The effects of slowed speech on auditory comprehension in aphasia

The present study investigates the effects of slowed speech on auditory comprehension in aphasia. Specifically, an attempt was made to isolate the effects of added time on comprehension at the language processing stages of auditory perception, by increasing the duration of the vowel segments in each word; word recognition and semantic analysis, by adding silences between words; and syntactic analysis, by adding silences at constituent phrase boundaries. Sentences were also read at a slow rate to see the effects of naturally slowed speech on sentence comprehension. Test sentences consisted of simple active and passive declarative sentences, and complex sentences with embedded medial and final relative clauses. Sentences were either semantically reversible or nonreversible. Thirty-four aphasic patients who varied in both severity and type of aphasia were tested on a picture verification task. Results indicated that slowing facilitated language comprehension significantly only in the syntactic condition. Neither syntactic complexity nor semantic reversibility interacted with slowed speech to facilitate auditory language comprehension. Further, it was only the Wernicke's aphasics who showed significant improvement with time added at constituent boundaries. These results suggest that time alone does not facilitate language comprehension in aphasia, but that rather it is the interaction of time with syntactic processing which improves comprehension.     

Comprehension and production of word order by 2-year-old children

This study is an attempt to test the predictions made by Chapman and Miller (1975) that (1) productive control of the subject-object relation exceeds comprehension performance based on syntactic form alone, and (2) less linguistically advanced children decode subject-object relations lacking referential support on the basis of a lexical-semantic strategy that assigns animate nouns to subject status and inanimate nouns to object status. Ten children, divided on the basis of mean length of utterance into two groups (average MLU of 2.45 and 3.75, respectively), participated. Comprehension and production of subject-order in semantically reversible sentences with inanimate or animate subject and object was assessed using an object manipulation format. The results obtained provided partial support for the predictions made by Chapman and Miller (1975). The proposed lexical-semantic strategy for comprehension was not employed by the subjects of the present study; these children appeared to use a probable event strategy in determining subject-object assignment. Although productive control of the ordering of subject and object was found to exceed comprehension performance, the facilitating effect of visual cues available during the production trials likely contributed to the observed differences in performance between the two tasks.     

Chinese Children’s Knowledge of Topicalization: Experimental Evidence from a Comprehension Study

There is a debate as to whether topic structures in Chinese involve A’-movement or result from base-generation of the topic in the left periphery. If Chinese topicalization was derived by movement, under the assumptions of Friedmann et al.’s Relativized Minimality (Lingua 119:67–88, 2009), we would expect children’s comprehension of object topicalization (with OSV order) to be worse than their comprehension of subject topicalization (with SVO order). This study examined 146 Mandarin-speaking children from age three to age six by means of a picture-sentence matching task with an appropriate context. The results showed a subject/object asymmetry when the topic marker is overt, and no asymmetry when the topic marker is covert. This suggests that the presence or absence of topic markers play an important role in children’s comprehension of topicalization. We propose that both structures involve movement in the adult grammar, but not in the child grammar, at least initially. Sentences without overt topic markers are base-generated on a par with gapless sentences with a topic, and the base-generation analysis is abandoned as soon as children learn the syntax and semantics of topic markers, which function as attractors of topics.     

Bradley — Terry — Luce models to incorporate within‐pair order effects: Representation and uniqueness theorems

The paper presents different representation theorems for the Bradley — Terry — Luce (BTL) models of Beaver and Gokhale and of Davidson and Beaver. In particular, algorithms that can be used in constructing BTL scales are provided. The uniqueness theorems show that the Davidson — Beaver model should be preferred to the Beaver — Gokhale model since the multiplicative order effect parameter is uniquely determined whereas the additive effect parameter is merely a ratio scale. Finally, a relationship to the simple BTL model is established. Let p(a, b) denote the probability that a is chosen when (a, b) is presented in a fixed order. Then the probabilities p(a, b) satisfy the Beaver — Gokhale model if and only if the balanced probabilities p_b(a, b):= ½ (p(a, b) + 1–p (b, a)) satisfy the simple BTL model.     

Sentences for use in memory research

To investigate the effects of effort toward comprehension on subsequent recall, Auble, Franks, and Soraci (1979) generated a series of 40 sentences which varied in comprehensibility. We presented these sentences along with 60 new sentences to 122 undergraduates at the University of New Orleans. Sentences were rated for comprehensibility both before and after cue presentation. Sentences which appear most useful for research are discussed.     

