Future prediction with automatically extracted morphosemantic patterns

In the following paper, we investigated the usefulness of future reference sentence patterns in the prediction of the unfolding of future events. To obtain such patterns we first collected sentences that have any reference to the future from newspapers and Web news. Based on this collection, we developed a novel method for automatic extraction of frequent patterns from such sentences. The extracted patterns, consisting of multilayer semantic information and morphological information, were implemented in the formation of a general model of linguistically expressed future. To fully assess the performance of the proposed method we performed a number of evaluation experiments. In the first experiment, we evaluated the automatic extraction of future reference sentence patterns with the proposed extraction algorithm. In the second set of experiments, we estimated the effectiveness of those patterns and applied them to automatically classify sentences into future referring and other. The final model was then tested for performance in retrieving a new set of future reference sentences from a large news corpus. The obtained results confirmed that the proposed method outperformed state-of-the-art method in fully automatic retrieval of future reference sentences. Lastly, we applied the method in practice to confirm its usefulness in two tasks. The first is to support human readers in the everyday prediction of unfolding future events. In the second task, we developed a fully automatic prototype method for future prediction and tested its performance using the tasks included in the official Future Prediction Competence Test. The results indicate that the prototype system outperforms natural human foreseeing capability.     

The effect of semantic plausibility on sentence comprehension in aphasia

Tested were 50 aphasic patients (16 Broca's, 15 Wernicke's, 10 global, and 9 amnesic), 13 nonaphasic brain damaged patients, and 13 normal adults to evaluate the effect of semantic plausibility on sentence comprehension in active affirmative declarative sentences with a sentence-picture matching task. A plate of two pictures was provided for each stimulus sentence, and the subject was required to choose the picture corresponding to the sentence presented auditorily. Two types of sentences in terms of plausibility were prepared, i.e., probable sentences (P) describing common events in our daily life and improbable sentences (I) describing rare events. There were four kinds of combinations of a picture with the other to make a correct/(distractor) set, i.e., P/(P), P/(I), I/(P), and I/(I) constructions. The results indicated that probable sentences were more comprehensible than improbable sentences, and that the effect of semantic plausibility did not differ among aphasic types.     

Working memory and planning during sentence production

Speakers retrieve conceptual, syntactic and lexical information in advance of articulation during sentence production. What type of working memory (WM) store is used to hold the planned information before speaking? To address this question, we measured onset latencies when subjects produced sentences that began with either a complex or a simple initial noun phrase, while holding semantic, phonological or spatial information in WM. Although we found that subjects had longer onset latencies for sentences beginning with a complex noun phrase, showing a phrasal scope of planning, the magnitude of this complexity effect was not affected by any type of WM load. However, subjects made more syntactic errors (but not lexical errors) for sentences beginning with a complex noun phrase, suggesting that advance planning for these phrases occurs at a syntactic rather than lexical–semantic level, which may account for the lack of effect with various types of WM load in the current study.     

The comprehension of anomalous sentences: evidence from structural priming

We report three experiments investigating how people process anomalous sentences, in particular those in which the anomaly is associated with the verb. We contrast two accounts for the processing of such anomalous sentences: a syntactic account, in which the representations constructed for anomalous sentences are similar in nature to the ones constructed for well-formed sentences; and a semantic account, in which the representations constructed for anomalous sentences are erroneous, or altogether missing, and interpretation is achieved on the basis of semantic representations instead. To distinguish between these accounts, we used structural priming. First, we ruled out the possibility that anomaly per se influences the magnitude of the priming effect: Prime sentences with morphologically incorrect verbs produced similarly enhanced priming (lexical boost) to sentences with the same correct verbs (Exp. 1). Second, we found that prime sentences with a novel verb (Exp. 2) or a semantically and syntactically incongruent verb (Exp. 3) produced a priming effect, which was the same as that produced by well-formed sentences. In accord with the syntactic account, we conclude that the syntactic representations of anomalous sentences are similar to those constructed for well-formed sentences. Our results furthermore suggest that lexically-independent syntactic information is robust enough to produce well-formed syntactic representations during processing without requiring aid from lexically-based syntactic information.     

