scholarly journals Divergence point analyses of visual world data: applications to bilingual research

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kate Stone ◽  
Sol Lago ◽  
Daniel Schad
Keyword(s):  
Open Access ◽  
Confidence Interval ◽  
Language Processing ◽  
Multiple Comparisons ◽  
Individual Factors ◽  
Visual World ◽  
Divergence Point ◽  
L2 Processing ◽  
Divergence Points ◽  
Language And Cognition

**This paper is now available open access in Bilingualism: Language and Cognition. Please see the Peer-reviewed publication DOI below.** Much work has shown that differences in the timecourse of language processing are central to comparing native (L1) and non-native (L2) speakers. However, estimating the onset of experimental effects in timecourse data presents several statistical problems including multiple comparisons and autocorrelation. We compare several approaches to tackling these problems and illustrate them using an L1-L2 visual world eye-tracking dataset. We then present a bootstrapping procedure that allows not only estimation of an effect onset, but also of a temporal confidence interval around this divergence point. We describe how divergence points can be used to demonstrate timecourse differences between speaker groups or between experimental manipulations, two important issues in evaluating L2 processing accounts. We discuss possible extensions of the bootstrapping procedure, including determining divergence points for individual speakers and correlating them with individual factors like L2 exposure and proficiency. Data and an analysis tutorial are available at https://osf.io/exbmk/.

scholarly journals Divergence point analyses of visual world data: applications to bilingual research

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-9
Author(s):  
Kate Stone ◽  
Sol Lago ◽  
Daniel J. Schad
Keyword(s):  
Confidence Interval ◽  
Eye Tracking ◽  
Language Processing ◽  
Multiple Comparisons ◽  
Individual Factors ◽  
Visual World ◽  
World Data ◽  
Divergence Point ◽  
L2 Processing ◽  
Divergence Points

Abstract Much work has shown that differences in the timecourse of language processing are central to comparing native (L1) and non-native (L2) speakers. However, estimating the onset of experimental effects in timecourse data presents several statistical problems including multiple comparisons and autocorrelation. We compare several approaches to tackling these problems and illustrate them using an L1-L2 visual world eye-tracking dataset. We then present a bootstrapping procedure that allows not only estimation of an effect onset, but also of a temporal confidence interval around this divergence point. We describe how divergence points can be used to demonstrate timecourse differences between speaker groups or between experimental manipulations, two important issues in evaluating L2 processing accounts. We discuss possible extensions of the bootstrapping procedure, including determining divergence points for individual speakers and correlating them with individual factors like L2 exposure and proficiency. Data and an analysis tutorial are available at https://osf.io/exbmk/.

scholarly journals Finding What Is Inaccessible: Antimicrobial Resistance Language Use among the One Health Domains

Antibiotics ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (4) ◽  
pp. 385
Author(s):  
Lauren L. Wind ◽  
Jonathan S. Briganti ◽  
Anne M. Brown ◽  
Timothy P. Neher ◽  
Meghan F. Davis ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Antibiotic Resistance ◽  
Open Access ◽  
Antimicrobial Resistance ◽  
Language Processing ◽  
One Health ◽  
Language Use ◽  
Language Usage ◽  
Health Domains ◽  
Accessibility Issues ◽  
The One

The success of a One Health approach to combating antimicrobial resistance (AMR) requires effective data sharing across the three One Health domains (human, animal, and environment). To investigate if there are differences in language use across the One Health domains, we examined the peer-reviewed literature using a combination of text data mining and natural language processing techniques on 20,000 open-access articles related to AMR and One Health. Evaluating AMR key term frequency from the European PubMed Collection published between 1990 and 2019 showed distinct AMR language usage within each domain and incongruent language usage across domains, with significant differences in key term usage frequencies when articles were grouped by the One Health sub-specialties (2-way ANOVA; p < 0.001). Over the 29-year period, “antibiotic resistance” and “AR” were used 18 times more than “antimicrobial resistance” and “AMR”. The discord of language use across One Health potentially weakens the effectiveness of interdisciplinary research by creating accessibility issues for researchers using search engines. This research was the first to quantify this disparate language use within One Health, which inhibits collaboration and crosstalk between domains. We suggest the following for authors publishing AMR-related research within the One Health context: (1) increase title/abstract searchability by including both antimicrobial and antibiotic resistance related search terms; (2) include “One Health” in the title/abstract; and (3) prioritize open-access publication.

scholarly journals Similarity-based interference and relative clauses in second language processing

2021 ◽  
pp. 026765832110635
Author(s):  
Ian Cunnings ◽  
Hiroki Fujita
Keyword(s):  
Language Processing ◽  
Relative Clause ◽  
Relative Clauses ◽  
Large Body ◽  
Interference Effects ◽  
Second Language Processing ◽  
L2 Processing ◽  
Relative Disadvantage ◽  
L1 And L2 ◽  
Object Relative

