scholarly journals “Where Are The . . .Fixations?”: Grammatical Number Cues Guide Anticipatory Fixations To Upcoming Referents And Reduce Lexical Competition

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Violet Aurora Brown ◽  
Neal P. Fox ◽  
Julia Feld Strand
Keyword(s):  
Target Word ◽  
Sentence Processing ◽  
Speech Processing ◽  
Search Space ◽  
Phonological Information ◽  
Contextual Cues ◽  
Lexical Competition ◽  
Sentence Frame ◽  
Visual World Paradigm ◽  
Grammatical Number

Listeners make use of contextual cues during continuous speech processing that help overcome the limitations of the acoustic input. These semantic, grammatical, and pragmatic cues facilitate prediction of upcoming words and/or reduce the lexical search space by inhibiting activation of contextually inappropriate words that share phonological information with the target (e.g., Barr, 2008a). The current study used the visual world paradigm (see Magnuson, 2019) to assess whether and how listeners use contextual cues about grammatical number during sentence processing by presenting target words in carrier phrases that were grammatically unconstraining (“Click on the …”) or grammatically constraining (“Where is/are the …”). Prior to the onset of the target word, listeners were already more likely to fixate on plural objects in the “Where are the…” context than the “Where is the…” context, indicating that they used the construction of the verb to anticipate the referent. Further, participants showed less interference from cohort competitors when the sentence frame made them contextually inappropriate, but still fixated on those words more than on phonologically unrelated distractor words. These results suggest that listeners rapidly and flexibly make use of contextual cues about grammatical number while maintaining sensitivity to the bottom-up input.

scholarly journals The development of lexical competition in written- and spoken-word competition

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Keith S Apfelbaum ◽  
Christina Blomquist ◽  
Bob McMurray
Keyword(s):  
Word Recognition ◽  
Target Recognition ◽  
Spoken Word ◽  
Developmental Changes ◽  
Lexical Competition ◽  
Visual World Paradigm ◽  
Input Modality ◽  
Developmental Continuity ◽  
Input Format ◽  
Temporal Overlap

Efficient word recognition depends on the ability to overcome competition from overlapping words. The nature of the overlap depends on the input modality: spoken words have temporal overlap from other words that share phonemes in the same positions, whereas written words have spatial overlap from other words with letters in the same places. It is unclear how these differences in input format affect the ability to recognize a word and the types of competitors that become active while doing so. This study investigates word recognition in both modalities in children between 7 and 15. Children complete a visual-world paradigm eye-tracking task that measures competition from words with several types of overlap, using identical word lists between modalities. Results showed correlated developmental changes in the speed of target recognition in both modalities. Additionally, developmental changes were seen in the efficiency of competitor suppression for some competitor types in the spoken modality. These data reveal some developmental continuity in the process of word recognition independent of modality, but also some instances of independence in how competitors are activated. Stimuli, data and analyses from this project are available at: https://osf.io/eav72

scholarly journals Experience with code-switching modulates the use of grammatical gender during sentence processing

2016 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 163-198 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jorge R. Valdés Kroff ◽  
Paola E. Dussias ◽  
Chip Gerfen ◽  
Lauren Perrotti ◽  
M. Teresa Bajo
Keyword(s):  
Sentence Processing ◽  
Grammatical Gender ◽  
Gender Effect ◽  
Code Switching ◽  
Asymmetric Effect ◽  
Language Experience ◽  
Visual World ◽  
Visual World Paradigm ◽  
Complex Sentences ◽  
English Bilingual

Abstract Using code-switching as a tool to illustrate how language experience modulates comprehension, the visual world paradigm was employed to examine the extent to which gender-marked Spanish determiners facilitate upcoming target nouns in a group of Spanish-English bilingual code-switchers. The first experiment tested target Spanish nouns embedded in a carrier phrase (Experiment 1b) and included a control Spanish monolingual group (Experiment 1a). The second set of experiments included critical trials in which participants heard code-switches from Spanish determiners into English nouns (e.g., la house) either in a fixed carrier phrase (Experiment 2a) or in variable and complex sentences (Experiment 2b). Across the experiments, bilinguals revealed an asymmetric gender effect in processing, showing facilitation only for feminine target items. These results reflect the asymmetric use of gender in the production of code-switched speech. The extension of the asymmetric effect into Spanish (Experiment 1b) underscores the permeability between language modes in bilingual code-switchers.

