The semantics of prosody: acoustic and perceptual evidence of prosodic correlates to word meaning

This investigation examined whether speakers produce reliable prosodic correlates to meaning across semantic domains and whether listeners use these cues to derive word meaning from novel words. Speakers were asked to produce phrases in infant-directed speech in which novel words were used to convey one of two meanings from a set of antonym pairs (e.g., big/small). Acoustic analyses revealed that some acoustic features were correlated with overall valence of the meaning. However, each word meaning also displayed a unique acoustic signature, and semantically related meanings elicited similar acoustic profiles. In two perceptual tests, listeners either attempted to identify the novel words with a matching meaning dimension (picture pair) or with mismatched meaning dimensions. Listeners inferred the meaning of the novel words significantly more often when prosody matched the word meaning choices than when prosody mismatched. These findings suggest that speech contains reliable prosodic markers to word meaning and that listeners use these prosodic cues to differentiate meanings. That prosody is semantic suggests a reconceptualization of traditional distinctions between linguistic and nonlinguistic properties of spoken language.     

The role of inferences about referential intent in word learning: evidence from autism

Young children are readily able to use known labels to constrain hypotheses about the meanings of new words under conditions of referential ambiguity. At issue is the kind of information children use to constrain such hypotheses. According to one theory, children take into account the speaker's intention when solving a referential puzzle. In the present studies, children with autism were impaired in monitoring referential intent, but were equally successful as normally developing 24-month-old toddlers at mapping novel words to unnamed items under conditions of referential ambiguity. Therefore, constraints that lead the child to map a novel label to a previously unnamed object under these circumstances are not solely based on assessments of speakers' intentions.     

Word category and verb--argument structure information in the dynamics of parsing

One of the core issues in psycholinguistic research concerns the relationship between word category information and verb-argument structure (e.g. transitivity) information of verbs in the process of sentence parsing. In two experiments (visual versus auditory presentation) using event-related brain potentials (ERPs), we addressed this question by presenting sentences in which the critical word simultaneously realized both a word category and a transitivity violation. ERPs for sentences with both types of violation clustered with the patterns for sentences with a word category violation only, but were different from the patterns elicited by argument structure violations in isolation, since only the latter elicited an N400 ERP component. The finding that an argument structure violation evoked an N400 only if the phrase structure of the respective sentence was correct suggests that a successful integration of the word category information of a verb functionally precedes the application of its argument structure information.     

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.     

Acquiring and processing verb argument structure: distributional learning in a miniature language

Adult knowledge of a language involves correctly balancing lexically-based and more language-general patterns. For example, verb argument structures may sometimes readily generalize to new verbs, yet with particular verbs may resist generalization. From the perspective of acquisition, this creates significant learnability problems, with some researchers claiming a crucial role for verb semantics in the determination of when generalization may and may not occur. Similarly, there has been debate regarding how verb-specific and more generalized constraints interact in sentence processing and on the role of semantics in this process. The current work explores these issues using artificial language learning. In three experiments using languages without semantic cues to verb distribution, we demonstrate that learners can acquire both verb-specific and verb-general patterns, based on distributional information in the linguistic input regarding each of the verbs as well as across the language as a whole. As with natural languages, these factors are shown to affect production, judgments and real-time processing. We demonstrate that learners apply a rational procedure in determining their usage of these different input statistics and conclude by suggesting that a Bayesian perspective on statistical learning may be an appropriate framework for capturing our findings.     

A semantics-based approach to the "no negative evidence" problem

Previous studies have shown that children retreat from argument-structure overgeneralization errors (e.g., * Don't giggle me ) by inferring that frequently encountered verbs are unlikely to be grammatical in unattested constructions, and by making use of syntax-semantics correspondences (e.g., verbs denoting internally caused actions such as giggling cannot normally be used causatively). The present study tested a new account based on a unitary learning mechanism that combines both of these processes. Seventy-two participants (ages 5–6, 9–10, and adults) rated overgeneralization errors with higher (* The funny man's joke giggled Bart ) and lower (* The funny man giggled Bart ) degrees of direct external causation. The errors with more-direct causation were rated as less unacceptable than those with less-direct causation. This finding is consistent with the new account, under which children acquire—in an incremental and probabilistic fashion—the meaning of particular constructions (e.g., transitive causative = direct external causation) and particular verbs, rejecting generalizations where the incompatibility between the two is too great.     

