Testing the automaticity of syntax using masked visual priming

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elena Pyatigorskaya ◽  
Matteo Maran ◽  
Emiliano Zaccarella
Keyword(s):  
Language Processing ◽  
Language Comprehension ◽  
Syntactic Priming ◽  
Visual Words ◽  
Visual Priming ◽  
Priming Paradigm ◽  
Syntactic Information ◽  
Fast Pace ◽  
Behavioural Experiments

Language comprehension proceeds at a very fast pace. It is argued that context influences the speed of language comprehension by providing informative cues for the correct processing of the incoming linguistic input. Priming studies investigating the role of context in language processing have shown that humans quickly recognise target words that share orthographic, morphological, or semantic information with their preceding primes. How syntactic information influences the processing of incoming words is however less known. Early syntactic priming studies reported faster recognition for noun and verb targets (e.g., apple or sing) following primes with which they form grammatical phrases or sentences (the apple, he sings). The studies however leave open a number of questions about the reported effect, including the degree of automaticity of syntactic priming, the facilitative versus inhibitory nature, and the specific mechanism underlying the priming effect—that is, the type of syntactic information primed on the target word. Here we employed a masked syntactic priming paradigm in four behavioural experiments in German language to test whether masked primes automatically facilitate the categorization of nouns and verbs presented as flashing visual words. Overall, we found robust syntactic priming effects with masked primes—thus suggesting high automaticity of the process—but only when verbs were morpho-syntactically marked (er kau-t; he chew-s). Furthermore, we found that, compared to baseline, primes slow down target categorisation when the relationship between prime and target is syntactically incorrect, rather than speeding it up when the prime-target relationship is syntactically correct. This argues in favour of an inhibitory nature of syntactic priming. Overall, the data indicate that humans automatically extract abstract syntactic features from word categories as flashing visual words, which has an impact on the speed of successful language processing during language comprehension.

The Oxford Handbook of Psycholinguistics

2018 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Language Processing ◽  
Language Comprehension ◽  
Language Production ◽  
Text Comprehension ◽  
Sentence Comprehension ◽  
Linguistic Diversity ◽  
First Language ◽  
Grammatical Encoding ◽  
Current State

This handbook reviews the current state of the art in the field of psycholinguistics. Part I deals with language comprehension at the sublexical, lexical, and sentence and discourse levels. It explores concepts of speech representation and the search for universal speech segmentation mechanisms against a background of linguistic diversity and compares first language with second language segmentation. It also discusses visual word recognition, lexico-semantics, the different forms of lexical ambiguity, sentence comprehension, text comprehension, and language in deaf populations. Part II focuses on language production, with chapters covering topics such as word production and related processes based on evidence from aphasia, the major debates surrounding grammatical encoding. Part III considers various aspects of interaction and communication, including the role of gesture in language processing, approaches to the study of perspective-taking, and the interrelationships between language comprehension, emotion, and sociality. Part IV is concerned with language development and evolution, focusing on topics ranging from the development of prosodic phonology, the neurobiology of artificial grammar learning, and developmental dyslexia. The book concludes with Part V, which looks at methodological advances in psycholinguistic research, such as the use of intracranial electrophysiology in the area of language processing.

scholarly journals Top-down information is more important in noisy situations: Exploring the role of pragmatic, semantic, and syntactic information in language processing

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Fabio Trecca ◽  
Kristian Tylén ◽  
Riccardo Fusaroli ◽  
Christer Johansson ◽  
Morten H. Christiansen
Keyword(s):  
Language Processing ◽  
Spoken Language ◽  
Top Down ◽  
Speech Input ◽  
Processing Strategies ◽  
Syntactic Information ◽  
Noisy Conditions ◽  
Relative Weighting ◽  
Different Sources

