Context-dependent motor simulation in language comprehension

2009 ◽  
Author(s):  
Wessel O. van Dam ◽  
Shirley-Ann Rueschemeyer ◽  
Harold Bekkering
Keyword(s):  
Language Comprehension ◽  
Motor Simulation ◽  
Context Dependent

scholarly journals Consequences of Sensory Modality for Perspective-Taking: Comparing Visual, Olfactory and Gustatory Perception

2021 ◽  
Vol 12 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elsi Kaiser
Keyword(s):  
Language Comprehension ◽  
Perspective Taking ◽  
Formal Semantics ◽  
Sensory Modality ◽  
Prior Work ◽  
Modality Effects ◽  
Context Dependent ◽  
Gustatory Perception ◽  
Taste And Smell

Perspective-taking is fundamental for language comprehension, including the interpretation of subjective adjectives (e.g., fun, tasty, and amazing). To understand these adjectives, one needs to know whose opinion is being conveyed—in other words, who is the attitude-holder or perspectival center. Although the perspective-sensitivity of subjective adjectives has received considerable attention in prior work in formal semantics, potential effects of sensory modality (e.g., sight, taste, and smell) on the process of attitude-holder identification have not been systematically investigated. This paper reports a series of studies testing whether interpretation of subjective adjectives depends on whether they refer to the visual, olfactory (smell) vs. gustatory (taste) domains. The results provide evidence that sensory modality has a significant impact on the process of identifying the attitude-holder. This outcome suggests that perspective-sensitivity is highly context-dependent, and the observed modality effects align well with the biological and social properties of sight, taste, and smell.

scholarly journals Understanding Sentences in Context

2008 ◽  
Vol 17 (6) ◽  
pp. 376-380 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jos J.A. Van Berkum
Keyword(s):  
Language Comprehension ◽  
Information Sources ◽  
Human Condition ◽  
The Other ◽  
Brain Potentials ◽  
Brain Waves ◽  
Context Dependent ◽  
The Human Condition

Language comprehension looks pretty easy. You pick up a novel and simply enjoy the plot, or ponder the human condition. You strike a conversation and listen to whatever the other person has to say. Although what you're taking in is a bunch of letters and sounds, what you really perceive—if all goes well—is meaning. But how do you get from one to the other so easily? The experiments with brain waves (event-related brain potentials or ERPs) reviewed here show that the linguistic brain rapidly draws upon a wide variety of information sources, including prior text and inferences about the speaker. Furthermore, people anticipate what might be said about whom, they use heuristics to arrive at the earliest possible interpretation, and if it makes sense, they sometimes even ignore the grammar. Language comprehension is opportunistic, proactive, and, above all, immediately context-dependent.

Conceptual short-term memory (CSTM) supports core claims of Christiansen and Chater

2016 ◽  
Vol 39 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mary C. Potter
Keyword(s):  
Working Memory ◽  
Rapid Serial Visual Presentation ◽  
Language Comprehension ◽  
Short Term Memory ◽  
Visual Presentation ◽  
Long Term Memory ◽  
Short Term ◽  
Term Memory ◽  
Use Of Knowledge

AbstractRapid serial visual presentation (RSVP) of words or pictured scenes provides evidence for a large-capacity conceptual short-term memory (CSTM) that momentarily provides rich associated material from long-term memory, permitting rapid chunking (Potter 1993; 2009; 2012). In perception of scenes as well as language comprehension, we make use of knowledge that briefly exceeds the supposed limits of working memory.

Activation and Persistence of Implicit Causality Information in Spoken Language Comprehension

2010 ◽  
Vol 57 (1) ◽  
pp. 5-16 ◽  
Author(s):  
Pirita Pyykkönen ◽  
Juhani Järvikivi
Keyword(s):  
Eye Tracking ◽  
Language Comprehension ◽  
Spoken Language ◽  
Visual World ◽  
Implicit Causality ◽  
Causality Information ◽  
Spoken Language Comprehension

A visual world eye-tracking study investigated the activation and persistence of implicit causality information in spoken language comprehension. We showed that people infer the implicit causality of verbs as soon as they encounter such verbs in discourse, as is predicted by proponents of the immediate focusing account ( Greene & McKoon, 1995 ; Koornneef & Van Berkum, 2006 ; Van Berkum, Koornneef, Otten, & Nieuwland, 2007 ). Interestingly, we observed activation of implicit causality information even before people encountered the causal conjunction. However, while implicit causality information was persistent as the discourse unfolded, it did not have a privileged role as a focusing cue immediately at the ambiguous pronoun when people were resolving its antecedent. Instead, our study indicated that implicit causality does not affect all referents to the same extent, rather it interacts with other cues in the discourse, especially when one of the referents is already prominently in focus.

Forming Impressions of Personality

2014 ◽  
Vol 45 (3) ◽  
pp. 153-163 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sanne Nauts ◽  
Oliver Langner ◽  
Inge Huijsmans ◽  
Roos Vonk ◽  
Daniël H. J. Wigboldus
Keyword(s):  
Impression Formation ◽  
Context Dependent

Asch’s seminal research on “Forming Impressions of Personality” (1946) has widely been cited as providing evidence for a primacy-of-warmth effect, suggesting that warmth-related judgments have a stronger influence on impressions of personality than competence-related judgments (e.g., Fiske, Cuddy, & Glick, 2007 ; Wojciszke, 2005 ). Because this effect does not fit with Asch’s Gestalt-view on impression formation and does not readily follow from the data presented in his original paper, the goal of the present study was to critically examine and replicate the studies of Asch’s paper that are most relevant to the primacy-of-warmth effect. We found no evidence for a primacy-of-warmth effect. Instead, the role of warmth was highly context-dependent, and competence was at least as important in shaping impressions as warmth.

Memorial Consequences of Environmental Context Change in Children and Adults

2010 ◽  
Vol 57 (6) ◽  
pp. 455-461 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alp Aslan ◽  
Anuscheh Samenieh ◽  
Tobias Staudigl ◽  
Karl-Heinz T. Bäuml
Keyword(s):  
Elementary School ◽  
Young Adults ◽  
Episodic Memory ◽  
Middle Childhood ◽  
First Graders ◽  
Fourth Graders ◽  
Environmental Context ◽  
Context Change ◽  
Context Dependent

Changing environmental context during encoding can influence episodic memory. This study examined the memorial consequences of environmental context change in children. Kindergartners, first and fourth graders, and young adults studied two lists of items, either in the same room (no context change) or in two different rooms (context change), and subsequently were tested on the two lists in the room in which the second list was encoded. As expected, in adults, the context change impaired recall of the first list and improved recall of the second. Whereas fourth graders showed the same pattern of results as adults, in both kindergartners and first graders no memorial effects of the context change arose. The results indicate that the two effects of environmental context change develop contemporaneously over middle childhood and reach maturity at the end of the elementary school days. The findings are discussed in light of both retrieval-based and encoding-based accounts of context-dependent memory.

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