@article{StoneVerissimoSchadetal.2021, author = {Stone, Kate and Verissimo, Joao and Schad, Daniel J. and Oltrogge, Elise and Vasishth, Shravan and Lago, Sol}, title = {The interaction of grammatically distinct agreement dependencies in predictive processing}, series = {Language, cognition and neuroscience}, volume = {36}, journal = {Language, cognition and neuroscience}, number = {9}, publisher = {Routledge, Taylor \& Francis Group}, address = {Abingdon}, issn = {2327-3798}, doi = {10.1080/23273798.2021.1921816}, pages = {1159 -- 1179}, year = {2021}, abstract = {Previous research has found that comprehenders sometimes predict information that is grammatically unlicensed by sentence constraints. An open question is why such grammatically unlicensed predictions occur. We examined the possibility that unlicensed predictions arise in situations of information conflict, for instance when comprehenders try to predict upcoming words while simultaneously building dependencies with previously encountered elements in memory. German possessive pronouns are a good testing ground for this hypothesis because they encode two grammatically distinct agreement dependencies: a retrospective one between the possessive and its previously mentioned referent, and a prospective one between the possessive and its following nominal head. In two visual world eye-tracking experiments, we estimated the onset of predictive effects in participants' fixations. The results showed that the retrospective dependency affected resolution of the prospective dependency by shifting the onset of predictive effects. We attribute this effect to an interaction between predictive and memory retrieval processes.}, language = {en} } @article{SchmandtNazziNew2022, author = {Schmandt, Silvana and Nazzi, Thierry and New, Boris}, title = {Consonant, vowel and lexical neighbourhood processing during word recognition: new evidence using the sandwich priming technique}, series = {Language, cognition and neuroscience}, volume = {37}, journal = {Language, cognition and neuroscience}, number = {9}, publisher = {Routledge, Taylor \& Francis Group}, address = {Abingdon}, issn = {2327-3798}, doi = {10.1080/23273798.2022.2046115}, pages = {1115 -- 1130}, year = {2022}, abstract = {Studies on French adults using a written lexical decision task with masked priming, in which targets were more primed by consonant- (jalu-JOLI) than vowel-related (vobi-JOLI) primes, support the proposal that consonants have more weight than vowels in lexical processing. This study examines the phonological and/or lexical nature of this consonant bias (C-bias), using a sandwich priming task in which a brief presentation of the target (pre-prime) precedes the prime-target sequence, a manipulation blocking lexical neighbourhood effects. Results from three experiments (varying pre-prime/prime durations) show consistent C-priming and no significant V-priming at earlier and later processing stages (50 or 66 ms primes). Yet, a joint analysis reveals a small V-priming, while confirming a significant consonant advantage. This demonstrates the contribution of the phonological level to the C-bias. Second, differences in performance comparing the classic versus sandwich priming task also establish a contribution of lexical neighbourhood inhibition effects to the C-bias.}, language = {en} } @article{WieseAlexiadouAllenetal.2022, author = {Wiese, Heike and Alexiadou, Artemis and Allen, Shanley and Bunk, Oliver and Gagarina, Natalia and Iefremenko, Kateryna and Martynova, Maria and Pashkova, Tatiana and Rizou, Vicky and Schroeder, Christoph and Shadrova, Anna and Szucsich, Luka and Tracy, Rosemarie and Tsehaye, Wintai and Zerbian, Sabine and Zuban, Yulia}, title = {Heritage speakers as part of the native language continuum}, series = {Frontiers in psychology}, volume = {12}, journal = {Frontiers in psychology}, publisher = {Frontiers Media}, address = {Lausanne}, issn = {1664-1078}, doi = {10.3389/fpsyg.2021.717973}, pages = {19}, year = {2022}, abstract = {We argue for a perspective on bilingual heritage speakers as native speakers of both their languages and present results from a large-scale, cross-linguistic study that took such a perspective and approached bilinguals and monolinguals on equal grounds. We targeted comparable language use in bilingual and monolingual speakers, crucially covering broader repertoires than just formal language. A main database was the open-access RUEG corpus, which covers comparable informal vs. formal and spoken vs. written productions by adolescent and adult bilinguals with heritage-Greek, -Russian, and -Turkish in Germany and the United States and with heritage-German in the United States, and matching data from monolinguals in Germany, the United States, Greece, Russia, and Turkey. Our main results lie in three areas. (1) We found non-canonical patterns not only in bilingual, but also in monolingual speakers, including patterns that have so far been considered absent from native grammars, in domains