Language processing depends on the integration of bottom-up information with top-down cues from several different sources—primarily our knowledge of the real world, of discourse contexts, and of how language works. Previous studies have shown that factors pertaining to both the sender and the receiver of the message affect the relative weighting of such information. Here, we suggest another factor that may change our processing strategies: perceptual noise in the environment. We hypothesize that listeners weight different sources of top-down information more in situations of perceptual noise than in noise-free situations. Using a sentence-picture matching experiment with four forced-choice alternatives, we show that degrading the speech input with noise compels the listeners to rely more on top-down information in processing. We discuss our results in light of previous findings in the literature, highlighting the need for a unified model of spoken language comprehension in different ecologically valid situations, including under noisy conditions.

scholarly journals Electrophysiological modulations of lexical prediction by conversation requirements

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cristina Baus ◽  
Anne-Sophie Dubarry ◽  
F.-Xavier Alario
Keyword(s):  
Social Context ◽  
Language Processing ◽  
Language Comprehension ◽  
Social Life ◽  
Language Production ◽  
Social Partner ◽  
Social Relevance ◽  
The Social ◽  
Priming Paradigm ◽  
Interactive Nature

Language mediates most of our social life and yet, despite such social relevance and ubiquity, little is known about language processing during social interactions. To explore this issue, two experiments were designed to isolate two basic components of a conversation: 1) the interplay between language production and comprehension systems, and 2) the participation of a social partner. We explored how prediction processes in language comprehension are modulated by two basic components of a conversation. Participants were asked to perform a cross-modal priming paradigm in two blocks, one involving only comprehension trials and another in which trials requiring production and comprehension were intermixed. In the first experiment, participants were alone during the task and in the second experiment, participants believed they were performing the task jointly with an interactive partner. A critical electrophysiological signature of lexical prediction was observed, the N400 component, allowing to assess its modulation across conditions and experiments. when production was involved in the task, the effect of lexical predictability was enhanced at the early stages of language comprehension (anticipatory phase), irrespective of the social context. In contrast, language production reduced the effect of lexical predictability at later stages (integration phase), only when participants performed the task alone but not in the social context. These results support production based-models and reveal the importance of exploring language considering its interactive nature.

scholarly journals Role of Gesture in Language Processing

2018 ◽  
pp. 591-607
Author(s):  
Asli Özyürek
Keyword(s):  
Language Processing ◽  
Relevant Information ◽  
Hand Gestures ◽  
Face To Face ◽  
Syntactic Information ◽  
Different Levels

Use of language in face-to-face context is multimodal. Production and perception of speech take place in the context of visual articulators such as lips, face, or hand gestures which convey relevant information to what is expressed in speech at different levels of language. While lips convey information at the phonological level, gestures contribute to semantic, pragmatic, and syntactic information, as well as to discourse cohesion. This chapter overviews recent findings showing that speech and gesture (e.g. a drinking gesture as someone says, “Would you like a drink?”) interact during production and comprehension of language at the behavioral, cognitive, and neural levels. Implications of these findings for current psycholinguistic theories and how they can be expanded to consider the multimodal context of language processing are discussed.

scholarly journals Examining the Role of General Cognitive Skills in Language Processing: A Window Into Complex Cognition

2020 ◽  
Vol 29 (6) ◽  
pp. 575-582
Author(s):  
Kara D. Federmeier ◽  
Suzanne R. Jongman ◽  
Jakub M. Szewczyk
Keyword(s):  
Working Memory ◽  
Language Processing ◽  
Language Comprehension ◽  
Cognitive Skills ◽  
Language Production ◽  
Language Skills ◽  
Cognitive Resources ◽  
Cognitive Domains ◽  
Complex Cognition

When we use language, we combine sounds, signs, and letters into words that then form sentences, which together tell a story. Both language production and language comprehension rely on representations that need to be continuously and rapidly activated, selected, and combined. These representations are specific to language, but many processes that regulate their use, such as inhibition of competitors or updating of working memory, are domain-general abilities that apply across different kinds of tasks. Here, we provide an overview of the behavioral and neurophysiological evidence for domain-general abilities underpinning language skills and describe which aspects of production and comprehension draw on such cognitive resources. We discuss how this line of research reveals important similarities between production and comprehension and also helps establish links between language and other cognitive domains. Finally, we argue that studying how domain-general abilities are used in language leads to important insights into the highly dynamic communication between brain networks that is necessary to successfully go from sounds to stories.

