Mechanisms that improve referential access

Two mechanisms, suppression and enhancement, are proposed to improve referential access. Enhancement improves the accessibility of previously mentioned concepts by increasing or boosting their activation; suppression improves concepts' accessibility by decreasing or dampening the activation of other concepts. Presumably, these mechanisms are triggered by the informational content of anaphors. Six experiments investigated this proposal by manipulating whether an anaphoric reference was made with a very explicit, repeated name anaphor or a less explicit pronoun. Subjects read sentences that introduced two participants in their first clauses, for example, "Ann predicted that Pam would lose the track race," and the sentences referred to one of the two participants in their second clauses, "but Pam/she came in first very easily." While subjects read each sentence, the activation level of the two participants was measured by a probe verification task. The first two experiments demonstrated that explicit, repeated name anaphors immediately trigger the enhancement of their own antecedents and immediately trigger the suppression of other (nonantecedent) participants. The third experiment demonstrated that less explicit, pronoun anaphors also trigger the suppression of other nonantecedents, but they do so less quickly--even when, as in the fourth experiment, the semantic information to identify their antecedents occurs prior to the pronouns (e.g., "Ann predicted that Pam would lose the track race. But after winning the race, she..."). The fifth experiment demonstrated that more explicit pronouns--pronouns that match the gender of only one participant-trigger suppression more powerfully. A final experiment demonstrated that it is not only rementioned participants who improve their referential access by triggering the suppression of other participants; newly introduced participants do so too (e.g., "Ann predicted that Pam would lose the track race, but Kim..."). Thus, both suppression and enhancement improve referential access, and the contribution of these two mechanisms is a function of explicitness. The role of these two mechanisms in mediating other referential access phenomena is also discussed.     

Intuitive (in)coherence judgments are guided by processing fluency, mood and affect

Recently proposed accounts of intuitive judgments of semantic coherence assume that processing fluency results in a positive affective response leading to successful assessment of semantic coherence. The present paper investigates whether processing fluency may indicate semantic incoherence as well. In two studies, we employ a new paradigm in which participants have to detect an incoherent item among semantically coherent words. In Study 1, we show participants accurately indicating an incoherent item despite not being able to provide an accurate solution to coherent words. Further, this effect is modified by affective valence of solution words that are not retrieved from memory. Study 2 replicates those results and extend them by showing that mood moderates incoherence judgments independently of affective valence of solutions. The results support processing fluency account of intuitive semantic coherence judgments and show that it is not fluency per se but fluency variations that drive judgments.     

Working memory,reading ability and the effects of distance and typicality on anaphor resolution in children

We investigated the time course of anaphor resolution in children and whether this is modulated by individual differences in working memory and reading skill. The eye movements of 30 children (10–11 years) were monitored as they read short paragraphs in which (1) the semantic typicality of an antecedent and (2) its distance in relation to an anaphor were orthogonally manipulated. Children showed effects of distance and typicality on the anaphor itself and also on the word to the right of the anaphor, suggesting that anaphoric processing begins immediately but continues after the eyes have left the anaphor. Furthermore, children showed no evidence of resolving anaphors in the most difficult condition (distant atypical antecedent), suggesting that anaphoric processing that is demanding may not occur online in children of this age. Finally, working memory capacity and reading comprehension skill affect the magnitude and time course of typicality and distance effects during anaphoric processing.     

Event-related responses to pronoun and proper name anaphors in parallel and nonparallel discourse structures.

The present study investigated event-related potential (ERP) effects of pronoun and proper name anaphors in both parallel and nonparallel discourse structures. Thirty-seven students processed 400 semantically different text passages. Each trial consisted of two sentences and a comprehension question. The first sentence introduced a protagonist who was referred to by an anaphoric word in the second sentence. The anaphoric word was either a pronoun or a repetition of the proper name of the protagonist and had either the same or a different syntactic role as its antecedent (subject or object). The sentences were presented word by word as rapid serial visual display. Event-related potentials were recorded from 61 scalp electrodes. In agreement with the parallel function strategy, nonparallel discourse structures required longer decision times and exhibited higher error rates than parallel structures. The ERPs revealed two effects: First, pronoun anaphors evoked a more pronounced negativity than proper name anaphors between 270 and 420 ms latency over the frontal cortex electrodes. Another relative negativity occurred between 510 and 600 ms over the parietal cortex electrodes. Second, anaphors in nonparallel positions were accompanied by a more pronounced negativity over the parietal cortex. These data support the idea that an anaphor in nonparallel position triggers extra processing steps, probably search processes in working memory which integrate currently encountered information with previously activated representations.     

