@article{PattersonTrompeltFelser2014, author = {Patterson, Clare and Trompelt, Helena and Felser, Claudia}, title = {The online application of binding condition B in native and non-native pronoun resolution}, series = {Frontiers in psychology}, volume = {5}, journal = {Frontiers in psychology}, publisher = {Frontiers Research Foundation}, address = {Lausanne}, issn = {1664-1078}, doi = {10.3389/fpsyg.2014.00147}, pages = {16}, year = {2014}, language = {en} } @article{PatilVasishthLewis2016, author = {Patil, Umesh and Vasishth, Shravan and Lewis, Richard L.}, title = {Retrieval Interference in Syntactic Processing: The Case of Reflexive Binding in English}, series = {Frontiers in psychology}, volume = {7}, journal = {Frontiers in psychology}, publisher = {Frontiers Research Foundation}, address = {Lausanne}, issn = {1664-1078}, doi = {10.3389/fpsyg.2016.00329}, pages = {18}, year = {2016}, abstract = {It has been proposed that in online sentence comprehension the dependency between a reflexive pronoun such as himself/herself and its antecedent is resolved using exclusively syntactic constraints. Under this strictly syntactic search account, Principle A of the binding theory—which requires that the antecedent c-command the reflexive within the same clause that the reflexive occurs in—constrains the parser's search for an antecedent. The parser thus ignores candidate antecedents that might match agreement features of the reflexive (e.g., gender) but are ineligible as potential antecedents because they are in structurally illicit positions. An alternative possibility accords no special status to structural constraints: in addition to using Principle A, the parser also uses non-structural cues such as gender to access the antecedent. According to cue-based retrieval theories of memory (e.g., Lewis and Vasishth, 2005), the use of non-structural cues should result in increased retrieval times and occasional errors when candidates partially match the cues, even if the candidates are in structurally illicit positions. In this paper, we first show how the retrieval processes that underlie the reflexive binding are naturally realized in the Lewis and Vasishth (2005) model. We present the predictions of the model under the assumption that both structural and non-structural cues are used during retrieval, and provide a critical analysis of previous empirical studies that failed to find evidence for the use of non-structural cues, suggesting that these failures may be Type II errors. We use this analysis and the results of further modeling to motivate a new empirical design that we use in an eye tracking study. The results of this study confirm the key predictions of the model concerning the use of non-structural cues, and are inconsistent with the strictly syntactic search account. These results present a challenge for theories advocating the infallibility of the human parser in the case of reflexive resolution, and provide support for the inclusion of agreement features such as gender in the set of retrieval cues.}, language = {en} } @article{ClacksonHeyer2014, author = {Clackson, Kaili and Heyer, Vera}, title = {Reflexive anaphor resolution in spoken language comprehension: structural constraints and beyond}, series = {Frontiers in psychology}, volume = {5}, journal = {Frontiers in psychology}, publisher = {Frontiers Research Foundation}, address = {Lausanne}, issn = {1664-1078}, doi = {10.3389/fpsyg.2014.00904}, pages = {9}, year = {2014}, abstract = {We report results from an eye-tracking during listening study examining English-speaking adults' online processing of reflexive pronouns, and specifically whether the search for an antecedent is restricted to syntactically appropriate positions. Participants listened to a short story where the recipient of an object was introduced with a reflexive, and were asked to identify the object recipient as quickly as possible. This allowed for the recording of participants' offline interpretation of the reflexive, response times, and eye movements on hearing the reflexive. Whilst our offline results show that the ultimate interpretation for reflexives was constrained by binding principles, the response time, and eye-movement data revealed that during processing participants were temporarily distracted by a structurally inappropriate competitor antecedent when this was prominent in the discourse. These results indicate that in addition to binding principles, online referential decisions are also affected by discourse-level information.}, language = {en} } @article{PanSchimkeFelser2015, author = {Pan, Hui-Yu and Schimke, Sarah and Felser, Claudia}, title = {Referential context effects in non-native relative clause ambiguity resolution}, series = {International journal of bilingualism : cross-disciplinary, cross-linguistic studies of language behavior}, volume = {19}, journal = {International journal of bilingualism : cross-disciplinary, cross-linguistic studies of language behavior}, number = {3}, publisher = {Sage Publ.