Examining the factors that affect structural repetition in question answering.

We present two experiments that examine structural priming in the single-trial phone-call paradigm introduced by Levelt and Kelter (Cognitive psychology, 14 (1), 78-106, 1982). Experimenters called businesses and asked either What time do you close? or At what time do you close? Participants were more likely to produce a prepositional response (At 7 o'clock vs. 7 o'clock) following a prepositional question than following a non-prepositional question. Experiments 1 and 2 attempted to strengthen the priming effect by having the experimenters engage in a brief interaction with the participant before asking the What time…? question. The interactions did not reliably affect the observed priming effect. An analysis across experiments demonstrated that the priming effect found in this paradigm is generally smaller than the average structural priming effect (as reported in Mahowald, James, Futrell, & Gibson, Journal of Memory and Language, 91, 5-27, 2016), but within the range of the effects that are observed in different structural priming paradigms.

Examining the Efficacy of Targeted Component Interventions on Language and Literacy for Third and Fourth Graders Who are at Risk of Comprehension Difficulties.

Testing a component model of reading comprehension in a randomized controlled trial, we evaluated the efficacy of four different interventions that were designed to target components of language and metacognition that predict children's reading comprehension: vocabulary, listening comprehension, comprehension of literate language, academic knowledge, and comprehension monitoring. Third- and fourth-graders with language skills falling below age expectations participated (N = 645). Overall, the component interventions were only somewhat effective in improving the targeted skills, compared to a business-as-usual control (g ranged from -.14 to .33), and no main effects were significant after correcting for multiple comparisons. Effects did not generalize to other language skills or to students' reading comprehension. Moreover, there were child-characteristic-by-treatment interaction effects. For example, the intervention designed to build sensorimotor mental representations was more effective for children with weaker vocabulary skills. Implications for component models of reading and interventions for children at risk of reading comprehension difficulties are discussed.

Reciprocal Effects of Self-Regulation, Semantic Knowledge, and Reading Comprehension in Early Elementary School.

Many assume that cognitive and linguistic processes, such as semantic knowledge (SK) and self-regulation (SR), subserve learned skills like reading. However, complex models of interacting and bootstrapping effects of SK, SR, instruction, and reading hypothesize reciprocal effects. Testing this "lattice" model with children (n = 852) followed from first to second grade (5.9-10.4 years of age) revealed reciprocal effects for reading and SR, and reading and SK, but not SR and SK. More effective literacy instruction reduced reading stability over time. Findings elucidate the synergistic and reciprocal effects of learning to read on other important linguistic, self-regulatory, and cognitive processes; the value of using complex models of development to inform intervention design; and how learned skills may influence development during middle childhood.

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.

Structural priming in question-answer dialogues.

We explored whether speakers self-prime during question-answer dialogues. Experimenters called restaurants and asked two questions. The first was about the timing of different menu options ((At)What time do you stop serving breakfast?), and the second was about the closing time of the restaurant ((At)What time do you close?). Participants were more likely to use a preposition in their responses (At 7 vs. 7) when experimenters used a preposition in their question. However, the participants' use of a preposition (or not) in their first response did not prime the use of a preposition in their second response (i.e., no self-priming). The lack of self-priming in these data provide support for error-based theories of structural priming, and against activation-based accounts of priming.

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.

Long-term cumulative structural priming persists for (at least) one week.

We present an experiment that explores the degree to which cumulative structural priming effects of the sort reported in Kaschak (Memory and Cognition 35:925-937, 2007) persist over the course of a week. In the first session of the experiment, participants completed written sentence stems that were designed to bias them toward producing the double object (Meghan gave Michael a toy) or prepositional object (Meghan gave a toy to Michael) construction. Participants returned for a second session of the experiment a week later. We observed that the biases established in the first phase of the experiment affected performance in the second phase. That is, the cumulative priming effect persisted for a week. The implications of this result for theories of language production are discussed.

Pointing to the Future of Language Research.

Murgiano et al. (2021) argue that indexicality and iconicity play a larger role in language than is typically acknowledged. They further call for a more situated view of language. We agree with the basic arguments laid out in their paper. In this commentary, we suggest that an embodied approach to language might provide a useful theoretical framework for developing a situated account of language.

Gaming experience affects the interpretation of ambiguous words.

