Regional variation of cloze probabilities for sentence contexts

In 1980, Bloom and Fischler published a paper describing a set of sentence contexts (SCs) and their cloze probabilities (CPs). This material has subsequently been employed in numerous studies of linguistic processing. We sought to define the completion words and their CPs for Bloom and Fischler’s sentences in an inner-city British population in order to establish reliable norms for subsequent studies in the U.K. One hundred and fifty incomplete SCs were presented to 73 volunteers. The CPs for each of the words used to complete the SCs were computed. We then compared the CPs from our sample with those from Bloom and Fischler. There were significant differences between CPs from each sample in 14% of the SCs analyzed (p < .01). Our data suggest that studies employing SCs and CPs may require locally defined norms if the test population differs substantially from the original one. The consequences of employing SCs and CPs to study linguistic processing without normalization are discussed.     

Sentence-final word completion norms for European Portuguese children and adolescents

This study presents a set of sentence contexts and their cloze probabilities for European Portuguese children and adolescents. Seventy-three sentence contexts (35 low- and 38 high-constraint sentence stems) were presented to 90 children and 102 adolescents. Participants were asked to complete the sentence contexts with the first word that came to mind. For each sentence context, responses were listed and cloze probabilities of the words that were chosen to complete the sentence context were computed. Additionally, idiosyncratic and invalid responses (structural and semantic errors) were analyzed. A high degree of consistency in responses among the two age samples (children and adolescents) was found, along with a decrease of idiosyncratic and invalid responses in older participants. These results shed light on age-related changes in the effects of linguistic context on word production, and also in knowledge’s representation. The full set of norms may be downloaded from http://brm.psychonomic-journals.org/content/supplemental.     

Completion norms for 112 Spanish sentences

Sentence completion norms are a valuable resource for researchers interested in studying the effects of context on word recognition processes. Norms for 112 Spanish sentences were compiled with the use of experimental software accessed over the World-Wide Web. Several measures summarizing the distribution of responses for each sentence are reported, including Schwanenflugel’s (1986) multiple-production measure of sentence constraint strength, the type-token ratio, and the information-theoretic measure of redundancy. The complete set of completion norms is available at http://www.ling.ed.ac.uk/ ~monica/spanish_completion_norms.html.     

Measuring local context as context–word probabilities

Context enables readers to quickly recognize a related word but disturbs recognition of unrelated words. The relatedness of a final word to a sentence context has been estimated as the probability (cloze probability) that a participant will complete a sentence with a word. In four studies, I show that it is possible to estimate local context-word relatedness based on common language usage. Conditional probabilities were calculated for sentences with published cloze probabilities. Four-word contexts produced conditional probabilities significantly correlated with cloze probabilities, but usage statistics were unavailable for some sentence contexts. The present studies demonstrate that a composite context measure based on conditional probabilities for one- to four-word contexts and the presence of a final period represents all of the sentences and maintains significant correlations (.25, .52, .53) with cloze probabilities. Finally, the article provides evidence for the effectiveness of this measure by showing that local context varies in ways that are similar to the N400 effect and that are consistent with a role for local context in reading. The Supplemental materials include local context measures for three cloze probability data sets.     

Novel metaphors appear anomalous at least momentarily: evidence from N400

This study addresses a central question in perception of novel figurative language: whether it is interpreted intelligently and figuratively immediately, or only after a literal interpretation fails. Eighty sentence frames that could plausibly end with a literal, truly anomalous, or figurative word were created. After validation for meaningfulness and figurativeness, the 240 sentences were presented to 11 subjects for event related potential (ERP) recording. ERP's first 200 ms is believed to reflect the structuring of the input; the prominence of a dip at around 400 ms (N400) is said to relate inversely to how expected a word is. Results showed no difference between anomalous and metaphoric ERPs in the early window, metaphoric and literal ERPs converging 300-500 ms after the ending, and significant N400s only for anomalous endings. A follow-up study showed that the metaphoric endings were less frequent (in standardized word norms) than were the anomalous and literal endings and that there were significant differences in cloze probabilities (determined from 24 new subjects) among the three ending types: literal > metaphoric > anomalous. It is possible that the low frequency of the metaphoric element and lower cloze probability of the anomalous one contributed to the processes reflected in the early window, while the incongruity and near-zero cloze probability of the anomalous endings produced an N400 effect in them alone. The structure or parse derived for metaphor during the early window appears to yield a preliminary interpretation suggesting anomaly, while semantic analysis reflected in the later window renders a plausible figurative interpretation.     