scholarly journals Cross-script orthographic and phonological preview benefits

2018 ◽  
Vol 71 (1) ◽  
pp. 11-19 ◽  
Author(s):  
Olessia Jouravlev ◽  
Debra Jared
Keyword(s):  
Second Language ◽  
Target Word ◽  
Present Experiment ◽  
First Language ◽  
Preview Benefit ◽  
Phonological Information ◽  
Parafoveal Preview ◽  
Eye Fixations ◽  
Target Words

The present experiment examined the use of parafoveally presented first-language (LI) orthographic and phonological codes during reading of second-language (L2) sentences in proficient Russian-English bilinguals. Participants read English sentences containing a Russian preview word that was replaced by the English target word when the participant’s eyes crossed an invisible boundary located before the preview word. The use of English and Russian allowed us to manipulate orthographic and phonological preview effects independently of one another. The Russian preview words overlapped with English target words in (a) orthography ( ВЕЛЮР [vʲɪˈlʲʉr]– BERRY), (b) phonology ( БЛАНК [blank]– BLOOD), or (c) had no orthographic or phonological overlap ( КАЛАЧ [kɐˈlat͡ɕ]– BERRY; ГЖЕЛЬ [ɡʐɛlʲ]– BLOOD). The results of this study showed a clear and strong benefit of the parafoveal preview of Russian words that shared either orthography or phonology with English target words. This study is the first demonstration of cross-script orthographic and phonological parafoveal preview benefit effects. Bilinguals integrate orthographic and phonological information across eye fixations in reading, even when this information comes from different languages.

scholarly journals Can hearing puter activate pupil? Phonological competition and the processing of reduced spoken words in spontaneous conversations

2012 ◽  
Vol 65 (11) ◽  
pp. 2193-2220 ◽  
Author(s):  
Susanne Brouwer ◽  
Holger Mitterer ◽  
Falk Huettig
Keyword(s):  
Target Word ◽  
Time Window ◽  
Eye Gaze ◽  
Reduced Form ◽  
Late Time ◽  
Word Form ◽  
Surface Form ◽  
Visual World Paradigm ◽  
Casual Speech ◽  
Reduced Forms

In listeners' daily communicative exchanges, they most often hear casual speech, in which words are often produced with fewer segments, rather than the careful speech used in most psycholinguistic experiments. Three experiments examined phonological competition during the recognition of reduced forms such as [pjutər] for computer using a target-absent variant of the visual world paradigm. Listeners' eye movements were tracked upon hearing canonical and reduced forms as they looked at displays of four printed words. One of the words was phonologically similar to the canonical pronunciation of the target word, one word was similar to the reduced pronunciation, and two words served as unrelated distractors. When spoken targets were presented in isolation (Experiment 1) and in sentential contexts (Experiment 2), competition was modulated as a function of the target word form. When reduced targets were presented in sentential contexts, listeners were probabilistically more likely to first fixate reduced-form competitors before shifting their eye gaze to canonical-form competitors. Experiment 3, in which the original /p/ from [pjutər] was replaced with a “real” onset /p/, showed an effect of cross-splicing in the late time window. We conjecture that these results fit best with the notion that speech reductions initially activate competitors that are similar to the phonological surface form of the reduction, but that listeners nevertheless can exploit fine phonetic detail to reconstruct strongly reduced forms to their canonical counterparts.

scholarly journals Expectations boost the reconstruction of auditory features from electrophysiological responses to noisy speech

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew W Corcoran ◽  
Ricardo Perera ◽  
Matthieu Koroma ◽  
Sid Kouider ◽  
Jakob Hohwy ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Sentence Processing ◽  
Speech Processing ◽  
Sentence Comprehension ◽  
Predictive Coding ◽  
Acoustic Stimulus ◽  
Visual Presentation ◽  
Active Listening ◽  
Dramatic Improvement ◽  
Written Information ◽  
Band Power