of morphology, syntax, intonation, and pragmatics. (2) We found a degree of lexical and morphosyntactic inter-speaker variability in monolinguals that was sometimes higher than that of bilinguals, further challenging the model of the streamlined native speaker. (3) In majority language use, non-canonical patterns were dominant in spoken and/or informal registers, and this was true for monolinguals and bilinguals. In some cases, bilingual speakers were leading quantitatively. In heritage settings where the language was not part of formal schooling, we found tendencies of register leveling, presumably due to the fact that speakers had limited access to formal registers of the heritage language. Our findings thus indicate possible quantitative differences and different register distributions rather than distinct grammatical patterns in bilingual and monolingual speakers. This supports the integration of heritage speakers into the native-speaker continuum. Approaching heritage speakers from this perspective helps us to better understand the empirical data and can shed light on language variation and change in native grammars. Furthermore, our findings for monolinguals lead us to reconsider the state-of-the art on majority languages, given recurring evidence for non-canonical patterns that deviate from what has been assumed in the literature so far, and might have been attributed to bilingualism had we not included informal and spoken registers in monolinguals and bilinguals alike.}, language = {en} } @article{ConradUllrichSchmidtkeetal.2022, author = {Conrad, Markus and Ullrich, Susann and Schmidtke, David S. and Kotz, Sonja A.}, title = {ERPs reveal an iconic relation between sublexical phonology and affective meaning}, series = {Cognition : international journal of cognitive science}, volume = {226}, journal = {Cognition : international journal of cognitive science}, publisher = {Elsevier}, address = {Amsterdam}, issn = {0010-0277}, doi = {10.1016/j.cognition.2022.105182}, pages = {8}, year = {2022}, abstract = {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.}, language = {en} } @article{SchefflerBrandtdelaFuenteetal.2022, author = {Scheffler, Tatjana and Brandt, Lasse and de la Fuente, Marie and Nenchev, Ivan}, title = {Stimulus data and experimental design for a self-paced reading study on emoji-word substitutions}, series = {Data in Brief}, volume = {43}, journal = {Data in Brief}, publisher = {Elsevier}, address = {Amsterdam}, issn = {2352-3409}, doi = {10.1016/j.dib.2022.108399}, pages = {7}, year = {2022}, abstract = {This data paper presents the experimental design and stimuli from an online self-paced reading study on the processing of emojis substituting lexically ambiguous nouns. We recorded reading times for the target ambiguous nouns and for emojis depicting either the intended target referent or a contextually inappropriate homophonous noun. Furthermore, we recorded comprehension accuracy, demographics and a self-assessment of the participants' emoji usage frequency. The data includes all stimuli used, the raw data, the full JavaScript code for the online experiment, as well as Python and R code for the data analysis. We believe that our dataset may give important insights related to the comprehension mechanisms involved in the cognitive processing of emojis. For interpretation and discussion of the experiment, please see the original article entitled "The processing of emoji-word substitutions: A self-paced-reading study".}, language = {en} } @article{BadePicatChungetal.2022, author = {Bade, Nadine and Picat, Leo and Chung, WooJin and Mascarenhas, Salvador}, title = {Alternatives and attention in language and reasoning: A reply to Mascarenhas \& Picat (2019)}, series = {Semantics and Pragmatics}, volume = {15}, journal = {Semantics and Pragmatics}, publisher = {Linguistic Society of America}, address = {Washington}, issn = {1937-8912}, doi = {10.3765/sp.15.2}, pages = {31}, year = {2022}, abstract = {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.}, language = {en} } @article{BuerkiAlarioVasishth2022, author = {B{\"u}rki, Audrey and Alario, F-Xavier and Vasishth, Shravan}, title = {When words collide: Bayesian meta-analyses of distractor and target properties in the picture-word interference paradigm}, series = {Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology}, volume = {76}, journal = {Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology}, number = {6}, publisher = {Sage Publications}, address = {London}, issn = {1747-0218}, doi = {10.1177/17470218221114644}, pages = {1410 -- 1430}, year = {2022}, abstract = {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.}, language = {en} } @article{LiuGoetzLoretteetal.2022, author = {Liu, Liquan and G{\"o}tz, Antonia and Lorette, Pernelle and Tyler, Michael D.