Rodd et al. (2016) report that recreational rowers' acquisition of sport-related terminology affected their interpretation of words that have both rowing-related and non-rowing-related meanings (e.g., crab). The extent to which the rowing- and non-rowing-related meanings were accessible to the participants depended on experiential factors, such as how long the participant had been a rower, and how long it had been since they last rowed. We present two experiments that attempt to replicate these findings with another group of hobbyists, namely video game players. Experiment 1 examined the differences in word meaning choice between gamers and non-gamers. Participation in video-gaming lead to participants generating more gaming-related word meanings in a word association task. Experiment 2 further examined the effects of video gaming experience on the lexical representation of gaming-related words. Participants who had spent more years as gamers were more likely to produce gaming-related word meanings in a word association task. The effect of time spent gaming was no longer significant when we took into account whether the participant engaged with video-game related media (such as YouTube channels or gaming-related message boards). This finding helps us to refine our understanding of the results reported by Rodd et al. (2016), suggesting that it may not be the time spent in an activity that affects the interpretation of ambiguous words, but rather the specific exposure to activity-related vocabulary.

Examining the impact of text style and epistemic beliefs on conceptual change.

Learning can be difficult for students due to incorrect prior knowledge, or misconceptions, interfering with the acquisition of new knowledge. Conceptual change refers to the process of replacing such misconceptions with new and accurate knowledge. The factors associated with conceptual change are currently under debate. The present study attempts to replicate previous investigations of how text style and epistemic beliefs impact conceptual change, and extends this work by investigating how those factors differentially facilitate conceptual change within participants. 157 college students completed a two-part, within participants study in which they completed pretests, read passages addressing a misconception, completed posttests, and were assessed on their epistemic beliefs. Text style (expository vs. refutation) and two dimensions of epistemic beliefs (texture and variability) did not directly impact pre-to-posttest changes in performance. However, interactions between text type, texture, and variability were related to changes in performance.

Developmental Timescale of Rapid Adaptation to Conflicting Cues in Real-Time Sentence Processing.

Children and adults use established global knowledge to generate real-time linguistic predictions, but less is known about how listeners generate predictions in circumstances that semantically conflict with long-standing event knowledge. We explore these issues in adults and 5- to 10-year-old children using an eye-tracked sentence comprehension task that tests real-time activation of unexpected events that had been previously encountered in brief stories. Adults generated predictions for these previously unexpected events based on these discourse cues alone, whereas children overall did not override their established global knowledge to generate expectations for semantically conflicting material; however, they do show an increased ability to integrate discourse cues to generate appropriate predictions for sentential endings. These results indicate that the ability to rapidly integrate and deploy semantically conflicting knowledge has a long developmental trajectory, with adult-like patterns not emerging until later in childhood.

The effect of the menstrual cycle on dichotic listening.

The purpose of this study was to determine the effect of the menstrual cycle on responses to a dichotic listening task. It was hypothesized that participants would exhibit a stronger right ear advantage during the menstrual cycle days when estrogen levels are at their peak. It was also hypothesized that the women not taking oral contraceptives would exhibit greater variations in ear advantage over the course of their menstrual cycle than those taking oral contraceptives. Finally, it was hypothesized that the error response rates would remain similar across different listening conditions and over the menstrual cycle. The participants were 30 women who took oral contraceptives and 15 who did not. They completed nine listening sessions comprised of three dichotic listening tasks: forced-left, forced-right, and open. The data were analyzed using a mixed effects models. The participants exhibited a reduction in right ear responses on the days that corresponded to when the level of estrogen would begin to increase. This response was different from what had been hypothesized. The analysis also indicated no response differences between the two groups of women. In addition, the women exhibited fewer errors over the course of the sessions, implying that they adapted to the task. The results indicate that the women's hormone fluctuation across the menstrual cycle affected their responses to the forced-left, cognitive control, task only.

Patterns of experience with verbs affect long-term cumulative structural priming.

Recent studies of structural priming have demonstrated that although there is evidence of verb-based effects in short-term priming (e.g., stronger priming when verbs are repeated between prime and target sentences), such effects are absent in long-term priming. We present evidence that verb-based effects can be observed in long-term priming situations. This result has important implications for theoretical accounts of the mechanisms that give rise to structural priming and other such adaptation effects in language production.

Body posture facilitates retrieval of autobiographical memories.

We assessed potential facilitation of congruent body posture on access to and retention of autobiographical memories in younger and older adults. Response times were shorter when body positions during prompted retrieval of autobiographical events were similar to the body positions in the original events than when body position was incongruent. Free recall of the autobiographical events two weeks later was also better for congruent-posture than for incongruent-posture memories. The findings were similar for younger and older adults, except for the finding that free recall was more accurate in younger adults than in older adults in the congruent condition. We discuss these findings in the context of theories of embodied cognition.