Focus identification during sentence comprehension: Evidence from eye movements

Three eye movement experiments investigated focus identification during sentence comprehension. Participants read dative or double-object sentences (i.e., either the direct or indirect object occurred first), and a replacive continuation supplied a contrast that was congruous with either the direct or the indirect object. Experiments 1 and 2 manipulated focus by locating only adjacent to either the direct or indirect object of dative (Experiment 1) or double-object (Experiment 2) sentences. Reading-time effects indicated that the surface position of the focus particle influenced processing. In addition, Experiment 1 reading times were longer when the replacive was incongruous with the constituent that only adjoined, and particle position modulated a similar effect in Experiment 2. Experiment 3 showed that this effect was absent when only was omitted. We conclude that the surface position of a focus particle modulates focus identification during on-line sentence comprehension.     

Click monitoring revisited: An on-line study of sentence comprehension

Spoken sentence comprehension is based upon rapid and complex psychological processes, yielding a constantly fluctuating cognitive load. The aim of this study was to evaluate on-line click monitoring, a classical but poorly exploited experimental method, which should allow for an easy measurement of processing load at any chosen point of experimental sentences. In Experiments 1 and 2, we obtained longer latencies to clicks located at the boundary of reversible object relative clauses than to clicks identically located in subject relatives and to clicks located earlier within object relatives. Experiment 3 further revealed that this effect of syntactic type was specific to transposed object relatives and did not occur with normal object relatives. In Experiment 4, we observed longer latencies with semantically reversible than with irreversible sentences, but no difference between actives and passives. These results were obtained under strict control of potential lexical and phonological biases, and suggest that on-line click monitoring may be one useful tool in the study of sentence comprehension.     

The influence of prosodic structure on the resolution of temporary syntactic closure ambiguities

This paper investigates the influence of prosodic structure on the process of sentence comprehension, with a specific focus on the relative contributions of syntactic and prosodic information to the resolution of temporary syntactic closure ambiguities. We argue that prosodic structure provides an initial memory representation for spoken sentences, and that information from this prosodic representation is available to inform syntactic parsing decisions. This view makes three predictions for the processing of temporary syntactic ambiguity: 1. When prosodic and syntactic boundaries coincide, syntactic processing should be facilitated. 2. When prosodic boundaries are placed at misleading points in syntactic structure, syntactic processing should show interference effects. 3. The processing difficulties that have been reliably demonstrated in reading experiments for syntactically complex sentences should disappear when those sentences are presented with a felicitous prosodic structure in listening experiments. These predictions were confirmed by series of experiments measuring end-of-sentence comprehension time and cross-modal naming time for sentences with temporary syntactic closure ambiguities. Sentences with coinciding or conflicting prosodic and syntactic boundaries were compared to a prosodic baseline condition.This research was supported in part by NIMH grant R29 MH51768 to the first author and NIMH grant T32 MH19729 to the Northeastern University Psychology Department.     

Direct Evidence of Memory Retrieval as a Source of Difficulty in Non‐Local Dependencies in Language

Linguistic dependencies between non‐adjacent words have been shown to cause comprehension difficulty, compared with local dependencies. According to one class of sentence comprehension accounts, non‐local dependencies are difficult because they require the retrieval of the first dependent from memory when the second dependent is encountered. According to these memory‐based accounts, making the first dependent accessible at the time when the second dependent is encountered should help alleviate the difficulty associated with the processing of non‐local dependencies. In a dual‐task paradigm, participants read sentences that did or did not contain a non‐local dependency (i.e., object‐ and subject‐extracted cleft constructions) while simultaneously remembering a word. The memory task was aimed at making the word held in memory accessible throughout the sentence. In an object‐extracted cleft (e.g., It was Ellen whom John consulted…), the object (Ellen) must be retrieved from memory when consulted is encountered. In the critical manipulation, the memory word was identical to the verb's object (ELLEN). In these conditions, the extraction effect was reduced in the comprehension accuracy data and eliminated in the reading time data. These results add to the body of evidence supporting memory‐based accounts of syntactic complexity.     

Executive function and intelligence in the resolution of temporary syntactic ambiguity: an individual differences investigation

In the current study, we examined the role of intelligence and executive functions in the resolution of temporary syntactic ambiguity using an individual differences approach. Data were collected from 174 adolescents and adults who completed a battery of cognitive tests as well as a sentence comprehension task. The critical items for the comprehension task consisted of object/subject garden paths (e.g., While Anna dressed the baby that was small and cute played in the crib), and participants answered a comprehension question (e.g., Did Anna dress the baby?) following each one. Previous studies have shown that garden-path misinterpretations tend to persist into final interpretations. Results showed that both intelligence and processing speed interacted with ambiguity. Individuals with higher intelligence and faster processing were more likely to answer the comprehension questions correctly and, specifically, following ambiguous as opposed to unambiguous sentences. Inhibition produced a marginal effect, but the variance in inhibition was largely shared with intelligence. Conclusions focus on the role of individual differences in cognitive ability and their impact on syntactic ambiguity resolution.     

