The cataphoric use of spoken stress in narratives

This study investigated the effects of introducing a concept into discourse either marked with spoken stress or in an unstressed form using a story continuation paradigm. Participants first listened to informal narratives and then continued them. The final phrase of the narratives introduced a new concept. If that concept had been introduced in a stressed form, participants referred to it more often and sooner. Also, there was a tendency towards using a higher proportion of pronominal references as opposed to NP references. These results closely resemble the findings of Gernsbacher and Shroyer, who, using the same experimental procedure, investigated the effect of marking a concept with the unstressed, indefinite article this as opposed to a/an. The two studies together support the notion of a common cataphoric function of the two linguistic devices; they mark concepts the speaker is likely to refer to again. Received: 10 August 1998 / Accepted: 9 December 1998     

Thinking ahead or not? Natural aging and anticipation during reading

Despite growing evidence of young adults neurally pre-activating word features during sentence comprehension, less clear is the degree to which this generalizes to older adults. Using ERPs, we tested for linguistic prediction in younger and older readers by means of indefinite articles (a’s and an’s) preceding more and less probable noun continuations. Although both groups exhibited cloze probability-graded noun N400s, only the young showed significant article effects, indicating probabilistic sensitivity to the phonology of anticipated upcoming nouns. Additionally, both age groups exhibited prolonged increased frontal positivities to less probable nouns, although in older adults this effect was prominent only in a subset with high verbal fluency (VF). This ERP positivity to contextual constraint violations offers additional support for prediction in the young. For high VF older adults, the positivity may indicate they, too, engage in some form of linguistic pre-processing when implicitly cued, as may have occurred via the articles.     

The effect of clause wrap-up on eye movements during reading

The effect of clause wrap-up on eye movements in reading was examined. Readers read passages in which a target category noun referred to either a high typical or a low typical antecedent. In addition, the category noun was either clause final or non-clause final. There were four primary results: (1) Readers looked longer at a category noun when its antecedent was a low typical member of the category than when it was a high typical member; (2)readers looked longer at the category noun and at the post-category region when they were clause final than when they were not clause final; (3) readers regressed from a category noun or post-category region more frequently when it was clause final than when it was not clause final; and (4) readers made longer initial saccades when their eyes left the category noun or post-category region when this word was in clause final position than when it was not clause final. The last result suggests that sometimes higher order processes that are related to making a decision about when to move the eyes impinge on lower level decisions that are typically associated with deciding where to move the eyes.     

On using what we know about ourselves in thinking about others: Not so fast

Abstract

We argue that the frequently assumed privileged role of the self as a habitual reference point in social judgments is often hindered by the fact that, unlike other persons, the self is typically represented primarily in terms of internal, unobservable characteristics. This idiosyncratic feature of self-representations may render them incompatible with many other social representations. Yet, such limitations are not universal. In particular, incompatibility is less of a problem when (1) the judgment target is someone psychologically close; (2) accessible self-representations involve distant (rather than recent) self-memories; (3) accessible self-representations are relatively abstract, (semanticized) rather than event-specific; or, (4) social judgements concern not a specific other person but more abstract social concepts such as traits.     

Feature accessibility in conceptual combination: Effects of context-induced relevance

In conceptual combinations such aspeeled apples, two kinds of features are potentially accessible: phrase features and noun features. Phrase features are true only of the phrase (e.g., “white”), whereas noun features are true of both the phrase and the head noun (e.g., “round”). When people comprehend such combinations, phrase features are verified more quickly and more accurately than noun features. We examine relevance as an explanation for this phrase feature superiority. If relevance is the critical factor, then contexts that explicitly make noun features relevant and phrase features irrelevant should reverse the phrase feature superiority (i.e., they should make noun features easier to verify than phrase features). Consistent with the relevance hypothesis, brief contexts that made noun features relevant also made those noun features more accessible than phrase features, and vice versa. We conclude that the phrase feature superiority effect is attributable to the discourse strategy of assigning relevance to modifiers in combinations, unless a context indicates otherwise.     

A purple giraffe is faster than a purple elephant: Inconsistent phonology affects determiner selection in English

The form of a determiner is dependent on different contextual factors: in some languages grammatical number and grammatical gender determine the choice of a determiner variant. In other languages, the phonological onset of the element immediately following the determiner affects selection, too. Previous work has shown that the activation of opposing determiner forms by a noun’s grammatical properties leads to slower naming latencies in a picture naming task, as does the activation of opposing forms by the interaction between a noun’s gender and the phonological context. The present paper addresses the question of whether phonological context alone is sufficient to evoke competition between determiner forms. Participants produced English phrases in which a noun phrase’s phonology required a determiner that was the same as or differed from the determiner required by the noun itself (e.g., a purple giraffe; an orange giraffe). Naming latencies were slower when the phrase-initial determiner differed from the determiner required by the noun in isolation than when the phrase-initial determiner matched the isolated-noun determiner. This was true both for definite and indefinite determiners. The data show that during the production of a determiner–noun phrase, nouns automatically activate the phonological forms of their determiners, which can compete with the phonological forms that are generated by an assimilation rule.     