The influence of contextual constraints on recall for words within sentences

Two experiments examined predictions of the relational-distinctive processing view to account for the influence of sentence constraints on memory of target words. In Experiment 1, congruous expected words were recalled better than incongruous words. Words appearing in high-constraint sentences were recalled better than words appearing in low-constraint sentences. In Experiment 2, word expectancy and sentence constraint interacted so that unexpected congruous words appearing in high-constraint sentences were recalled better than their expected counterparts, but this difference was not present for low-constraint sentences. A hybrid model including aspects of the featural restriction model of sentence constraint and the relational-distinctive processing view is proposed.     

Interactions between sentence context and word frequencyinevent-related brainpotentials

Event-related brain potentials (ERPs) were recorded as subjects silently read a set of unrelated sentences. The ERP responses elicited by open-class words were sorted according to word frequency and the ordinal position of the eliciting word within its sentence. We observed a strong inverse correlation between sentence position and the amplitude of the N400 component of the ERP. In addition, we found that less frequent words were associated with larger N400s than were more frequent words, but only if the eliciting words occurred early in their respective sentences. We take this interaction between sentence position and word frequency as evidence that frequency does not play a mandatory role in word recognition, but can be superseded by the contextual constraint provided by a sentence.     

Rapid processing of the meaning of sentences

It has been shown (Fischler & Bloom, 1979) that sentence contexts facilitate a lexical decision task for words that are highly likely sentence completions and inhibit the decision for words that are semantically anomalous sentence completions. In the present experiment, the sentence contexts were presented 1 word at a time, at rates from 4 to 28 words/sec. The facilitation for words that were likely sentence completions was marginal at the slower rates and absent at higher rates. In contrast, the inhibitory effects of semantic anomaly were apparent at all presentation rates. Several analyses suggested that the sentence contexts were becoming ineffective at the very highest presentation rates, but the high rates at which the sentence contexts still affected word recognition were taken as evidence that semantic information accrues at an early stage of sentence processing. Implications for Posner and Snyder’s (1975) theory of attention and for models of reading were discussed.     

The influence of lexical and conceptual constraints on reading mixed-language sentences: Evidence from eye fixations and naming times

In two experiments, we explored the degree to which sentence context effects operate at a lexical or conceptual level by examining the processing of mixed-language sentences by fluent Spanish-English bilinguals. In Experiment 1, subjects’ eye movements were monitored while they read English sentences in which sentence constraint, word frequency, and language of target word were manipulated. A frequency × constraint interaction was found when target words appeared in Spanish, but not in English. First fixation durations were longer for high-frequency Spanish words when these were embedded in high-constraint sentences than in low-constraint sentences. This result suggests that the conceptual restrictions produced by the sentence context were met, but that the lexical restrictions were not. The same result did not occur for low-frequency Spanish words, presumably because the slower access of low-frequency words provided more processing time for the resolution of this conflict. Similar results were found in Experiment 2 using rapid serial visual presentation when subjects named the target words aloud. It appears that sentence context effects are influenced by both semantic/conceptual and lexical information.     

The effects of processing requirements on neurophysiological responses to spoken sentences

Ten English speaking subjects listened to sentences that varied in sentential constraint (i.e., the degree to which the context of a sentence predicts the final word of that sentence) and event-related potentials (ERPs) were recorded during the presentation of the final word of each sentence. In the Control condition subjects merely listened to the sentences. In the Orthographic processing condition subjects merely listened to the sentences. In the Orthographic processing condition subjects decided, following each sentence, whether a given letter had been present in the final word of the preceding sentence. In the Phonological processing condition the subjects judged whether a given speech sound was contained in the terminal word. In the Semantic processing condition subjects determined whether the final word was a member of a given semantic category. A previous finding in the visual modality that the N400 component was larger in amplitude for low constraint sentence terminations than for high was extended to the auditory modality. It was also found that the amplitude of a N200-like response was similarly responsive to contextual constraint. The hypothesis that N400 amplitude would vary significantly with the depth of processing of the terminal word was not supported by the data. The "N200" recorded in this language processing context showed the classic frontocentral distribution of the N200. The N400 to spoken sentences had a central/centroparietal distribution similar to the N400 in visual modality experiments. It is suggested that the N400 obtained in these sentence contexts reflects an automatic semantic processing of words that occurs even when semantic analysis is not required to complete a given task. The cooccurrence and topographical dissimilarity of the "N200" and N400 suggest that the N400 may not be a delayed or a generic N200.     

Event-related potential sensitivity to acoustic and semantic properties of terminal words in sentences.

