scholarly journals Reply to comment on “Nonadjacent dependency processing in monkeys, apes, and humans”

2021 ◽  
Vol 7 (30) ◽  
pp. eabj1517
Author(s):  
Stuart K. Watson ◽  
Judith M. Burkart ◽  
Steven J. Schapiro ◽  
Susan P. Lambeth ◽  
Jutta L. Mueller ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Language Processing ◽  
Cognitive Mechanisms ◽  
Latent Ability ◽  
Nonadjacent Dependencies ◽  
Predictive Relationships ◽  
Open Question

Rawski et al. revisit our recent findings suggesting the latent ability to process nonadjacent dependencies (“Non-ADs”) in monkeys and apes. Specifically, the authors question the relevance of our findings for the evolution of human syntax. We argue that (i) these conclusions hinge upon an assumption that language processing is necessarily hierarchical, which remains an open question, and (ii) our goal was to probe the foundational cognitive mechanisms facilitating the processing of syntactic Non-ADs—namely, the ability to recognize predictive relationships in the input.

Neural Mechanisms of Music and Language

2019 ◽  
pp. 906-952
Author(s):  
Mattson Ogg ◽  
L. Robert Slevc
Keyword(s):  
Auditory Cortex ◽  
Language Processing ◽  
Auditory Processing ◽  
Cortical Plasticity ◽  
Speaker Identification ◽  
Auditory Pathway ◽  
Cognitive Mechanisms ◽  
Cross Domain ◽  
Music And Language ◽  
Cortical Regions

Music and language are uniquely human forms of communication. What neural structures facilitate these abilities? This chapter conducts a review of music and language processing that follows these acoustic signals as they ascend the auditory pathway from the brainstem to auditory cortex and on to more specialized cortical regions. Acoustic, neural, and cognitive mechanisms are identified where processing demands from both domains might overlap, with an eye to examples of experience-dependent cortical plasticity, which are taken as strong evidence for common neural substrates. Following an introduction describing how understanding musical processing informs linguistic or auditory processing more generally, findings regarding the major components (and parallels) of music and language research are reviewed: pitch perception, syntax and harmonic structural processing, semantics, timbre and speaker identification, attending in auditory scenes, and rhythm. Overall, the strongest evidence that currently exists for neural overlap (and cross-domain, experience-dependent plasticity) is in the brainstem, followed by auditory cortex, with evidence and the potential for overlap becoming less apparent as the mechanisms involved in music and speech perception become more specialized and distinct at higher levels of processing.

scholarly journals Incrementality and intention-recognition in utterance processing

2011 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 199-233 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eleni Gregoromichelaki ◽  
Ruth Kempson ◽  
Matthew Purver ◽  
Gregory J. Mills ◽  
Ronnie Cann ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Predictive Model ◽  
Language Processing ◽  
Mental States ◽  
Higher Order ◽  
Low Level ◽  
Intention Recognition ◽  
Dialogue Modelling ◽  
Open Question ◽  
Dynamic Syntax ◽  
Do So

Ever since dialogue modelling first developed relative to broadly Gricean assumptions about utter-ance interpretation (Clark, 1996), it has remained an open question whether the full complexity of higher-order intention computation is made use of in everyday conversation. In this paper we examine the phenomenon of split utterances, from the perspective of Dynamic Syntax, to further probe the necessity of full intention recognition/formation in communication: we do so by exploring the extent to which the interactive coordination of dialogue exchange can be seen as emergent from low-level mechanisms of language processing, without needing representation by interlocutors of each other’s mental states, or fully developed intentions as regards messages to be conveyed. We thus illustrate how many dialogue phenomena can be seen as direct consequences of the grammar architecture, as long as this is presented within an incremental, goal-directed/predictive model.

scholarly journals Strong conceptual ability reduces the effect of lexical impairments on verb retrieval in aphasia