Orthographic learning in learning to spell: The roles of semantics and type of practice

This study investigated the relevance of type of practice and presence of semantic representation for orthographic learning in learning to spell. A total of 36 students in Grade 2 (mean age = 7 years 10 months) were exposed to 10 novel nonwords, 5 of which were paired with semantic information. Half of the participants practiced reading these new items, whereas the others spelled them. The students were then tested 1 and 7 days later on a dictation task. Results revealed a significant main effect of practice type favoring spelling practice and a main effect of the teaching condition, where taught items paired with semantic information were spelled correctly more often than words presented without semantic support. There was no effect of testing time, with learned words being retained well over the 1-week delay, nor were there any significant interactions. The findings support the contention that spelling offers an excellent milieu for orthographic learning to occur. Furthermore, semantics are proposed as a relevant factor in learning to spell, supporting the view that orthographic learning involves the integration of phonological, orthographic, and semantic representations.     

Comprehension of argument structure and semantic roles: evidence from English-learning children and the forced-choice pointing paradigm

Research using the intermodal preferential looking paradigm (IPLP) has consistently shown that English-learning children aged 2 can associate transitive argument structure with causal events. However, studies using the same methodology investigating 2-year-old children's knowledge of the conjoined agent intransitive and semantic role assignment have reported inconsistent findings. The aim of the present study was to establish at what age English-learning children have verb-general knowledge of both transitive and intransitive argument structure using a new method: the forced-choice pointing paradigm. The results suggest that young 2-year-olds can associate transitive structures with causal (or externally caused) events and can use transitive structure to assign agent and patient roles correctly. However, the children were unable to associate the conjoined agent intransitive with noncausal events until aged 3;4. The results confirm the pattern from previous IPLP studies and indicate that children may develop the ability to comprehend different aspects of argument structure at different ages. The implications for theories of language acquisition and the nature of the language acquisition mechanism are discussed.     

Sources of self-esteem: From theory to measurement and back again

According to some conceptions, self-esteem possesses a moral dimension; according to others, it does not. According to some, the realism of the self-evaluation matters; according to others, it does not. For some investigators, narcissism is just high self-esteem; for others, narcissism involves internal conflicts within one's self-evaluation, which is strongly dependent on admiration extracted from other people. The best known procedure for measuring self-esteem has been a 10 question survey introduced by Rosenberg in 1965. Along with other insensitivities and biases, the Rosenberg scale fails to respond to the different high-level values or “sources” that are constitutive of self-esteem for different individuals. A person's self-esteem can be contingent on internal sources (such as independent thinking, productive projects, and moral commitments), or on external sources (such as fame, wealth, physical appearance, or the approval of peers). A study reported here investigated the relationships among global explicit self-esteem (as assessed with the Rosenberg scale), reliance on internal sources of self-esteem (measured with the Self-Esteem Sentence Completion Instrument), reliance on several external sources (via the External Sources of Self-Esteem scale), and narcissistic tendencies (as per the Narcissistic Personality Inventory). The participants were 97 undergraduate college students enrolled in psychology courses. Rosenberg and NPI scores displayed different patterns of correlation with various subscales of the ESOSES, raising the prospect that profiles of various external sources will enable us to differentiate between self-esteem and narcissism. Meanwhile, scores on the SESCI were not significantly related to any other variable, except for a mild negative correlation with the success recognition subscale of the ESOSES—an outcome that raises both theoretical and measurement questions about internal sources. Contrary to frequent assumptions of direct rivalry, reliance on internal sources of self-esteem may be largely independent of reliance on external sources. At the same time, however, more work obviously needs to be done on measuring internal sources of self-esteem, both explicit and implicit.     

Syntactic structure and artificial grammar learning: the learnability of embedded hierarchical structures

Embedded hierarchical structures, such as "the rat the cat ate was brown", constitute a core generative property of a natural language theory. Several recent studies have reported learning of hierarchical embeddings in artificial grammar learning (AGL) tasks, and described the functional specificity of Broca's area for processing such structures. In two experiments, we investigated whether alternative strategies can explain the learning success in these studies. We trained participants on hierarchical sequences, and found no evidence for the learning of hierarchical embeddings in test situations identical to those from other studies in the literature. Instead, participants appeared to solve the task by exploiting surface distinctions between legal and illegal sequences, and applying strategies such as counting or repetition detection. We suggest alternative interpretations for the observed activation of Broca's area, in terms of the application of calculation rules or of a differential role of working memory. We claim that the learnability of hierarchical embeddings in AGL tasks remains to be demonstrated.     

