TY - JOUR A1 - Albert, Aviad A1 - Nicenboim, Bruno T1 - Modeling sonority in terms of pitch intelligibility with the nucleus attraction principle JF - Cognitive science : a multidisciplinary journal of anthropology, artificial intelligence, education, linguistics, neuroscience, philosophy, psychology ; journal of the Cognitive Science Society N2 - Sonority is a fundamental notion in phonetics and phonology, central to many descriptions of the syllable and various useful predictions in phonotactics. Although widely accepted, sonority lacks a clear basis in speech articulation or perception, given that traditional formal principles in linguistic theory are often exclusively based on discrete units in symbolic representation and are typically not designed to be compatible with auditory perception, sensorimotor control, or general cognitive capacities. In addition, traditional sonority principles also exhibit systematic gaps in empirical coverage. Against this backdrop, we propose the incorporation of symbol-based and signal-based models to adequately account for sonority in a complementary manner. We claim that sonority is primarily a perceptual phenomenon related to pitch, driving the optimization of syllables as pitch-bearing units in all language systems. We suggest a measurable acoustic correlate for sonority in terms of periodic energy, and we provide a novel principle that can account for syllabic well-formedness, the nucleus attraction principle (NAP). We present perception experiments that test our two NAP-based models against four traditional sonority models, and we use a Bayesian data analysis approach to test and compare them. Our symbolic NAP model outperforms all the other models we test, while our continuous bottom-up NAP model is at second place, along with the best performing traditional models. We interpret the results as providing strong support for our proposals: (i) the designation of periodic energy as the acoustic correlate of sonority; (ii) the incorporation of continuous entities in phonological models of perception; and (iii) the dual-model strategy that separately analyzes symbol-based top-down processes and signal-based bottom-up processes in speech perception. KW - Sonority KW - Pitch intelligibility KW - Periodic energy KW - Bayesian data KW - analysis KW - Speech perception KW - Phonetics and phonology Y1 - 2022 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1111/cogs.13161 SN - 0364-0213 SN - 1551-6709 VL - 46 IS - 7 PB - Wiley CY - Hoboken ER - TY - THES A1 - Atasoy, Atilla T1 - Production, perception, and processing of focus in Turkish N2 - The main goal of this dissertation is to experimentally investigate how focus is realised, perceived, and processed by native Turkish speakers, independent of preconceived notions of positional restrictions. Crucially, there are various issues and scientific debates surrounding focus in the Turkish language in the existing literature (chapter 1). It is argued in this dissertation that two factors led to the stagnant literature on focus in Turkish: the lack of clearly defined, modern understandings of information structure and its fundamental notion of focus, and the ongoing and ill-defined debate surrounding the question of whether there is an immediately preverbal focus position in Turkish. These issues gave rise to specific research questions addressed across this dissertation. Specifically, we were interested in how the focus dimensions such as focus size (comparing narrow constituent and broad sentence focus), focus target (comparing narrow subject and narrow object focus), and focus type (comparing new-information and contrastive focus) affect Turkish focus realisation and, in turn, focus comprehension when speakers are provided syntactic freedom to position focus as they see fit. To provide data on these core goals, we presented three behavioural experiments based on a systematic framework of information structure and its notions (chapter 2): (i) a production task with trigger wh-questions and contextual animations manipulated to elicit the focus dimensions of interest (chapter 3), (ii) a timed acceptability judgment task in listening to the recorded answers in our production task (chapter 4), and (iii) a self-paced reading task to gather on-line processing data (chapter 5). Based on the results of the conducted experiments, multiple conclusions are made in this dissertation (chapter 6). Firstly, this dissertation demonstrated empirically that there is no focus position in Turkish, neither in the sense of a strict focus position language nor as a focally loaded position facilitating focus perception and/or processing. While focus is, in fact, syntactically variable in the Turkish preverbal area, this is a consequence of movement triggered by other IS aspects like topicalisation and backgrounding, and the observational markedness of narrow subject focus compared to narrow object focus. As for focus type in Turkish, this dimension is not associated with word order in production, perception, or processing. Significant acoustic correlates of focus size (broad sentence focus vs narrow constituent focus) and focus target (narrow subject focus vs narrow object focus) were observed in fundamental frequency and intensity, representing focal boost, (postfocal) deaccentuation, and the presence or absence of a phrase-final rise in the prenucleus, while the perceivability of these effects remains to be investigated. In contrast, no acoustic correlates of focus type in simple, three-word transitive structures were observed, with focus types being interchangeable in mismatched question-answer pairs. Overall, the findings of this dissertation highlight the need for experimental investigations regarding focus in Turkish, as theoretical predictions do not necessarily align with experimental data. As such, the fallacy of implying causation from correlation