}, address = {London}, issn = {1367-0069}, doi = {10.1177/1367006913515769}, pages = {298 -- 313}, year = {2015}, abstract = {We report the results from two experiments investigating how referential context information affects native and non-native readers' interpretation of ambiguous relative clauses in sentences such as The journalist interviewed the assistant of the inspector who was looking very serious. The preceding discourse context was manipulated such that it provided two potential referents for either the first (the assistant) or the second (the inspector) of the two noun phrases that could potentially host the relative clause, thus biasing towards either an NP1 or an NP2 modification reading. The results from an offline comprehension task indicate that both native English speakers' and German and Chinese-speaking ESL learners' ultimate interpretation preferences were reliably influenced by the type of referential context. In contrast, in a corresponding self-paced-reading task we found that referential context information modulated only the non-native participants' disambiguation preferences but not the native speakers'. Our results corroborate and extend previous findings suggesting that non-native comprehenders' initial analysis of structurally ambiguous input is strongly influenced by biasing discourse information.}, language = {en} } @article{PaapeVasishth2016, author = {Paape, Dario and Vasishth, Shravan}, title = {Local Coherence and Preemptive Digging-in Effects in German}, series = {Language and speech}, volume = {59}, journal = {Language and speech}, publisher = {Sage Publ.}, address = {London}, issn = {0023-8309}, doi = {10.1177/0023830915608410}, pages = {387 -- 403}, year = {2016}, abstract = {SOPARSE predicts so-called local coherence effects: locally plausible but globally impossible parses of substrings can exert a distracting influence during sentence processing. Additionally, it predicts digging-in effects: the longer the parser stays committed to a particular analysis, the harder it becomes to inhibit that analysis. We investigated the interaction of these two predictions using German sentences. Results from a self-paced reading study show that the processing difficulty caused by a local coherence can be reduced by first allowing the globally correct parse to become entrenched, which supports SOPARSE's assumptions.}, language = {en} } @article{PanedaLagoVaresetal.2020, author = {Pa{\~n}eda, Claudia and Lago, Sol and Vares, Elena and Ver{\´i}ssimo, Jo{\~a}o Marques and Felser, Claudia}, title = {Island effects in Spanish comprehension}, series = {Glossa : a journal of general linguistics}, volume = {5}, journal = {Glossa : a journal of general linguistics}, number = {1}, publisher = {Open Library of Humanities}, address = {London}, issn = {2397-1835}, doi = {10.5334/gjgl.1058}, pages = {30}, year = {2020}, abstract = {A growing body of experimental syntactic research has revealed substantial variation in the magnitude of island effects, not only across languages but also across different grammatical constructions. Adopting a well-established experimental design, the present study examines island effects in Spanish using a speeded acceptability judgment task. To quantify variation across grammatical constructions, we tested extraction from four different types of structure (subjects, complex noun phrases, adjuncts and interrogative clauses). The results of Bayesian mixed effects modelling showed that the size of island effects varied between constructions, such that there was clear evidence of subject, adjunct and interrogative island effects, but not of complex noun phrase island effects. We also failed to find evidence that island effects were modulated by participants' working memory capacity as measured by an operation span task. To account for our results, we suggest that variability in island effects across constructions may be due to the interaction of syntactic, semantic-pragmatic and processing factors, which may affect island types differentially due to their idiosyncratic properties.}, language = {en} } @article{BartekLewisVasishthetal.2011, author = {Bartek, Brian and Lewis, Richard L. and Vasishth, Shravan and Smith, Mason R.}, title = {In Search of on-line locality effects in sentence comprehension}, series = {Journal of experimental psychology : Learning, memory, and cognition}, volume = {37}, journal = {Journal of experimental psychology : Learning, memory, and cognition}, number = {5}, publisher = {American Psychological Association}, address = {Washington}, issn = {0278-7393}, doi = {10.1037/a0024194}, pages = {1178 -- 1198}, year = {2011}, abstract = {Many comprehension theories assert that increasing the distance between elements participating in a linguistic relation (e.g., a verb and a noun phrase argument) increases the difficulty of establishing that relation during on-line comprehension. Such locality effects are expected to increase reading times and are thought to reveal properties and limitations of the short-term memory system that supports comprehension. Despite their theoretical importance and putative ubiquity, however, evidence for on-line locality effects is quite narrow linguistically and methodologically: It is restricted almost exclusively to self-paced reading of complex structures involving a particular class of syntactic relation. We present 4 experiments (2 self-paced reading and 2 eyetracking experiments) that demonstrate locality effects in the course of establishing subject-verb dependencies; locality effects are seen even in materials that can be read quickly and easily. These locality effects are observable in the earliest possible eye-movement measures and are of much shorter duration than previously reported effects. To account for the observed empirical patterns, we outline a processing model of the adaptive control of button pressing and eye movements. This model makes progress toward the goal of eliminating linking assumptions between memory constructs and empirical measures in favor of explicit theories of the coordinated control of motor responses and parsing.