Leaders as eponyms: Individual and situational determinants of ruler eminence

The eponymic theory of leadership maintains that the eminence of rulers depends on their utility as historical labels without regard for their personal attributes. The explanatory scope of this interpretation was tested, for methodological reasons, on a sample of 342 European hereditary monarchs. In support of eponymic theory: (a) About two-thirds of the variance in leader eminence can be ascribed to the number of significant events occurring during the leader's tenure in office; (b) events with positive and negative social valence carry approximately equal and positive weight; (c) events over which the leader exerts considerable control have about the same weight as those over which personal control is virtually nonexistent; and (d) the effects of epochcentric bias and reign span are mediated by the number of significant events. But qualifying eponymic theory: (a) Eminence is not determined solely by the event tabulations (e.g., leader frame is a J-curve function of intelligence and a U-curve function of morality); (b) the number of events is not exclusively accounted for by reign span; and (c) reign span is not solely a function of life span (e.g., reign span is a positive linear function of assessed leadership). The results endorse a form of the theory in which some provision is made for intellectual and personality factors.     

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.     

Reconstructing Distances among Objects from Their Discriminability

We describe a principled way of imposing a metric representing dissimilarities on any discrete set of stimuli (symbols, handwritings, consumer products, X-ray films, etc.), given the probabilities with which they are discriminated from each other by a perceiving system, such as an organism, person, group of experts, neuronal structure, technical device, or even an abstract computational algorithm. In this procedure one does not have to assume that discrimination probabilities are monotonically related to distances, or that the distances belong to a predefined class of metrics, such as Minkowski. Discrimination probabilities do not have to be symmetric, the probability of discriminating an object from itself need not be a constant, and discrimination probabilities are allowed to be 0’s and 1’s. The only requirement that has to be satisfied is Regular Minimality, a principle we consider the defining property of discrimination: for ordered stimulus pairs (a,b), b is least frequently discriminated from a if and only if a is least frequently discriminated from b. Regular Minimality generalizes one of the weak consequences of the assumption that discrimination probabilities are monotonically related to distances: the probability of discriminating a from a should be less than that of discriminating a from any other object. This special form of Regular Minimality also underlies such traditional analyses of discrimination probabilities as Multidimensional Scaling and Cluster Analysis. This research was supported by the NSF grant SES 0318010 (E.D.), Humboldt Research Award (E.D.), Humboldt Foundation grant DEU/1038348 (H.C. & E.D.), and DFG grant Co 94/5 (H.C.).     

Semantische Faktoren beim Behalten der Verneinung von Sätzen

Zusammenfassung Es wurde der Einfluß der Faktoren semantische Implikation und Belebtheit des Subjekts auf die Speicherung der Verneinungsformen Subjektverneinung (SV), Prädikatsverneinung (PV) und Objektverneinung (OV) untersucht. Die Analyse der Befunde ergab, daß die Verneinungsformen SV, PV und OV unterschiedlich gut gespeichert werden und die beiden Variablen semantische Implikation und Belebtheit des Subjekts die Speicherung dieser Negationsformen differentiell beeinflussen.

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Semantic factors in storing negated sentences

Summary The influence of the factors semantic implication and animateness of the subject of the sentence upon the recall of the different forms of negation: negation of the subject (SV), negation of the predicate (PV) and negation of the object (OV) was investigated. It was found that the forms of negation SV, PV and OV were differently recalled and that the two variables semantic implication and animateness of the subject showed a different effect on the recall of these three forms of negation.

     

Reading and listening comprehension in Broca's aphasia: Lexical versus syntactical errors

Ten agrammatic Broca's aphasics were presented with a series of four picture plates together with a spoken or written sentence stimulus. All sentence stimuli were of the structure, the + N + is/are + V + ing + the + N. The four pictures on each stimulus plate represented (a) the correct response, (b) a reversal of the stimulus sentence subject and object, (c) a change in the number of the subject of the stimulus sentence, and (d) a change in one of the major lexical items of the stimulus sentence. Subjects selected the correct picture most often. When they erred, they usually selected a subject-object reversal. Number errors were less frequent, and the patients seldom selected a change in major lexical item. This pattern occurred with both written and spoken sentences. These results were interpreted as reflecting the dependence of agrammatic Broca's aphasics on the semantic interpretation of the lexicon for decoding sentences in the face of deficits in syntactical-grammatical interpretation, irrespective of comprehension modality.     