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Haley C. Dresang ◽  
William D. Hula ◽  
Tessa Warren ◽  
Michael Walsh Dickey
Keyword(s):  
Left Hemisphere ◽  
Language Processing ◽  
Brain Injuries ◽  
Conceptual Processing ◽  
Action Processing ◽  
Processing Abilities ◽  
Conceptual Ability ◽  
Chronic Aphasia ◽  
Left Hemisphere Stroke ◽  
Open Question

Verb-retrieval impairments are pervasive deficits that can negatively impact communicative function for individuals living with aphasia. Unfortunately, the neurocognitive basis of these deficits remains poorly understood. One open question is the degree to which verb-retrieval impairments might be rooted in lexical- versus conceptual-processing deficits. These deficits can be co-present and correlated in people with aphasia, but they have also been found to be dissociated in patients with a variety of acquired brain injuries. This study examined the degree to which conceptual versus lexical action-processing abilities are impaired and may contribute to verb-retrieval impairments in adults with chronic aphasia due to left-hemisphere stroke. The results indicate that conceptual action processing can be impaired in aphasia and may contribute to verb-retrieval impairments. Furthermore, relatively unimpaired conceptual processing can ameliorate the influence of lexical impairments on verb-retrieval impairments. These findings are consistent with models in which conceptual representations play a key role in language processing and may be leveraged to improve verb retrieval in adults with chronic aphasia.

Electrophysiological and experimental-behavioral approaches to the study of intra-sentential code-switching

2017 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 134-161 ◽  
Author(s):  
Janet G. van Hell ◽  
Carla B. Fernandez ◽  
Gerrit Jan Kootstra ◽  
Kaitlyn A. Litcofsky ◽  
Caitlin Y. Ting
Keyword(s):  
Language Processing ◽  
Empirical Studies ◽  
Code Switching ◽  
Cognitive Mechanisms ◽  
Brain Potentials ◽  
Electrophysiological Response ◽  
Time Frequency ◽  
Behavioral Techniques ◽  
Approaches To Study ◽  
Response Profiles

Abstract A hallmark of bilingual language processing is intra-sentential code-switching. An emergent body of research seeks to understand the intricate neural and cognitive mechanisms that underlie this seemingly effortless skill. In this paper, we discuss electrophysiological and experimental-behavioral research approaches that have been used to study intra-sentential code-switching, and illustrate the use of these techniques by discussing a select number of empirical studies. More specifically, we discuss electrophysiological approaches that are used to study the comprehension of visually and auditorily presented code-switched sentences, including the Event-Related brain Potentials (ERPs) method, time-frequency analysis, and approaches to study inter-individual variation in electrophysiological response profiles. This is followed by a discussion of experimental-behavioral techniques to study the comprehension and production of code-switched sentences, including self-paced reading, shadowing, and confederate scripting.

scholarly journals Working Memory and Lexical Ambiguity Resolution as Revealed by ERPs: A Difficult Case for Activation Theories

2003 ◽  
Vol 15 (5) ◽  
pp. 643-657 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas C. Gunter ◽  
Susanne Wagner ◽  
Angela D. Friederici
Keyword(s):  
Working Memory ◽  
Language Processing ◽  
Memory Span ◽  
Underlying Mechanism ◽  
Event Related Potential ◽  
Difficult Case ◽  
Cognitive Mechanisms ◽  
Subordinate Meaning ◽  
Efficient Processing ◽  
N400 Component

This series of three event-related potential experiments explored the issue of whether the underlying mechanism of working memory (WM) supporting language processing is inhibitory or activational in nature. These different cognitive mechanisms have been proposed to explain the more efficient processing of subjects with a high WM span compared to those with a low WM span. Participants with high and low WM span were presented with sentences containing a homonym followed three words later by a nominal disambiguation cue and a final disambiguation using a verb. At the position of the disambiguation cue, inhibitory or activational WM mechanisms predict contrasting results. When activation is the underlying mechanism for efficient processing, the prediction is that high memory span persons activate both meanings of the homonym equally in WM, whereas low memory span persons only have one meaning present. When inhibition is the underlying mechanism, the predictions are the reverse. The ERP data, in particular, the variations of the meaning related N400 component, showed clear evidence for inhibition as the underlying cognitive mechanism in high-span readers. For low-span participants the cueing towards the dominant or the subordinate meaning elicited an equivalently large N400 component suggesting that both meanings are active in WM. In highspan subjects, the dominant disambiguation cue elicited a smaller N400 than the subordinate one, indicating that for these subjects particularly the dominant meaning is active. The experiments showed that inhibitory processes are probably underlying WM used during language comprehension in high-span subjects. Moreover, they demonstrate that these subjects can use their inhibition in a more flexible manner than low-span subjects. The effects that these processing differences have on the efficiency of language parsing are discussed.

