Developmental changes in assigning agent relations in Hebrew: The interaction between word order and structural cues

Developmental changes in the interaction between word order and structural cues was investigated by having Hebrew-speaking children between 4 and 10 years of age interpret NVN utterances that balanced the complementary and contradictory effects of work order and two types of morphological cues, inflections that mark subject-verb gender agreement and an object particle. In Hebrew, gender inflections are highly complex and irregular while the object particle is highly regular and distinctive. Both word order and structural cues affected interpretations by subjects of all age groups, though the role of structural cues increased with age. For all groups, the objec particle was a dominant cue. The likelihood of assigning the agent relation to the first or second noun systematically varied with the relative weights of cues that supported and opposed each assignment. Comparisons were made between processing of Hebrew and processing of Serbo-Croatian and Turkish.     

句法和语义在汉语简单句理解中的作用

两个实验探讨句法和语义在汉语简单句加工中的作用及其相互关系。实验一采用施事判断任务,发现句法作用与语义可逆性的作用都很显著;实验二采用快速句子判断任务,发现句法作用是主要的,语义可逆性无显著作用;两个实验都发现句法与语义可逆性之间的交互作用不显著。这些结果表明：（１）在汉语简单句理解的过程中句法因素的作用是主要的,语义因素的作用是次要的,只要当实验任务更多地强调语义分析时,语义因素才有显著的作用。     

The role of Hebrew letter names in early literacy: the case of multiphonemic acrophonic names

English-speaking children spell letters correctly more often when the letters' names are heard in the word (e.g., B in beach vs. bone). Hebrew letter names have been claimed to be less useful in this regard. In Study 1, kindergartners were asked to report and spell initial and final letters in Hebrew words that included full (CVC), partial (CV), and phonemic (C) cues derived from these letter names (e.g., kaftor, kartis, kibepsilonl, spelled with /kaf/). Correct and biased responses increased with length of congruent and incongruent cues, respectively. In Study 2, preschoolers and kindergartners were asked to report initial letters with monosyllabic or disyllabic names (e.g., /kaf/ or /samepsilonx/, respectively) that included the cues described above. Correct responses increased with cue length; the effect was stronger with monosyllabic letter names than with disyllabic letter names, probably because the cue covered a larger ratio of the letter name. Phonological awareness was linked to use of letter names.     

The effects of “effort after meaning” on recall: Differences in within- and between-subjects designs

In four experiments, we examined free recall of ambiguous sentences with or without corresponding cues to facilitate comprehension, using Auble and Franks’s (1978) paradigm to examine effort after meaning (Bartlett, 1932). The ambiguous sentences were studied without cues, with cues meaningfully embedded in them, with cues provided shortly before the sentence (precue), or with cues following the sentence after several seconds (delayed cue). When these conditions were manipulated within subjects, the process of cue integration in the pre- and delayed-cue conditions enhanced recall, relative to the no-cue and embedded-cue conditions. Furthermore, in a test condition in which subjects first attempted to recall the cues alone, recall was also best in the delayed-cue condition. The effects described above did not occur when the cue presentation conditions varied between subjects, and on a test of order reconstruction, there was even an advantage for sentences studied in the embedded-cue condition over those studied in the delayed-cue condition. The dissociative effects of experimental design on sentence recall and order reconstruction suggest that effort after meaning might enhance memory for study items at the cost of impairing memory for temporal order information.     

Sentence interpretation in normal and aphasic Hindi speakers.

In interpreting a sentence, listeners rely on a variety of linguistic cues to assign grammatical roles such as agent and patient. The present study considered the relative ranking of three cues to agenthood (word order, noun animacy, and subject-verb agreement) in normal and aphasic speakers of Hindi. Because animacy plays a grammatical role in Hindi (determining the nature and acceptability of sentences without accusative marking), this language is relevant to the claim that Broca's aphasia involves a dissociation between grammar and semantics. Results of Study 1 with normal Hindi-dominant speakers showed that animacy is the strongest cue in this language, while agreement is the weakest cue. In Study 2, Hindi-English bilinguals were tested in both their languages. Most showed the normal animacy-dominant monolingual pattern in Hindi, with a mixture of strategies from both languages in their interpretation of English. A substantial minority showed mixed strategies in both languages. Only 5 of 48 subjects displayed a complete separation between languages, with animacy dominance in Hindi and word order dominance in English. In Study 3, two Hindi-English bilinguals with Broca's aphasia were tested in both languages. Results indicate (a) greater use of animacy in Hindi than in English and (b) greater use of word order in English than in Hindi. The strategies displayed by these patients fall well within the range observed among bilingual normals. We conclude that the use of animacy in sentence interpretation by these aphasic patients reflects preservation of normal, language-specific processing strategies; it cannot be interpreted as a nonlinguistic strategy developed to compensate for receptive agrammatism. Results are discussed in light of other cross-linguistic evidence on sentence comprehension in monolingual and bilingual aphasics.     