should be strictly kept in mind, especially when constructions coincide with canonical structures, such as the immediately preverbal position in narrow object foci. Finally, numerous open questions remain to be explored, especially as focus and word order in Turkish are multifaceted. As shown, givenness is a confounding factor when investigating focus types, while thematic role assignment potentially confounds word order preferences. Further research based on established, modern information structure frameworks is needed, with chapter 5 concluding with specific recommendations for such future research. N2 - Das Hauptziel dieser Dissertation war die experimentelle Untersuchung, wie Muttersprachler des Türkischen Fokus realisieren, wahrnehmen und sprachlich verarbeiten, unabhängig von vorgefassten Meinungen betreffend Positionsbeschränkungen. Entscheidend ist, dass es in der vorhandenen Literatur verschiedene Probleme und wissenschaftliche Debatten zum Thema Fokus in der türkischen Sprache gibt (Kapitel 1). In dieser Dissertation wird argumentiert, dass zwei Faktoren zu der stagnierenden Forschung zum Thema Fokus im Türkischen beitrugen: Das Fehlen eines klar definierten modernen Verständnisses der Informationsstruktur und ihres grundlegenden Begriffs von Fokus und die anhaltende und unklare Debatte um die Frage, ob es im Türkischen eine unmittelbar präverbale Fokusposition gibt. Diese Probleme führten zu den jeweiligen Forschungsfragen, die in dieser Dissertation behandelt wurden. Ausdrücklich lag das Interesse darauf, wie die Fokusdimensionen Fokusgröße, der Vergleich von schmalem Fokus (narrow focus) auf der Konstituente und breitem, projiziertem Fokus (broad focus) auf dem Satz, Fokusziel, der Vergleich von schmalem Subjektfokus und Objektfokus, und Fokustyp, der Vergleich von Fokus auf neuer Information (new-inforamtion focus) und Kontrastfokus, die Fokusrealisierung und -wahrnehmung im Türkischen beeinflussen, wenn den Sprechern syntaktische Freiheit gegeben wird Fokus nach Belieben im Satz zu positionieren. Basierend auf einen systematischen theoretischen Rahmen der Informationsstruktur und ihrer Begriffe (Kapitel 2), wurden drei Verhaltensexperimente in dieser Dissertation präsentiert, um Daten zu diesen Kernzielen vorzulegen: (i) ein Produktionsexperiment mit Fragen und kontextbezogenen Animationen als Trigger manipuliert, um die obengenannten Fokusdimensionen zu untersuchen, (ii) ein zeitlich gemessenes Akzeptanzexperiment (timed acceptability judgment task) beim Anhören der Antworten aufgezeichnet in unserem Produktionsexperiment und (iii) ein selbstbestimmtes Leseexperiment (self-paced reading task) zur Untersuchung der sprachlichen Verarbeitung (on-line language processing). Auf der Grundlage der Ergebnisse der durchgeführten Experimente werden in dieser Dissertation mehrere Schlussfolgerungen gezogen (Kapitel 6). Diese Dissertation hat zum einen empirisch nachgewiesen, dass es im Türkischen keine Fokusposition gibt, weder im Sinne einer strikten Fokusposition noch als fokal geladene Position, die die Fokuswahrnehmung und/oder -verarbeitung erleichtert. Während Fokus im türkischen präverbalen Bereich tatsächlich syntaktisch variabel ist, ist dies eine Folge syntaktischer Strategien anderer IS-Aspekte, wie etwa Topikalisierung und Hintergrundbildung (backgrounding), wie auch die additive Kennzeichnung schmaler Subjektfokusse im Vergleich zum Objektfokus. Was Fokustyp im Türkischen betrifft, ist diese Fokusdimension nicht mit Wortstellung in Produktion, Wahrnehmung oder Verarbeitung assoziiert. Signifikante akustische Korrelate der Fokusgröße (breiter Satzfokus vs. schmalen Konstituentenfokus) und Fokusziel (schmaler Subjektfokus vs. schmalen Objektfokus) in Grundfrequenz und Intensität in Form von Fokusverstärkung (focal boost), (postfokaler) Deakzentuierung und dem Vorhandensein oder Fehlen eines phrasenfinalen Anstiegs im Pränukleus wurden beobachtet, während die Wahrnehmbarkeit dieser Effekte noch zu untersuchen ist. Im Gegensatz dazu wurden keine akustischen Korrelate für Fokustyp in simplen transitiven Dreiwortstrukturen beobachtet, wobei Fokustypen in nicht übereinstimmenden Frage-Antwort-Paaren austauschbar waren. Insgesamt unterstreichen die oben skizzierten Ergebnisse dieser Dissertation die Notwendigkeit experimenteller Untersuchungen zu Fokus im Türkischen, da theoretische Vorhersagen nicht immer mit experimentellen Daten übereinstimmen. Der Trugschluss, dass Korrelation Kausalität impliziert, sollte strikt im Auge behalten werden, insbesondere wenn Konstruktionen mit kanonischen Strukturen übereinstimmen, wie etwa die unmittelbar präverbale Position in schmalen Objektfokussen. Schließlich sind noch zahlreiche offene Fragen zu klären, zumal Fokus und Wortstellung im Türkischen vielfältig sind. Wie in dieser Dissertation gezeigt wurde, ist Gegebenheit ein Störfaktor in der Untersuchung von Fokustypen. Ebenfalls ist zu vermuten, dass thematische Rollenzuweisung im Türkischen Präferenzen in Wortstellung hervorrufen können, die als Fokuseffekte fehlinterpretiert werden könnten. Weitere Forschung auf der Grundlage etablierter theoretischer Informationsstrukturrahmen ist erforderlich. Kapitel 5 schließt mit konkreten Empfehlungen für solche zukünftigen Untersuchungen ab. T2 - Produktion, Wahrnehmung und Verarbeitung von Fokus im Türkischen KW - focus KW - information structure KW - Turkish KW - focus realisation KW - Türkisch KW - Fokus KW - Fokusrealisierung KW - Informationsstruktur Y1 - 2022 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-548156 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Bade, Nadine A1 - Picat, Leo A1 - Chung, WooJin A1 - Mascarenhas, Salvador T1 - Alternatives and attention in language and reasoning: A reply to Mascarenhas & Picat (2019) JF - Semantics and Pragmatics N2 - In this paper, we employ an experimental paradigm using insights from the psychology