Modality exclusivity norms for 400 nouns: The relationship between perceptual experience and surface word form

We present modality exclusivity norms for 400 randomly selected noun concepts, for which participants provided perceptual strength ratings across five sensory modalities (i.e., hearing, taste, touch, smell, and vision). A comparison with previous norms showed that noun concepts are more multimodal than adjective concepts, as nouns tend to subsume multiple adjectival property concepts (e.g., perceptual experience of the concept baby involves auditory, haptic, olfactory, and visual properties, and hence leads to multimodal perceptual strength). To show the value of these norms, we then used them to test a prediction of the sound symbolism hypothesis: Analysis revealed a systematic relationship between strength of perceptual experience in the referent concept and surface word form, such that distinctive perceptual experience tends to attract distinctive lexical labels. In other words, modality-specific norms of perceptual strength are useful for exploring not just the nature of grounded concepts, but also the nature of form–meaning relationships. These norms will be of benefit to those interested in the representational nature of concepts, the roles of perceptual information in word processing and in grounded cognition more generally, and the relationship between form and meaning in language development and evolution.     

Tempo discrimination of musical patterns: Effects due to pitch and rhythmic structure

The purpose of this research was to investigate a set of factors that may influence the perceived rate of an auditory event. In a paired-comparison task, subjects were presented with a set of music-like patterns that differed in their relative number of contour changes and in the magnitude of pitch skips (Experiment 1) as well as in the compatibility of rhythmic accent structure with the arrangement of pitch relations (Experiment 2). Results indicated that, relative to their standard referents, comparison melodies were judged to unfold more slowly when they displayed more changes in pitch direction, greater pitch distances, and an incompatible rhythmic accent structure. These findings are suggested to stern from animputed velocity hypo thesis, in which people overgeneralize certain invariant relations that typically occur between melodic and temporal accent structure within Western music.     

Experience and grammatical agreement: Statistical learning shapes number agreement production

A robust result in research on the production of grammatical agreement is that speakers are more likely to produce an erroneous verb with phrases such as the key to the cabinets, with a singular noun followed by a plural one, than with phrases such as the keys to the cabinet, where a plural noun is followed by a singular. These asymmetries are thought to reflect core language production processes. Previous accounts have attributed error patterns to a syntactic number feature present on plurals but not singulars. An alternative approach is presented in which a process similar to structural priming contributes to the error asymmetry via speakers’ past experiences with related agreement constructions. A corpus analysis and two agreement production studies test this account. The results suggest that agreement production is shaped by statistical learning from past language experience. Implications for accounts of agreement are discussed.     

Interpreting conjoined noun phrases and conjoined clauses: Collective versus distributive preferences

Two experiments are reported that show that introducing event participants in a conjoined noun phrase (NP) favours a single event (collective) interpretation, while introducing them in separate clauses favours a separate events (distributive) interpretation. In Experiment 1, acceptability judgements were speeded when the bias of a predicate toward separate events versus a single event matched the presumed bias of how the subjects' referents were introduced (as conjoined noun phrases or in conjoined clauses). In Experiment 2, reading of a phrase containing an anaphor following conjoined noun phrases was facilitated when the anaphor was they, relative to when it was neither/each of them; the opposite pattern was found when the anaphor followed conjoined clauses. We argue that comprehension was facilitated when the form of an anaphor was appropriate for how its antecedents were introduced. These results address the very general problem of how we individuate entities and events when presented with a complex situation and show that different linguistic forms can guide how we construe a situation. The results also indicate that there is no general penalty for introducing the entities or events separately—in distinct clauses as “split” antecedents.     

Discourse in aphasia: Integration deficits in processing reference

The present study investigated moderately impaired aphasic subjects' ability to integrate information across sentences by having them identify antecedents for ambiguous pronouns in brief narratives. In order to disambiguate the pronouns, the subjects had to consult either textual cues and/or extratextual cues. In addition, the subjects' ability to retrieve factual information was measured by having them identify explicitly stated noun referents. The results show that the aphasic subjects had significant difficulty using textual cues to resolve referents when the referents were not readily accessible through world knowledge. The patients had little difficulty interpreting referents which were recoverable from world knowledge or were stated explicitly. The explanatory power of world knowledge effects, grammatical class effects, memory effects, and linguistic integration effects in accounting for the deficit pattern observed is considered.     

