A Probabilistic Model of Lexical and Syntactic Access and Disambiguation

The problems of access—retrieving linguistic structure from some mental grammar —and disambiguation—choosing among these structures to correctly parse ambiguous linguistic input—are fundamental to language understanding. The literature abounds with psychological results on lexical access, the access of idioms, syntactic rule access, parsing preferences, syntactic disambiguation, and the processing of garden-path sentences. Unfortunately, it has been difficult to combine models which account for these results to build a general, uniform model of access and disambiguation at the lexical, idiomatic, and syntactic levels. For example, psycholinguistic theories of lexical access and idiom access and parsing theories of syntactic rule access have almost no commonality in methodology or coverage of psycholinguistic data. This article presents a single probabilistic algorithm which models both the access and disambiguation of linguistic knowledge. The algorithm is based on a parallel parser which ranks constructions for access, and interpretations for disambiguation, by their conditional probability. Low-ranked constructions and interpretations are pruned through beam-search; this pruning accounts, among other things, for the garden-path effect. I show that this motivated probabilistic treatment accounts for a wide variety of psycholinguistic results, arguing for a more uniform representation of linguistic knowledge and for the use of probabilistically-enriched grammars and interpreters as models of human knowledge of and processing of language.     

Filipino Personality Structure and the Big Five Model: A Lexical Approach

ABSTRACT In lexically based studies, we derived Filipino personality dimensions and related them to the Big Five model. In Study 1, Filipino high-school and college students (N= 629) rated themselves on a near-comprehensive list of 861 Filipino (Tagalog) trait adjectives. In Study 2, Filipino high-school and college students (N= 1,531) rated 280 markers of dimensions identified in Study 1. Some students (n= 473) also completed the NEO Five-Factor Inventory. Seven comparable Filipino dimensions were identified in factor analyses in the two studies. We concluded that the dimensions we labeled Concern for Others (vs. Egotism), Conscientiousness. Gregariousness, and Intellect were quite similar to Big Five Agreeableness, Conscientiousness, Extraversion, and Intellect, respectively. The Filipino Self-Assurance dimension was most similar to Big Five Neuroticism. The Filipino Temperamentalness dimension was more complex in Big Five terms, overlapping Agreeableness, Conscientiousness, and Neuroticism. A final Filipino factor resembled a Negative Valence or Infrequency dimension. More than five factors had to be extracted to obtain Philippine dimensions resembling all of the Big Five.     

舌尖效应产生和解决的词汇提取年老化机制：两阶段范式研究

舌尖效应年老化机制受语言特异性因素的影响。本研究把Stroop效应作为协变量,在统计分析控制个体抑制能力的基础上,采用两阶段范式考察舌尖效应产生和解决过程中词汇提取的年老化机制。结果发现：（1）老年人的舌尖效应产生率和语音提取缺陷均显著高于青年人,而语义提取缺陷的年龄差异不显著;（2）老年人的舌尖效应解决率和语音促进效应量均显著低于青年人;（3）语义启动影响老年人舌尖效应解决时的语言促进效应,而对青年人没有影响。上述结果表明,舌尖效应产生和解决的词汇提取年老化与语音提取衰退有关,与语义提取衰退无关,支持语言特异性衰退的观点。     

Disambiguation by community membership

To interpret utterances in conversations, listeners must often make reference to the common ground they share with speakers. For example, when faced with an utterance such as "That game was a disaster," listeners must decide whether they share common assumptions about what outcome would be disastrous. In our experiments, we examine how common ground, as encoded in community membership, is used to constrain judgments about the interpretations of ambiguous utterances. In Experiment 1, subjects were sensitive to community membership when they were asked to evaluate the interpretations at a leisurely pace. Experiment 2 replicated this result with greater time pressure. Experiment 3 demonstrated that judgments based on assessments of community membership were equivalent to those based on certain knowledge, except when the judgements were challenged. The results suggest that models of memory retrieval during language comprehension should make mention of access to common ground.     

The Disambiguation Prediction Effect

ABSTRACT

Children tend to select a novel object rather than a familiar object when asked to identify the referent of a novel label. Current accounts of this so-called disambiguation effect do not address whether children have a general metacognitive representation of this way of determining the reference of novel labels. In two experiments (each N = 48), three- and four-year-olds received a prediction task that required such a representation. In the initial phase, children completed four disambiguation test trials that were presented as instances of the same “game.” In the next phase, they received four additional trials. These differed only in that before the label was presented, children were asked to predict which object “was going to be right.” On the first prediction trial, most four-year-olds predicted the novel object, whereas most three-year-olds did not. On subsequent trials, despite having received feedback regarding predictions, three-year-olds showed no tendency to begin to predict the novel object, whereas most four-year-olds continued to make this prediction. These findings add to the evidence that most children develop a general metacognitive representation of their tendency to map novel labels onto novel rather than familiar objects some time around their fourth birthday.     

