scholarly journals Using verb morphology to predict subject number in L1 and L2 sentence processing: A visual-world eye-tracking experiment

2021 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 115-132
Author(s):  
Eva M. Koch ◽  
Bram Bulté ◽  
Alex Housen ◽  
Aline Godfroid
Keyword(s):  
Eye Tracking ◽  
Sentence Processing ◽  
Visual World ◽  
Verb Morphology ◽  
Subject Number ◽  
L1 And L2

scholarly journals Children do not overcome lexical biases where adults do: the role of the referential scene in garden-path recovery

2010 ◽  
Vol 38 (1) ◽  
pp. 222-234 ◽  
Author(s):  
EVAN KIDD ◽  
ANDREW J. STEWART ◽  
LUDOVICA SERRATRICE
Keyword(s):  
Eye Tracking ◽  
Sentence Processing ◽  
Test Sentence ◽  
Visual World ◽  
Garden Path ◽  
Initial Analysis ◽  
Adults And Children ◽  
Scene Information ◽  
Lexical Cues

ABSTRACTIn this paper we report on a visual world eye-tracking experiment that investigated the differing abilities of adults and children to use referential scene information during reanalysis to overcome lexical biases during sentence processing. The results showed that adults incorporated aspects of the referential scene into their parse as soon as it became apparent that a test sentence was syntactically ambiguous, suggesting they considered the two alternative analyses in parallel. In contrast, the children appeared not to reanalyze their initial analysis, even over shorter distances than have been investigated in prior research. We argue that this reflects the children's over-reliance on bottom-up, lexical cues to interpretation. The implications for the development of parsing routines are discussed.

scholarly journals A cognitive load delays predictive eye movements similarly during L1 and L2 comprehension

2017 ◽  
Vol 21 (2) ◽  
pp. 251-264 ◽  
Author(s):  
AINE ITO ◽  
MARTIN CORLEY ◽  
MARTIN J. PICKERING
Keyword(s):  
Working Memory ◽  
Eye Movements ◽  
Eye Tracking ◽  
Cognitive Load ◽  
Memory Task ◽  
Target Object ◽  
Cognitive Resources ◽  
Visual World ◽  
L1 And L2

We used the visual world eye-tracking paradigm to investigate the effects of cognitive load on predictive eye movements in L1 (Experiment 1) and L2 (Experiment 2) speakers. Participants listened to sentences whose verb was predictive or non-predictive towards one of four objects they were viewing. They then clicked on a mentioned object. Half the participants additionally performed a working memory task of remembering words. Both L1 and L2 speakers looked more at the target object predictively in predictable- than in non-predictable sentences when they performed the listen-and-click task only. However, this predictability effect was delayed in those who performed the concurrent memory task. This pattern of results was similar in L1 and L2 speakers. L1 and L2 speakers make predictions, but cognitive resources are required for making predictive eye movements. The findings are compatible with the claim that L2 speakers use the same mechanisms as L1 speakers to make predictions.

scholarly journals Lingering misinterpretation in native and nonnative sentence processing: Evidence from structural priming

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-30
Author(s):  
Hiroki Fujita ◽  
Ian Cunnings
Keyword(s):  
Eye Tracking ◽  
Sentence Processing ◽  
Priming Effect ◽  
Target Sentence ◽  
Structural Priming ◽  
Correct Interpretation ◽  
Priming Effects ◽  
L1 And L2 ◽  
Accuracy Rates ◽  
Comprehension Accuracy

Abstract Native (L1) and nonnative (L2) speakers sometimes misinterpret temporarily ambiguous sentences like “When Mary dressed the baby laughed happily.” Recent studies suggest that the initially assigned misinterpretation (“Mary dressed the baby”) may persist even after disambiguation, and that L2 speakers may have particular difficulty discarding initial misinterpretations. The present study investigated whether L2 speakers are more persistent with misinterpretation compared with L1 speakers during sentence processing, using the structural priming and eye tracking while reading tasks. In the experiment, participants read prime followed by target sentences. Reading times revealed that unambiguous but not ambiguous prime sentences facilitated processing of the globally correct interpretation of ambiguous target sentences. However, this priming effect was only observed when the prime and target sentence shared the same verb. Comprehension accuracy rates were not significantly influenced by priming effects but did provide evidence of lingering misinterpretation. We did not find significant L1/L2 differences in either priming effects or persistence of misinterpretation. Together, these results suggest that initially assigned misinterpretations linger in both L1 and L2 readers during sentence processing and that L1 and L2 comprehension priming is strongly lexically mediated.

