Response bias and judgments of the location of clicks in sentences

This study examines the view that response bias is the basis of the “click effect,” i.e., the influence of grammatical structure on subjects’ location of clicks sounded during the presentation of a sentence. It is argued that, since response bias is more likely to operate when one is unsure of one’s perception, if response bias generates the “click effect,” the effect should be weaker for certain than for uncertain responses. Subjects were asked to identify the location of the click and allowed to make more than one response if they were uncertain of their first choice. Using the number of locations selected as an index of uncertainty, it was found that when a subject was less certain, the click was less likely to be judged as having occurred in the major grammatical break. Further, performance was superior when the click had been in the break, and this effect, which was more pronounced for “certain” responses, was not eliminated by correcting for possible response bias. It is concluded that the "click effect" is not attributable solely to response bias.     

The effects of processing requirements on neurophysiological responses to spoken sentences

Ten English speaking subjects listened to sentences that varied in sentential constraint (i.e., the degree to which the context of a sentence predicts the final word of that sentence) and event-related potentials (ERPs) were recorded during the presentation of the final word of each sentence. In the Control condition subjects merely listened to the sentences. In the Orthographic processing condition subjects merely listened to the sentences. In the Orthographic processing condition subjects decided, following each sentence, whether a given letter had been present in the final word of the preceding sentence. In the Phonological processing condition the subjects judged whether a given speech sound was contained in the terminal word. In the Semantic processing condition subjects determined whether the final word was a member of a given semantic category. A previous finding in the visual modality that the N400 component was larger in amplitude for low constraint sentence terminations than for high was extended to the auditory modality. It was also found that the amplitude of a N200-like response was similarly responsive to contextual constraint. The hypothesis that N400 amplitude would vary significantly with the depth of processing of the terminal word was not supported by the data. The "N200" recorded in this language processing context showed the classic frontocentral distribution of the N200. The N400 to spoken sentences had a central/centroparietal distribution similar to the N400 in visual modality experiments. It is suggested that the N400 obtained in these sentence contexts reflects an automatic semantic processing of words that occurs even when semantic analysis is not required to complete a given task. The cooccurrence and topographical dissimilarity of the "N200" and N400 suggest that the N400 may not be a delayed or a generic N200.     

Effects of task on the perceptual organization of sentences

Children and college students listened to sentences and responded to a question or a probe word after each sentence. To prevent Ss from using different perceptual strategies in performing the two tasks, question items and probe items were presented in mixed lists. In the probe task, the relationship between sentence structure and correct response latencies resembled the findings of an earlier study with block lists. The results from the question task were less similar to those obtained earlier, perhaps because, with mixed lists, Ss tended to organize all sentences in a manner especially suited to the probe task. A different type of organization might be used in the process of comprehending a sentence solely for the purpose of answering questions.     

Effects of methamphetamine and scopolamine on variability of response location.

Methamphetamine and scopolamine were studied in monkeys responding under a multiple fixed-ratio fixed-interval schedule of reinforcement. A response on any one of six levers could satisfy the schedule requirements. Variability of response location was evaluated in terms of switches, where a switch was defined as a response on one lever followed by a response on a different lever. Under baseline conditions the fixed-ratio schedule generated a high rate of responding and a low level of variability, while the fixed-interval schedule generated a low rate of responding and a high level of variability. Both methamphetamine (0.1 to 0.5 mg/kg) and scopolamine (2.4 to 240 microgram/kg) decreased overall response rate and increased variability of response location in each component of the multiple schedule with increasing doses of drug. At lower doses both drugs were found to decrease rate without affecting response variability.     

The representation of time and location in memory for sentences

Two theoretical approaches to the representation of Time and Location Markers in Memory were contrasted. According to predictions derived from one approach, the amount of forgetting will be the same for two-proposition sentences and sentences with a single proposition and a Time or a Location marker. According to the other approach, the amount of forgetting will be the same for one-proposition sentences and sentences with a Time or a Location Marker. Propositional structure and the level of within-sentence associations were orthogonally varied to create eight within-subject experimental conditions. Ninety subjects studied 40 sentences and were required to recall then. Four dependent variables were used: number of sentences completely recalled, number of sentences partially recalled, number of sentences where information was lost from within the proposition, and number of sentences where a complete proposition was lost. The results suggest that Time and Location markers are represented in memory as arguments in a proposition rather than as separate propositions. Level of associations within the sentence seems to have a different effect when the sentence is composed of one or two propositions. The results also suggest that there may be differences between the representations of Time and Location markers.     