篇章阅读中影响回指推理的因素

探讨回指距离、干扰词的精细描述、干扰词的典型性对回指推理的影响。包括2个实验,164名大学生被试。实验1探讨干扰词精细描述类型的影响。结果表明,干扰的精细描述并非是影响回指推理的主要因素。实验2探讨干扰词和先行词的典型性类型的相对变化的影响。结果表明高典型干扰在不同回指距离条件下都会对回指推理产生影响。从而表明高典型的干扰项干扰了回指推理发生。     

The Repeated Name Penalty,the Overt Pronoun Penalty,and Topic in Japanese

When reading sentences with an anaphoric reference to a subject antecedent, repeated-name anaphors result in slower reading times relative to pronouns (the Repeated Name Penalty: RNP), and overt pronouns are read slower than null pronouns (the Overt Pronoun Penalty: OPP). Because in most languages previously tested, the grammatical subject is typically also the discourse topic it remains unclear whether these effects reflect anaphors’ subject-hood or their topic-hood. To address this question we conducted a self-paced reading experiment in Japanese, a language which morphologically marks both subjects and topics overtly. Our results show that both repeated-name topic-subject anaphors and repeated-name non-topic-subject anaphors exhibit the RNP and that both overt-pronoun topic-subject and overt-pronoun non-topic-subject anaphors show the OPP. However, a detailed examination of performance revealed an interaction between the anaphor topic marking, reference form, and the antecedent’s grammatical status, indicating that the effect of the antecedent’s grammatical status is strongest for null pronoun and repeated name subject anaphors and that the overt form most similar to null pronouns is the repeated name topic anaphor. We discuss the implications of these findings for theories of anaphor processing.     

指代者对其先行词可提取性的影响

三个实验,考察了在理解含有指代法表述的句子过程中,指代者对其先行词(即所指者)的可提取性的影响及其与先述参与者可提取性上的优势之间的关系。结果表明：(1)指代者对所指者的激活有促进作用,对非所指者有一定的抑制作用,从而提高了所指者的可提取性;(2)指代者对所指者和非所指者的这种作用有一定的时间进程;(3)指代者对所指者产生作用的时间进程随指代法表述的特性而变化;(4)句子先述参与者在可提取性上的优势是一种较普遍的认知现象。它与指代法表述中所指者的易提取性现象是一种动态的关系,指代法表述或者增强先述参与者可提取性的优势,或者会消除这种优势。     

文本阅读中回指推理发生的整合性因素

探讨回指距离、干扰词的精细描述、干扰词的典型性 对回指推理（先行词通达）的影响。包括2个实验,被试是华南师范大学一二年级本科生164名。采用移动窗口技术,要求被试阅读一定篇数（如,实验1a每个被试阅读15篇）的文章,对不同条件的探测词的反应时进行统计。实验1探讨干扰词精细描述类型（精细描述高和精细描述低）对回指推理的影响。结果表明,干扰的精细描述并非是影响回指推理的主要因素。实验2探讨干扰词和先行词的典型性类型的相对变化对回指推理的影响。结果表明高典型干扰在不同回指距离条件下都会对回指推理产生影响。本研究结果初步证明在影响回指推理的干扰典型性和干扰精细描述的二个因素中,起主要作用的是干扰的典型性     

The development of discourse mapping processes: the on-line interpretation of anaphoric expressions

The present research focuses on how children integrate the antecedent of different kinds of anaphor into their on-going interpretation of an utterance, and on the kinds of cues they use to help them to do this. These issues were studied by examining the on-line processing of three types of anaphoric devices—repeated noun phrases, general terms and pronoun anaphors. The data showed that by the age of five, anaphoric mapping processes in general are well-mastered, although all age-groups (5, 7, 10 year olds and adults) found general term anaphors more difficult to interpret. The major developmental differences concerned the processing of anaphoric pronouns. For five year olds, pronouns were primarily interpreted as devices which maintained the thematic subject of the discourse, but when there was no thematic subject they relied primarily on pragmatic plausibility in their assignment of pronominal co-reference. As children get older, they are able to take advantage of the lexical properties of pronouns and all three sources of information—lexical, pragmatic inference and the thematic structure of the discourse—play contributory roles in the assignment of reference to a pronoun.     

Morphed facial expressions elicited a N400 ERP effect: A domain‐specific semantic module?

Previous studies have revealed that decoding of facial expressions is a specific component of face comprehension and that semantic information might be processed separately from the basic stage of face perception. In order to explore event-related potentials (ERPs) related to recognition of facial expressions and the effect of the semantic content of the stimulus, we analyzed 20 normal subjects. Faces with three prototypical emotional expressions (fear, happiness, and sadness) and with three morphed expressions were presented in random order. The neutral stimuli represented the control condition. Whereas ERP profiles were similar with respect to an early negative ERP (N170), differences in peak amplitude were observed later between incongruous (morphed) expressions and congruous (prototypical) ones. In fact, the results demonstrated that the emotional morphed faces elicited a negative peak at about 360 ms, mainly distributed over the posterior site. The electrophysiological activity observed may represent a specific cognitive process underlying decoding of facial expressions in case of semantic anomaly detection. The evidence is in favor of the similarity of this negative deflection with the N400 ERP effect elicited in linguistic tasks. A domain-specific semantic module is proposed to explain these results.     