A kinematic approach to the conceptual representations of this and that

The Italian demonstrative pronouns questo/a (‘this_[mas/fem]’) and quello/a (‘that_[mas/fem]’) implicitly convey information about objects’ distance with respect to the speaker. Our study investigated the referents of questo/a (‘this_[mas/fem]’) and quello/a (‘that_[mas/fem]’) by analysing their influence on reach-to-grasp actions towards objects located near to (12 cm) or far from (30 cm) the participant. Upon acoustic instruction containing one or the other pronoun, participants had to reach for and grasp a target object. Results showed an effect of pronoun on movement planning. When the object was in the far position, reaction times were faster for the congruent pronoun quello/a, whereas when it was in the near position they were faster for the congruent pronoun questo/a. Interactions between implied and real target distance suggest that the conceptual spaces of questo/a and quello/a do not map onto a strict distinction between peripersonal and extrapersonal space.     

Social cognition,artefacts, and stigmergy revisited: Concepts of coordination

A number of different coordination concepts have been developed to explain how individual activities are coordinated on a social level, and the variety of concepts shows there is an interest in many domains to find such explanations. Stigmergy being one of them, has come to be increasingly applied on various kinds of human activities. In other domains we find other concepts for explaining how environmental resources contribute to work activities or how people use them to structure their work. This paper discusses different coordination concepts, including stigmergy, articulation work, coordination mechanisms, triggers, placeholders, and entry points. The first three concepts are explicitly concerned with coordination among several agents, while the last three instead concern individual activities, but arguably they can be extended to the social level. They also bring an explicitly cognitive dimension to coordination, which is not as salient in the former concepts. The concepts discussed here do have some similarities, but also important differences. They may not be interchangeable, but they could complement each other, or contribute to further elaboration of existing concepts. The stigmergic sign, e.g., could usefully be developed to recognise qualitative differences in its role as a coordination mechanism.     

Verb semantic structures in memory for sentences: Evidence for componential representation

This research contrasts two hypotheses concerning componential storage of meaning. The Complexity Hypothesis assumed by Fodor (The language of thought, NY: Crowell, 1975), Kintsch (The representation of meaning in memory, Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum, 1974), and Thorndyke (Conceptual complexity and imagery in comprehension and memory. Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior, 1975, 14, 359–369) states that a word with many semantic components will require more processing resources, comprehension time, and long-term memory space than a word with few components, and thus will interfere more with memory for surrounding words. This memory prediction was tested against an alternative prediction based on connectivity. The Connectivity Hypothesis views verb semantic structures as frames for sentence representation and states that memory strength between two nouns in a sentence increases with the number of underlying verb subpredicates that connect the nouns. Thus, the Complexity Hypothesis predicts that a verb with many subpredicates will lead to poorer memory strength between the surrounding nouns than a verb with few subpredicates, while the Connectivity Hypothesis predicts that verbs with many subpredicates will lead to greater memory strength between nouns in cases when the additional subpredicates provide semantic connections between the nouns.In three experiments, subjects recalled subject-verb-object sentences, given subject nouns as cues. General verbs, with relatively few subpredicates, were compared with more specific verbs whose additional subpredicates either did or did not provide additional connections between the surrounding nouns. The level of recall of the object noun, given the subject noun as cue, was predicted by the relative number of connecting subpredicates in the verb, but not by the relative number of subpredicates. This finding supports the Connectivity Hypothesis over the Complexity Hypothesis. These results are interpreted in terms of a model in which the verb conveys a structured set of subpredicates that provides a connective framework for sentence memory.     

Intraindividual differences dimensions of mood change during pregnancy identified in five P-technique factor analyses

Daily-self-ratings of mood and state were obtained for approximately 120 days of observation from five pregnant subjects. Measurements were based on a total pool of 75 adjectives culled from the literature to represent eight dimensions of affect established in primarily cross-sectional studies. The data were analyzed in a P-technique factor analysis context to determine both the extent to which interindividual differences and intraindividual variability concepts were interchangeable and how general such intraindividual variability concepts were among different subjects. Although evidence was found that subjects construe many adjectives differently, for dimensions such as Energy, Well Being, Fatigue, and Concentration, the data indicate that cross-sectionally and longitudinally based personality concepts exhibit a fair degree of convergence.     