From locality to location and back again: A spatial journey in the study of religion

In this article, in the context of a retrospective examination of my own research journey from locality to location and back again, I argue for the importance and value of studying religion in local perspective, and reconceptualize ‘locality’ from the perspective of a spatial methodology, in recognition of the critiques made of earlier usage and the demands placed on the term in the context of globalization. Using the example of an urban high street, I put a spatially-informed approach to the study of religion in locality to work. I suggest that such an approach counterbalances and challenges the once dominant perspective in Religious Studies that focused on World Religions and saw the places in which they occurred as little more than mere context. A locality-based approach seeks to reconnect religion with other social and cultural fields and to recognise the impact of local particularity on the religious life of an area.     

Affectedness and direct objects: the role of lexical semantics in the acquisition of verb argument structure.

How do speakers predict the syntax of a verb from its meaning? Traditional theories posit that syntactically relevant information about semantic arguments consists of a list of thematic roles like "agent", "theme", and "goal", which are linked onto a hierarchy of grammatical positions like subject, object and oblique object. For verbs involving motion, the entity caused to move is defined as the "theme" or "patient" and linked to the object. However, this fails for many common verbs, as in fill water into the glass and cover a sheet onto the bed. In more recent theories verbs' meanings are multidimensional structures in which the motions, changes, and other events can be represented in separate but connected substructures; linking rules are sensitive to the position of an argument in a particular configuration. The verb's object would be linked not to the moving entity but to the argument specified as "affected" or caused to change as the main event in the verb's meaning. The change can either be one of location, resulting from motion in a particular manner, or of state, resulting from accommodating or reacting to a substance. For example, pour specifies how a substance moves (downward in a stream), so its substance argument is the object (pour the water/glass); fill specifies how a container changes (from not full to full), so its stationary container argument is the object (fill the glass/water). The newer theory was tested in three experiments. Children aged 3;4-9;4 and adults were taught made-up verbs, presented in a neutral syntactic context (this is mooping), referring to a transfer of items to a surface or container. Subjects were tested on their willingness to encode the moving items or the surface as the verb's object. For verbs where the items moved in a particular manner (e.g., zig-zagging), people were more likely to express the moving items as the object; for verbs where the surface changed state (e.g., shape, color, or fullness), people were more likely to express the surface as the object. This confirms that speakers are not confined to labeling moving entities as "themes" or "patients" and linking them to the grammatical object; when a stationary entity undergoes a state change as the result of a motion, it can be represented as the main affected argument and thereby linked to the grammatical object instead.     

From negative to positive and back again: Polarized affective and relational experience in borderline personality disorder

A core feature of borderline personality disorder (BPD) is the tendency to evaluate one's experience with extreme polarity (i.e., feeling all good or all bad; Beck, Freeman, & Davis, 2004; Kernberg, 1975; Linehan, 1993). In this investigation, we examined the polarity of within-person reports of experience in individuals with BPD and healthy adults over the course of a 21-day, experience-sampling diary. We applied multilevel modeling techniques (Rafaeli, Rogers, & Ravelle, 2007) to capture the within-person covariance of momentary reports of negative and positive features of experience, either affective or relational. Our data indicated significantly greater polarity in reports of affective and relational experiences in BPD that increased during heightened interpersonal stress. We also examined the association of affective and relational polarity to reports of impulsive behaviors (e.g., self-injury, substance use, etc.) and found evidence that increased polarity in reports of affective (in low-stress contexts) and relational experiences (in high-stress contexts) predicted increased rate of reports of impulsive behaviors. Together, these data present strong evidence for the role of polarized experiences in BPD, and have implications for the treatment of individuals with this disorder. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved).     