Relative clauses have long been examined in research on first (L1) and second (L2) language acquisition and processing, and a large body of research has shown that object relative clauses (e.g. ‘The boy that the girl saw’) are more difficult to process than subject relative clauses (e.g. ‘The boy that saw the girl’). Although there are different accounts of this finding, memory-based factors have been argued to play a role in explaining the object relative disadvantage. Evidence of memory-based factors in relative clause processing comes from studies indicating that representational similarity influences the difficulty associated with object relatives as a result of a phenomenon known as similarity-based interference. Although similarity-based interference has been well studied in L1 processing, less is known about how it influences L2 processing. We report two studies – an eye-tracking experiment and a comprehension task – investigating interference in the comprehension of relative clauses in L1 and L2 readers. Our results indicated similarity-based interference in the processing of object relative clauses in both L1 and L2 readers, with no significant differences in the size of interference effects between the two groups. These results highlight the importance of considering memory-based factors when examining L2 processing.

scholarly journals Talking in another person’s shoes: Incremental perspective-taking in language processing

2011 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 11-33 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sarah Brown-Schmidt ◽  
Joy E. Hanna
Keyword(s):  
Language Processing ◽  
Perspective Taking ◽  
Careful Consideration ◽  
Probabilistic Constraints ◽  
Sources Of Information ◽  
Visual World ◽  
Integration Model ◽  
Knowledge And Beliefs ◽  
On Line ◽  
Methodological Advance

Language use in conversation is fundamentally incremental, and is guided by the representations that interlocutors maintain of each other’s knowledge and beliefs. While there is a consensus that interlocutors represent the perspective of others, three candidate models, a Perspective-Adjustment model, an Anticipation-Integration model, and a Constraint-Based model, make conflicting predictions about the role of perspective information during on-line language processing. Here we review psycholinguistic evidence for incrementality in language processing, and the recent methodological advance that has fostered its investigation—the use of eye-tracking in the visual world paradigm. We present visual world studies of perspective-taking, and evaluate each model's account of the data. We argue for a Constraint-Based view in which perspective is one of multiple probabilistic constraints that guide language processing decisions. Addressees combine knowledge of a speaker’s perspective with rich information from the discourse context to arrive at an interpretation of what was said. Understanding how these sources of information combine to influence interpretation requires careful consideration of how perspective representations were established, and how they are relevant to the communicative context.

Spoken language comprehension: insights from eye movements

2007 ◽  
pp. 308-326 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael K. Tanenhaus
Keyword(s):  
Eye Movements ◽  
Language Processing ◽  
Language Comprehension ◽  
Language Production ◽  
World Literature ◽  
Spoken Language ◽  
Response Measure ◽  
Visual World ◽  
Spoken Language Processing ◽  
Spoken Language Comprehension

Recently, eye movements have become a widely used response measure for studying spoken language processing in both adults and children, in situations where participants comprehend and generate utterances about a circumscribed “Visual World” while fixation is monitored, typically using a free-view eye-tracker. Psycholinguists now use the Visual World eye-movement method to study both language production and language comprehension, in studies that run the gamut of current topics in language processing. Eye movements are a response measure of choice for addressing many classic questions about spoken language processing in psycholinguistics. This article reviews the burgeoning Visual World literature on language comprehension, highlighting some of the seminal studies and examining how the Visual World approach has contributed new insights to our understanding of spoken word recognition, parsing, reference resolution, and interactive conversation. It considers some of the methodological issues that come to the fore when psycholinguists use eye movements to examine spoken language comprehension.

Does open access citation advantage depend on paper topics?

2019 ◽  
Vol 46 (5) ◽  
pp. 696-709
Author(s):  
Hajar Sotudeh
Keyword(s):  
Open Access ◽  
Language Processing ◽  
Analysis Method ◽  
Research Topics ◽  
Abstract Level ◽  
Article Processing Charges ◽  
Processing Techniques ◽  
Citation Advantage ◽  
Selection Of

Research topics vary in their citation potential. In a metric-wise scientific milieu, it would be probable that authors tend to select citation-attractive topics especially when choosing open access (OA) outlets that are more likely to attract citations. Applying a matched-pairs study design, this research aims to examine the role of research topics in the citation advantage of OA papers. Using a comparative citation analysis method, it investigates a sample of papers published in 47 Elsevier article processing charges (APC)-funded journals in different access models including non-open access (NOA), APC, Green and mixed Green-APC. The contents of the papers are analysed using natural language processing techniques at the title and abstract level and served as a basis to match the NOA papers to their peers in the OA models. The publication years and journals are controlled for in order to avoid their impacts on the citation numbers. According to the results, the OA citation advantage that is observed in the whole sample still holds even for the highly similar OA and NOA papers. This implies that the OA citation surplus is not an artefact of the OA and NOA papers’ differences in their topics and, therefore, in their citation potential. This leads to the conclusion that OA authors’ self-selectivity, if it exists at all, is not responsible for the OA citation advantage, at least as far as selection of topics with probably higher citation potentials is concerned.

