TY - JOUR A1 - Felser, Claudia A1 - Drummer, Janna-Deborah T1 - Sensitivity to Crossover Constraints During Native and Non-native Pronoun Resolution JF - Journal of psycholinguistic research N2 - We report the results from two experiments examining native and non-native German speakers’ sensitivity to crossover constraints on pronoun resolution. Our critical stimuli sentences contained personal pronouns in either strong (SCO) or weak crossover (WCO) configurations. Using eye-movement monitoring during reading and a gender-mismatch paradigm, Experiment 1 investigated whether a fronted wh-phrase would be considered as a potential antecedent for a pronoun intervening between the wh-phrase and its canonical position. Both native and non-native readers initially attempted coreference in WCO but not in SCO configurations, as evidenced by early gender-mismatch effects in our WCO conditions. Experiment 2 was an offline antecedent judgement task whose results mirrored the SCO/WCO asymmetry observed in our reading-time data. Taken together, our results show that the SCO constraint immediately restricts pronoun interpretation in both native and non-native comprehension, and further suggest that SCO and WCO constraints derive from different sources. KW - Strong crossover KW - Weak crossover KW - Pronoun resolution KW - Eye-movement monitoring KW - German Y1 - 2016 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1007/s10936-016-9465-8 SN - 0090-6905 SN - 1573-6555 VL - 46 SP - 771 EP - 789 PB - Springer CY - New York ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Paape, Dario L. J. F. T1 - Filling the Silence: Reactivation, not Reconstruction JF - Frontiers in psychology N2 - In a self-paced reading experiment, we investigated the processing of sluicing constructions ("sluices") whose antecedent contained a known garden path structure in German. Results showed decreased processing times for sluices with garden-path antecedents as well as a disadvantage for antecedents with non-canonical word order downstream from the ellipsis site. A post-hoc analysis showed the garden-path advantage also to be present in the region right before the ellipsis site. While no existing account of ellipsis processing explicitly predicted the results, we argue that they are best captured by combining a local antecedent mismatch effect with memory trace reactivation through reanalysis. KW - ellipsis processing KW - garden-path effect KW - German KW - retrieval KW - reconstruction KW - self-paced reading Y1 - 2016 U6 - https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2016.00027 SN - 1664-1078 VL - 7 PB - Frontiers Research Foundation CY - Lausanne ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Adani, Flavia A1 - Stegenwallner-Schütz, Maja Henny Katherine A1 - Händler, Yair A1 - Zukowski, Andrea T1 - Elicited production of relative clauses in German: Evidence from typically developing children and children with specific language impairment JF - First language N2 - We elicited the production of various types of relative clauses in a group of German-speaking children with specific language impairment (SLI) and typically developing controls in order to test the movement optionality account of grammatical difficulty in SLI. The results show that German-speaking children with SLI are impaired in relative clause production compared to typically developing children. The alternative structures that they produce consist of simple main clauses, as well as nominal and prepositional phrases produced in isolation, sometimes contextually appropriate, and sometimes not. Crucially for evaluating the movement optionality account, children with SLI produce very few instances of embedded clauses where the relative clause head noun is pronounced in situ; in fact, such responses are more common among the typically developing child controls. These results underscore the difficulty German-speaking children with SLI have with structures involving movement, but provide no specific support for the movement optionality account. KW - Elicited production KW - first language acquisition KW - German KW - relative clauses KW - specific language impairment Y1 - 2016 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1177/0142723716648842 SN - 0142-7237 SN - 1740-2344 VL - 36 SP - 203 EP - 227 PB - Sage Publ. CY - London ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Paape, Dario A1 - Vasishth, Shravan T1 - Local Coherence and Preemptive Digging-in Effects in German JF - Language and speech N2 - 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. KW - Local coherence KW - digging-in effects KW - self-paced reading KW - SOPARSE KW - sentence processing KW - German Y1 - 2016 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1177/0023830915608410 SN - 0023-8309 SN - 1756-6053 VL - 59 SP - 387 EP - 403 PB - Sage Publ. CY - London ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Bhatara, Anjali A1 - Boll-Avetisyan, Natalie A1 - Agus, Trevor A1 - Höhle, Barbara A1 - Nazzi, Thierry T1 - Language Experience Affects Grouping of Musical Instrument Sounds JF - Cognitive science : a multidisciplinary journal of anthropology, artificial intelligence, education, linguistics, neuroscience, philosophy, psychology ; journal of the Cognitive Science Society KW - Cross-linguistic KW - French KW - German KW - Auditory perception KW - Music KW - Rhythmic grouping Y1 - 2016 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1111/cogs.12300 SN - 0364-0213 SN - 1551-6709 VL - 40 SP - 1816 EP - 1830 PB - Wiley-Blackwell CY - Hoboken ER - TY - GEN A1 - Paape, Dario L. J. F. A1 - Vasishth, Shravan T1 - Local coherence and preemptive digging-in effects in German T2 - Postprints der Universität Potsdam : Humanwissenschaftliche Reihe N2 - 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. T3 - Zweitveröffentlichungen der Universität Potsdam : Humanwissenschaftliche Reihe - 417 KW - local coherence KW - digging-in effects KW - self-paced reading KW - SOPARSE KW - sentence processing KW - German Y1 - 2018 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-405337 IS - 417 ER - TY - GEN A1 - Adani, Flavia A1 - Stegenwallner-Schütz, Maja Henny Katherine A1 - Haendler, Yair A1 - Zukowski, Andrea T1 - Elicited production of relative clauses in German BT - evidence from typically developing children and children with specific language