Online speech processing imposes significant computational demands on the listening brain. Predictive coding provides an elegant account of the way this challenge is met through the exploitation of prior knowledge. While such accounts have accrued considerable evidence at the sublexical- and word-levels, relatively little is known about the predictive mechanisms that support sentence-level processing. Here, we exploit the 'pop-out' phenomenon (i.e. dramatic improvement in the intelligibility of degraded speech following prior information) to investigate the psychophysiological correlates of sentence comprehension. We recorded electroencephalography and pupillometry from 21 humans (10 females) while they rated the clarity of full sentences that had been degraded via noise-vocoding or sine-wave synthesis. Sentence pop-out was reliably elicited following visual presentation of the corresponding written sentence, despite never hearing the undistorted speech. No such effect was observed following incongruent or no written information. Pop-out was associated with improved reconstruction of the acoustic stimulus envelope from low-frequency EEG activity, implying that pop-out is mediated via top-down signals that enhance the precision of cortical speech representations. Spectral analysis revealed that pop-out was accompanied by a reduction in theta-band power, consistent with predictive coding accounts of acoustic filling-in and incremental sentence processing. Moreover, delta- and alpha-band power, as well as pupil diameter, were increased following the provision of any written information. We interpret these findings as evidence of a transition to a state of active listening, whereby participants selectively engage attentional and working memory processes to evaluate the congruence between expected and actual sensory input.

scholarly journals Hierarchy of speech-driven spectrotemporal receptive fields in human auditory cortex

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jonathan Henry Venezia ◽  
Steven Matthew Thurman ◽  
Virginia Richards ◽  
Gregory Hickok
Keyword(s):  
Speech Processing ◽  
Clustering Algorithm ◽  
Receptive Fields ◽  
Data Driven ◽  
Phonological Information ◽  
Spectrotemporal Receptive Fields ◽  
Novel Approach ◽  
Cortical Responses ◽  
Level Information ◽  
Speech Information

Existing data indicate that cortical speech processing is hierarchically organized. Numerous studies have shown that early auditory areas encode fine acoustic details while later areas encode abstracted speech patterns. However, it remains unclear precisely what speech information is encoded across these hierarchical levels. Estimation of speech-driven spectrotemporal receptive fields (STRFs) provides a means to explore cortical speech processing in terms of acoustic or linguistic information associated with characteristic spectrotemporal patterns. Here, we estimate STRFs from cortical responses to continuous speech in fMRI. Using a novel approach based on filtering randomly-selected spectrotemporal modulations (STMs) from aurally-presented sentences, STRFs were estimated for a group of listeners and categorized using a data-driven clustering algorithm. ‘Behavioral STRFs’ highlighting STMs crucial for speech recognition were derived from intelligibility judgments. Clustering revealed that STRFs in the supratemporal plane represented a broad range of STMs, while STRFs in the lateral temporal lobe represented circumscribed STM patterns important to intelligibility. Detailed analysis recovered a bilateral organization with posterior-lateral regions preferentially processing STMs associated with phonological information and anterior-lateral regions preferentially processing STMs associated with word- and phrase-level information. Regions in lateral Heschl’s gyrus preferentially processed STMs associated with vocalic information (pitch).

Gender-marked determiners help Dutch learners' word recognition when gender information itself does not

2010 ◽  
Vol 38 (1) ◽  
pp. 87-100 ◽  
Author(s):  
MARIEKE VAN HEUGTEN ◽  
ELIZABETH K. JOHNSON
Keyword(s):  
Word Recognition ◽  
Sentence Processing ◽  
Speech Processing ◽  
English Learners ◽  
Sentence Comprehension ◽  
Definite Article ◽  
Partial Knowledge ◽  
Preferential Looking ◽  
Gender Information ◽  
Article System

ABSTRACTDutch, unlike English, contains two gender-marked forms of the definite article. Does the presence of multiple definite article forms lead Dutch learners to be delayed relative to English learners in the acquisition of their determiner system? Using the Preferential Looking Procedure, we found that Dutch-learning children aged 1 ; 7 to 2 ; 0 use articles during sentence comprehension in a fashion comparable to similarly aged English learners. That is, Dutch learners' sentence processing was impaired when a nonsense (se) as opposed to real article (de, het) preceded target words, much like English learners' sentence processing is disrupted by the use of a nonsense article. At the same time, however, gender cues did not help Dutch learners recognize target nouns more efficiently, indicating that gender has yet to be acquired. Thus, although Dutch-learning children aged 1 ; 7 to 2 ; 0 have not mastered all aspects of their language's article system, they nonetheless use their partial knowledge of articles during speech processing.

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