}, title = {How tone, intonation and emotion shape the development of infants' fundamental frequency perception}, series = {Frontiers in psychology}, volume = {13}, journal = {Frontiers in psychology}, publisher = {Frontiers Research Foundation}, address = {Lausanne}, issn = {1664-1078}, doi = {10.3389/fpsyg.2022.906848}, pages = {14}, year = {2022}, abstract = {Fundamental frequency (integral(0)), perceived as pitch, is the first and arguably most salient auditory component humans are exposed to since the beginning of life. It carries multiple linguistic (e.g., word meaning) and paralinguistic (e.g., speakers' emotion) functions in speech and communication. The mappings between these functions and integral(0) features vary within a language and differ cross-linguistically. For instance, a rising pitch can be perceived as a question in English but a lexical tone in Mandarin. Such variations mean that infants must learn the specific mappings based on their respective linguistic and social environments. To date, canonical theoretical frameworks and most empirical studies do not view or consider the multi-functionality of integral(0), but typically focus on individual functions. More importantly, despite the eventual mastery of integral(0) in communication, it is unclear how infants learn to decompose and recognize these overlapping functions carried by integral(0). In this paper, we review the symbioses and synergies of the lexical, intonational, and emotional functions that can be carried by integral(0) and are being acquired throughout infancy. On the basis of our review, we put forward the Learnability Hypothesis that infants decompose and acquire multiple integral(0) functions through native/environmental experiences. Under this hypothesis, we propose representative cases such as the synergy scenario, where infants use visual cues to disambiguate and decompose the different integral(0) functions. Further, viable ways to test the scenarios derived from this hypothesis are suggested across auditory and visual modalities. Discovering how infants learn to master the diverse functions carried by integral(0) can increase our understanding of linguistic systems, auditory processing and communication functions.}, language = {en} } @article{SchadNicenboimBuerkneretal.2022, author = {Schad, Daniel and Nicenboim, Bruno and B{\"u}rkner, Paul-Christian and Betancourt, Michael and Vasishth, Shravan}, title = {Workflow techniques for the robust use of bayes factors}, series = {Psychological methods}, volume = {28}, journal = {Psychological methods}, number = {6}, publisher = {American Psychological Association}, address = {Washington}, issn = {1082-989X}, doi = {10.1037/met0000472}, pages = {1404 -- 1426}, year = {2022}, abstract = {Inferences about hypotheses are ubiquitous in the cognitive sciences. Bayes factors provide one general way to compare different hypotheses by their compatibility with the observed data. Those quantifications can then also be used to choose between hypotheses. While Bayes factors provide an immediate approach to hypothesis testing, they are highly sensitive to details of the data/model assumptions and it's unclear whether the details of the computational implementation (such as bridge sampling) are unbiased for complex analyses. Hem, we study how Bayes factors misbehave under different conditions. This includes a study of errors in the estimation of Bayes factors; the first-ever use of simulation-based calibration to test the accuracy and bias of Bayes factor estimates using bridge sampling; a study of the stability of Bayes factors against different MCMC draws and sampling variation in the data; and a look at the variability of decisions based on Bayes factors using a utility function. We outline a Bayes factor workflow that researchers can use to study whether Bayes factors are robust for their individual analysis. Reproducible code is available from haps://osf.io/y354c/.
Translational Abstract
In psychology and related areas, scientific hypotheses are commonly tested by asking questions like "is [some] effect present or absent." Such hypothesis testing is most often carried out using frequentist null hypothesis significance testing (NIIST). The NHST procedure is very simple: It usually returns a p-value, which is then used to make binary decisions like "the effect is present/abscnt." For example, it is common to see studies in the media that draw simplistic conclusions like "coffee causes cancer," or "coffee reduces the chances of geuing cancer." However, a powerful and more nuanced alternative approach exists: Bayes factors. Bayes factors have many advantages over NHST. However, for the complex statistical models that arc commonly used for data analysis today, computing Bayes factors is not at all a simple matter. In this article, we discuss the main complexities associated with computing Bayes factors. This is the first article to provide a detailed workflow for understanding and computing Bayes factors in complex statistical models. The article provides a statistically more nuanced way to think about hypothesis testing than the overly simplistic tendency to declare effects as being "present" or "absent".