}, language = {en} } @article{ArantzetaBastiaanseBurchertetal.2017, author = {Arantzeta, Miren and Bastiaanse, Roelien and Burchert, Frank and Wieling, Martijn Benjamin and Martinez-Zabaleta, Maite and Laka, Itziar}, title = {Eye-tracking the effect of word order in sentence comprehension in aphasia}, series = {Language, cognition and neuroscience}, volume = {32}, journal = {Language, cognition and neuroscience}, number = {10}, publisher = {Routledge, Taylor \& Francis Group}, address = {Abingdon}, issn = {2327-3798}, doi = {10.1080/23273798.2017.1344715}, pages = {1320 -- 1343}, year = {2017}, abstract = {Agrammatic speakers of languages with overt grammatical case show impaired use of the morphological cues to establish theta-role relations in sentences presented in non-canonical word orders. We analysed the effect of word order on the sentence comprehension of aphasic speakers of Basque, an ergative, free word order and head-final (SOV) language. Ergative languages such as Basque establish a one-to-one mapping of the thematic role and the case marker. We collected behavioural and gaze-fixation data while agrammatic speakers performed a picture-matching task with auditorily presented sentences with different word orders. We found that people with aphasia (PWA) had difficulties in assigning theta-roles in Theme-Agent order. This result is in line with processing accounts. Contrary to previous findings, our data do not suggest a systematic delay in the integration of morphological information in the PWA group, but strong reliance on the ergative case morphology and difficulties assigning thematic roles into the determiner phrases.}, language = {en} } @article{ReifegersteJarvisFelser2020, author = {Reifegerste, Jana and Jarvis, Rebecca and Felser, Claudia}, title = {Effects of chronological age on native and nonnative sentence processing}, series = {Journal of memory and language}, volume = {111}, journal = {Journal of memory and language}, publisher = {Elsevier}, address = {Amsterdam [u.a.]}, issn = {0749-596X}, doi = {10.1016/j.jml.2019.104083}, pages = {23}, year = {2020}, abstract = {While much attention has been devoted to the cognition of aging multilingual individuals, little is known about how age affects their grammatical processing. We assessed subject-verb number-agreement processing in sixty native (L1) and sixty non-native (L2) speakers of German (age: 18-84) using a binary-choice sentence-completion task, along with various individual-differences tests. Our results revealed differential effects of age on L1 and L2 speakers' accuracy and reaction times (RTs). L1 speakers' RTs increased with age, and they became more susceptible to attraction errors. In contrast, L2 speakers' RTs decreased, once age-related slowing was controlled for, and their overall accuracy increased. We interpret this as resulting from increased L2 exposure. Moreover, L2 speakers' accuracy/RT patterns were more strongly affected by cognitive variables (working memory, interference control) than L1 speakers'. Our findings show that as regards bilinguals' grammatical processing ability, aging is associated with both gains (in experience) and losses (in cognitive abilities).}, language = {en} } @article{HofmeisterVasishth2014, author = {Hofmeister, Philip and Vasishth, Shravan}, title = {Distinctiveness and encoding effects in online sentence comprehension}, series = {Frontiers in psychology}, volume = {5}, journal = {Frontiers in psychology}, publisher = {Frontiers Research Foundation}, address = {Lausanne}, issn = {1664-1078}, doi = {10.3389/fpsyg.2014.01237}, pages = {13}, year = {2014}, abstract = {In explicit memory recall and recognition tasks, elaboration and contextual isolation both facilitate memory performance. Here, we investigate these effects in the context of sentence processing: targets for retrieval during online sentence processing of English object relative clause constructions differ in the amount of elaboration associated with the target noun phrase, or the homogeneity of superficial features (text color). Experiment 1 shows that greater elaboration for targets during the encoding phase reduces reading times at retrieval sites, but elaboration of non-targets has considerably weaker effects. Experiment 2 illustrates that processing isolated superficial features of target noun phrases-here, a green word in a sentence with words colored white-does not lead to enhanced memory performance, despite triggering longer encoding times. These results are interpreted in the light of the memory models of Nairne, 1990, 2001, 2006, which state that encoding remnants contribute to the set of retrieval cues that provide the basis for similarity-based interference effects.}, language = {en} }