scholarly journals Task-specific contribution of the right posterior cerebellum to language processing in healthy individuals

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Fleur L. P. Bongaerts ◽  
Dennis J. L. G. Schutter ◽  
Jana Klaus
Keyword(s):  
Lexical Decision ◽  
Lexical Decision Task ◽  
Language Processing ◽  
Language Comprehension ◽  
Sentence Comprehension ◽  
Decision Task ◽  
Unrelated Control ◽  
Manual Responses ◽  
The Right

Clinical and neuroscientific studies in healthy volunteers have established that the cerebellum contributes to language comprehension and production. Yet most evidence is correlational and the exact role of the cerebellum remains unclear. The aim of this study was to investigate the role of the right cerebellum in unimpaired language comprehension and production using non-invasive brain stimulation. In this double-blind, sham-controlled experiment, thirty-six healthy participants received anodal or sham transcranial direct current (tDCS) stimulation to the right cerebellum while performing a lexical decision, sentence comprehension, verbal fluency and language-unrelated control task. Results showed that anodal relative to sham tDCS caused faster manual responses in the lexical decision task. Additional exploratory analyses suggest load-specific performance modulation in the sentence comprehension and lexical decision task, with tDCS improving performance in low-load trials of the sentence comprehension task and high-load trials in the lexical decision task. Overall, our findings provide evidence for the involvement of the right posterior cerebellum in comprehension-based language tasks requiring a manual response. Further research is needed to dissociate the influence of task difficulty and timing of the underlying cognitive processes.

Working Memory in Aphasia

2005 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
pp. 107-118 ◽  
Author(s):  
Heather Harris Wright ◽  
Rebecca J. Shisler
Keyword(s):  
Working Memory ◽  
Language Processing ◽  
Language Comprehension ◽  
Theoretical Basis ◽  
Working Memory Capacity ◽  
Memory Capacity ◽  
Theoretical Framework

Recently, researchers have suggested that deficits in working memory capacity contribute to language-processing difficulties observed in individuals with aphasia (e.g., I. Caspari, S. Parkinson, L. LaPointe, & R. Katz, 1998; R. A. Downey et al., 2004; N. Friedmann & A. Gvion, 2003; H. H. Wright, M. Newhoff, R. Downey, & S. Austermann, 2003). A theoretical framework of working memory can aid in our understanding of a disrupted system (e.g., after stroke) and how this relates to language comprehension and production. Additionally, understanding the theoretical basis of working memory is important for the measurement and treatment of working memory. The literature indicates that future investigations of measurement and treatment of working memory are warranted in order to determine the role of working memory in language processing.

scholarly journals The Role of Left Dorsolateral Prefrontal Cortex in Language Processing

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jana Klaus ◽  
Dennis J. L. G. Schutter
Keyword(s):  
Prefrontal Cortex ◽  
Language Processing ◽  
Language Comprehension ◽  
Language Production ◽  
Dorsolateral Prefrontal Cortex ◽  
Production Task ◽  
Double Blind ◽  
Left Dlpfc ◽  
Dorsolateral Prefrontal

In addition to the role of left frontotemporal areas in language processing, there is increasing evidence that language comprehension and production require control and working memory resources involving the left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC). The aim of this study was to investigate the role of the left DLPFC in both language comprehension and production. In a double-blind, sham-controlled crossover experiment, thirty-two participants received cathodal or sham transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) to the left DLPFC while performing a language comprehension and a language production task. Results showed that cathodal tDCS increases reaction times in the language comprehension task, but decreases naming latencies in the language production task. However, additional analyses revealed that the polarity of tDCS effects was highly correlated across tasks, implying differential individual susceptibility to the effect of tDCS within participants. Overall, our findings demonstrate that left DLPFC is part of the complex cortical network associated with language processing.

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