}, language = {en} } @article{CuperusdeKokdeAguiaretal.2022, author = {Cuperus, Pauline and de Kok, D{\"o}rte and de Aguiar, Vania and Nickels, Lyndsey}, title = {Understanding user needs for digital aphasia therapy}, series = {Aphasiology : an international, interdisciplinary journal}, volume = {37}, journal = {Aphasiology : an international, interdisciplinary journal}, number = {7}, publisher = {Routledge, Taylor \& Francis Group}, address = {London}, issn = {0268-7038}, doi = {10.1080/02687038.2022.2066622}, pages = {1016 -- 1038}, year = {2022}, abstract = {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.}, language = {en} } @article{RaelingHanneSchroederetal.2017, author = {R{\"a}ling, Romy and Hanne, Sandra and Schr{\"o}der, Astrid and Keßler, Carla and Wartenburger, Isabell}, title = {Judging the animacy of words}, series = {Quarterly journal of experimental psychology}, volume = {70}, journal = {Quarterly journal of experimental psychology}, number = {10}, publisher = {Routledge, Taylor \& Francis Group}, address = {Abingdon}, issn = {1747-0218}, doi = {10.1080/17470218.2016.1223704}, pages = {2094 -- 2104}, year = {2017}, abstract = {The age at which members of a semantic category are learned (age of acquisition), the typicality they demonstrate within their corresponding category, and the semantic domain to which they belong (living, non-living) are known to influence the speed and accuracy of lexical/semantic processing. So far, only a few studies have looked at the origin of age of acquisition and its interdependence with typicality and semantic domain within the same experimental design. Twenty adult participants performed an animacy decision task in which nouns were classified according to their semantic domain as being living or non-living. Response times were influenced by the independent main effects of each parameter: typicality, age of acquisition, semantic domain, and frequency. However, there were no interactions. The results are discussed with respect to recent models concerning the origin of age of acquisition effects.}, language = {en} } @article{GanselHernikMłodzianowska2024, author = {Gansel, Carsten and Hernik-Młodzianowska, Monika}, title = {Erinnerungsboom, unzuverl{\"a}ssiges Erinnern und "Tricksder Erinnerung" in Jan Koneffkes "Ein Sonntagskind" (2015)}, series = {Literarische Formen des Erinnerns : die deutschsprachige Gegenwartsliteratur zwischen Aufst{\"o}rung und Stabilisierung}, journal = {Literarische Formen des Erinnerns : die deutschsprachige Gegenwartsliteratur zwischen Aufst{\"o}rung und Stabilisierung}, publisher = {De Gruyter}, address = {Berlin}, isbn = {978-3-11-125141-7}, doi = {10.1515/9783111267777-015}, pages = {279 -- 291}, year = {2024}, language = {de} } @misc{OffredeJacobiReberniketal.2020, author = {Offrede, Tom F. and Jacobi, Jidde and Rebernik, Teja and de Jong, Lisanne and Keulen, Stefanie and Veenstra, Pauline and Noiray, Aude and Wieling, Martijn}, title = {The impact of alcohol on L1 versus L2}, series = {Zweitver{\"o}ffentlichungen der Universit{\"a}t Potsdam : Humanwissenschaftliche Reihe}, journal = {Zweitver{\"o}ffentlichungen der Universit{\"a}t Potsdam : Humanwissenschaftliche Reihe}, number = {3}, issn = {1866-8364}, doi = {10.25932/publishup-54095}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-540955}, pages = {14}, year = {2020}, abstract = {Alcohol intoxication is known to affect many aspects of human behavior and cognition; one of such affected systems is articulation during speech production. Although much research has revealed that alcohol negatively impacts pronunciation in a first language (L1), there is only initial evidence suggesting a potential beneficial effect of inebriation on articulation in a non-native language (L2). The aim of this study was thus to compare the effect of alcohol consumption on pronunciation in an L1 and an L2. Participants who had ingested different amounts of alcohol provided speech samples in their L1 (Dutch) and L2 (English), and native speakers of each language subsequently rated the pronunciation of these samples on their intelligibility (for the L1) and accent nativelikeness (for the L2). These data were analyzed with generalized additive mixed modeling. Participants' blood alcohol concentration indeed negatively affected pronunciation in L1, but it produced no significant effect on the L2 accent ratings. The expected negative impact of alcohol on L1 articulation can be explained by reduction in fine motor control. We present two hypotheses to account for the absence of any effects of intoxication on L2 pronunciation: (1) there may be a reduction in L1 interference on L2 speech due to decreased motor control or (2) alcohol may produce a differential effect on each of the two linguistic subsystems.