This experiment was concerned with the effects of phonologically correct masking on the electrophysiological responses to terminal words of spoken sentences differing in contextual constraint. Two event-related potential (ERP) components, the N400 and N200, were recorded to the terminal words of high and low constraint sentences in four conditions. In the Control condition, subjects (Ss) simply attended to the sentences with no explicit task instructions. In the Semantic condition, Ss were required to listen to the stimuli in order to make semantic judgements about the terminal word of each sentence. The Control+Masking condition was identical to the Control condition except for the simultaneous presentation of a masking stimulus. The Semantic+Masking condition had Ss listening to sentences in the presence of masking with the task of making semantic judgements about the terminal word of each sentence. ERPs were recorded from Fz, Cz, Pz, T3, and T4 in 10 subjects. Amplitudes of both the N200 and the N400 were sensitive to contextual constraint with larger responses elicited by the terminal words of low constraint sentences. In addition to demonstrating the co-occurrence of the N200 and N400, this experiment highlighted a functional separation between the two components. Masking had no statistically significant effect on N200 latency but N400 latency was delayed in the masked conditions relative to those in the unmasked conditions. It is proposed that the N200 and N400 are manifestations of two different processes; the N200 reflects the acoustic/phonological processing of the terminal word while the N400 reflects the cognitive/linguistic processing. The relationship between the N200 recorded in this experiment and the discrimination N200 is discussed.     

Aging and the Deletion Function of Inhibition

The present study was adapted from the sentence completion task of Hartman and Hasher (1991). We addressed the question raised by Burke (1997): are the age-related differences in priming effects found in that task better explained by deficits in explicit memory or by inefficient inhibitory mechanisms? In the study phase, older and younger adults read high cloze sentences ending with an expected or an unexpected final word. In the second phase, participants were asked to complete sentence frames with either the final word presented during the study phase (inclusion condition) or with another, new word (exclusion condition). The third phase was an indirect memory test of perceptual identification. Finally, we compared explicit memory for recalled and inhibited words in a recognition test. In perceptual identification by older adults, priming was equivalent for recalled and inhibited words, whereas in younger adults priming was higher for recalled than for inhibited words. In the explicit memory test, recognition scores were lower for inhibited words in both age groups. These results are consistent with the view of Hasher and Zacks (1988), who assume an age-related decline in the ability to suppress no-longer-relevant information     

Understanding words in sentence contexts: the time course of ambiguity resolution

Spoken language comprehension requires rapid integration of information from multiple linguistic sources. In the present study we addressed the temporal aspects of this integration process by focusing on the time course of the selection of the appropriate meaning of lexical ambiguities ("bank") in sentence contexts. Successful selection of the contextually appropriate meaning of the ambiguous word is dependent upon the rapid binding of the contextual information in the sentence to the appropriate meaning of the ambiguity. We used the N400 to identify the time course of this binding process. The N400 was measured to target words that followed three types of context sentences. In the concordant context, the sentence biased the meaning of the sentence-final ambiguous word so that it was related to the target. In the discordant context, the sentence context biased the meaning so that it was not related to the target. In the unrelated control condition, the sentences ended in an unambiguous noun that was unrelated to the target. Half of the concordant sentences biased the dominant meaning, and the other half biased the subordinate meaning of the sentence-final ambiguous words. The ISI between onset of the target word and offset of the sentence-final word of the context sentence was 100 ms in one version of the experiment, and 1250 ms in the second version. We found that (i) the lexically dominant meaning is always partly activated, independent of context, (ii) initially both dominant and subordinate meaning are (partly) activated, which suggests that contextual and lexical factors both contribute to sentence interpretation without context completely overriding lexical information, and (iii) strong lexical influences remain present for a relatively long period of time.     

Coregistration of eye movements and EEG in natural reading: analyses and review

Brain-electric correlates of reading have traditionally been studied with word-by-word presentation, a condition that eliminates important aspects of the normal reading process and precludes direct comparisons between neural activity and oculomotor behavior. In the present study, we investigated effects of word predictability on eye movements (EM) and fixation-related brain potentials (FRPs) during natural sentence reading. Electroencephalogram (EEG) and EM (via video-based eye tracking) were recorded simultaneously while subjects read heterogeneous German sentences, moving their eyes freely over the text. FRPs were time-locked to first-pass reading fixations and analyzed according to the cloze probability of the currently fixated word. We replicated robust effects of word predictability on EMs and the N400 component in FRPs. The data were then used to model the relation among fixation duration, gaze duration, and N400 amplitude, and to trace the time course of EEG effects relative to effects in EM behavior. In an extended Methodological Discussion section, we review 4 technical and data-analytical problems that need to be addressed when FRPs are recorded in free-viewing situations (such as reading, visual search, or scene perception) and propose solutions. Results suggest that EEG recordings during normal vision are feasible and useful to consolidate findings from EEG and eye-tracking studies.     

Effects of contextual constraint on eye movements in reading: A further examination

The effect of contextual constraint on eye movements in reading was examined by asking subjects to read sentences that contained a target word that varied in contextual constraint; high-, medium-, or low-constraint target words were used. Subjects fixated low-constraint target words longer than they did either high- or medium-constraint target words. In addition, they skipped high-constraint words more than they did either medium- or low-constraint target words. The results further confirm that contextual constraint has a strong influence on eye movements during reading.     