of reasoning to investigate the question whether certain modals generate and draw attention to alternatives. The article extends and builds on the methodology and findings of Mascarenhas & Picat (2019). Based on experimental results, they argue that the English epistemic modal might raises alternatives. We apply the same methodology to the English modal allowed to to test different hypotheses regarding the involvement of alternatives in deontic modality. We find commonalities and differences between the two modals we tested. We discuss theoretical consequences for existing semantic analyses of these modals, and argue that reasoning tasks can serve as a diagnostic tool to discover which natural language expressions involve alternatives. KW - reasoning KW - modals KW - alternatives Y1 - 2022 U6 - https://doi.org/10.3765/sp.15.2 SN - 1937-8912 VL - 15 PB - Linguistic Society of America CY - Washington ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Bürki, Audrey A1 - Alario, F-Xavier A1 - Vasishth, Shravan T1 - When words collide: Bayesian meta-analyses of distractor and target properties in the picture-word interference paradigm JF - Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology N2 - In the picture-word interference paradigm, participants name pictures while ignoring a written or spoken distractor word. Naming times to the pictures are slowed down by the presence of the distractor word. The present study investigates in detail the impact of distractor and target word properties on picture naming times, building on the seminal study by Miozzo and Caramazza. We report the results of several Bayesian meta-analyses based on 26 datasets. These analyses provide estimates of effect sizes and their precision for several variables and their interactions. They show the reliability of the distractor frequency effect on picture naming latencies (latencies decrease as the frequency of the distractor increases) and demonstrate for the first time the impact of distractor length, with longer naming latencies for trials with longer distractors. Moreover, distractor frequency interacts with target word frequency to predict picture naming latencies. The methodological and theoretical implications of these findings are discussed. KW - Picture-word interference KW - Bayesian meta-analysis KW - distractor frequency Y1 - 2022 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1177/17470218221114644 SN - 1747-0218 SN - 1747-0226 VL - 76 IS - 6 SP - 1410 EP - 1430 PB - Sage Publications CY - London ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Bürki-Foschini, Audrey Damaris A1 - Madec, Sylvain T1 - Picture-Word interference in language production studies BT - exploring the roles of attention and processing times JF - Journal of experimental psychology : Learning, memory, and cognition N2 - The picture-word interference paradigm (participants name target pictures while ignoring distractor words) is often used to model the planning processes involved in word production. The participants' naming times are delayed in the presence of a distractor (general interference). The size of this effect depends on the relationship between the target and distractor words. Distractors of the same semantic category create more interference (semantic interference), and distractors overlapping in phonology create less interference (phonological facilitation). The present study examined the relationships between these experimental effects, processing times, and attention in order to better understand the cognitive processes underlying participants' behavior in this paradigm. Participants named pictures with a superimposed line of Xs, semantically related distractors, phonologically related distractors, or unrelated distractors. General interference, semantic interference, and phonological facilitation effects were replicated. Distributional analyses revealed that general and semantic interference effects increase with naming times, while phonological facilitation decreases. The phonological facilitation and semantic interference effects were found to depend on the synchronicity in processing times between the planning of the picture's name and the processing of the distractor word. Finally, electroencephalographic power in the alpha band before stimulus onset varied with the position of the trial in the experiment and with repetition but did not predict the size of interference/facilitation effects. Taken together, these results suggest that experimental effects in the picture-word interference paradigm depend on processing times to both the target word and distractor word and that distributional patterns could partly reflect this dependency. KW - language production KW - picture-word interference KW - variability KW - attention KW - EEG alpha power Y1 - 2022 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1037/xlm0001098 SN - 0278-7393 SN - 1939-1285 VL - 48 IS - 7 SP - 1019 EP - 1046 PB - American Psychological Association CY - Washington ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Ciaccio, Laura Anna A1 - Veríssimo, João T1 - Investigating variability in morphological processing with Bayesian distributional models JF - Psychonomic bulletin & review : a journal of the Psychonomic Society N2 - We investigated the processing of morphologically complex words adopting an approach that goes beyond estimating average effects and allows testing predictions about variability in performance. We tested masked morphological priming effects with English derived ('printer') and inflected ('printed') forms priming their stems ('print') in non-native speakers, a population that is characterized by large variability. We modeled reaction times with a shifted-lognormal distribution using Bayesian distributional models, which allow assessing effects of experimental manipulations on both the mean of the response distribution ('mu') and