Processing delays

2018 ◽  
Vol 35 ◽  
pp. 65-78
Author(s):  
Loes Koring ◽  
Hans van de Koot
Keyword(s):  
Eye Tracking ◽  
Sentence Processing ◽  
Word Order ◽  
Time Course ◽  
Visual World ◽  
Visual World Paradigm ◽  
Exact Time ◽  
On Line

Abstract An eye-tracking experiment using the Visual World Paradigm (VWP) shows that in on-line sentence processing in English the argument of an unaccusative verb reactivates late after verb offset. In contrast to previous studies, this VWP experiment establishes the exact time course of this effect, which matches the time course previously found for Dutch, despite differences in word order between the two languages. Furthermore, it uncovers an early reactivation of the argument of unergative verbs that has previously gone unnoticed. Such an effect has previously been observed for Dutch, but not for English. Moreover, the effect seems to occur earlier in English than in Dutch. We suggest that this difference may be due to the more rigid word order of English, which provides the parser with more informative cues.

scholarly journals How Animacy and Verbal Information Influence V2 Sentence Processing: Evidence from Eye Movements

2019 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 630-649
Author(s):  
Peter de Swart ◽  
Geertje van Bergen
Keyword(s):  
Eye Movements ◽  
Eye Tracking ◽  
Sentence Processing ◽  
Verbal Information ◽  
Grammatical Function ◽  
Visual World ◽  
Object A ◽  
Selectional Restrictions ◽  
Clear Association ◽  
Main Verb

AbstractThere exists a clear association between animacy and the grammatical function of transitive subject. The grammar of some languages require the transitive subject to be high in animacy, or at least higher than the object. A similar animacy preference has been observed in processing studies in languages without such a categorical animacy effect. This animacy preference has been mainly established in structures in which either one or both arguments are provided before the verb. Our goal was to establish (i) whether this preference can already be observed before any argument is provided, and (ii) whether this preference is mediated by verbal information. To this end we exploited the V2 property of Dutch which allows the verb to precede its arguments. Using a visual-world eye-tracking paradigm we presented participants with V2 structures with either an auxiliary (e.g. Gisteren heeft X … ‘Yesterday, X has …’) or a lexical main verb (e.g. Gisteren motiveerde X … ‘Yesterday, X motivated …’) and we measured looks to the animate referent. The results indicate that the animacy preference can already be observed before arguments are presented and that the selectional restrictions of the verb mediate this bias, but do not override it completely.

LEXICAL AND SYNTACTIC CONGRUENCY IN L2 PREDICTIVE GENDER PROCESSING

2016 ◽  
Vol 40 (1) ◽  
pp. 171-199 ◽  
Author(s):  
Holger Hopp ◽  
Natalia Lemmerth
Keyword(s):  
Adult Learners ◽  
Eye Tracking ◽  
Native Speakers ◽  
Grammatical Gender ◽  
Visual World ◽  
L2 Learners ◽  
Syntactic Differences ◽  
L1 And L2 ◽  
German Mark ◽  
Gender Processing

This article investigates how lexical and syntactic differences in L1 and L2 grammatical gender affect L2 predictive gender processing. In a visual-world eye-tracking experiment, 24 L1 Russian adult learners and 15 native speakers of German were tested. Both Russian and German have three gender classes. Yet, they differ in lexical congruency, that is, whether a noun (“house”) is assigned to the same or a different gender class. Further, gender is syntactically realized on postnominal suffixes in Russian but on prenominal articles in German. For adjectives, both Russian and German mark gender on suffixes. In predictive gender processing, we find interactions of proficiency and congruency for gender-marked articles. Advanced L2 learners show nativelike gender prediction throughout. High-intermediate learners display asymmetries according to syntactic and lexical congruency. Predictive gender processing obtains for all nouns in the (syntactically congruent) adjective condition, yet only for lexically congruent nouns in the (syntactically incongruent) article condition.