SEMANTIC AND PHONOLOGICAL CODING PROCESSES IN SKILLED AND LESS SKILLED READERS' READING OF TEXT

Abstract

Two experiments examine the memory coding processes of skilled and less skilled readers during the reading of connected text. In experiment 1, students read several paragraphs which required a lexical decision about an underlined letter string within a sentence. Underlined letter strings were either synonyms, repeated words, or control words in reference to items in the sentence. Students were later asked to recall words related to their lexical decision, as well as verify the occurrence of sentences from the text. Skilled readers recalled more synonyms than poor readers, whereas no differences emerged between groups in their recall of other types of words related to the lexical task or for the verification of sentences. Experiment 2 procedures were similar to Experiment 1, except that synonyms were replaced with homophones and the sentence verification task included phrases related to the homophones. When compared to less skilled readers, skilled readers recalled more homophones and repeated words, but were more likely to be disrupted in correct verification of sentences with homophones. Taken together, the experiments suggest that along with phonological coding, semantic processing contributes an important amount of variance to deficiencies in the reading of connected text.     

Interpretation-based processing: a unified theory of semantic sentence comprehension

We present interpretation-based processing—a theory of sentence processing that builds a syntactic and a semantic representation for a sentence and assigns an interpretation to the sentence as soon as possible. That interpretation can further participate in comprehension and in lexical processing and is vital for relating the sentence to the prior discourse. Our theory offers a unified account of the processing of literal sentences, metaphoric sentences, and sentences containing semantic illusions. It also explains how text can prime lexical access. We show that word literality is a matter of degree and that the speed and quality of comprehension depend both on how similar words are to their antecedents in the preceding text and how salient the sentence is with respect to the preceding text. Interpretation-based processing also reconciles superficially contradictory findings about the difference in processing times for metaphors and literals. The theory has been implemented in ACT-R [Anderson and Lebiere, The Atomic Components of Thought, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates Publishers, Mahwah, NJ, 1998].     

Verb Comprehension Deficits in Probable Alzheimer's Disease

Studies of lexical comprehension in probable Alzheimer's disease (pAD) have focused almost exclusively on nouns. In the following preliminary study, we examined whether lexical comprehension for verbs is also impaired in 25 pAD patients. The semantic meaning of motion verbs, cognition verbs, and perception verbs was assessed with a triadic comparison task. Structural meaning associated with these verbs was evaluated by asking the patients to judge the coherence of sentence frames that accept these verbs naturally or awkwardly. We found that pAD patients are significantly impaired at identifying semantic relations among verbs. pAD patients also encountered significantly more difficulty judging the coherence of sentences than control subjects. Correlation and regression analyses demonstrated that semantic characteristics of verbs are projected from the verbs' sentence frames in control subjects, but there was minimal evidence for such a structural–semantic relationship in pAD. We consider several possible explanations for our preliminary observations of an impairment that has consequences for processing both semantic and structural aspects of verb meaning.     

自然阅读中儿童和成人新词学习能力的差异比较:基于眼动的证据

从读者重复学习新词时眼动行为经历的变化,揭示儿童和成人自然阅读中新词学习能力的差异。构造双字假词作为新词,将其嵌在五个语境中,记录儿童和成人阅读时的眼动轨迹。结果发现:随着新词学习次数的递增,儿童和成人在新词上的首次注视时间呈相同变化;在对新词的凝视时间和再注视概率上,成人在第二次阅读时就大幅下降,而小学生在第四次阅读时才开始下降。表明成人新词学习能力高于儿童体现在词汇加工的相对晚期阶段。     

The role of specificity in the lexical encoding of participants

In addition to information about phonology, morphology and syntax, lexical entries contain semantic information about participants (e.g., Agent). However, the traditional criteria for determining how much participant information is lexically encoded have proved unreliable. We have proposed two semantic criteria (obligatoriness and selectivity) that jointly identify the participants that are lexically encoded in verbs. We tested whether one of these criteria, semantic selectivity, makes psychologically real distinctions between participant information that is lexically encoded and participant information that is not. We examined how readers integrated syntactically optional WH-constituents in filler-gap sentences when the participant information conveyed by the WH-filler was specific to a restricted class of verbs (i.e., source locations) and when it was not (i.e., event locations). Our results provide support for the role of specificity in the lexical encoding of participant information of syntactically optional constituents.     