its standard deviation ('sigma'). Our results show similar effects on mean response times for inflected and derived primes, but a difference between the two on the sigma of the distribution, with inflectional priming increasing response time variability to a significantly larger extent than derivational priming. This is in line with previous research on non-native processing, which shows more variable results across studies for the processing of inflected forms than for derived forms. More generally, our study shows that treating variability in performance as a direct object of investigation can crucially inform models of language processing, by disentangling effects which would otherwise be indistinguishable. We therefore emphasize the importance of looking beyond average performance and testing predictions on other parameters of the distribution rather than just its central tendency. KW - RT distribution KW - Distributional models KW - Masked priming KW - Visual word KW - recognition KW - Morphological processing Y1 - 2022 U6 - https://doi.org/10.3758/s13423-022-02109-w SN - 1069-9384 SN - 1531-5320 SP - 2264 EP - 2274 PB - Springer CY - New York ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Conrad, Markus A1 - Ullrich, Susann A1 - Schmidtke, David S. A1 - Kotz, Sonja A. T1 - ERPs reveal an iconic relation between sublexical phonology and affective meaning JF - Cognition : international journal of cognitive science N2 - Classical linguistic theory assumes that formal aspects, like sound, are not internally related to the meaning of words. However, recent research suggests language might code affective meaning such as threat and alert sublexically. Positing affective phonological iconicity as a systematic organization principle of the German lexicon, we calculated sublexical affective values for sub-syllabic phonological word segments from a large-scale affective lexical German database by averaging valence and arousal ratings of all words any phonological segment appears in. We tested word stimuli with either consistent or inconsistent mappings between lexical affective meaning and sublexical affective values (negative-valence/high-arousal vs. neutral-valence/lowarousal) in an EEG visual-lexical-decision task. A mismatch between sublexical and lexical affective values elicited an increased N400 response. These results reveal that systematic affective phonological iconicity - extracted from the lexicon - impacts the extraction of lexical word meaning during reading. KW - Sound symbolism KW - Visual word recognition KW - Phonological iconicity KW - Affective meaning KW - N400 KW - ERPs Y1 - 2022 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cognition.2022.105182 SN - 0010-0277 SN - 1873-7838 VL - 226 PB - Elsevier CY - Amsterdam ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Cuperus, Pauline A1 - de Kok, Dörte A1 - de Aguiar, Vania A1 - Nickels, Lyndsey T1 - Understanding user needs for digital aphasia therapy BT - experiences and preferences of speech and language therapists JF - Aphasiology : an international, interdisciplinary journal N2 - Background: Aphasia therapy software applications (apps) can help achieve recommendations regarding aphasia treatment intensity and duration. However, we currently know very little about speech and language therapists' (SLTs) preferences with regards to these apps. This may be problematic, as clinician acceptance of novel treatments and technology are a key factor for successful translation from research evidence to practice. Aim: This research aimed to increase our understanding of clinicians' experiences with aphasia therapy apps and their perceived barriers and facilitators to the use of aphasia apps. Furthermore, we wanted to explore the influence of some demographic factors (age, country, and SLT availability in the client's hometown) on SLTs' attitudes towards these apps. Method & Procedures: 35 Dutch and 29 Australian SLTs completed an online survey. The survey contained 9 closed-ended questions and 3 open-ended questions. Responses to the closed-ended questions were summarised through the use of descriptive statistics. The responses to the open questions were analysed and coded into recurring themes that were derived from the data. Logistic regression analyses were performed to explore the relationship between the demographic variables and the responses to the closed-ended questions. Outcomes & results: Participants were overwhelmingly positive about aphasia therapy apps and saw the potential for their clients to use apps independently. As facilitators of app use, participants reported accessibility and inclusion of different language modalities, while high costs, absence of a compatible device, and clients' potential computer illiteracy were listed as barriers. None of the analysed demographic factors consistently influenced differences in participants' attitudes towards aphasia therapy apps. Conclusions: The positive, extensive and insightful feedback from speech and language therapists is both useful and encouraging for app developers and aphasia researchers, and should facilitate the development of appropriate, high-quality therapy apps. KW - telemedicine KW - mobile applications KW - user research KW - speech and language therapy KW - clinician feedback Y1 - 2022 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1080/02687038.2022.2066622 SN - 0268-7038 SN - 1464-5041 VL - 37 IS - 7 SP - 1016 EP - 1038 PB - Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group CY - London ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Czapka, Sophia A1 - Schwieter, John W. A1 - Festman, Julia T1 - The influence of peripheral emotions on inhibitory control among children JF - Acta psychologica : international journal of psychonomics N2 - In this study, we investigated the cognitive-emotional interplay by measuring the effects of executive