The processing of passive sentences in German

2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 163-195
Author(s):  
Valentina Cristante ◽  
Sarah Schimke
Keyword(s):  
Eye Tracking ◽  
Primary School ◽  
Language Processing ◽  
Empirical Data ◽  
Age Groups ◽  
Visual World ◽  
German Speaking ◽  
Passive Sentence ◽  
Auxiliary Verb ◽  
Age Range

Abstract This study examines the processing and interpretation of passive sentences in German-speaking seven-year-olds, ten-year-olds, and adults. This structure is often assumed to be particularly difficult to understand, and not yet fully mastered in primary school (Kemp, Bredel, & Reich, 2008), i.e. in children aged between six and eleven. Few studies provide empirical data concerning this age range; it is therefore unknown whether this assumption is warranted. Against this background, we tested whether the three age groups differed in their off-line comprehension of passive sentences. In addition, we employed Visual World eye-tracking to measure processing difficulties that may differ between age groups and may not be reflected in the final interpretations. Previous studies on adult language processing in German and English have documented a preference to interpret sentences according to an agent-first strategy. Our results show that all three groups make use of this strategy, and that all of them are able to revise this interpretation once the first cue indicating a passive sentence is encountered (the auxiliary verb form wurde). We conclude that at least from age seven on, children have the linguistic and cognitive prerequisites to process the passive morphosyntax of German and to revise initial sentence misinterpretations.

USING EYE-TRACKING TO INVESTIGATE TOPICS IN L2 ACQUISITION AND L2 PROCESSING

2013 ◽  
Vol 35 (2) ◽  
pp. 213-235 ◽  
Author(s):  
Leah Roberts ◽  
Anna Siyanova-Chanturia
Keyword(s):  
Eye Tracking ◽  
Real Time ◽  
Language Processing ◽  
Target Language ◽  
Tracking Data ◽  
L2 Acquisition ◽  
Tracking Method ◽  
L2 Processing ◽  
Major Benefit ◽  
The Moment

Second language (L2) researchers are becoming more interested in both L2 learners’ knowledge of the target language and how that knowledge is put to use during real-time language processing. Researchers are therefore beginning to see the importance of combining traditional L2 research methods with those that capture the moment-by-moment interpretation of the target language, such as eye-tracking. The major benefit of the eye-tracking method is that it can tap into real-time (or online) comprehension processes during the uninterrupted processing of the input, and thus, the data can be compared to those elicited by other, more metalinguistic tasks to offer a broader picture of language acquisition and processing. In this article, we present an overview of the eye-tracking technique and illustrate the method with L2 studies that show how eye-tracking data can be used to (a) investigate language-related topics and (b) inform key debates in the fields of L2 acquisition and L2 processing.

Language Loss and Language Learning in Internationally Adopted Children

2019 ◽  
pp. 469-480
Author(s):  
Lara J. Pierce ◽  
Fred Genesee ◽  
Denise Klein
Keyword(s):  
Language Learning ◽  
Language Processing ◽  
Adopted Children ◽  
Language Attrition ◽  
Activation Patterns ◽  
L2 Processing ◽  
L1 Attrition ◽  
Internationally Adopted Children ◽  
L1 And L2 ◽  
Internationally Adopted

Internationally adopted (IA) children begin acquiring one language from birth (L1), but typically discontinue it in favour of their adoption language (L2). Language attrition occurs quickly with IA children unable to speak/understand their L1 within months of adoption. However, as adults IA test participants show certain advantages in this language compared to monolingual speakers never exposed to it, suggesting that certain elements of the L1 may be retained. Neuroimaging studies have found that IA participants exhibit brain activation patterns reflecting the retention of L1 representations and their influence on L2 processing. This chapter reviews research on L1 attrition in IA children, discussing whether/how elements of the L1 may be retained. It discusses how L1 attrition versus retention might influence subsequent language processing in the L1 and L2. Implications of language attrition versus retention patterns observed in IA participants for neuroplasticity and language acquisition are also discussed beyond this specific group.

Evolution of an Optimal Lexicon under Constraints from Embodiment

2003 ◽  
Vol 9 (4) ◽  
pp. 387-402 ◽  
Author(s):  
Willem Zuidema ◽  
Gert Westermann
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Science ◽  
Language Processing ◽  
Language Evolution ◽  
Language Game ◽  
Self Organization ◽  
Language Games ◽  
Linguistic Patterns ◽  
Language And Cognition ◽  
Linguistic Structures

Research in language evolution is concerned with the question of how complex linguistic structures can emerge from the interactions between many communicating individuals. Thus it complements psycholinguistics, which investigates the processes involved in individual adult language processing, and child language development studies, which investigate how children learn a given (fixed) language. We focus on the framework of language games and argue that they offer a fresh and formal perspective on many current debates in cognitive science, including those on the synchronic-versus-diachronic perspective on language, the embodiment and situatedness of language and cognition, and the self-organization of linguistic patterns. We present a measure for the quality of a lexicon in a population, and derive four characteristics of the optimal lexicon: specificity, coherence, distinctiveness, and regularity. We present a model of lexical dynamics that shows the spontaneous emergence of these characteristics in a distributed population of individuals that incorporate embodiment constraints. Finally, we discuss how research in cognitive science could contribute to improving existing language game models.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document