Developmental changes in the understanding of generics

Generic sentences (such as "Birds lay eggs") are important in that they refer to kinds (e.g., birds as a group) rather than individuals (e.g., the birds in the henhouse). The present set of studies examined aspects of how generic nouns are understood by English speakers. Adults and children (4- and 5-year-olds) were presented with scenarios about novel animals and questioned about their properties, using generic and non-generic questions. Three primary findings emerged. First, both children and adults distinguished generic from non-generic reference, interpreting generics as referring to kinds. Thus, under certain contexts children and adults accepted that "Dobles have claws" even when all the dobles in the available context were clawless. Second, adults further distinguished properties that are inborn from those that are acquired. Inborn properties were judged to be predicated of a generic kind, even when all available instances have lost the property, but this was not the case for acquired properties. Third, children did not distinguish inborn from acquired properties. These data suggest the existence of developmental changes in conceptual or semantic understanding, and are interpreted in light of recent theories of psychological essentialism.     

The abstraction of linguistic ideas in “meaningless” sentences

It was proposed that the Bransford and Franks linear effect is unrelated to semantic processes and will, therefore, occur even when “meaningless” sentences (i.e., sentences containing nonsense instead of meaningful content words) are employed. Within the Bransford and Franks format, Ss were given either the meaningless sentences or control sentences. Results showed a significant linear effect for the meaningless sentences. Furthermore, although the slope of the effect for meaningless sentences was flatter than that of the control, other data ruled out a semantic integration explanation based on the availability of semantic information contained in sentence structure. A simple guessing strategy hypothesis was offered to account for the linear effect.     

Detecting silent pauses in speech: a new tool for measuring on-line lexical and semantic processing

In this study, we introduce pause detection (PD) as a new tool for studying the on-line integration of lexical and semantic information during speech comprehension. When listeners were asked to detect 200-ms pauses inserted into the last words of spoken sentences, their detection latencies were influenced by the lexical-semantic information provided by the sentences. Listeners took longer to detect a pause when it was inserted within a word that had multiple potential endings, rather than a unique ending, in the context of the sentence. An event-related potential (ERP) variant of the PD procedure revealed brain correlates of pauses as early as 101 to 125 ms following pause onset and patterns of lexical-semantic integration that mirrored those obtained with PD within 160 ms of pause onset. Thus, both the behavioral and the electrophysiological responses to pauses suggest that lexical and semantic processes are highly interactive and that their integration occurs rapidly during speech comprehension.     

Semantic constraints and judged preference for interpretations of ambiguous sentences

It is proposed that the degree of sensibleness of sentences is determined by semantic constraints which may be more or less satisfied. Such continuous semantic constraints were examined in two experiments in which subjects judged the likelihood of obtaining each of the interpretations of ambiguous sentences. The sentences were factorially generated by independently varying the degree to which semantic constraints for each interpretation were satisfied. In one experiment, the semantic constraints were manipulated by varying critical words within the ambiguous sentence; in the other experiment, a preceding context sentence was used. The results of both experiments supported the hypotheses that the judged likelihood was a direct function of the relative sensibleness of the interpretations, that semantic constraints determined the degree of sensibleness of each interpretation, and that these semantic constraints are continuous restrictions which are independent of each other and stable from sentence to sentence in which they occur.     

What do category-specific semantic deficits tell us about the representation of lexical concepts?

A reassessment of category-specific semantic deficits in light of their contribution to a theory of the representation of lexical concepts is proposed. Two theories are examined: one, held by the majority of researchers in the field, claims that concepts are represented by sets of features; another, in contrast, claims that concepts are atomic representations. An analysis of category-specific semantic deficits in terms of inferential relations (of the meaning-postulates type) between atomic concepts is elaborated. It is argued that this theory can better account for the pattern of performance exhibited by patients with semantic deficits.     