competition (Pessoa, 2013), i.e., how inhibitory control is influenced when emotional information is encountered. Sixty-three children (8 to 9 years of age) participated in an inhibition task (central task) accompanied by happy, sad, or neutral emoticons (displayed in the periphery). Typical interference effects were found in the main task for speed and accuracy, but in general, these effects were not additionally modulated by the peripheral emoticons indicating that processing of the main task exhausted the limited capacity such that interference from the task-irrelevant, peripheral information did not show (Pessoa, 2013). Further analyses revealed that the magnitude of interference effects depended on the order of congruency conditions: when incongruent conditions preceded congruent ones, there was greater interference. This effect was smaller in sad conditions, and particularly so at the beginning of the experiment. These findings suggest that the bottom-up perception of task-irrelevant emotional information influenced the top-down process of inhibitory control among children in the sad condition when processing demands were particularly high. We discuss if the salience and valence of the emotional stimuli as well as task demands are the decisive characteristics that modulate the strength of this relation. KW - Executive function KW - Inhibitory control task KW - Cognitive emotional KW - regulation KW - Primary school children Y1 - 2022 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.actpsy.2022.103507 SN - 0001-6918 SN - 1873-6297 VL - 223 PB - Elsevier CY - Amsterdam ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Engbert, Ralf A1 - Rabe, Maximilian Michael A1 - Schwetlick, Lisa A1 - Seelig, Stefan A. A1 - Reich, Sebastian A1 - Vasishth, Shravan T1 - Data assimilation in dynamical cognitive science JF - Trends in cognitive sciences N2 - Dynamical models make specific assumptions about cognitive processes that generate human behavior. In data assimilation, these models are tested against timeordered data. Recent progress on Bayesian data assimilation demonstrates that this approach combines the strengths of statistical modeling of individual differences with the those of dynamical cognitive models. Y1 - 2022 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tics.2021.11.006 SN - 1364-6613 SN - 1879-307X VL - 26 IS - 2 SP - 99 EP - 102 PB - Elsevier CY - Amsterdam ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Fanselow, Gisbert A1 - Zimmermann, Malte A1 - Philipp, Mareike T1 - Assessing the availability of inverse scope in German in the covered box paradigm JF - Glossa : a journal of general linguistics N2 - This paper presents the results of a novel experimental approach to relative quantifier scope in German that elicits data in an indirect manner. Applying the covered-box method (Huang et al. 2013) to scope phenomena, we show that inverse scope is available to some extent in the free constituent order language German, thereby validating earlier findings on other syntactic configurations in German (Rado & Bott 2018) and empirical claims on other free constituent order languages (Japanese, Russian, Hindi), as well as recent corpus findings in Webelhuth (2020). Moreover, the results of the indirect covered-box experiment replicate findings from an earlier direct-query experiment with comparable target items, in which participants were asked directly about the availability of surface scope and inverse scope readings. The configuration of interest consisted of canonical transitive clauses with deaccented existential subject and universal object QPs, in which the restriction of the universal QP was controlled for by the context. KW - inverse scope KW - covered-box KW - free constituent order KW - German KW - experimental semantics Y1 - 2022 U6 - https://doi.org/10.16995/glossa.5766 SN - 2397-1835 VL - 7 IS - 1 SP - 1 EP - 24 PB - Open Library of Humanities CY - London ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Felser, Claudia A1 - Drummer, Janna-Deborah T1 - Binding out of relative clauses in native and non-native sentence comprehension JF - Journal of psycholinguistic research N2 - Pronouns can sometimes covary with a non c-commanding quantifier phrase (QP). To obtain such 'telescoping' readings, a semantic representation must be computed in which the QP's semantic scope extends beyond its surface scope. Non-native speakers have been claimed to have more difficulty than native speakers deriving such non-isomorphic syntax-semantics mappings, but evidence from processing studies is scarce. We report the results from an eye-movement monitoring experiment and an offline questionnaire investigating whether native and non-native speakers of German can link personal pronouns to non c-commanding QPs inside relative clauses. Our results show that both participant groups were able to obtain telescoping readings offline, but only the native speakers showed evidence of forming telescoping dependencies during incremental parsing. During processing the non-native speakers focused on a discourse-prominent, non-quantified alternative antecedent instead. The observed group differences indicate that non-native comprehenders have more difficulty than native comprehenders computing scope-shifted representations in real time. KW - Pronoun binding KW - c-command KW - Eye-movement monitoring KW - Non-native language KW - processing KW - German Y1 - 2022 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1007/s10936-022-09845-z SN - 0090-6905 SN - 1573-6555 VL - 51 IS - 4 SP - 763 EP - 788 PB - Springer CY - New York ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Fuhrmeister, Pamela A1 - Bürki-Foschini, Audrey Damaris T1 - Distributional properties of semantic interference in picture naming BT - Bayesian meta-analyses JF - Psychonomic bulletin & review : a journal of the Psychonomic Society N2 - Studies