}, language = {en} } @article{OffredeJacobiReberniketal.2020, author = {Offrede, Tom F. and Jacobi, Jidde and Rebernik, Teja and de Jong, Lisanne and Keulen, Stefanie and Veenstra, Pauline and Noiray, Aude and Wieling, Martijn}, title = {The impact of alcohol on L1 versus L2}, series = {Language and Speech}, volume = {64}, journal = {Language and Speech}, number = {3}, publisher = {SAGE Publications}, address = {Thousand Oaks}, issn = {1756-6053}, doi = {10.1177/0023830920953169}, pages = {681 -- 692}, year = {2020}, abstract = {Alcohol intoxication is known to affect many aspects of human behavior and cognition; one of such affected systems is articulation during speech production. Although much research has revealed that alcohol negatively impacts pronunciation in a first language (L1), there is only initial evidence suggesting a potential beneficial effect of inebriation on articulation in a non-native language (L2). The aim of this study was thus to compare the effect of alcohol consumption on pronunciation in an L1 and an L2. Participants who had ingested different amounts of alcohol provided speech samples in their L1 (Dutch) and L2 (English), and native speakers of each language subsequently rated the pronunciation of these samples on their intelligibility (for the L1) and accent nativelikeness (for the L2). These data were analyzed with generalized additive mixed modeling. Participants' blood alcohol concentration indeed negatively affected pronunciation in L1, but it produced no significant effect on the L2 accent ratings. The expected negative impact of alcohol on L1 articulation can be explained by reduction in fine motor control. We present two hypotheses to account for the absence of any effects of intoxication on L2 pronunciation: (1) there may be a reduction in L1 interference on L2 speech due to decreased motor control or (2) alcohol may produce a differential effect on each of the two linguistic subsystems.}, language = {en} } @misc{FrankRadtkeNienstedtetal.2021, author = {Frank, Ulrike and Radtke, Julia and Nienstedt, Julie Cl{\"a}re and P{\"o}tter-Nerger, Monika and Sch{\"o}nwald, Beate and Buhmann, Carsten and Gerloff, Christian and Niessen, Almut and Fl{\"u}gel, Till and Koseki, Jana-Christiane and Pflug, Christina}, title = {Dysphagia screening in Parkinson's Disease}, series = {Zweitver{\"o}ffentlichungen der Universit{\"a}t Potsdam : Humanwissenschaftliche Reihe}, journal = {Zweitver{\"o}ffentlichungen der Universit{\"a}t Potsdam : Humanwissenschaftliche Reihe}, number = {5}, issn = {1866-8364}, doi = {10.25932/publishup-56962}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-569625}, pages = {10}, year = {2021}, abstract = {Background Simple water-swallowing screening tools are not predictive of aspiration and dysphagia in patients with Parkinson's Disease (PD). We investigated the diagnostic accuracy of a multi-texture screening tool, the Gugging Swallowing Screen (GUSS) to identify aspiration and dysphagia/penetration in PD patients compared to flexible endoscopic evaluation of swallowing (FEES). Methods Swallowing function was evaluated in 51 PD participants in clinical 'on-medication' state with the GUSS and a FEES examination according to standardized protocols. Inter-rater reliability and convergent validity were determined and GUSS- and FEES-based diet recommendations were compared. Key Results Inter-rater reliability of GUSS ratings was high (r(s) = 0.8; p < 0.001). Aspiration was identified by the GUSS with a sensitivity of 50\%, and specificity of 51.35\% (PPV 28\%, NPV 73\%, LR+ 1.03, LR- 0.97), dysphagia/penetration was identified with 72.97\% sensitivity and 35.71\% specificity (PPV 75\%, NPV 33.33\%, LR+ 1.14, LR- 0.76). Agreement between GUSS- and FEES-based diet recommendations was low (r(s) = 0.12, p = 0.42) with consistent NPO (Nil per Os) allocation by GUSS and FEES in only one participant. Conclusions and Inferences The multi-texture screening tool GUSS in its current form, although applicable with good inter-rater reliability, does not detect aspiration in PD patients with acceptable accuracy. Modifications of the GUSS parameters "coughing," "voice change" and "delayed swallowing" might enhance validity. The GUSS' diet recommendations overestimate the need for oral intake restriction in PD patients and should be verified by instrumental swallowing examination.}, language = {en} } @misc{vonderMalsburgPoppelsLevy2020, author = {von der Malsburg, Titus Raban and Poppels, Till and Levy, Roger P.