Enacted Reading Comprehension: Using Bodily Movement to Aid the Comprehension of Abstract Text Content.

We report a design study that assessed the feasibility of Enacted Reading Comprehension (ERC), an intervention designed to teach 3rd and 4th grade students (n = 40 and 25, respectively) to use gestures to understand an increasingly abstract set of texts. Students were taught to use gestures to understand the idea of "opposing forces" in a concrete setting-the forces at play as tectonic plates move past each other-and then taught to use the gestures to understand opposing forces in more abstract situations. For example, students were taught to use gestures to understand the opposing sides of an argument, and to understand the internal conflicts that arise as individuals are faced with moral dilemmas. The results of our design study suggest that ERC has promise as a method for introducing students to the idea of using gesture to understand text content, and to employ this strategy in a range of reading contexts.

Recent experience affects the strength of structural priming.

In two experiments, we explore how recent experience with particular syntactic constructions affects the strength of the structural priming observed for those constructions. The results suggest that (1) the strength of structural priming observed for double object and prepositional object constructions is affected by the relative frequency with which each construction was produced earlier in the experiment, and (2) the effects of relative frequency are not modulated by the temporal placement of the tokens of each construction within the experiment.

Idiomatic syntactic constructions and language learning.

This article explores the influence of idiomatic syntactic constructions (i.e., constructions whose phrase structure rules violate the rules that underlie the construction of other kinds of sentences in the language) on the acquisition of phrase structure. In Experiment 1, participants were trained on an artificial language generated from hierarchical phrase structure rules. Some participants were given exposure to an idiomatic construction (IC) during training, whereas others were not. Under some circumstances, the presence of an idiomatic construction in the input aided learners in acquiring the phrase structure of the language. Experiment 2 provides a replication of the first experiment and extends the findings by showing that idiomatic constructions that strongly violate the predictive dependencies that define the phrase structure of the language do not aid learners in acquiring the structure of the language. Together, our data suggest that (a) idiomatic constructions aid learners in acquiring the phrase structure of a language by highlighting relevant structural elements in the language, and (b) such constructions are useful cues to learning to the extent that learners can keep their knowledge of the idiomatic construction separate from their knowledge of the rest of the language.

The Action-Sentence Compatibility Effect: It's All in the Timing.

When participants are asked to make sensibility judgments on sentences that describe action toward the body (i.e., "Mark dealt the cards to you") or away from the body (i.e., "You dealt the cards to Mark"), they are faster to respond when the response requires an arm movement in the same direction as the action described by the sentence. This congruence effect is known as the Action-Sentence Compatibility Effect (ACE). This study reports 4 experiments that extend our understanding of the ACE by exploring how the time at which one prepares the motor response required for the sensibility judgment affects the magnitude of the ACE. Results show that the ACE arises only when participants have the opportunity to plan their motor response while they are processing the sentence.

Perception of auditory motion affects language processing.

Previous reports have demonstrated that the comprehension of sentences describing motion in a particular direction (toward, away, up, or down) is affected by concurrently viewing a stimulus that depicts motion in the same or opposite direction. We report 3 experiments that extend our understanding of the relation between perception and language processing in 2 ways. First, whereas most previous studies of the relation between perception and language processing have focused on visual perception, our data show that sentence processing can be affected by the concurrent processing of auditory stimuli. Second, it is shown that the relation between the processing of auditory stimuli and the processing of sentences depends on whether the sentences are presented in the auditory or visual modality.

Perception of motion affects language processing.

Recently developed accounts of language comprehension propose that sentences are understood by constructing a perceptual simulation of the events being described. These simulations involve the re-activation of patterns of brain activation that were formed during the comprehender's interaction with the world. In two experiments we explored the specificity of the processing mechanisms required to construct simulations during language comprehension. Participants listened to (and made judgments on) sentences that described motion in a particular direction (e.g. "The car approached you"). They simultaneously viewed dynamic black-and-white stimuli that produced the perception of movement in the same direction as the action specified in the sentence (i.e. towards you) or in the opposite direction as the action specified in the sentence (i.e. away from you). Responses were faster to sentences presented concurrently with a visual stimulus depicting motion in the opposite direction as the action described in the sentence. This suggests that the processing mechanisms recruited to construct simulations during language comprehension are also used during visual perception, and that these mechanisms can be quite specific.