Effects of animacy and noun-phrase relatedness on the processing of complex sentences

Previous work has suggested that syntactically complex object-extracted relative clauses are easier to process when the head noun phrase (NP1) is inanimate and the embedded noun phrase (NP2) is animate, as compared with the reverse animacy configuration, with differences in processing difficulty beginning as early as NP2 (e.g., The article that the senator . . . vs. The senator that the article . . .). Two eye-tracking-while-reading experiments were conducted to better understand the source of this effect. Experiment 1 showed that having an inanimate NP1 facilitated processing even when NP2 was held constant. Experiment 2 manipulated both animacy of NP1 and the degree of semantic relatedness between the critical NPs. When NP1 and NP2 were paired arbitrarily, the early animacy effect emerged at NP2. When NP1 and NP2 were semantically related, this effect disappeared, with effects of NP1 animacy emerging in later processing stages for both the related and arbitrary conditions. The results indicate that differences in the animacy of NP1 influence early processing of complex sentences only when the critical NPs share no meaningful relationship.     

Effects of fixed-ratio sample and choice response requirements upon oddity matching

Three pigeons were trained on oddity matching in which either 1, 4, 8, 16, or 32 sample-key observing responses were required to turn off the sample stimuli and turn on the comparison stimuli. Oddity accuracy increased when the observing-response requirement was raised and decreased when the requirement was lowered. Next, while the observing requirement was maintained at one response, the number of responses required to the comparison stimuli was either 1, 4, 8, 16, or 32. Under these conditions, choice was defined as the comparison that first accumulated the required number of responses. In general, increasing the comparison-response requirement decreased accuracy and lowering the comparison requirement increased accuracy. The fixed-ratio observing requirements appeared to facilitate control by stimuli serving an instructional function.     

Click location in sentences: A test of the linguistic competence of seven-year-old fluent and disfluent males

Ten fluent and ten disfluent 7-yr-old males were presented simple and complex fully grammatical, anomalous and scrambled sentences. A click (35-msec 1-kHz tone burst) had been superimposed within three positions to the right or left of the major syntactic boundary in each sentence. The subjects heard the sentence, repeated the sentence, and marked on a preprinted version of the sentence where they heard the click. It was expected that children with greater language facility would more probably locate the click veridically. By the same reasoning, less complex syntactic structures should be expected to influence click placement less than more complex utterances. The following results were obtained: (a) the disfluent group gave a greater number of correct responses than the fluent group; (b) more correct responses were observed for simple sentences than for complex sentences for both groups; and (c) fewer correct responses were observed for both simple and complex grammatical sentences than for anomalous and scrambled sentence types.     

Lexical decision in sentences: Effects of syntactic structure

A lexical decision paradigm was used to examine syntactic influence on word recognition in sentences. Initial fragments of sentences were presented visually (CRT display) one word at a time (at reading speeds), from left to right. The string terminated with the appearance of a lexical decision target. The grammatical structure of the incomplete sentence affected lexical decision reaction time (RT). In Experiment 1, modal verb contexts followed by main verb targets and preposition contexts followed by noun targets produced lower RTs than did the opposite pairings (i.e., modal/noun and preposition/verb). In Experiment 2, transitive verb contexts followed by noun targets and subject noun phrase contexts followed by verb targets yielded lower RTs than did the opposite pairings. Similar contrasts for adjective targets did not yield comparable effects in Experiment 2, but did when the adjective was the head of a predictable phrase (Experiment 4). In Experiment 3, noun targets yielded lower RTs than did verb targets after contexts of a transitive verb followed by a prepositional phrase. An account of these effects is offered in terms of parsing constraints on phrasal categories.     

Delayed matching-to-sample performance of hens: Effects of sample duration and response requirements during the sample

Six domestic hens were trained under a delayed matching-to-sample procedure with red and green keylights as sample and comparison stimuli and a 1.5-s delay interval. The hens were trained to stop pecking the sample stimuli when a tone sounded. Duration of the sample stimuli (2 to 10 s) and the number of pecks required on the key on which these stimuli were presented (0 to 10) were altered across conditions. Both the response requirement on the sample key and the duration of sample presentations affected accuracy. These findings are in agreement with those of earlier studies using other species and somewhat different procedures.     

Effect of respondent code location on survey response rate

Survey response rates were examined for differences based on the location of the respondent code, a numerical code placed on the survey versus a numerical code placed on the return envelope. A four-page survey on criteria and procedures used when hiring health education faculty members was mailed to program coordinators of university health education programs (N = 223). Half of the coordinators (n = 112) received coded surveys (surveys that had a written overt three-digit code at the top right corner of the first page of the survey). The other half of the coordinators (n = 111) received coded return envelopes (return envelopes with a six-digit code typed directly under the return mailing address). A total of 132 coordinators returned completed surveys (62%). Response rate did not differ significantly based on placement of respondent code. Survey researchers are thus recommended to devote their efforts to other inducement strategies to increase response rates.     