}, title = {Implicit gender bias in linguistic descriptions for expected events}, series = {Zweitver{\"o}ffentlichungen der Universit{\"a}t Potsdam : Humanwissenschaftliche Reihe}, journal = {Zweitver{\"o}ffentlichungen der Universit{\"a}t Potsdam : Humanwissenschaftliche Reihe}, number = {2}, issn = {1866-8364}, doi = {10.25932/publishup-51615}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-516154}, pages = {16}, year = {2020}, abstract = {Gender stereotypes influence subjective beliefs about the world, and this is reflected in our use of language. But do gender biases in language transparently reflect subjective beliefs? Or is the process of translating thought to language itself biased? During the 2016 United States (N = 24,863) and 2017 United Kingdom (N = 2,609) electoral campaigns, we compared participants' beliefs about the gender of the next head of government with their use and interpretation of pronouns referring to the next head of government. In the United States, even when the female candidate was expected to win, she pronouns were rarely produced and induced substantial comprehension disruption. In the United Kingdom, where the incumbent female candidate was heavily favored, she pronouns were preferred in production but yielded no comprehension advantage. These and other findings suggest that the language system itself is a source of implicit biases above and beyond previously known biases, such as those measured by the Implicit Association Test.}, language = {en} } @article{vonderMalsburgPoppelsLevy2020, author = {von der Malsburg, Titus Raban and Poppels, Till and Levy, Roger P.}, title = {Implicit gender bias in linguistic descriptions for expected events}, series = {Psychological Science}, volume = {31}, journal = {Psychological Science}, number = {2}, publisher = {Sage}, address = {London}, issn = {0956-7976}, doi = {10.1177/0956797619890619}, pages = {115 -- 128}, year = {2020}, abstract = {Gender stereotypes influence subjective beliefs about the world, and this is reflected in our use of language. But do gender biases in language transparently reflect subjective beliefs? Or is the process of translating thought to language itself biased? During the 2016 United States (N = 24,863) and 2017 United Kingdom (N = 2,609) electoral campaigns, we compared participants' beliefs about the gender of the next head of government with their use and interpretation of pronouns referring to the next head of government. In the United States, even when the female candidate was expected to win, she pronouns were rarely produced and induced substantial comprehension disruption. In the United Kingdom, where the incumbent female candidate was heavily favored, she pronouns were preferred in production but yielded no comprehension advantage. These and other findings suggest that the language system itself is a source of implicit biases above and beyond previously known biases, such as those measured by the Implicit Association Test.}, language = {en} } @article{ParshinaLaurinavichyuteSekerina2021, author = {Parshina, Olga and Laurinavichyute, Anna and Sekerina, Irina A.}, title = {Eye-movement benchmarks in heritage language reading}, series = {Bilingualism : language and cognition}, volume = {24}, journal = {Bilingualism : language and cognition}, number = {1}, publisher = {Cambridge University Press}, address = {Cambridge}, issn = {1366-7289}, doi = {10.1017/S136672892000019X}, pages = {69 -- 82}, year = {2021}, abstract = {This eye-tracking study establishes basic benchmarks of eye movements during reading in heritage language (HL) by Russian-speaking adults and adolescents of high (n = 21) and low proficiency (n = 27). Heritage speakers (HSs) read sentences in Cyrillic, and their eye movements were compared to those of Russian monolingual skilled adult readers, 8-year-old children and L2 learners. Reading patterns of HSs revealed longer mean fixation durations, lower skipping probabilities, and higher regressive saccade rates than in monolingual adults. High-proficient HSs were more similar to monolingual children, while low-proficient HSs performed on par with L2 learners. Low-proficient HSs differed from high-proficient HSs in exhibiting lower skipping probabilities, higher fixation counts, and larger frequency effects. Taken together, our findings are consistent with the weaker links account of bilingual language processing as well as the divergent attainment theory of HL.}, language = {en} } @article{HoehleFritzscheMessetal.2020, author = {H{\"o}hle, Barbara and Fritzsche, Tom and Meß, Katharina and Philipp, Mareike and Gafos, Adamantios I.}, title = {Only the right noise?}, series = {Developmental Science}, volume = {23}, journal = {Developmental Science}, number = {5}, publisher = {Wiley-Blackwell}, address = {Oxford}, issn = {1363-755X}, doi = {10.1111/desc.12950}, pages = {1 -- 16}, year = {2020}, abstract = {Seminal work by Werker and colleagues (Stager \& Werker [1997]Nature, 388, 381-382) has found that 14-month-old infants do not show evidence for learning minimal pairs in the habituation-switch paradigm. However, when multiple speakers produce the minimal pair in acoustically variable ways, infants' performance improves in comparison to a single speaker condition (Rost \& McMurray [2009]Developmental Science, 12, 339-349). The current study further extends these results and assesses how different kinds of input variability affect 14-month-olds' minimal pair learning in the habituation-switch paradigm testing German learning infants. The first two experiments investigated word learning when the labels were spoken by a single speaker versus when the labels were spoken by multiple speakers. In the third experiment we studied whether non-acoustic