Expectancy,integration, and interactional processes: Age differences in the nature of words affected by sentence context

Two experiments investigated sentence context effects on the naming times of sentence completion words by third-grade children and college students. Across both experiments, the largest age difference in contextual facilitation was obtained for highly predictable, best completion words. Pronounced age differences in facilitation effects were also present for semantically acceptable target words which were much less predictable in the sentence context than the best completion words. However, age differences in contextual facilitation were negligible for target words which were associatively related to the best completion word, but which were not also semantically acceptable in the sentence context. Thus, the semantic acceptability of the word in the sentence context had a much greater influence on children's as compared to adults' word identification times, both when the word was highly predictable, as well as when it was much less predictable in the sentence context.     

Spoken word recognition in context: evidence from Chinese ERP analyses

Two event-related potential (ERP) experiments were conducted to investigate spoken word recognition in Chinese and the effect of contextual constraints on this process. In Experiment 1, three kinds of incongruous words were formed by altering the first, second or both syllables of the congruous disyllabic terminal words in high constraint spoken sentences. Results showed an increase of N400 amplitude in all three incongruous word conditions and a delayed N400 effect in the cohort incongruous condition as compared with the rhyme incongruous and plain incongruous condition. In addition, unlike results in English, we found that the N400 effect in the rhyme incongruous condition disappeared earlier than in the plain incongruous condition. In Experiment 2, three kinds of nonwords derived from sentence congruous words were constructed by altering few or many phonetic features of the onset or the whole of the first syllable, and the resulting nonwords appeared as disyllabic terminal forms in either high or low constraint sentences. All three nonword conditions elicited the N400 component. In addition, in high constraint sentences but not in low, the amplitude and duration of the N400 varied as a function of the degree of phonetic mismatch between the terminal nonword and the expected congruous word.     

An electrophysiological investigation of the effects of coreference on word repetition and synonymy

In two experiments the effects of word repetition, synonymy, and coreference on event-related brain potentials during text processing were studied. Participants read one (Experiment 1) or two sentence (Experiment 2) texts in which critical nouns were preceded by the definite (the) or indefinite (a) articles. Experiment 1 was run as a control to verify that differences in article processing in the second sentences of Experiment 2 would not contaminate the ERPs to critical noun items. They did not. In Experiment 2, an initial sentence was used to set up a context and contained either a first presentation or synonym of the critical word from the second sentence. N400 (but not Late Positive Component; LPC) priming effects were found for repetitions and synonyms (larger for repetitions) in second sentences. This extends observations of priming in word lists and single sentences to two-sentence texts. There was also a greater left anterior negativity or "LAN" for coreferential critical nouns (those following the article "The") compared to non-coreferential critical nouns (those following the article "A") suggesting that ERPs are sensitive to working memory processes engaged during referential assignment. In response to the articles themselves, there was a greater N400-700 elicited by the article "A" vs. "The." Finally, there was a greater N400-like negativity to the final words of non-coreferential sentences implying that the meanings of these sentences were difficult to integrate with the discourse level representation established by the prior sentence.     

A Representation Theorem for a Decision Theory With Conditionals

This paper investigates the role of conditionals in hypothetical reasoning and rational decision making. Its main result is a proof of a representation theorem for preferences defined on sets of sentences (and, in particular, conditional sentences), where an agent’s preference for one sentence over another is understood to be a preference for receiving the news conveyed by the former. The theorem shows that a rational preference ordering of conditional sentences determines probability and desirability representations of the agent’s degrees of belief and desire that satisfy, in the case of non-conditional sentences, the axioms of Jeffrey’s decision theory and, in the case of conditional sentences, Adams’ expression for the probabilities of conditionals. Furthermore, the probability representation is shown to be unique and the desirability representation unique up to positive linear transformation. This revised version was published online in June 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Differentiating the N3 and N4 electrophysiological semantic incongruity effects

An event-related potential termed the N4 has been widely studied due to its sensitivity to semantic incongruity. A recent report (Nobre & McCarthy, 1994) indicates there is also an N3 component that is sensitive to semantic incongruity. To differentiate these two components, an existing data set with 65 electrode sites, 78 subjects, and 120 sentences was examined. Instead of the usual procedure of averaging over the stimuli within distinct categories for each subject, a new approach--averaging over subjects--was employed. In this item average approach, 120 averages (one per sentence) were produced. Correlational analyses indicate that the N3 is equally sensitive to cloze probability and sentential constraint. The N4, by contrast, is more sensitive to sentential constraint and less to cloze probability; it is also correlated with familiarity. We interpret these results as evidence that the N3 is more responsive to semantic fit whereas the N4 is more responsive to semantic expectancy.