impairment T2 - Postprints der Universität Potsdam : Humanwissenschaftliche Reihe N2 - We elicited the production of various types of relative clauses in a group of German-speaking children with specific language impairment (SLI) and typically developing controls in order to test the movement optionality account of grammatical difficulty in SLI. The results show that German-speaking children with SLI are impaired in relative clause production compared to typically developing children. The alternative structures that they produce consist of simple main clauses, as well as nominal and prepositional phrases produced in isolation, sometimes contextually appropriate, and sometimes not. Crucially for evaluating the movement optionality account, children with SLI produce very few instances of embedded clauses where the relative clause head noun is pronounced in situ; in fact, such responses are more common among the typically developing child controls. These results underscore the difficulty German-speaking children with SLI have with structures involving movement, but provide no specific support for the movement optionality account. T3 - Zweitveröffentlichungen der Universität Potsdam : Humanwissenschaftliche Reihe - 409 KW - elicited production KW - first language acquisition KW - German KW - relative clauses KW - specific language impairment Y1 - 2018 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-405149 IS - 409 ER - TY - GEN A1 - Nicenboim, Bruno A1 - Logacev, Pavel A1 - Gattei, Carolina A1 - Vasishth, Shravan T1 - When High-Capacity Readers Slow Down and Low-Capacity Readers Speed Up BT - Working Memory and Locality Effects N2 - We examined the effects of argument-head distance in SVO and SOV languages (Spanish and German), while taking into account readers' working memory capacity and controlling for expectation (Levy, 2008) and other factors. We predicted only locality effects, that is, a slowdown produced by increased dependency distance (Gibson, 2000; Lewis and Vasishth, 2005). Furthermore, we expected stronger locality effects for readers with low working memory capacity. Contrary to our predictions, low-capacity readers showed faster reading with increased distance, while high-capacity readers showed locality effects. We suggest that while the locality effects are compatible with memory-based explanations, the speedup of low-capacity readers can be explained by an increased probability of retrieval failure. We present a computational model based on ACT-R built under the previous assumptions, which is able to give a qualitative account for the present data and can be tested in future research. Our results suggest that in some cases, interpreting longer RTs as indexing increased processing difficulty and shorter RTs as facilitation may be too simplistic: The same increase in processing difficulty may lead to slowdowns in high-capacity readers and speedups in low-capacity ones. Ignoring individual level capacity differences when investigating locality effects may lead to misleading conclusions. T3 - Zweitveröffentlichungen der Universität Potsdam : Humanwissenschaftliche Reihe - 288 KW - locality KW - working memory capacity KW - individual differences KW - Spanish KW - German KW - ACT-R Y1 - 2016 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-90663 SP - 1 EP - 24 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Nicenboim, Bruno A1 - Logacev, Pavel A1 - Gattei, Carolina A1 - Vasishth, Shravan T1 - When High-Capacity Readers Slow Down and Low-Capacity Readers Speed Up BT - Working Memory and Locality Effects JF - Frontiers in psychology N2 - We examined the effects of argument-head distance in SVO and SOV languages (Spanish and German), while taking into account readers' working memory capacity and controlling for expectation (Levy, 2008) and other factors. We predicted only locality effects, that is, a slowdown produced by increased dependency distance (Gibson, 2000; Lewis and Vasishth, 2005). Furthermore, we expected stronger locality effects for readers with low working memory capacity. Contrary to our predictions, low-capacity readers showed faster reading with increased distance, while high-capacity readers showed locality effects. We suggest that while the locality effects are compatible with memory-based explanations, the speedup of low-capacity readers can be explained by an increased probability of retrieval failure. We present a computational model based on ACT-R built under the previous assumptions, which is able to give a qualitative account for the present data and can be tested in future research. Our results suggest that in some cases, interpreting longer RTs as indexing increased processing difficulty and shorter RTs as facilitation may be too simplistic: The same increase in processing difficulty may lead to slowdowns in high-capacity readers and speedups in low-capacity ones. Ignoring individual level capacity differences when investigating locality effects may lead to misleading conclusions. KW - locality KW - working memory capacity KW - individual differences KW - Spanish KW - German KW - ACT-R Y1 - 2016 U6 - https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2016.00280 SN - 1664-1078 VL - 7 SP - 1 EP - 24 PB - Frontiers Research Foundation CY - Lausanne ER - TY - GEN A1 - Paape, Dario L. J. F. T1 - Filling the Silence BT - Reactivation, not Reconstruction N2 - In a self-paced reading experiment, we investigated the processing of sluicing constructions (“sluices”) whose antecedent contained a known garden-path structure in German. Results showed decreased processing times for sluices with garden-path antecedents as well as a disadvantage for antecedents with non-canonical word order downstream from the ellipsis site. A post-hoc analysis showed the garden-path advantage also to be present in the region right before the ellipsis site. While no existing account of ellipsis processing explicitly predicted the results, we argue that they are best captured by combining a local antecedent mismatch effect with memory trace reactivation through reanalysis. T3 - Zweitveröffentlichungen der Universität Potsdam : Humanwissenschaftliche Reihe - 285 KW - ellipsis processing KW - garden-path effect KW - German KW - retrieval KW - reconstruction KW - self-paced reading Y1 - 2016 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-90480 ER -