variability, implemented by visual variability of the objects presented together with the labels, would also affect minimal pair learning. We found enhanced learning in the multiple speakers compared to the single speaker condition, confirming previous findings with English-learning infants. In contrast, visual variability of the presented objects did not support learning. These findings both confirm and better delimit the beneficial role of speech-specific variability in minimal pair learning. Finally, we review different proposals on the mechanisms via which variability confers benefits to learning and outline what may be likely principles that underlie this benefit. We highlight among these the multiplicity of acoustic cues signalling phonemic contrasts and the presence of relations among these cues. It is in these relations where we trace part of the source for the apparent paradoxical benefit of variability in learning.}, language = {en} } @misc{HoehleFritzscheMessetal.2020, author = {H{\"o}hle, Barbara and Fritzsche, Tom and Meß, Katharina and Philipp, Mareike and Gafos, Adamantios I.}, title = {Only the right noise?}, series = {Zweitver{\"o}ffentlichungen der Universit{\"a}t Potsdam : Humanwissenschaftliche Reihe}, journal = {Zweitver{\"o}ffentlichungen der Universit{\"a}t Potsdam : Humanwissenschaftliche Reihe}, number = {5}, issn = {1866-8364}, doi = {10.25932/publishup-51667}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-516674}, pages = {18}, year = {2020}, abstract = {Seminal work by Werker and colleagues (Stager \& Werker [1997]Nature, 388, 381-382) has found that 14-month-old infants do not show evidence for learning minimal pairs in the habituation-switch paradigm. However, when multiple speakers produce the minimal pair in acoustically variable ways, infants' performance improves in comparison to a single speaker condition (Rost \& McMurray [2009]Developmental Science, 12, 339-349). The current study further extends these results and assesses how different kinds of input variability affect 14-month-olds' minimal pair learning in the habituation-switch paradigm testing German learning infants. The first two experiments investigated word learning when the labels were spoken by a single speaker versus when the labels were spoken by multiple speakers. In the third experiment we studied whether non-acoustic variability, implemented by visual variability of the objects presented together with the labels, would also affect minimal pair learning. We found enhanced learning in the multiple speakers compared to the single speaker condition, confirming previous findings with English-learning infants. In contrast, visual variability of the presented objects did not support learning. These findings both confirm and better delimit the beneficial role of speech-specific variability in minimal pair learning. Finally, we review different proposals on the mechanisms via which variability confers benefits to learning and outline what may be likely principles that underlie this benefit. We highlight among these the multiplicity of acoustic cues signalling phonemic contrasts and the presence of relations among these cues. It is in these relations where we trace part of the source for the apparent paradoxical benefit of variability in learning.}, language = {en} } @misc{CiaccioClahsen2019, author = {Ciaccio, Laura Anna and Clahsen, Harald}, title = {Variability and consistency in first and second language processing}, series = {Zweitver{\"o}ffentlichungen der Universit{\"a}t Potsdam : Humanwissenschaftliche Reihe}, journal = {Zweitver{\"o}ffentlichungen der Universit{\"a}t Potsdam : Humanwissenschaftliche Reihe}, number = {1}, issn = {1866-8364}, doi = {10.25932/publishup-51772}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-517727}, pages = {36}, year = {2019}, abstract = {Word forms such as walked or walker are decomposed into their morphological constituents (walk + -ed/-er) during language comprehension. Yet, the efficiency of morphological decomposition seems to vary for different languages and morphological types, as well as for first and second language speakers. The current study reports results from a visual masked priming experiment focusing on different types of derived word forms (specifically prefixed vs. suffixed) in first and second language speakers of German. We compared the present findings with results from previous studies on inflection and compounding and proposed an account of morphological decomposition that captures both the variability and the consistency of morphological decomposition for different morphological types and for first and second language speakers. Open Practices This article has been awarded an Open Materials badge. Study materials are publicly accessible via the Open Science Framework at . Learn more about the Open Practices badges from the Center for Open Science.