of word production often make use of picture-naming tasks, including the picture-word-interference task. In this task, participants name pictures with superimposed distractor words. They typically need more time to name pictures when the distractor word is semantically related to the picture than when it is unrelated (the semantic interference effect). The present study examines the distributional properties of this effect in a series of Bayesian meta-analyses. Meta-analytic estimates of the semantic interference effect first show that the effect is present throughout the reaction time distribution and that it increases throughout the distribution. Second, we find a correlation between a participant's mean semantic interference effect and the change in the effect in the tail of the reaction time distribution, which has been argued to reflect the involvement of selective inhibition in the naming task. Finally, we show with simulated data that this correlation emerges even when no inhibition is used to generate the data, which suggests that inhibition is not needed to explain this relationship. KW - Picture-word-interference task KW - Semantic interference effect KW - Selective KW - inhibition KW - Delta plot analyses KW - Individual differences Y1 - 2021 U6 - https://doi.org/10.3758/s13423-021-02016-6 SN - 1069-9384 SN - 1531-5320 VL - 29 IS - 2 SP - 635 EP - 647 PB - Springer CY - New York ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Fuhrmeister, Pamela A1 - Madec, Sylvain A1 - Lorenz, Antje A1 - Elbuy, Shereen A1 - Bürki Foschini, Audrey Damaris T1 - Behavioural and EEG evidence for inter-individual variability in late encoding stages of word production JF - Language, cognition and neuroscience N2 - Individuals differ in the time needed to name a picture. This contribution asks whether this inter-individual variability emerges in earlier stages of word production (e.g. lexical selection) or later stages (e.g. articulation) and examines the consequences of this variability for EEG group results. We measured participants' (N = 45) naming latencies and continuous EEG in a picture-word interference task and naming latencies in a delayed naming task. Inter-individual variability in naming latencies in immediate naming (in contrast with inter-item variability) was not larger than the variability in the delayed task, suggesting that some variability in immediate naming originates in later stages of word production. EEG data complemented this interpretation: Differences between relatively fast vs. slow speakers emerged in response-aligned analyses in a time window close to the vocal response. We additionally present a method to assess the generalisability of the timing of effects across participants based on random sampling. KW - Word production KW - inter-individual variability KW - event-related potentials KW - picture-word-interference Y1 - 2022 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1080/23273798.2022.2030483 SN - 2327-3798 SN - 2327-3801 VL - 37 IS - 7 SP - 902 EP - 924 PB - Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group CY - Abingdon ER - TY - THES A1 - Galetzka, Fabian T1 - Investigating and improving background context consistency in neural conversation models N2 - Neural conversation models aim to predict appropriate contributions to a (given) conversation by using neural networks trained on dialogue data. A specific strand focuses on non-goal driven dialogues, first proposed by Ritter et al. (2011): They investigated the task of transforming an utterance into an appropriate reply. Then, this strand evolved into dialogue system approaches using long dialogue histories and additional background context. Contributing meaningful and appropriate to a conversation is a complex task, and therefore research in this area has been very diverse: Serban et al. (2016), for example, looked into utilizing variable length dialogue histories, Zhang et al. (2018) added additional context to the dialogue history, Wolf et al. (2019) proposed a model based on pre-trained Self-Attention neural networks (Vasvani et al., 2017), and Dinan et al. (2021) investigated safety issues of these approaches. This trend can be seen as a transformation from trying to somehow carry on a conversation to generating appropriate replies in a controlled and reliable way. In this thesis, we first elaborate the meaning of appropriateness in the context of neural conversation models by drawing inspiration from the Cooperative Principle (Grice, 1975). We first define what an appropriate contribution has to be by operationalizing these maxims as demands on conversation models: being fluent, informative, consistent towards given context, coherent and following a social norm. Then, we identify different targets (or intervention points) to achieve the conversational appropriateness by investigating recent research in that field. In this thesis, we investigate the aspect of consistency towards context in greater detail, being one aspect of our interpretation of appropriateness. During the research, we developed a new context-based dialogue dataset (KOMODIS) that combines factual and opinionated context to dialogues. The KOMODIS dataset is publicly available and we use the data in this thesis to gather new insights in context-augmented dialogue generation. We further introduced a new way of encoding context within Self-Attention based neural networks. For that, we elaborate the issue of space complexity from knowledge graphs, and propose a concise encoding strategy for structured context inspired from graph neural networks (Gilmer et al., 2017) to reduce the space complexity of the additional context. We discuss limitations of context-augmentation for neural conversation models, explore the characteristics of knowledge graphs, and explain how we create and augment knowledge graphs for our experiments. Lastly, we analyzed