Slow and steady: sustained effects of lexico-semantic associations can mediate referential impairments in schizophrenia

The present study investigated the contribution of lexico-semantic associations to impairments in establishing reference in schizophrenia. We examined event-related potentials as schizophrenia patients and healthy, demographically matched controls read five-sentence scenarios. Sentence 4 introduced a noun that referred back to three possible referents introduced in Sentences 1–3. These referents were contextually appropriate, contextually inappropriate but lexico-semantically associated, and contextually inappropriate and lexico-semantically nonassociated. In order to determine whether participants had correctly linked the anaphor to its referent, the final sentence reintroduced each referent, and participants indicated whether the last two sentences referred to the same entity. Results indicated that between 300 and 400 ms, patients, like healthy controls, used discourse context to link the noun with its preceding referent. However, between 400 and 500 ms, neural activity in patients was modulated only by lexico-semantic associations, rather than by discourse context. Moreover, patients were also more likely than controls to incorrectly link the noun with contextually inappropriate but lexico-semantically associated referents. These results suggest that at least some types of referential impairments may be driven by sustained activation of contextually inappropriate lexico-semantic associations.     

Thin slices of creativity: Using single-word utterances to assess creative cognition

We investigated the hypothesis that individual differences in creative cognition can be manifest even in brief responses, such as single-word utterances. Participants (n = 193) were instructed to say a verb upon seeing a noun displayed on a computer screen and were cued to respond creatively to half of the nouns. For every noun–verb pair (72 pairs per subject), we assessed the semantic distance between the noun and the verb, using latent semantic analysis (LSA). Semantic distance was higher in the cued ("creative") condition than the uncued condition, within subjects. Critically, between subjects, semantic distance in the cued condition had a strong relationship to a creativity factor derived from a battery of verbal, nonverbal, and achievement-based creativity measures (β= .50), and this relation remained when controlling for intelligence and personality. The data show that creative cognition can be assessed reliably and validly from such thin slices of behavior.     

Why Boys will be boys and girls will be girls: Understanding colloquial tautologies

What do tautological phrases such asBoys will be boys, A promise is a promise, or War is war mean and how are they understood? These phrases literally appear to be uninformative, yet speakers frequently use such expressions in conversation and listeners have little difficulty comprehending them. Understanding nominal tautologies requires that listeners/readers infer the speaker's attitude toward the noun phrase (e.g.,boys) mentioned in the sentence. The purpose of the present studies was to investigate the role of context, syntactic form, and lexical content in the interpretation of nominal tuatologies. Two studies are reported in which subjects rated the acceptability of different tautological constructions either alone (Experiment 1) or with supporting contextual information (Experiment 2). The results of these studies provide evidence that colloquial tautologies can be interpreted differently in different contexts, but that there are important regularities in the syntactic form and lexical content of these phrases which influence how they are understood. Our findings highlight the importance of speakers/listeners' stereotypical understanding of people, activities, and concrete objects in the use and understanding of different tautological expressions. The implications of this research for psycholinguistic theories of conversational inference and indirect language use are discussed.     

Asymmetries for the categorization of kanji nouns, adjectives, and verbs presented to the left and right

Kanji is one form of written Japanese in which the symbolic/analytic characteristics of language are dissociated from systematic phonetic characteristics; as such, it makes possible a more careful test of which aspect of language is responsible for the frequently observed superior left-hemisphere performance. In this study, subjects were asked to categorize tachistoscopically presented kanji as nouns, adjectives, or verbs. The previously reported (Hatta 1977, Neuropsychologia, 15, 685–688) left-visual-field advantage for kanji was found only in the case of nouns. Adjectives and verbs were processed more rapidly and correctly in the right visual field.     

Associations to unfamiliar words: Learning the meanings of new words

Five experiments were designed to examine whether subjects attend to different aspects of meaning for familiar and unfamiliar words. In Experiments 1–3, subjects gave free associations to high- and low-familiarity words from the same taxonomic category (e.g.,seltzer:sarsparilla; Experiment 1), from the same noun synonym set (e.g.,baby:neonate; Experiment 2), and from the same verb synonym set (e.g.,abscond:escape; Experiment 3). In Experiments 4 and 5, subjects first read a context sentence containing the stimulus word and then gave associations; stimuli were novel words or either high- or low-familiarity nouns. Low-familiarity and novel words elicited more nonsemantically based responses (e.g.,engram:graham) than did high-familiarity words. Of the responses semantically related to the stimulus, low-familiarity and novel words elicited a higher proportion of definitional responses [category (e.g.,sarsparilla:soda), synonym (e.g.,neonate:newborn), and coordinate (e.g.,armoire:dresser)], whereas high-familiarity stimuli elicited a higher proportion of event-based responses [thematic (e.g.,seltzer:glass) and noun:verb (e.g.,baby:cry)]. Unfamiliar words appear to elicit a shift of attentional resources from relations useful in understanding the message to relations useful in understanding the meaning of the unfamiliar word.