Perceptual simulation in developing language comprehension

We tested an embodied account of language proposing that comprehenders create perceptual simulations of the events they hear and read about. In Experiment 1, children (ages 7–13 years) performed a picture verification task. Each picture was preceded by a prerecorded spoken sentence describing an entity whose shape or orientation matched or mismatched the depicted object. Responses were faster for matching pictures, suggesting that participants had formed perceptual-like situation models of the sentences. The advantage for matching pictures did not increase with age. Experiment 2 extended these findings to the domain of written language. Participants (ages 7–10 years) of high and low word reading ability verified pictures after reading sentences aloud. The results suggest that even when reading is effortful, children construct a perceptual simulation of the described events. We propose that perceptual simulation plays a more central role in developing language comprehension than was previously thought.     

New Word Acquisition in Children: Examining the Contribution of Verbal Short‐term Memory to Lexical and Semantic Levels of Learning

A variety of evidence suggests that human vocabulary acquisition and verbal short‐term ability are related. The aim of this study was to investigate the learning of new lexical and semantic representation in 7 to 12 years old children selected on the basis of their poor working memory capacity. A deep characterization of the short‐term memory (STM) capacities has been carried out through a series of tasks derived from recent STM models tapping STM, language and attentional processes. Participants experienced a three conditions word learning task designed to reflect lexical learning, semantic learning and lexical–semantic learning capacities. Other aspects of the learning such as the learning rate and the word length effect were evaluated. The experimental participants scored more poorly than controls on lexical learning, and this deficit was associated with the serial order STM and the attentional capacities. The current study also highlighted that neither the experimental group nor the control group took advantage in lexical learning of semantic information supplement. Our results suggest that children with verbal STM problems learn a smaller number of new words but present a similar way of learning than children without verbal STM problems. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Age-Specific Effects of Lexical–Semantic Networks on Word Production

The lexical–semantic organization of the mental lexicon is bound to change across the lifespan. Nevertheless, the effects of lexical–semantic factors on word processing are usually based on studies enrolling young adult cohorts. The current study aims to investigate to what extent age-specific semantic organization predicts performance in referential word production over the lifespan, from school-age children to older adults. In Study 1, we conducted a free semantic association task with participants from six age-groups (ranging from 10 to 80 years old) to compute measures that capture age-specific properties of the mental lexicon across the lifespan. These measures relate to lifespan changes in the Available Richness of the mental lexicon and in the lexical–semantic Network Prototypicality of concrete words. In Study 2, we used the collected data to predict performance in a picture-naming task on a new group of participants within the same age-groups as for Study 1. The results show that age-specific semantic Available Richness and Network Prototypicality affect word production speed while the semantic variables collected only in young adults do not. A richer and more prototypical semantic network across subjects from a given age-group is associated with faster word production speed. The current results indicate that age-specific semantic organization is crucial to predict lexical–semantic behaviors across the lifespan. Similarly, these results also provide cues to the understanding of the lexical–semantic properties of the mental lexicon and to lexical selection in referential tasks.     

Learning words and rules: abstract knowledge of word order in early sentence comprehension

Children quickly acquire basic grammatical facts about their native language. Does this early syntactic knowledge involve knowledge of words or rules? According to lexical accounts of acquisition, abstract syntactic and semantic categories are not primitive to the language-acquisition system; thus, early language comprehension and production are based on verb-specific knowledge. The present experiments challenge this account: We probed the abstractness of young children's knowledge of syntax by testing whether 25- and 21-month-olds extend their knowledge of English word order to new verbs. In four experiments, children used word order appropriately to interpret transitive sentences containing novel verbs. These findings demonstrate that although toddlers have much to learn about their native languages, they represent language experience in terms of an abstract mental vocabulary. These abstract representations allow children to rapidly detect general patterns in their native language, and thus to learn rules as well as words from the start.