Race-Based Parsing and Syntactic Disambiguation

We present a processing model that integrates same important psychological claims about the human sentence-parsing mechanism: namely, that processing is influenced by limitations an working memory and by various syntactic preferences. The model uses time-constraint information to resolve conflicting preferences in a psychologically plausible way. The starting paint far this proposal is the Sausage Machine model (Fodor & Frazier, 1980: Frazier & Fodor, 1978). From there, we attempt to overcome the original model's dependence an ad hoc aspects of its grammar, and its omission of verb-frame preferences. We also add mechanisms far lexical disambiguation and semantic processing in parallel with syntactic processing.     

A Neurogenetic Approach to Impulsivity

ABSTRACT Impulsivity is a complex and multidimensional trait that is of interest to both personality psychologists and to clinicians. For investigators seeking the biological basis of personality traits, the use of neuroimaging techniques such as positron emission tomography (PET) and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) revolutionized personality psychology in less than a decade. Now, another revolution is under way, and it originates from molecular biology. Specifically, new findings in molecular genetics, the detailed mapping and the study of the function of genes, have shown that individual differences in personality traits can be related to individual differences within specific genes. In this article, we will review the current state of the field with respect to the neural and genetic basis of trait impulsivity.     

A Neuropsychological Approach to Intelligence

This paper proposes that current psychometric intelligence tests are limited in evaluating cognitive activity. From a neuropsychological perspective, they fail to measure some fundamental cognitive abilities such as executive functions, memory, and visuospatial abilities. The analysis of the Wechsler Intelligence Scale presented shows that the original rationale for selecting the specific subtests included in the WAIS was unclear. The concept of a g factor in cognition is also analyzed, with the conclusion that the g factor continues to be controversial. The value of intelligence tests in predicting school performance is also criticized. It is proposed that the psychometric concept of general intelligence should be deleted from cognitive and neurological sciences. Finally, it is proposed that, in the future, neuropsychological instruments sensitive to more specific cognitive abilities replace current psychometric intelligence tests.     

A Semantic Approach to Conservativity

The aim of this paper is to describe from a semantic perspective the problem of conservativity of classical first-order theories over their intuitionistic counterparts. In particular, we describe a class of formulae for which such conservativity results can be proven in case of any intuitionistic theory T which is complete with respect to a class of T-normal Kripke models. We also prove conservativity results for intuitionistic theories which are closed under the Friedman translation and complete with respect to a class of conversely well-founded Kripke models. The results can be applied to a wide class of intuitionistic theories and can be viewed as generalization of the results obtained by syntactic methods.     

A Deliberative Approach to Causation

Fundamental physics makes no clear use of causal notions; it uses laws that operate in relevant respects in both temporal directions and that relate whole systems across times. But by relating causation to evidence, we can explain how causation fits in to a physical picture of the world and explain its temporal asymmetry. This paper takes up a deliberative approach to causation, according to which causal relations correspond to the evidential relations we need when we decide on one thing in order to achieve another. Tamsin's taking her umbrella is a cause of her staying dry, for example, if and only if her deciding to take her umbrella for the sake of staying dry is adequate grounds for believing she'll stay dry. This correspondence explains why causation matters: knowledge of causal structure helps us make decisions that are evidence of outcomes we seek. The account also explains why we can control the future and not the past, and why causes come before their effects. When agents properly deliberate, their decisions can never count as evidence for any outcomes they may seek in the past. From this it follows that causal relations don't run backwards. This deliberative asymmetry is itself traced back to asymmetries of evidence and entropy, providing a new way of deriving causal asymmetry from temporally symmetric laws.     

A Stimulus-Oriented Approach to Memory

ABSTRACT— Our understanding of short-term recognition memory can be enhanced by careful choice and control of test materials. Theory-driven manipulation of memory test stimuli, including visual textures, human faces, and complex sounds, minimize individual differences and make it possible to predict recognition performance for specific combinations of stimulus items. This stimulus-oriented approach to memory reveals that stimulus similarity plays two different important roles in recognition memory. By exploiting tools used in psychophysics, it is possible to generate mnemometric functions—detailed "snapshots" that capture key features of subjects' memory strength.     

A Proven Approach to Licensure

This article is about how counselor licensure is moving ahead slowly, and those who wish to promote licensure bills in the states need specific and workable “guidelines” for successful efforts.     

A Trajectory Approach to Causality

In this paper we propose a new approach to address the ramification problem in common-sense reasoning about action and change. We contrast the methods of McCain and Turner, Thielscher and Sandewall and, based on some of the limitations they encounter, we introduce a trajectory-based approach which keeps a history of the states through which a system evolves to characterise its dynamical state. We furnish an underlying state-transition semantics and a logic that admits an expressive, dynamical account of some typical scenarios which encounter modelling difficulties in the other approaches mentioned.     

How to Criticize Lexical Accounts of Idioms

The semantics of idioms has traditionally treated the idiomatic phrase as a lexical item to which an idiomatic meaning is assigned, and in which remains inert the ordinary literal meaning of the phrase's constitutive words. I draw a distinction between metaphysical lexicalism and methodological lexicalism, and show how criticisms lodged against one kind of lexicalism leave the other intact. Once it is clarified that it is methodological lexicalism that is of interest, and what kind of evidence counts against methodological lexicalism and semantic inertness, I criticize the traditional semantic approach to idioms.