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.

scholarly journals Interference in Native and Non-Native Sentence Processing

2017 ◽  
Vol 20 (4) ◽  
pp. 712-721 ◽  
Author(s):  
IAN CUNNINGS
Keyword(s):  
Sentence Processing ◽  
Language Comprehension ◽  
Memory Retrieval ◽  
Primary Source ◽  
Careful Consideration ◽  
L2 Processing ◽  
Target Article ◽  
Different Populations ◽  
Similarities And Differences ◽  
L1 And L2

The primary aim of my target article was to demonstrate how careful consideration of the working memory operations that underlie successful language comprehension is crucial to our understanding of the similarities and differences between native (L1) and non-native (L2) sentence processing. My central claims were that highly proficient L2 speakers construct similarly specified syntactic parses as L1 speakers, and that differences between L1 and L2 processing can be characterised in terms of L2 speakers being more prone to interference during memory retrieval operations. In explaining L1/L2 differences in this way, I argued a primary source of differences between L1 and L2 processing lies in how different populations of speakers weight cues that guide memory retrieval.

scholarly journals Subject encodings and retrieval interference

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nathan Arnett ◽  
Matthew Wagers
Keyword(s):  
Eye Tracking ◽  
Sentence Processing ◽  
Retrieval Cues ◽  
Syntactic Theory ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Syntactic Properties ◽  
Retrieval Interference ◽  
Processing Difficulty

Interference has been identified as a cause of processing difficulty in linguistic dependencies, such as the subject-verb relation (Van Dyke and Lewis, 2003). However, while mounting evidence implicates retrieval interference in sentence processing, the nature of the retrieval cues involved - and thus the source of difficulty - remains largely unexplored. Three experiments used self-paced reading and eye-tracking to examine the ways in which the retrieval cues provided at a verb characterize subjects. Syntactic theory has identified a number of properties correlated with subjecthood, both phrase-structural and thematic. Findings replicate and extend previous findings of interference at a verb from additional subjects, but indicate that retrieval outcomes are relativized to the syntactic domain in which the retrieval occurs. One, the cues distinguish between thematic subjects in verbal and nominal domains. Two, within the verbal domain, retrieval is sensitive to abstract syntactic properties associated with subjects and their clauses. We argue that the processing at a verb requires cue-driven retrieval, and that the retrieval cues utilize abstract grammatical properties which may reflect parser expectations.

scholarly journals Priming Younger and Older Adults’ Sentence Comprehension: Insights from Dynamic Emotional Facial Expressions and Pupil Size Measures

2016 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 129-148 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maria Nella Carminati ◽  
Pia Knoeferle
Keyword(s):  
Older Adults ◽  
Sentence Processing ◽  
Pupil Size ◽  
Sentence Comprehension ◽  
Cognitive Effort ◽  
Pupil Dilation ◽  
Emotional Facial Expressions ◽  
Visual World ◽  
Positivity Effect ◽  
Positive Valence

Background: Prior visual-world research has demonstrated that emotional priming of spoken sentence processing is rapidly modulated by age. Older and younger participants saw two photographs of a positive and of a negative event side-by-side and listened to a spoken sentence about one of these events. Older adults’ fixations to the mentioned (positive) event were enhanced when the still photograph of a previously-inspected positive-valence speaker face was (vs. wasn’t) emotionally congruent with the event/sentence. By contrast, the younger adults exhibited such an enhancement with negative stimuli only. Objective: The first aim of the current study was to assess the replicability of these findings with dynamic face stimuli (unfolding from neutral to happy or sad). A second goal was to assess a key prediction made by socio-emotional selectivity theory, viz. that the positivity effect (a preference for positive information) displayed by older adults involves cognitive effort. Method: We conducted an eye-tracking visual-world experiment. Results: Most priming and age effects, including the positivity effects, replicated. However, against our expectations, the positive gaze preference in older adults did not co-vary with a standard measure of cognitive effort - increased pupil dilation. Instead, pupil size was significantly bigger when (both younger and older) adults processed negative than positive stimuli. Conclusion: These findings are in line with previous research on the relationship between positive gaze preferences and pupil dilation. We discuss both theoretical and methodological implications of these results.

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