Detrimental effects of using negative sentences in the autobiographical IAT

The autobiographical Implicit Association Test (aIAT) is a method that accurately identifies which one of two contrasting autobiographical events is true for the subject. The aIAT indexes the real autobiographical event (e.g. I was in Paris for Christmas) on the basis of the facilitating effect because it maps the real autobiographical event with true sentences (e.g. I am in front of a computer) on the same motor response. In this paper we focus on the conditions under which the autobiographical IAT accurately and reliably identifies autobiographical memories. A recent study showed a reduction in the accuracy of the aIAT when negative sentences are used. We have investigated the detrimental effect on aIAT accuracy of such negative sentence items, used to describe autobiographical events, compared with affirmative sentence items. While we highlight the reliability of the results obtained using negative sentences, we also show that the use of affirmative sentences in describing autobiographical events guarantees high accuracy and reliability of results in identifying the true autobiographical event. Finally, we summarise the criteria for preparing stimuli for an effective aIAT in order to maximise correct classifications of individual subjects.     

Picture versus question elaboration on young children's learning of sentences containing high- and low-probability content

The main purpose of the two experiments reported here was to compare the potency of two types of elaboration on children's learning of sentence content: The effects of partial picture adjuncts were compared to the effects produced by answering "why"-questions about the relationships specified in the sentences. Five- to seven-year-old children heard sentences of the form, subject/verb/direct object/preposition/instrument. Sentences contained either a high-probability or a low-probability instrument given the semantic context. In Experiment 1, sentences either were accompanied by a partial picture depicting the sentence action but omitting the instrument or were presented without a partial picture accompaniment. Recall was improved by provision of partial pictures at study. In Experiment 2, the sentences were accompanied by complete pictures depicting the sentence content. In both experiments, questioning significantly reduced recall of high-probability sentences, with recall of instruments affected especially negatively. Evidence is presented that insufficient attention to instruments may have been one mechanism mediating depressed recall of high- compared to low-probability instruments in the questioned conditions. In summary, partial pictures improved cued recall of sentences in this study; in contrast, all significant effects produced by answering why-questions were negative ones (i.e., later recall was reduced following interrogation at study).     

Influence of linguistic complexity,rate of presentation,and interphrase pause time on auditory-verbal comprehension of adult aphasic patients

Among the variables affecting comprehension of linguistic stimuli by aphasic subjects are syntactic complexity and processing time. Comprehension performance of 15 aphasic adults was studied while altering the rate of speech presentation and varying the pause time between the major phrases within sentences of increasing grammatical complexity.Simple Active Affirmative Declarative Sentences, Negative, and Passive sentences were presented (1) at the rate of 150 words per minute (wpm) with 1-sec interphrase pause time (IPT); (2) 150 wpm with no pauses; (3) 120 wpm with 1-sec IPT; (4) 120 wpm with no pauses added.Performance was seen to vary with increasing syntactical complexity and as a function of processing time. Greater comprehension was seen with active affirmative than negative; greater with passive affirmative than with active negative. Clinical implications are discussed. Subjects demonstrated greater comprehension when sentences were presented at slower than normal rate; addition of interphrase pause time intervals aided comprehension. Combining slower rate of presentation and IPT intervals provided greatest increase in auditory processing time and showed concomitant increase in comprehension performance.     

PASSIVES AND TOPICALIZATION

Recent studies, suggesting that passives emphasize the importance of their logical object over their logical subject, have employed full passives with both nominals similarly determined (e.g. the Noun + Verb + the Noun). When subjects are asked to indicate the important entity of full passives where the definiteness of nominals is varied, they select the definitely marked nominal in sentences like the N + V + a N, a N + V + the N, and the event in sentences like a N + V + a N. Since these results apply both to short passives and to active sentences, it would seem that the important entity of an utterance is not solely indicated by voice and word-order, but is more closely concerned with definiteness. This is apparently related to a feature of discourse which may be termed topicalization.     

Processing Italian Relative Clauses: Working Memory Span and Word Order Effects on RTs

In this study, the authors aim to clarify whether the subject–object asymmetry in relative clause comprehension is due to the use of parsing strategies (Active Filler Theory) or to a greater memory load generated by object sentences. Two experiments investigate how individual differences in working memory span may influence the reading times of relative sentences in Italian, a language characterized by a flexible structure. The results of Experiment 1 indicate that object extraction is more complex than subject extraction when sentences have a canonical structure. Furthermore, low-span participants have particular difficulties with object relative sentence comprehension. The results of Experiment 2 show that subject-relative clauses with uncanonical structures are more complex to understand than object-relative clauses, and low-span participants have more difficulties than high-span participants in elaborating both subject and object relative clauses. These data seem to be coherent with the Active Filler Theory.