Aphasic adults' use of heuristic and structural linguistic cues for sentence analysis

Eight aphasic adults with relatively preserved auditory comprehension and 12 normal adults were tested for their ability to analyze sentences in which the functional relations between the verb and nouns was either directly reflected by word order expectancies, or marked by a functor or non-NVN word order. The subjects' task was to designate the agent of each sentence. Results indicated that aphasics utilize word order expectancies but are impaired in their ability to exploit functors and particularly, word order markers for sentence analysis. Results are discussed in terms of aphasics' use of heuristic versus structural linguistic cues for interpreting sentences.     

Aging and the use of interword spaces during reading: Evidence from eye movements

In an eye movement experiment, we assessed the performance of young (18–30 years) and older (65 + years) adult readers when sentences contained conventional interword spaces, when interword spaces were removed, or when interword spaces were replaced by nonlinguistic symbols. The replacement symbol was either a closed square (■) that provided a salient (low-spatial-frequency) cue to word boundaries, or an open square (□) that provided a less salient cue and included features (vertical and horizontal lines) similar to those found in letters. Removing or replacing interword spaces slowed reading times and impaired normal eye movement behavior for both age groups. However, this disruption was greater for the older readers, particularly when the replacement symbol did not provide a salient cue as to word boundaries. Specific influences of this manipulation on word identification during reading were assessed by examining eye movements for a high- or low-frequency target word in each sentence. Standard word frequency effects were obtained for both age groups when text was spaced normally, and although the word frequency effect was larger when spaces were removed or filled, the increases were similar across age groups. Therefore, whereas older adults’ normal eye movements were substantially disrupted when text lacked conventional interword spaces, the process of lexical access associated with the word frequency effect was no more difficult for older than for young adults. The indication, therefore, is that although older adults struggle from the loss of conventional cues to word boundaries, this is not due to additional difficulties in word recognition.     

话题结构对语篇情绪累加的影响

在阅读理解的过程中,读者能够自动对语篇中的情绪进行推断。本研究采用自定步速阅读的方法,分别在外显和内隐两种情绪加工的任务下,考察话题结构对语篇情绪累加的影响。结果发现,在实验一的外显情绪判断任务下,话题结构未显示出对语篇情绪累加的明显作用;在实验二的内隐情绪理解任务下,当话题延续时,读者对有两个情绪线索的语篇的阅读时间短于仅有一个情绪线索的语篇,此时情绪的累加促进了当前句的加工,而话题转换时,二者没有显著差异,说明此时读者在新结构下建立当前句的情绪表征,并不在先前情绪的基础上进行累加。     

汉语普通话句子重音在时长方面的声学表现

研究包括2部分。在第一部分,通过对由10个发音人发音的148条句子中的4个词时长方面的声学特征的分析发现：（1）当句子重音强调词时,时长的增加主要集中在这个词的重读音节上;（2）当句子重音强调词的某个音节时,时长的延长主要集中在这个音节上。在第二部分,通过使用上述语句的知觉实验发现,句子重音强调词的语句和句子重音强调这个词的重读音节的语句相对于它们的语境是可以相互替换的, 这种相互可替换性起因于这两种语句声学表现方面的相似性     

Remindings influence the interpretation of ambiguous stimuli

Remindings—stimulus-guided retrievals of prior events—may help us interpret ambiguous events by linking the current situation to relevant prior experiences. Evidence suggests that remindings play an important role in interpreting complex ambiguous stimuli (Ross & Bradshaw Memory & Cognition, 22, 591–605, 1994); here, we evaluate whether remindings will influence word interpretation and memory in a new paradigm. Learners studied words on distinct visual backgrounds and generated a sentence for each word. Homographs were preceded by a biasing cue on the same background three items earlier, preceded by a biasing cue on a different background three items earlier, or followed by a biasing cue on the same background three items later. When biasing cues preceded the homographs on the same backgrounds as the homographs, the meanings of the homographs in learner-generated sentences were consistent with the biasing cues more often than in the other two conditions. These results show that remindings can influence word interpretation. In addition, later memory for the homographs and cues was greater when the meaning of the homograph in the sentence was consistent with the earlier biasing cue, suggesting that remindings enhanced mnemonic performance. Remindings play an important role in how we interpret ambiguous stimuli and enhance memory for the involved material.     

