@article{ReifegersteElinClahsen2018, author = {Reifegerste, Jana and Elin, Kirill and Clahsen, Harald}, title = {Persistent differences between native speakers and late bilinguals}, series = {Bilingualism : language and cognition}, volume = {22}, journal = {Bilingualism : language and cognition}, number = {3}, publisher = {Cambridge Univ. Press}, address = {New York}, issn = {1366-7289}, doi = {10.1017/S1366728918000615}, pages = {425 -- 440}, year = {2018}, abstract = {Previous research with younger adults has revealed differences between native (L1) and non-native late-bilingual (L2) speakers with respect to how morphologically complex words are processed. This study examines whether these L1/L2 differences persist into old age. We tested masked-priming effects for derived and inflected word forms in older L1 and L2 speakers of German and compared them to results from younger L1 and L2 speakers on the same experiment (mean ages: 62 vs. 24). We found longer overall response times paired with better accuracy scores for older (L1 and L2) participants than for younger participants. The priming patterns, however, were not affected by chronological age. While both L1 and L2 speakers showed derivational priming, only the L1 speakers demonstrated inflectional priming. We argue that general performance in both L1 and L2 is affected by aging, but that the more profound differences between native and non-native processing persist into old age.}, language = {en} } @phdthesis{Elin2018, author = {Elin, Kirill}, title = {Morphological processing in older adults}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-418605}, school = {Universit{\"a}t Potsdam}, pages = {217}, year = {2018}, abstract = {Over the last decades mechanisms of recognition of morphologically complex words have been extensively examined in order to determine whether all word forms are stored and retrieved from the mental lexicon as wholes or whether they are decomposed into their morphological constituents such as stems and affixes. Most of the research in this domain focusses on English. Several factors have been argued to affect morphological processing including, for instance, morphological structure of a word (e.g., existence of allomorphic stem alternations) and its linguistic nature (e.g., whether it is a derived word or an inflected word form). It is not clear, however, whether processing accounts based on experimental evidence from English would hold for other languages. Furthermore, there is evidence that processing mechanisms may differ across various populations including children, adult native speakers and language learners. Recent studies claim that processing mechanisms could also differ between older and younger adults (Clahsen \& Reifegerste, 2017; Reifegerste, Meyer, \& Zwitserlood, 2017). The present thesis examined how properties of the morphological structure, types of linguistic operations involved (i.e., the linguistic contrast between inflection and derivation) and characteristics of the particular population such as older adults (e.g., potential effects of ageing as a result of the cognitive decline or greater experience and exposure of older adults) affect initial, supposedly automatic stages of morphological processing in Russian and German. To this end, a series of masked priming experiments was conducted. In experiments on Russian, the processing of derived -ost' nouns (e.g., glupost' 'stupidity') and of inflected forms with and without allomorphic stem alternations in 1P.Sg.Pr. (e.g., igraju - igrat' 'to play' vs. košu - kosit' 'to mow') was examined. The first experiment on German examined and directly compared processing of derived -ung nouns (e.g., Gr{\"u}ndung 'foundation') and inflected -t past participles (e.g., gegr{\"u}ndet 'founded'), whereas the second one investigated the processing of regular and irregular plural forms (-s forms such as Autos 'cars' and -er forms such as Kinder 'children', respectively). The experiments on both languages have shown robust and comparable facilitation effects for derived words and regularly inflected forms without stem changes (-t participles in German, forms of -aj verbs in Russian). Observed morphological priming effects could be clearly distinguished from purely semantic or orthographic relatedness between words. At the same time, we found a contrast between forms with and without allomorphic stem alternations in Russian and regular and irregular forms in German, with significantly more priming for unmarked stems (relative to alternated ones) and significantly more priming for regular (compared) word forms. These findings indicate the relevance of morphological properties of a word for initial stages of processing, contrary to claims made in the literature holding that priming effects are determined by surface form and meaning overlap only. Instead, our findings are more consistent with approaches positing a contrast between combinatorial, rule-based and lexically-stored forms (Clahsen, Sonnenstuhl, \& Blevins, 2003). The doctoral dissertation also addressed the role of ageing and age-related cognitive changes on morphological processing. The results obtained on this research issue are twofold. On the one hand, the data demonstrate effects of ageing on general measures of language performance, i.e., overall longer reaction times and/or higher accuracy rates in older than younger individuals. These findings replicate results from previous studies, which have been linked to the general slowing of processing speed at older age and to the larger vocabularies of older adults. One the other hand, we found that more specific aspects of language processing appear to be largely intact in older adults as revealed by largely similar morphological priming effects for older and younger adults. These latter results indicate that initial stages of morphological processing investigated here by means of the masked priming paradigm persist in older age. One caveat should, however, be noted. Achieving the same performance as a younger individual in a behavioral task may not necessarily mean that the same neural processes are involved. Older people may have to recruit a wider brain network than younger individuals, for example. To address this and related possibilities, future studies should examine older people's neural representations and mechanisms involved in morphological processing.