@article{BurchertHanneVasishth2013,
  author    = {Burchert, Frank and Hanne, Sandra and Vasishth, Shravan},
  title     = {Sentence comprehension disorders in aphasia the concept of chance performance revisited},
  series = {Aphasiology : an international, interdisciplinary journal},
  volume    = {27},
  journal   = {Aphasiology : an international, interdisciplinary journal},
  number    = {1},
  publisher = {Wiley},
  address   = {Hove},
  issn      = {0268-7038},
  doi       = {10.1080/02687038.2012.730603},
  pages     = {112 -- 125},
  year      = {2013},
  abstract  = {Background: In behavioural tests of sentence comprehension in aphasia, correct and incorrect responses are often randomly distributed. Such a pattern of chance performance is a typical trait of Broca's aphasia, but can be found in other aphasic syndromes as well. Many researchers have argued that chance behaviour is the result of a guessing strategy, which is adopted in the face of a syntactic breakdown in sentence processing. Aims: Capitalising on new evidence from recent studies investigating online sentence comprehension in aphasia using the visual world paradigm, the aim of this paper is to review the concept of chance performance as a reflection of a syntactic impairment in sentence processing and to re-examine the conventional interpretation of chance performance as a guessing behaviour. Main Contribution: Based on a review of recent evidence from visual world paradigm studies, we argue that the assumption of chance performance equalling guessing is not necessarily compatible with actual real-time parsing procedures in people with aphasia. We propose a reinterpretation of the concept of chance performance by assuming that there are two distinct processing mechanisms underlying sentence comprehension in aphasia. Correct responses are always the result of normal-like parsing mechanisms, even in those cases where the overall performance pattern is at chance. Incorrect responses, on the other hand, are the result of intermittent deficiencies of the parser. Hence the random guessing behaviour that persons with aphasia often display does not necessarily reflect a syntactic breakdown in sentence comprehension and a random selection between alternatives. Instead it should be regarded as a result of temporal deficient parsing procedures in otherwise normal-like comprehension routines. Conclusion: Our conclusion is that the consideration of behavioural offline data alone may not be sufficient to interpret a performance in language tests and subsequently draw theoretical conclusions about language impairments. Rather it is important to call on additional data from online studies that look at language processing in real time in order to gain a comprehensive picture about syntactic comprehension abilities of people with aphasia and possible underlying deficits.},
  language  = {en}
}
@article{ElsnerPfeiferParkeretal.2013,
  author    = {Elsner, Birgit and Pfeifer, Caroline and Parker, Charlene and Hauf, Petra},
  title     = {Infants' perception of actions and situational constraints - an eye-tracking study},
  series = {Journal of experimental child psychology},
  volume    = {116},
  journal   = {Journal of experimental child psychology},
  number    = {2},
  publisher = {Elsevier},
  address   = {San Diego},
  issn      = {0022-0965},
  doi       = {10.1016/j.jecp.2012.11.014},
  pages     = {428 -- 442},
  year      = {2013},
  abstract  = {Rational action understanding requires that infants evaluate the efficiency of a movement in achieving a goal with respect to situational constraints. In contrast, recent accounts have highlighted the impact of perceptual characteristics of the demonstrated movement or constraints to explain infants' behavior in so-called rational imitation tasks. The current study employed eye tracking to investigate how 13- to 15-month-old infants distribute their visual attention to different aspects of an action demonstration. In three tasks (touchlight, house, and obstacle), infants watched videos in which a model performed an unusual action while she was or was not restricted by situational constraints. Infants' overall looking to the demonstration as well as looking to four segments of the video (initial segment, constraint demonstration, action performance, and final segment) and to specific areas (constraint area of interest [AOI] and action AOI) was analyzed. Overall, infants looked longer at the demonstration in the constraint condition compared with the no-constraint condition. The condition differences occurred in the two video segments where the constraint or action was displayed and were especially profound for the constraint AOI. These findings indicate that infants processed the situational constraints. However, the pattern of condition differences varied slightly in the three tasks. In sum, the data imply that infants process perceptual characteristics of the movement or constraints and that low-level perceptual processes interact with higher level cognitive processes in infants' action perception.},
  language  = {en}
}