scholarly journals Neurobehavioral Correlates of Surprisal in Language Comprehension: A Neurocomputational Model

2021 ◽  
Vol 12 ◽  
Author(s):  
Harm Brouwer ◽  
Francesca Delogu ◽  
Noortje J. Venhuizen ◽  
Matthew W. Crocker
Keyword(s):  
Experimental Design ◽  
Language Processing ◽  
Language Comprehension ◽  
Word Processing ◽  
World Knowledge ◽  
Behavioral Correlates ◽  
Close Link ◽  
Model Predictions ◽  
Open Question ◽  
Processing Difficulty

Expectation-based theories of language comprehension, in particular Surprisal Theory, go a long way in accounting for the behavioral correlates of word-by-word processing difficulty, such as reading times. An open question, however, is in which component(s) of the Event-Related brain Potential (ERP) signal Surprisal is reflected, and how these electrophysiological correlates relate to behavioral processing indices. Here, we address this question by instantiating an explicit neurocomputational model of incremental, word-by-word language comprehension that produces estimates of the N400 and the P600—the two most salient ERP components for language processing—as well as estimates of “comprehension-centric” Surprisal for each word in a sentence. We derive model predictions for a recent experimental design that directly investigates “world-knowledge”-induced Surprisal. By relating these predictions to both empirical electrophysiological and behavioral results, we establish a close link between Surprisal, as indexed by reading times, and the P600 component of the ERP signal. The resultant model thus offers an integrated neurobehavioral account of processing difficulty in language comprehension.

scholarly journals Processing Speaker-Specific Information in Two Stages During the Interpretation of Referential Precedents

2020 ◽  
Vol 11 ◽  
Author(s):  
Edmundo Kronmüller ◽  
Ernesto Guerra
Keyword(s):  
Language Processing ◽  
Perspective Taking ◽  
Referential Communication ◽  
Specific Information ◽  
Retrieval Process ◽  
Cognitive Mechanisms ◽  
Two Stage ◽  
Communication Task ◽  
The Moment ◽  
Two Stages

To reduce ambiguity across a conversation, interlocutors reach temporary conventions or referential precedents on how to refer to an entity. Despite their central role in communication, the cognitive underpinnings of the interpretation of precedents remain unclear, specifically the role and mechanisms by which information related to the speaker is integrated. We contrast predictions of one-stage, original two-stage, and extended two-stage models for the processing of speaker information and provide evidence favoring the latter: we show that both stages are sensitive to speaker-specific information. Using an experimental paradigm based on visual-world eye tracking in the context of a referential communication task, we look at the moment-by-moment interpretation of precedents and focus on the temporal profile of the influence of the speaker and linguistic information when facing ambiguity. We find two clearly identifiable moments where speaker-specific information has its effects on reference resolution. We conclude that these two stages reflect two distinct cognitive mechanisms, with different timings, and rely on different representational formats for encoding and accessing information about the speaker: a cue-driven memory retrieval process that mediates language processing and an inferential mechanism based on perspective-taking abilities.

scholarly journals Ladies First: Gender Stereotypes Drive Anticipatory Eye-Movements During Incremental Sentence Interpretation

2021 ◽  
Vol 12 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ernesto Guerra ◽  
Jasmin Bernotat ◽  
Héctor Carvacho ◽  
Gerd Bohner
Keyword(s):  
Eye Movements ◽  
Language Processing ◽  
Sentence Processing ◽  
Gender Stereotypes ◽  
Contextual Information ◽  
Gender Attitudes ◽  
World Knowledge ◽  
Cognitive Mechanisms ◽  
Male Characters ◽  
Anticipatory Eye Movements