What exactly is a yait anyway: The role of semantics in orthographic learning

This study investigated whether semantic information presented along with novel printed nonwords facilitates orthographic learning and examined predictors of individual differences in this important literacy skill. A sample of 35 fourth graders was tested on a variety of language and literacy tests, and participants were then exposed to 10 target nonwords, 5 of which were presented with semantic information. Children were tested 1 and 4 days later on their ability to correctly recognize and spell the target nonwords. Results revealed a significant main effect on the recognition task, where items presented with semantic information were identified correctly more often than were words presented in isolation. No significant effect of training condition was found for the spelling posttests. Furthermore, multiple regression analyses revealed that both phonological and semantic factors were significant predictors of orthographic learning. The findings support the view that orthographic learning, as measured through visual recognition, involves the integration of phonological, orthographic, and semantic representations.     

From infant to child: the dynamics of cognitive change in the second year of life

The authors review several key areas of early cognitive development in which an abrupt shift in ability at the end of the second year of life has been traditionally assumed. These areas include deferred imitation, self-recognition, language, and categorization. Contrary to much conventional theorizing, the evidence shows robust continuities in all domains of early cognitive development. Where there is evidence of a reorganization of behavior that makes a new level of performance possible, dynamic-systems analyses indicate that even these may be driven by underlying processes that are continuous. Although there remain significant definitional and methodological issues to be resolved, the outcome of this review augers well for newer models in which cognitive development is viewed as a continuous, dynamic process.     

From theory to application and back again: implications of research on medical expertise for psychological theory.

Research directed at an understanding of medical expertise is about 30 years old, and many developments in this literature parallel progress in cognitive psychology. Over the past 15 years or so, this research became much more closely identified with particular psychological theories. Initial forays into medicine were essentially direct applications of methods developed in the psychology lab to the more natural domain of medicine, with varying degrees of success. These attempts were followed by a second wave that took the psychological theories themselves more seriously in a more thoughtful application of psychological methods to the medical domain. I will argue in the present paper that the methods and theories used in the study of medical expertise have advanced to the point that there is some reverse flow and they are providing a unique and valuable perspective on the nature of thinking.     

From autonomy to heteronomy (and back): The enaction of social life

The term “social cognition” can be construed in different ways. On the one hand, it can refer to the cognitive faculties involved in social activities, defined simply as situations where two or more individuals interact. On this view, social systems would consist of interactions between autonomous individuals; these interactions form higher-level autonomous domains not reducible to individual actions. A contrasting, alternative view is based on a much stronger theoretical definition of a truly social domain, which is always defined by a set of structural norms; moreover, these social structures are not only a set of constraints, but actually constitute the possibility of enacting worlds that would just not exist without them. This view emphasises the heteronomy of individuals who abide by norms that are impersonal, culturally inherited and to a large extent independent of the individuals. Human beings are socialised through and through; consequently, all human cognition is social cognition. The article argues for this second position. Finally, it appears that fully blown autonomy actually requires heteronomy. It is the acceptance of the constraints of social structures that enables individuals to enter new realms of common meaningfulness. The emergence of social life marks a crucial step in the evolution of cognition; so that at some evolutionary point human cognition cannot but be social cognition.     

Learning to divide the labor between syntax and semantics: a connectionist account of deficits in light and heavy verb production

In aphasic subjects who demonstrate difficulty producing verbs, a double dissociation has been observed between light verbs (e.g., GO) and heavy verbs (e.g., FLY). A simple connectionist model of sentence production, lesioned to simulate agrammatic- and anomic-like deficits, suggests that this dissociation arises from light verbs learning to rely more on syntactic cues and heavy verbs learning to rely more on semantic cues. Systematic manipulations of the variables which distinguish light and heavy verbs reveal that it is primarily the greater frequency of occurrence of light verbs, and the fact that they are specified by fewer semantic features, which cause them to depend more on syntactic information. Implications are discussed for models of lexical access in both normal and aphasic populations.     

Starting at the end: the importance of goals in spatial language

We explored the linguistic encoding of Paths in children between the ages of three and seven, in children with Williams syndrome, and in normal adults, focusing specifically on Source and Goal Paths. The results showed an asymmetry, with Goal Paths regularly and systematically encoded, but Source Paths often omitted. This pattern occurred among all groups and across a broad range of domains including Manner of Motion, Change of Possession, Change of State, and Attachment/Detachment events. It also occurred whether participants spontaneously described events or were asked to use a specific verb that biased them towards a Goal or Source Path (e.g. 'give' vs. 'get'). The results are discussed in terms of non-linguistic foundations of spatial language and the linguistic mapping biases that arise when we describe what we see.