An ERP study on facial expression of emotion: comparison of linguistic and visual semantic decoding

The present research compared the semantic information processing of linguistic stimuli with semantic elaboration of nonlinguistic facial stimuli. To explore brain potentials (ERPs, event-related potentials) related to decoding facial expressions and the effect of semantic valence of the stimulus, we analyzed data for 20 normal subjects (M age = 23.6 yr., SD = 0.2). Faces with three basic emotional expressions (fear, happiness, and sadness from the 1976 Ekman and Friesen database), with three semantically anomalous expressions (with respect to their emotional content), and the neutral stimuli (face without an emotional content) were presented in a random order. Differences in peak amplitude of ERP were observed later for anomalous expressions compared with congruous expressions. In fact, the results demonstrated that the emotional anomalous faces elicited a higher negative peak at about 360 msec., distributed mainly over the posterior sites. The observed electrophysiological activity may represent specific cognitive processing underlying the comprehension of facial expressions in detection of semantic anomaly. The evidence is in favour of comparability of this negative deflection with the N400 ERP effect elicited by linguistic anomalies.     

Right Hemisphere Activation during Indirect Semantic Priming: Evidence from Event-Related Potentials

Healthy subjects performed a lexical decision task in a semantic priming paradigm while event-related potentials (ERPs) were recorded from 64 channels. Semantic distance between prime and target was varied by including directly, indirectly, and nonrelated word pairs. At centro-parietal electrodes an N400 to nonrelated pairs was elicited bilaterally which was sensitive only to direct, but not to indirect semantic priming. These N400 priming effects were mirrored by the RT data. At inferior fronto-temporal sites directly related words showed ERP priming effects over both hemispheres. However, indirectly related words only elicited ERP priming effects over the right hemisphere. These results support the hypothesis that the right hemisphere semantic system is involved in processing of remote semantic information.     

Readers’ sensitivity to linguistic cues in narratives: How salience influences anaphor resolution

Despite the general assumption that anaphoric inferences are necessary inferences, Levine, Guzmán, and Klin (2000) concluded that the probability of resolving noun phrase anaphors depends both on the degree of accessibility in memory of the antecedent concepts and the extent to which resolution is necessary to create a coherent discourse representation. Four experiments are presented in which the factors that influence readers' standard of coherence are investigated. We examine the hypothesis that readers are more likely to resolve anaphors that are perceived as salient; salience was manipulated both with a syntactic focusing structure (wh- clefts) and with the addition of prenominal adjectival modifiers. The results of a probe recognition time task provide support for the hypothesis that a variety of linguistic cues serve as mental processing instructions (Givón, 1992), which instruct readers as to how much attention to devote to processing.     

Noun-phrase anaphors and focus: the informational load hypothesis

The processing of noun-phrase (NP) anaphors in discourse is argued to reflect constraints on the activation and processing of semantic information in working memory. The proposed theory views NP anaphor processing as an optimization process that is based on the principle that processing cost, defined in terms of activating semantic information, should serve some discourse function--identifying the antecedent, adding new information, or both. In a series of 5 self-paced reading experiments, anaphors' functionality was manipulated by changing the discourse focus, and their cost was manipulated by changing the semantic relation between the anaphors and their antecedents. The results show that reading times of NP anaphors reflect their functional justification: Anaphors were read faster when their cost had a better functional justification. These results are incompatible with any theory that treats NP anaphors as one homogeneous class regardless of discourse function and processing cost.     

Is there a logic of incoherence?

What should we do when we discover that our assessment of probabilities is incoherent? I explore the hypothesis that there is a logic of incoherence—a set of universally valid rules that specify how incoherent probability assessments are to be repaired. I examine a pair of candidate‐rules of incoherence logic that have been employed in philosophical reconstructions of scientific arguments. Despite their intuitive plausibility, both rules turn out to be invalid. There are presently no viable candidate‐rules for an incoherence logic on the table. Other ways of dealing with incoherence are surveyed, and found either to be unsatisfactory or to rely on a logic of incoherence in the end. The resolution of these antagonistic conclusions is left to future researchers.     

