Information structure effects on the processing of nouns and verbs: evidence from event-related brain potentials

Electroencephalographic (EEG) signals can reveal the cost required to deal with information structure mismatches in speech or in text contexts. The present study investigates the costs related to the processing of different associations between the syntactic categories of Noun and Verb and the information categories of Topic and Focus. It is hypothesized that – due to the very nature (respectively, predicative and non-predicative) of verbal and nominal reference – sentences with Topics realized by verbs, and Focuses realized by nouns, should impose greater processing demands, compared to the decoding of nominal Topics and verbal Focuses. Data from event-related potential (ERP) measurements revealed an N400 effect in response to both nouns encoded as Focus and verbs packaged as Topic, confirming that the cost associated with information structure processing follows discourse-driven expectations also with respect to the word-class level.

DO L1-L2 DIFFERENCES IN DISCOURSE PROCESSING REFLECT PROCESSING DEMANDS OR DIFFICULTY OF FORM-FUNCTION MAPPING?

We examined what causes L1-L2 differences in sensitivity to prominence cues in discourse processing. Participants listened to recorded stories in segment-by-segment fashion at their own pace. Each story established a pair of contrasting items, and one item from the pair was rementioned and manipulated to carry either a contrastive or presentational pitch accent. By directly comparing the current self-paced listening data to previously obtained experimenter-paced listening data, we tested whether reducing online-processing demands allows L2 learners to show a nativelike behavior, such that contrastive pitch accents facilitate later ruling out the salient alternative. However, reduced time pressure failed to lead even higher proficiency L1-Korean learners of English to reach a nativelike level, suggesting that L2 learners’ nonnativelike processing and representation of the prominence cue in spoken discourse processing can be due to the inherent difficulty of fully learning a complex form-function mapping rather than to online-processing demands.

Language Can Obscure as Well as Facilitate Apparent-Theory of Mind Performance: Part 2—The Case of Dyslexia in Adulthood

Many studies imply causal links between linguistic competencies and Theory of Mind (ToM). But despite Dyslexia being a prime example of linguistic deficits, studies on whether it is related to ToM have been relatively unforthcoming. In the first of 2 studies (N = 89), independently-diagnosed dyslexic adults and non-dyslexic adults were presented with false-belief vignettes via computer, answering 4 types of question (Factual, Inference, 1st-order ToM & 2nd-order ToM). Dyslexia related to lower false-belief scores. Study 2 (N = 93) replicated this result with a non-computer-based variant on the false-belief task. We considered the possibility that the apparent-issue with ToM is caused by processing demands more associated to domains of cognition such as language, than to ToM itself. Addressing this possibility, study 2 additionally utilised the ToM30Q questionnaire, designed largely to circumvent issues related to language and memory. Principal-Components analysis extracted 4 factors, 2 capturing perceptual/representational ToM, and the other 2 capturing affective components related to ToM. The ToM30Q was validated via its associations to a published measure of empathy, replication of the female gender advantage over males, and for one factor from the ToM30Q there was a correlation with an existing published index of ToM. However, when we considered the performance of dyslexic and non-dyslexic participants using the ToM30Q, we found absolutely no difference between them. The contrasting findings from our 2 studies here, arguably offer the first experimental evidence with adults, that there is in fact no ToM deficit in dyslexia. Additionally, this finding raises the possibility that some other groups considered in some sense atypical, failed ToM tasks, not because they actually have a ToM deficit at all, but rather because they are asked to reveal their ToM competence through cognitive domains, such as language and memory.