Recency effects in direct and indirect memory tasks

In three experiments, subjects learned two lists under incidental conditions and were then given either a part-word or a word (extralist associate) cue. Each cue was related to one word in each list. Half the subjects were given production instructions (an indirect memory test), and half were given cued recall instructions (a direct memory test). When the interval between List 2 and the test was shortened, recency effects were found for part-word cues for both cued recall and production instructions. Little or no recency effects were found with word cues. These results are incompatible with a simple distinction between the types of memory trace or information that are tapped by direct as opposed to indirect memory tasks. Possible causes for the recency effect and for the difference between word and part-word cues are discussed.     

Agrammatism in a case-inflected language: Comprehension of agent-object relations

Yugoslav agrammatic aphasics and normal control subjects were tested for comprehension of agent-object relations in a series of simple Serbo-Croatian sentences consisting of two nouns (N) and a transitive action verb (V). The availability of nominative and accusative case inflections and a semantic contrast was systematically varied across sentences. Sentences were also varied with respect to the two sequences NVN and VNN. An analysis of subjects' agent-object assignments yielded the following results: While Broca's aphasics did show some sensitivity to case inflections, their ability to process such cues was greatly impaired relative to normal subjects, for whom morphological cues were almost completely deterministic. To a lesser degree, Broca's aphasics were impaired in their ability to employ a strategy of “choose the first noun as agent” when case inflections and semantic contrasts were not available. While Broca's aphasics showed no impairment in their ability to exploit semantic contrasts for agent-object assignment, there was no absolute compensatory increase in the degree to which they relied on semantic cues. Differences in word sequence had no effect on agent-object assignment in Broca's aphasics. Finally, Broca's aphasics frequently responded unsystematically when cues to agent-object relations occurred in isolation or in competition with one another, but when there was a convergence of cues their performance approached that of normal subjects. This result was interpreted in terms of an accessing hypothesis.     

Tracking the time course of phonetic cue integration during spoken word recognition

Speech perception requires listeners to integrate multiple cues that each contribute to judgments about a phonetic category. Classic studies of trading relations assessed the weights attached to each cue but did not explore the time course of cue integration. Here, we provide the first direct evidence that asynchronous cues to voicing (/b/ vs. /p/) and manner (/b/ vs. /w/) contrasts become available to the listener at different times during spoken word recognition. Using the visual world paradigm, we show that the probability of eye movements to pictures of target and of competitor objects diverge at different points in time after the onset of the target word. These points of divergence correspond to the availability of early (voice onset time or formant transition slope) and late (vowel length) cues to voicing and manner contrasts. These results support a model of cue integration in which phonetic cues are used for lexical access as soon as they are available.     

When are social judgments made? Evidence for the spontaneousness of trait inferences

Do people make trait inferences, even without intentions or instructions, at the encoding stage of processing behavioral information? Tulving's encoding specificity paradigm (Tulving & Thomson, 1973) was adapted for two recall experiments. Under memory instructions only, subjects read sentences describing people performing actions that implied traits. Later, subjects recalled each sentence under one of three cuing conditions: (a) a dispositional cue (e.g., generous), (b) a strong, nondispositional semantic associate to an important sentence word; or (c) no cue. Recall was best when cued by the disposition words. Subjects were unaware of having made trait inferences. Interpreted in terms of encoding specificity, these results indicate that subjects unintentionally made trait inferences at encoding. This suggests that attributions may be made spontaneously, as part of the routine comprehension of social events.     

Categorized and uncategorized attributes as recall cues: The phenomenon of limited access

Our most general proposition is that access to a memory unit is limited to those cues which specify the identifying property of the unit. In our first experiment we had subjects categorize a colored shape by either its shape or color property. Recall for the other member of a unit was faster and better when the cue was the categorized rather than the uncategorized property. In a subsequent experiment evidence was presented which suggested that the asymmetry of the two types of cues was an access rather than an associative asymmetry. Finally, we found that retrieval latency to the uncategorized cue decreased sharply as list length was decreased, while very little effect was evident for the categorized cue, suggesting different retrieval processes for the two types of cues. We are led to infer that when a unit is stored it is also classified and that direct access to that unit is only possible via cues which are specified in the classification system.     

