments against theories that assume that words differing in frequency are perceptually equivalent, as well as models that predict little to no influence of perceptual features on top-down processes of word selection.

Syntactic Entrainment: The Repetition of Syntactic Structures in Event Descriptions.

Syntactic structures can convey certain (subtle) emergent properties of events. For example, the double-object dative ("the doctor is giving a patient pills") can convey the successful transfer of possession, whereas its syntactic alternative, the prepositional dative ("the doctor is giving pills to a patient"), conveys just a transfer to a location. Four experiments explore how syntactic structures may become associated with particular semantic content - such as these emergent properties of events. Experiment 1 provides evidence that speakers form associations between syntactic structures and particular event depictions. Experiment 2 shows that these associations also hold for different depictions of the same events. Experiments 3 and 4 implicate representations of the semantic features of events in these associations. Taken together, these results reveal an effect we term syntactic entrainment that is well positioned to reflect the recalibration of the strength of the mappings or associations that allow syntactic structures to convey emergent properties of events.

The role of working memory for syntactic formulation in language production.

Four picture-description experiments investigated if syntactic formulation in language production can proceed with only minimal working memory involvement. Experiments 1-3 compared the initiation latencies, utterance durations, and errors for syntactically simpler picture descriptions (adjective-noun phrases, e.g., the red book) to those of more complex descriptions (relative clauses, e.g., the book that is red). In Experiment 4, the syntactically more complex descriptions were also lexically more complex (e.g., the book and the car vs. the book). Simpler and more complex descriptions were produced under verbal memory load consisting of 2 or 4 unrelated nouns, or under no load. Across experiments, load actually made production more efficient (as manifested in shorter latencies, shorter durations or both), and sped up the durations of relative clauses more than those of adjective-noun phrases. The only evidence for disproportional disruption of more complex descriptions by load was a greater increase of production errors for these descriptions than for simpler descriptions under load in Experiments 2 and 4. We thus conclude that syntactic formulation in production (for certain constructions or in certain situations) can proceed with minimal working memory involvement. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).

A Mechanistic Framework for Explaining Audience Design in Language Production.

Audience design refers to the situation in which speakers fashion their utterances so as to cater to the needs of their addressees. In this article, a range of audience design effects are reviewed, organized by a novel cognitive framework for understanding audience design effects. Within this framework, feedforward (or one-shot) production is responsible for feedforward audience design effects, or effects based on already known properties of the addressee (e.g., child versus adult status) or the message (e.g., that it includes meanings that might be confusable). Then, a forward modeling approach is described, whereby speakers independently generate communicatively relevant features to predict potential communicative effects. This can explain recurrent processing audience design effects, or effects based on features of the produced utterance itself or on idiosyncratic features of the addressee or communicative situation. Predictions from the framework are delineated.

Remaining Puzzles about Morpheme Production in the Posterior Temporal Lobe.

Using data from time-resolved cortical stimulation, intracranial neural recordings, and focal surgical resections, Lee et al. (2018) demonstrate that a small area within left posterior superior temporal gyrus (pSTG) supports the ability to produce functional morphemes but not other basic aspects of language production or comprehension. These findings are intriguing because they raise important questions about the functional architecture of language processing, including critically, the relationship between production and comprehension. Here, we highlight some of the puzzles that remain and that we hope will guide future empirical explorations of the cognitive and neural mechanisms that support our capacity for language.

The priming of basic combinatory responses in MEG.

Priming has been a powerful tool for the study of human memory and especially the memory representations relevant for language. However, although it is well established that lexical access can be primed, we do not know exactly what types of computations can be primed above the word level. This work took a neurobiological approach and assessed the ways in which the complex representation of a minimal combinatory phrase, such as red boat, can be primed, as evidenced by the spatiotemporal profiles of magnetoencephalography (MEG) signals. Specifically, we built upon recent progress on the neural signatures of phrasal composition and tested whether the brain activities implicated for the basic combination of two words could be primed. In two experiments, MEG was recorded during a picture naming task where the prime trials were designed to replicate previously reported combinatory effects and the target trials to test whether those combinatory effects could be primed. The manipulation of the primes was successful in eliciting larger activity for adjective-noun combinations than single nouns in left anterior temporal and ventromedial prefrontal cortices, replicating prior MEG studies on parallel contrasts. Priming of similarly timed activity was observed during target trials in anterior temporal cortex, but only when the prime and target shared an adjective. No priming in temporal cortex was observed for single word repetition and two control tasks showed that the priming effect was not elicited if the prime pictures were simply viewed but not named. In sum, this work provides evidence that very basic combinatory operations can be primed, with the necessity for some lexical overlap between prime and target suggesting combinatory conceptual, as opposed to syntactic processing. Both our combinatory and priming effects were early, onsetting between 100 and 150ms after picture onset and thus are likely to reflect the very earliest planning stages of a combinatory message. Thus our findings suggest that at the earliest stages of combinatory planning in production, a combinatory memory representation is formed that affects the planning of a relevantly similar combination on a subsequent trial.

Form Overrides Meaning When Bilinguals Monitor for Errors.

Bilinguals rarely produce unintended language switches, which may in part be because switches are detected and corrected by an internal monitor. But are language switches easier or harder to detect than within-language semantic errors? To approximate internal monitoring, bilinguals listened (Experiment 1) or read aloud (Experiment 2) stories, and detected language switches (translation equivalents or semantically unrelated to expected words) and within-language errors (semantically related or unrelated to expected words). Bilinguals detected semantically related within-language errors most slowly and least accurately, language switches more quickly and accurately than within-language errors, and (in Experiment 2), translation equivalents as quickly and accurately as unrelated language switches. These results suggest that internal monitoring of form (which can detect mismatches in language membership) completes earlier than, and is independent of, monitoring of meaning. However, analysis of reading times prior to error detection revealed meaning violations to be more disruptive for processing than language violations.