}, language = {en} } @article{WulffBuschhueterWestphaletal.2020, author = {Wulff, Peter and Buschh{\"u}ter, David and Westphal, Andrea and Nowak, Anna and Becker, Lisa and Robalino, Hugo and Stede, Manfred and Borowski, Andreas}, title = {Computer-based classification of preservice physics teachers' written reflections}, series = {Journal of science education and technology}, volume = {30}, journal = {Journal of science education and technology}, number = {1}, publisher = {Springer}, address = {Dordrecht}, issn = {1059-0145}, doi = {10.1007/s10956-020-09865-1}, pages = {1 -- 15}, year = {2020}, abstract = {Reflecting in written form on one's teaching enactments has been considered a facilitator for teachers' professional growth in university-based preservice teacher education. Writing a structured reflection can be facilitated through external feedback. However, researchers noted that feedback in preservice teacher education often relies on holistic, rather than more content-based, analytic feedback because educators oftentimes lack resources (e.g., time) to provide more analytic feedback. To overcome this impediment to feedback for written reflection, advances in computer technology can be of use. Hence, this study sought to utilize techniques of natural language processing and machine learning to train a computer-based classifier that classifies preservice physics teachers' written reflections on their teaching enactments in a German university teacher education program. To do so, a reflection model was adapted to physics education. It was then tested to what extent the computer-based classifier could accurately classify the elements of the reflection model in segments of preservice physics teachers' written reflections. Multinomial logistic regression using word count as a predictor was found to yield acceptable average human-computer agreement (F1-score on held-out test dataset of 0.56) so that it might fuel further development towards an automated feedback tool that supplements existing holistic feedback for written reflections with data-based, analytic feedback.}, language = {en} } @article{UygunClahsen2021, author = {Uygun, Serkan and Clahsen, Harald}, title = {Morphological processing in heritage speakers}, series = {Bilingualism : language and cognition}, volume = {24}, journal = {Bilingualism : language and cognition}, number = {3}, publisher = {Cambridge Univ. Press}, address = {Cambridge}, issn = {1366-7289}, doi = {10.1017/S1366728920000577}, pages = {415 -- 426}, year = {2021}, abstract = {Previous research has shown that heritage speakers struggle with inflectional morphology. 'Limitations of online resources' for processing a non-dominant language has been claimed as one possible reason for these difficulties. To date, however, there is very little experimental evidence on real-time language processing in heritage speakers. Here we report results from a masked priming experiment with 97 bilingual (Turkish/German) heritage speakers and a control group of 40 non-heritage speakers of Turkish examining regular and irregular forms of the Turkish aorist. We found that, for the regular aorist, heritage speakers use the same morphological decomposition mechanism ('affix stripping') as control speakers, whereas for processing irregularly inflected forms they exhibited more variability (i.e., less homogeneous performance) than the control group. Heritage speakers also demonstrated semantic priming effects. At a more general level, these results indicate that heritage speakers draw on multiple sources of information for recognizing morphologically complex words.}, language = {en} } @article{Reifegerste2021, author = {Reifegerste, Jana}, title = {The effects of aging on bilingual language}, series = {Bilingualism : language and cognition}, volume = {24}, journal = {Bilingualism : language and cognition}, number = {1}, publisher = {Cambridge Univ. Press}, address = {Cambridge}, issn = {1366-7289}, doi = {10.1017/S1366728920000413}, pages = {1 -- 17}, year = {2021}, abstract = {Substantial research has examined cognition in aging bilinguals. However, less work has investigated the effects of aging on language itself in bilingualism. In this article I comprehensively review prior research on this topic, and interpret the evidence in light of current theories of aging and theories of bilingualism. First, aging indeed appears to affect bilinguals' language performance, though there is considerable variability in the trajectory across adulthood (declines, age-invariance, and improvements) and in the extent to which these trajectories resemble those found in monolinguals. I argue that these age effects are likely explained by the key opposing forces of increasing experience and cognitive declines in aging. Second, consistent with some theoretical work on bilingual language processing, the grammatical processing mechanisms do not seem to change between younger and older bilingual adults, even after decades of immersion. I conclude by discussing how future research can further advance the field.}, language = {en} } @article{FelserDrummer2022, author = {Felser, Claudia and Drummer, Janna-Deborah}, title = {Binding out of relative clauses in native and non-native sentence comprehension}, series = {Journal of psycholinguistic research}, volume = {51}, journal = {Journal of psycholinguistic research}, number = {4}, publisher = {Springer}, address = {New York}, issn = {0090-6905}, doi = {10.1007/s10936-022-09845-z}, pages = {763 -- 788}, year = {2022}, abstract = {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.}, language = {en} } @article{SchoknechtRoehmSchlesewskyetal.2022, author = {Schoknecht, Pia and Roehm, Dietmar and Schlesewsky, Matthias and Bornkessel-Schlesewsky, Ina}, title = {The interaction of predictive processing and similarity-based retrieval interference}, series = {Language, cognition and neuroscience}, volume = {37}, journal = {Language, cognition and neuroscience}, number = {7}, publisher = {Routledge, Taylor \& Francis Group}, address = {Abingdon}, issn = {2327-3798}, doi = {10.1080/23273798.2022.2026421}, pages = {883 -- 901}, year = {2022}, abstract = {Language processing requires memory retrieval to integrate current input with previous context and making predictions about upcoming input. We propose that prediction and retrieval are two sides of the same coin, i.e. functionally the same, as they both activate memory representations. Under this assumption, memory retrieval and prediction should interact: Retrieval interference can only occur at a word that triggers retrieval and a fully predicted word would not do that. The present study investigated the proposed interaction with event-related potentials (ERPs) during the processing of sentence pairs in German. Predictability was measured via cloze probability. Memory retrieval was manipulated via the position of a distractor inducing proactive or retroactive similarity-based interference. Linear mixed model analyses provided evidence for the hypothesised interaction in a broadly distributed negativity, which we discuss in relation to the interference ERP literature. Our finding supports the proposal that memory retrieval and prediction are functionally the same.}, language = {en} }