the potential of reinforcement and transfer learning to improve context-consistency for neural conversation models. We find that current reward functions need to be more precise to enable the potential of reinforcement learning, and that sequential transfer learning can improve the subjective quality of generated dialogues. N2 - Neuronale Konversationsmodelle versuchen einen angemessenen Beitrag zu einer (gegebenen) Konversation zu erzeugen, indem neuronale Netze auf Dialogdaten trainiert werden. Ein spezieller Forschungszweig beschäftigt sich mit den nicht-zielgeführten Dialogen, erstmals vorgestellt von Ritter et al. (2011): Das Team untersuchte die Aufgabe der Transformation einer Äußerung in eine angemessene Antwort. Im Laufe der Zeit hat dieser Zweig Dialogsystem-Ansätze hervorgebracht, die lange Konversationen und zusätzlichen Kontext verarbeiten können. Einen sinnvollen und angemessenen Beitrag zu einem Gespräch zu leisten, ist eine komplexe Aufgabe, und daher war die Forschung auf diesem Gebiet sehr vielfältig: Serban et al. (2016) untersuchten beispielsweise die Verwendung von Dialogverläufen variabler Länge, Zhang et al. (2018) fügten der Dialoggeschichte zusätzlichen Kontext hinzu, Wolf et al. (2019) schlugen ein Modell vor, das auf vortrainierten neuronalen Self-Attention Schichten basiert (Vasvani et al., 2017), und Dinan et al. (2021) untersuchten Ansätze zur Kontrolle von unangebrachten Inhalten, wie zum Beispiel Beleidigungen. Dieser Trend kann als Transformation gesehen werden, der vom Versuch, ein Gespräch irgendwie fortzuführen, hin zum kontrollierten und zuverlässigen Generieren angemessener Antworten reicht. In dieser Arbeit untersuchen wir den Aspekt der Kontextkonsistenz genauer, der ein Aspekt unserer Interpretation von einem angemessenen Konversationsbeitrag ist. Während der Untersuchungen haben wir einen neuen kontextbasierten Dialogdatensatz (KOMODIS) entwickelt, der sachlichen und meinungsbezogenen Kontext zu Dialogen kombiniert. Der KOMODIS Datensatz ist öffentlich verfügbar, und wir verwenden die Daten in dieser Arbeit, um neue Einblicke in die kontextunterstützte Dialoggenerierung zu gewinnen. Wir haben außerdem eine neue Methode zur Eingabe von Kontext auf Self-Attention basierenden neuronalen Netzen entwickelt. Dazu erörtern wir zunächst das Problem der begrenzten Eingabelänge für Sequenzen aus Wissensgraphen in solche Modelle, und schlagen eine effiziente Codierungsstrategie für strukturierten Kontext vor, die von Graph Neural Networks inspiriert ist (Gilmer et al., 2017), um die Komplexität des zusätzlichen Kontexts zu reduzieren. Wir diskutieren die Grenzen der Kontexterweiterung für neuronale Konversationsmodelle, untersuchen die Eigenschaften von Wissensgraphen und erklären, wie wir Wissensgraphen für unsere Experimente erstellen und erweitern können. Schließlich haben wir das Potenzial von Reinforcement Learning und Transfer Learning analysiert, um die Kontextkonsistenz für neuronale Konversationsmodelle zu verbessern. Wir stellen fest, dass aktuelle Reward Funktionen präziser sein müssen, um das Potenzial von Reinforcement Learning zu nutzen, und dass Sequential Transfer Learning die subjektive Qualität der generierten Dialoge verbessern kann. KW - conversational ai KW - neural conversation models KW - context consistency KW - gpt KW - conversation KW - dialogue KW - deep learning KW - knowledge graphs KW - Kontextkonsistenz KW - Konversation KW - Dialog KI KW - Deep Learning KW - Dialog KW - GPT KW - Wissensgraph KW - neuronale Konversationsmodelle Y1 - 2022 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-584637 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Gotzner, Nicole A1 - Romoli, Jacopo T1 - Meaning and alternatives JF - Annual review of linguistics N2 - Alternatives and competition in language are pervasive at all levels of linguistic analysis. More specifically, alternatives have been argued to play a prominent role in an ever-growing class of phenomena in the investigation of natural language meaning. In this article, we focus on scalar implicatures, as they are arguably the most paradigmatic case of an alternative-based phenomenon. We first review the main challenge for theories of alternatives, the so-called symmetry problem, and we briefly discuss how it has shaped the different approaches to alternatives. We then turn to two more recent challenges concerning scalar diversity and the inferences of sentences with multiple scalars. Finally, we describe several related alternative-based phenomena and recent conceptual approaches to alternatives. As we discuss, while important progress has been made, much more work is needed both on the theoretical side and on understanding the empirical landscape better. KW - alternatives KW - scalar implicatures KW - symmetry problem KW - focus KW - polarity KW - sensitivity KW - negative strengthening Y1 - 2022 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-linguistics-031220-012013 SN - 2333-9691 SN - 2333-9683 VL - 8 SP - 213 EP - 234 PB - Annual Reviews CY - Palo Alto ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Gotzner, Nicole A1 - Spalek, Katharina T1 - Expectations about upcoming discourse referents BT - Effects of pitch accents and focus particles in German language production JF - International review of pragmatics : IRP N2 - In the current study, we explore how different information-structural devices affect which referents conversational partners expect in the upcoming discourse. Our main research question is how pitch accents (H*, L+H*) and focus particles (German nur `only' and auch 'also') affect speakers' choices to mention focused referents, previously mentioned alternatives or new, inferable alternatives. Participants in our experiment were presented with short discourses involving two referents and were asked to orally produce two sentences that continue the story. An analysis of