Modifiers in metaphors: Effects of constituent phrase similarity on the interpretation of figurative sentences

Previous research has shown that the ease of metaphor interpretation and judgments of metaphor goodness are correlated with the degree of similarity between the two nouns linked in a metaphor. This study was designed to investigate the effects of adding adjective modifiers to the nouns constituting metaphorical sentences. Four types of associative relationships, between adjectives and nouns were defined. It was found that different patterns of adjective modification influenced constituent phrase similarity (e.g., the ADJECTIVE-NOUN_A is an ADJECTIVE-NOUN_B), and such differences were consistent with changes in metaphor goodness and interpretability. However, the intercorrelations among these variables were a function of the level of similarity between unmodified constituent nouns. With initially similar constituent nouns, the three variables were about equally intercorrelated. With initially dissimilar constituent nouns, constituent phrase similarity and metaphor goodness were highly correlated, but interpretability was not predictable from a linear model. Results are discussed in terms of a cognitive-feature model of association and metaphor processing.     

Time allocation on concurrent schedules with asymmetrical response requirements

Pigeons were trained on concurrent schedules in which key pecking was required by both schedules (concurrent variable-interval variable-interval schedules) and on concurrent schedules in which key pecking was required by only one of the schedules (concurrent variable-interval variable-time schedules). The distribution of reinforcements was systematically varied with both types of concurrent schedules. The distribution of time between the schedules depended on the reinforcement distribution and was independent of the symmetry of the response requirement. The relation between time and reinforcement distributions appears to be invariant over a wide range of manipulations of responding maintained by concurrent schedules.     

Effects of syntactic structure in the memory of concrete and abstract Chinese sentences

Smith (1981) found that concrete English sentences were better recognized than abstract sentences and that this concreteness effect was potent only when the concrete sentence was also affirmative but the effect switched to an opposite end when the concrete sentence was negative. These results were partially replicated in Experiment 1 by using materials from a very different language (i.e., Chinese): concrete-affirmative sentences were better remembered than concrete-negative and abstract sentences, but no reliable difference was found between the latter two types. In Experiment 2, the task was modified by using a visual presentation instead of an oral one as in Experiment 1. Both concrete-affirmative and concrete-negative sentences were better memorized then abstract ones in Experiment 2. The findings in the two experiments are explained by a combination of the dual-coding model and Marschark's (1985) item-specific and relational processing. The differential effects of experience with different language systems on processing verbal materials in memory are also discussed.This research was partially supported by a research grant from the Research Grants Council of Hong Kong to Hsuan-Chih Chen. Connie Suk-Han Ho was supported on an Overseas Research Studentship from the University of Oxford of United Kingdom during the preparation of this article.     

Effects of accelerated reading rate on syntactic processing of Hebrew sentences: electrophysiological evidence

The present study was designed to investigate whether accelerated reading rate influences the way adult readers process sentence components with different grammatical functions. Participants were 20 male native Hebrew-speaking college students aged 18-27 years. The processing of normal word strings was examined during word-by-word reading of sentences having subject-verb-object (SVO) syntactic structure in self-paced and fast-paced conditions. In both reading conditions, the N100 (late positive) and P300 (late negative) event-related potential (ERP) components were sensitive to such internal processes as recognition of words' syntactic functions. However, an accelerated reading rate influenced the way in which readers processed these sentence elements. In the self-paced condition, the predicate-centered (morphologically based) strategy was used, whereas in the fast-paced condition an approach that was more like the word-order strategy was used. This new pattern was correlated with findings on the shortening of latency and the increasing of amplitudes in both N100 and P300 ERP components for most sentence elements. These changes seemed to be related to improved working memory functioning and maximized attention.     

Attentional requirements for location and distance of movement: encoding and recognition

The purpose of this experiment was to study the early processing stages of encoding and recognition of slow movement in a short-term motor-memory paradigm. These stages were examined by determining whether Laabs' (1973) differential decay rates for location of movement and distance of movement could be replicated when the interfering activity was performed during the criterion and replication movements. 20 subjects performed a linear-positioning task in a 2 X 2 X 2 (count X movement type X retention interval) experimental design. 10 subjects in one condition counted backwards by 3s during the criterion and replication movements. There were no detrimental effects for location and distance-cue reproduction when attention was shared with counting backwards. Like Laabs' results, location of movement was maintained over the 15-sec. interval while distance of movement spontaneously changed. These results supported the notion that the early stages of encoding and recognition of cues for movement can occur unaffected by a secondary task.     

Variability of response location on fixed-ratio and fixed-interval schedules of reinforcement

Variability of response location was studied in monkeys performing in a six-lever chamber. Fixed-ratio schedules, ranging from FR 1 to FR 300, generated a high degree of stereotypy of response location. In contrast, fixed-interval schedules of comparable reinforcement frequencies (0.06 to 4 minutes) generated much greater variability. These results failed to confirm any simple relationship between response variability and intermittence of reinforcement. Rather, variability seems to be determined by the particular characteristics of the reinforcement schedule.