Prosodic influences on the resolution of temporary ambiguity during on-line sentence processing

We present three experiments designed to investigate the role of prosody during sentence processing. The first investigated the question of whether an utterance's prosodic contour influences its comprehension on-line. We spliced the beginning and end portions of direct object and embedded clause sentences and observed the consequent effects on comprehension using a dual-task procedure to measure processing load. Our second experiment sought to determine-whether the constituent structure of these sentences could be reliably predicted using prosodic information. We found that the duration and F₀ contour associated with the main-clause verb and the following NP reliably distinguished between the direct object and embedded clause constructions. In the final experiment, we manipulated the duration of the main-clause verb and found that subjects used this information to guide their initial parse during on-line sentence comprehension. The need for a model of sentence processing that addresses the use of prosodic information is discussed.The work reported in this paper was supported in part by NTH grant DC00494.     

Some effects of discriminative training with equated frequency of reinforcement

Pigeons were exposed to a multiple schedule which provided equally frequent reinforcement in the presence of two stimuli but which produced markedly different rates of key-pecking. Generalization gradients were displaced away from the stimulus associated with the lower rate of key-pecking. Another group of pigeons had similar training, except that a low rate of key-pecking was established in a stimulus with a much higher frequency of food reinforcement. In this case, the generalization gradients were not affected by the training on the schedule producing a low response rate.     

On the logic of belief claims in religion

International Journal for Philosophy of Religion -