Immediate contextual information and world knowledge allow comprehenders to anticipate incoming language in real time. The cognitive mechanisms that underlie such behavior are, however, still only partially understood. We examined the novel idea that gender attitudes may influence how people make predictions during sentence processing. To this end, we conducted an eye-tracking experiment where participants listened to passive-voice sentences expressing gender-stereotypical actions (e.g., “The wood is being painted by the florist”) while observing displays containing both female and male characters representing gender-stereotypical professions (e.g., florists, soldiers). In addition, we assessed participants’ explicit gender-related attitudes to explore whether they might predict potential effects of gender-stereotypical information on anticipatory eye movements. The observed gaze pattern reflected that participants used gendered information to predict who was agent of the action. These effects were larger for female- vs. male-stereotypical contextual information but were not related to participants’ gender-related attitudes. Our results showed that predictive language processing can be moderated by gender stereotypes, and that anticipation is stronger for female (vs. male) depicted characters. Further research should test the direct relation between gender-stereotypical sentence processing and implicit gender attitudes. These findings contribute to both social psychology and psycholinguistics research, as they extend our understanding of stereotype processing in multimodal contexts and regarding the role of attitudes (on top of world knowledge) in language prediction.

scholarly journals The Spectral Underpinning of word2vec

2020 ◽  
Vol 6 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ariel Jaffe ◽  
Yuval Kluger ◽  
Ofir Lindenbaum ◽  
Jonathan Patsenker ◽  
Erez Peterfreund ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Natural Language Processing ◽  
Spectral Method ◽  
Language Processing ◽  
Rigorous Analysis ◽  
Theoretical Justification ◽  
Nonlinear Functional ◽  
Nonlinear Properties ◽  
Frequent Use ◽  
Highly Nonlinear ◽  
Open Question

Word2vec introduced by Mikolov et al. is a word embedding method that is widely used in natural language processing. Despite its success and frequent use, a strong theoretical justification is still lacking. The main contribution of our paper is to propose a rigorous analysis of the highly nonlinear functional of word2vec. Our results suggest that word2vec may be primarily driven by an underlying spectral method. This insight may open the door to obtaining provable guarantees for word2vec. We support these findings by numerical simulations. One fascinating open question is whether the nonlinear properties of word2vec that are not captured by the spectral method are beneficial and, if so, by what mechanism.

Using Language Processing to Evaluate the Equivalency of the FASB and IASB Standards

2016 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 129-144 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ingrid E. Fisher ◽  
Robert A. Nehmer
Keyword(s):  
Conceptual Framework ◽  
Language Processing ◽  
Financial Statements ◽  
The United States ◽  
United States Congress ◽  
Balance Sheets ◽  
Semantic Richness ◽  
Data Transparency ◽  
Open Question ◽  
Lexical Content

ABSTRACT The passage of the Data Transparency and Accountability Act in the United States Congress will necessitate that government agencies provide more data in transparent formats. The issue of how to interpret such data remains an open question. The accounting profession has continued to struggle with common formats since the inception of balance sheets and income statements. The original FASB Conceptual Framework was developed to help construct consistent GAAP standards. XBRL was developed to provide a consistent representation of the data contained in financial statements and other financial documents. This research explores the use of two codifications (U.S. GAAP and IFRS) of GAAP standards in both their syntactic representation through XBRL taxonomies and their semantics through their authoritative references back to their own standards and codification. The research uses language theory to model the codifications in terms of the strings used to represent lexical content in the financial statements and to provide a systematic mapping to the semantics of the related XBRL specifications. The immediate objectives of this research are to provide a means to compare the semantic richness of U.S. GAAP and IFRS and to determine the consistency of either standardization with respect to the emerging shared Conceptual Framework. Ultimately, to the extent that the system is able to model both the syntax and the semantics of the financial statements, it could provide a baseline on which to consider assurance over parts of the financial statements, rather than over the financial statements taken as a whole.

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