The importance of increased processing demands in the design of Elicited Imitation tests

This study is a conceptual replication of Ellis’ ‘Measuring implicit and explicit knowledge of a second language: A psychometric study’, published in Studies in Second Language Acquisition (2005), aiming to establish the importance of including belief statements (hypothesized to increase processing demands) in the design of Elicited Imitation (EI) tests. In a between-groups comparison, 103 participants completed one of two versions of Erlam’s EI test (2006), one which required participants to make a ‘belief’ judgement, and one which did not. Both contained ungrammatical stimuli. Participants were scored for repetition of grammatical stimuli and correction of ungrammatical stimuli. An Exit questionnaire aimed to establish how aware they were of ungrammatical stimuli. Participants also completed a timed grammaticality judgement test (TGJT), an untimed grammaticality judgement test (UGJT), a metalinguistic knowledge test (MKT), and another Elicited Imitation (EI) test designed as a measure of global proficiency. Performance on each EI version was examined in relationship to performance on these measures. There was no variation between performance on either EI test version. The article underscores the need for ongoing research investigating design features of EI tests.

Facial speech processing in children with and without dyslexia

What role does the presence of facial speech play for children with dyslexia? Current literature proposes two distinctive claims. One claim states that children with dyslexia make less use of visual information from the mouth during speech processing due to a deficit in recruitment of audiovisual areas. An opposing claim suggests that children with dyslexia are in fact reliant on such information in order to compensate for auditory/phonological impairments. The current paper aims at directly testing these contrasting hypotheses (here referred to as “mouth insensitivity” versus “mouth reliance”) in school-age children with and without dyslexia, matched on age and listening comprehension. Using eye tracking, in Study 1, we examined how children look at the mouth across conditions varying in speech processing demands. The results did not indicate significant group differences in looking at the mouth. However, correlation analyses suggest potentially important distinctions within the dyslexia group: those children with dyslexia who are better readers attended more to the mouth while presented with a person’s face in a phonologically demanding condition. In Study 2, we examined whether the presence of facial speech cues is functionally beneficial when a child is encoding written words. The results indicated lack of overall group differences on the task, although those with less severe reading problems in the dyslexia group were more accurate when reading words that were presented with articulatory facial speech cues. Collectively, our results suggest that children with dyslexia differ in their “mouth reliance” versus “mouth insensitivity,” a profile that seems to be related to the severity of their reading problems.

Seven Computations of the Social Brain

ABSTRACT The social environment presents the human brain with the most complex of information processing demands. The computations that the brain must perform occur in parallel, combine social and nonsocial cues, produce verbal and non-verbal signals, and involve multiple cognitive systems; including memory, attention, emotion, learning. This occurs dynamically and at timescales ranging from milliseconds to years. Here, we propose that during social interactions, seven core operations interact to underwrite coherent social functioning; these operations accumulate evidence efficiently – from multiple modalities – when inferring what to do next. We deconstruct the social brain and outline the key components entailed for successful human social interaction. These include (1) social perception; (2) social inferences, such as mentalizing; (3) social learning; (4) social signaling through verbal and non-verbal cues; (5) social drives (e.g., how to increase one’s status); (6) determining the social identity of agents, including oneself; and (7) minimizing uncertainty within the current social context by integrating sensory signals and inferences. We argue that while it is important to examine these distinct aspects of social inference, to understand the true nature of the human social brain, we must also explain how the brain integrates information from the social world.

roles of efficiency and complexity in the processing of verb particle constructions

Recent theories have proposed that processing difficulty affects both individuals’ choice of grammatical structures and the distribution of these structures across languages of the world (Hawkins, 2004). Researchers have proposed that performance constraints, such as efficiency, integration, and storage costs, drive languages to choose word orders that minimize processing demands for individual speakers (Hawkins, 1994; Gibson, 2000). This study investigates how three performance factors, adjacency, dependency, and complexity, affect reading times for sentences with verb-particle constructions. Results from a self-paced reading task indicate that reading times increase with each performance factor, such that shifted sentences, more dependent verb-particle constructions, and more complex noun phrases are more difficult. More importantly, I explore the relative weightings and interactions of the performance factors. The results support the notion that processing ease affects grammaticalization, such that those structures which are more easily processed by individuals (subject relatives and adjacent dependent constituents) are also more common crosslinguistically (Keenan & Hawkins, 1987).