Time course and task dependence of emotion effects in word processing

The emotional content of stimuli influences cognitive performance. In two experiments, we investigated the time course and mechanisms of emotional influences on visual word processing in various tasks by recording event-related brain potentials (ERPs). The stimuli were verbs of positive, negative, and neutral valence. In Experiment 1, where lexical decisions had to be performed on single verbs, both positive and negative verbs were processed more quickly than neutral verbs and elicited a distinct ERP component, starting around 370 msec. In Experiment 2, the verbs were embedded in a semantic context provided by single nouns. Likewise, structural, lexical, and semantic decisions for positive verbs were accelerated, and an ERP effect with a scalp distribution comparable to that in Experiment 1 now started about 200 msec earlier. These effects may signal an automatic allocation of attentional resources to emotionally arousing words, since they were not modulated by different task demands. In contrast, a later ERP effect of emotion was restricted to lexical and semantic decisions and, thus, appears to indicate more elaborated, task-dependent processing of emotional words.     

主题与类属关系的距离对分类和属性推理过程的影响：来自ERP的证据

不同关系类型对归纳推理具有重要的影响,然而主题关系（如,熊猫vs.竹子）与类属关系（如,熊猫vs.羚羊）在归纳推理中的神经机制仍然不清楚。本研究采用事件相关电位（ERP）技术,通过分开呈现属性归纳推理任务中的结论类别和结论属性,探讨两种关系类型及其距离在分类过程和属性推理过程中的ERP特征。结果发现：（1）结论类别呈现阶段,N400（370～500 ms）与LNC（the late negative component）（570～700 ms）时间窗口上,无论是主题关系还是类属关系,远距离比近距离均诱发了更大的负波;前者表明N400与语义整合密切相关,后者说明LNC与语义类别信息违背和假设形成有关。（2）结论属性呈现阶段,主题关系比类属关系诱发了更大的N1;同时,近距离比远距离诱发了更大的N1,反映了类别属性特征的知觉和自动化加工。结果表明：语义类别属性归纳存在距离效应,并且语义关系在属性推理过程中具有不同的加工方式。     

Brain potentials elicited by prose-embedded linguistic anomalies

Linguistic theories distinguish between syntax (sentence form) and semantics (sentence meaning). Correspondingly, recent studies have shown that syntactic and semantic anomalies elicit distinct changes in the event-related brain potential (ERP). However, these results have been obtained with highly artificial methodologies and have not yet been generalized to more natural reading conditions. Here, we recorded ERPs while subjects read a naturalistic prose passage. The subjects either read for comprehension with no other task being assigned or read for comprehension and made acceptability judgments after each sentence. Consistent with prior work and regardless of the subjects' assigned task, syntactic anomalies elicited a large positive wave (P600), whereas semantic anomalies elicited a large increase in N400 amplitude. These results demonstrate that the qualitatively distinct ERP responses elicited by syntactic and semantic anomalies are not artifacts of unnatural aspects of previously used stimuli, thereby providing additional evidence that separable syntactic and semantic processes exist.     

Structure and limited capacity in verbal working memory: a study with event-related potentials

In order to test recent claims about the structure of verbal working memory, two ERP experiments with Dutch speaking participants were carried out. We compared the ERP effects of syntactic and semantic mid-sentence anomalies in subject and object relative sentences. In Experiment 1, the participants made acceptability judgments, while in Experiment 2 they read for comprehension. Syntactic anomalies concerned subject-verb disagreement, while semantic anomalies were related to implausible events (e.g., *The cat that fled from the mice ran through the room). Semantic anomalies did not elicit an N400 effect. The semantic as well as syntactic anomalies elicited P600 effects, with similar centro-parietal scalp distributions. For both kinds of anomaly, the P600 effects were modulated by syntactic complexity: they were either relatively small (Experiment 1) or absent (Experiment 2) in object relative sentences. Taken together, our results suggest that: (a) verbal working memory is a limited capacity system; (b) it is not subdivided into an interpretative and a post-interpretative component (); (c) the P600 can reflect the presence of a semantic bias in syntactically unambiguous sentences; (d) the P600 is related to language monitoring: its function is to check upon the veridicality of an unexpected (linguistic) event; (e) if such a check is made, there is no integration of the event and hence no N400 effect.     

Electrophysiological difference between the representations of causal judgment and associative judgment in semantic memory

Causally related concepts like “virus” and “epidemic” and general associatively related concepts like “ring” and “emerald” are represented and accessed separately. The Evoked Response Potential (ERP) procedure was used to examine the representations of causal judgment and associative judgment in semantic memory. Participants were required to remember a task cue (causal or associative) presented at the beginning of each trial, and assess whether the relationship between subsequently presented words matched the initial task cue. The ERP data showed that an N400 effect (250–450 ms) was more negative for unrelated words than for all related words. Furthermore, the N400 effect elicited by causal relations was more positive than for associative relations in causal cue condition, whereas no significant difference was found in the associative cue condition. The centrally distributed late ERP component (650–750 ms) elicited by the causal cue condition was more positive than for the associative cue condition. These results suggested that the processing of causal judgment and associative judgment in semantic memory recruited different degrees of attentional and executive resources.