Very clever homunculus: Compound stimulus strategies for the explicit task-cuing procedure

In two experiments, subjects were given arbitrary letter cues or meaningful word cues that specified the task to be performed on a subsequent target stimulus. Letter and word cues were presented in separate blocks. There were two cues of each type for each task. Three kinds of transitions separated tasks:cue repetitions, in which both the cue and the task repeated;task repetitions, in which the cue changed but the task repeated; andtask alternations, in which both the cue and the task changed. Responses were faster for cue than for task repetitions for both cue types. With word cues, task repetitions were not reliably faster than task alternations. With letter cues, task repetitions were reliably faster than task alternations in the first block but not in the second block. The results suggest that subjects responded to the compound of the cue and the target rather than switching task set between trials.     

An auditory cue-depreciation effect.

An experiment is reported in which subjects first heard a list of words and then tried to identify these same words from degraded utterances. Paralleling previous findings in the visual modality, the probability of identifying a given utterance was reduced when the utterance was immediately preceded by other, more degraded, utterances of the same word. A second experiment replicated this "cue-depreciation effect" and in addition found the effect to be weakened, if not eliminated, when the target word was not included in the initial list or when the test was delayed by two days.     

Retrieval in cued recall

Three experiments examined retrieval in a cued recall paradigm by manipulating the pattern of output cues. In the first two experiments, subjects were paced through recall of a categorized list by recalling one word at a time in response to a category name as a retrieval cue. The pattern of these output cues exerted a strong influence on performance. Subjects recalled considerably more when the cues were blocked by category than when required to recall successive words from different categories. This output effect increased over trials, and was interpreted in terms of a model in which subjects develop a retrieval strategy that can be interfered with by the circumstances of output. The last experiment contrasted structural and strategy models in a hierarchical recall paradigm. Subjects were given a set of postinput recall cues that either made evident the hierarchical structure of the input list or contained the same cue words but with no hierarchical information. Information about the hierarchical structure improved performance even when provided only during recall. The data were discuss in terms of recent models of recall, and a compromise was suggested.     

Context and the allocation of resources in word recognition

Three experiments are reported that investigate the effects of context on the use of limited processing resources in word recognition. On each trial in all of the experiments, the subjects were presented with an incomplete sentence followed by a target display containing a word and two digits. In all cases, accuracy at reporting the word was affected by context, as expected. The effect of context on processing resources was examined by considering the accuracy of reports of the digits in cases in which the word did or did not fit the context. Accuracy of digit report was greater for digits surrounding words in related context, but only when the subjects were required to report the word before reporting the digits. There was no effect of word context on the digit report when subjects had to report the digits first. There was likewise no effect on accuracy of digit report when subjects were required to report only the word or only the digits, even when the cue was presented 250 msec after the target display was replaced by a patterned mask. The results suggest that the effect of context on the resources consumed in word recognition is restricted to aspects of processing that can be delayed until the subject is required to select an overt response, and a simple interpretation of the results may be given in terms of a slight modification of Morton's model of the interaction of stimulus information and context.     

The interactive effects of facial expressions of emotion and verbal messages on perceptions of affective meaning

The influence of facial expressions of emotion on perceptions of affective sentence meaning was investigated by pairing happy, angry, suprised, and sad faces of “teachers” with sentences of varying affective tone. Ninety-five students judged the overall meaning communicated by these paired stimuli. The design allowed exploration of unique facial-verbal combination effects, overall cue integration effects, and sex differences. Clear effects of cue combinations emerged. Perceived sincerity was found to be a function of the consistency of evaluative (positivity) but not dominance cues. Perceived positivity was an interactive function of both evaluative cues and dominance cues. Perceived dominance was affected by the interaction of evaluative cues. The subtleties of cue combination were clarified through open-ended dependent measures. Also, as expected, females were found to be more sensitive than males to verbal-nonverbal cue conflict in perceptions of sincerity. However, no other sex differences were found. The findings were discussed with regard to the need for a firm empirical base upon which to integrate verbal and nonverbal research traditions in the communication of affective meaning.