speakers' continuations showed that participants were most likely to mention a contextual alternative in the condition with only and the L+H* conditions, followed by H* conditions. In the condition with also, in turn, participants mentioned both the focused/accented referent and the contextual alternative. Our findings highlight the importance of information structure for discourse management and suggest that speakers take activated alternatives to be relevant for an unfolding discourse. KW - information structure KW - linguistics focus KW - pitch accents KW - focus KW - alternatives KW - discourse expectations Y1 - 2022 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1163/18773109-01401003 SN - 1877-3095 SN - 1877-3109 VL - 14 IS - 1 SP - 77 EP - 94 PB - Brill CY - Leiden ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Heffner, Christopher C. A1 - Fuhrmeister, Pamela A1 - Luthra, Sahil A1 - Mechtenberg, Hannah A1 - Saltzman, David A1 - Myers, Emily B. T1 - Reliability and validity for perceptual flexibility in speech JF - Brain and language : a journal of clinical, experimental and theoretical research N2 - The study of perceptual flexibility in speech depends on a variety of tasks that feature a large degree of variability between participants. Of critical interest is whether measures are consistent within an individual or across stimulus contexts. This is particularly key for individual difference designs that are deployed to examine the neural basis or clinical consequences of perceptual flexibility. In the present set of experiments, we assess the split-half reliability and construct validity of five measures of perceptual flexibility: three of learning in a native language context (e.g., understanding someone with a foreign accent) and two of learning in a non-native context (e.g., learning to categorize non-native speech sounds). We find that most of these tasks show an appreciable level of split-half reliability, although construct validity was sometimes weak. This provides good evidence for reliability for these tasks, while highlighting possible upper limits on expected effect sizes involving each measure. KW - Reliability KW - Construct validity KW - Individual differences KW - Speech KW - perception KW - Phonetic identification KW - Phonetic learning KW - Phonetic KW - adaptation Y1 - 2022 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.bandl.2021.105070 SN - 0093-934X SN - 1090-2155 VL - 226 PB - Elsevier CY - Amsterdam [u.a.] ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Hein, Johannes A1 - Murphy, Andrew T1 - VP-nominalization and the Final-over-Final Condition JF - Linguistic inquiry N2 - The Final-over-Final Condition has emerged as a robust and explanatory generalization for a wide range of phenomena (Biberauer, Holmberg, and Roberts 2014, Sheehan et al. 2017). In this article, we argue that it also holds in another domain, nominalization. In languages that show overt nominalization of VPs, one word order is routinely unattested, namely, a head-initial VP with a suffixal nominalizer. This typological gap can be accounted for by the Final-over-Final Condition, if we allow it to hold within mixed extended projections. This view also makes correct predictions about agentive nominalizations and nominalized serial verb constructions. KW - Final-over-Final Condition KW - nominalization KW - extended projections KW - word KW - order KW - serial verb constructions KW - syntax Y1 - 2022 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1162/ling_a_00407 SN - 0024-3892 SN - 1530-9150 VL - 53 IS - 2 SP - 337 EP - 370 PB - MIT Press CY - Cambridge ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Kidd, Evan A1 - Garcia, Rowena T1 - How diverse is child language acquisition research? JF - First language N2 - A comprehensive theory of child language acquisition requires an evidential base that is representative of the typological diversity present in the world's 7000 or so languages. However, languages are dying at an alarming rate, and the next 50 years represents the last chance we have to document acquisition in many of them. Here, we take stock of the last 45 years of research published in the four main child language acquisition journals: Journal of Child Language, First Language, Language Acquisition and Language Learning and Development. We coded each article for several variables, including (1) participant group (mono vs multilingual), (2) language(s), (3) topic(s) and (4) country of author affiliation, from each journal's inception until the end of 2020. We found that we have at least one article published on around 103 languages, representing approximately 1.5% of the world's languages. The distribution of articles was highly skewed towards English and other well-studied Indo-European languages, with the majority of non-Indo-European languages having just one paper. A majority of the papers focused on studies of monolingual children, although papers did not always explicitly report participant group status. The distribution of topics across language categories was more even. The number of articles published on non-Indo-European languages from countries outside of North America and Europe is increasing; however, this increase is driven by research conducted in relatively wealthy countries. Overall, the vast majority of the research was produced in the Global North. We conclude that, despite a proud history of crosslinguistic research, the goals of the discipline need to be recalibrated before we can lay claim to truly a representative account of child language acquisition. KW - linguistic diversity KW - child language acquisition KW - typology KW - archival KW - research KW - language coverage Y1 - 2022 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1177/01427237211066405 SN - 0142-7237 SN - 1740-2344 VL - 42 IS - 6 SP - 703 EP - 735 PB - Sage CY - London [u.a.] ER -