}, language = {en} } @misc{RubergRothweilerVerissimoetal.2019, author = {Ruberg, Tobias and Rothweiler, Monika and Ver{\´i}ssimo, Jo{\~a}o Marques and Clahsen, Harald}, title = {Childhood bilingualism and Specific Language Impairment}, series = {Zweitver{\"o}ffentlichungen der Universit{\"a}t Potsdam : Humanwissenschaftliche Reihe}, journal = {Zweitver{\"o}ffentlichungen der Universit{\"a}t Potsdam : Humanwissenschaftliche Reihe}, number = {3}, issn = {1866-8364}, doi = {10.25932/publishup-51809}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-518095}, pages = {15}, year = {2019}, abstract = {This study addresses the question of whether and how growing up with more than one language shapes a child's language impairment. Our focus is on Specific Language Impairment (SLI) in bilingual (Turkish-German) children. We specifically investigated a range of phenomena related to the so-called CP (Complementizer Phrase) in German, the hierarchically highest layer of syntactic clause structure, which has been argued to be particularly affected in children with SLI. Spontaneous speech data were examined from bilingual children with SLI in comparison to two comparison groups: (i) typically-developing bilingual children, (ii) monolingual children with SLI. We found that despite persistent difficulty with subject-verb agreement, the two groups of children with SLI did not show any impairment of the CP-domain. We conclude that while subject-verb agreement is a suitable linguistic marker of SLI in German-speaking children, for both monolingual and bilingual ones, 'vulnerability of the CP-domain' is not.}, language = {en} } @article{RubergRothweilerVerissimoetal.2019, author = {Ruberg, Tobias and Rothweiler, Monika and Ver{\´i}ssimo, Jo{\~a}o Marques and Clahsen, Harald}, title = {Childhood bilingualism and Specific Language Impairment}, series = {Bilingualism: Language and Cognition}, volume = {23}, journal = {Bilingualism: Language and Cognition}, number = {3}, publisher = {Cambridge Univ. Press}, address = {Cambridge}, issn = {1366-7289}, doi = {10.1017/S1366728919000580}, pages = {668 -- 680}, year = {2019}, abstract = {This study addresses the question of whether and how growing up with more than one language shapes a child's language impairment. Our focus is on Specific Language Impairment (SLI) in bilingual (Turkish-German) children. We specifically investigated a range of phenomena related to the so-called CP (Complementizer Phrase) in German, the hierarchically highest layer of syntactic clause structure, which has been argued to be particularly affected in children with SLI. Spontaneous speech data were examined from bilingual children with SLI in comparison to two comparison groups: (i) typically-developing bilingual children, (ii) monolingual children with SLI. We found that despite persistent difficulty with subject-verb agreement, the two groups of children with SLI did not show any impairment of the CP-domain. We conclude that while subject-verb agreement is a suitable linguistic marker of SLI in German-speaking children, for both monolingual and bilingual ones, 'vulnerability of the CP-domain' is not.}, language = {en} } @phdthesis{Zona2024, author = {Zona, Carlotta Isabella}, title = {Visuo-linguistic integration for thematic-role assignment across speakers}, doi = {10.25932/publishup-63185}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-631857}, school = {Universit{\"a}t Potsdam}, pages = {147}, year = {2024}, abstract = {This dissertation examines the integration of incongruent visual-scene and morphological-case information ("cues") in building thematic-role representations of spoken relative clauses in German. Addressing the mutual influence of visual and linguistic processing, the Coordinated Interplay Account (CIA) describes a mechanism in two steps supporting visuo-linguistic integration (Knoeferle \& Crocker, 2006, Cog Sci). However, the outcomes and dynamics of integrating incongruent thematic-role representations from distinct sources have been investigated scarcely. Further, there is evidence that both second-language (L2) and older speakers may rely on non-syntactic cues relatively more than first-language (L1)/young speakers. Yet, the role of visual information for thematic-role comprehension has not been measured in L2 speakers, and only limitedly across the adult lifespan. Thematically unambiguous canonically ordered (subject-extracted) and noncanonically ordered (object-extracted) spoken relative clauses in German (see 1a-b) were presented in isolation and alongside visual scenes conveying either the same (congruent) or the opposite (incongruent) thematic relations as the sentence did. 1 a Das ist der Koch, der die Braut verfolgt. This is the.NOM cook who.NOM the.ACC bride follows This is the cook who is following the bride. b Das ist der Koch, den die Braut verfolgt. This is the.NOM cook whom.ACC the.NOM bride follows This is the cook whom the bride is following. The relative contribution of each cue to thematic-role representations was assessed with agent identification. Accuracy and latency data were collected post-sentence from a sample of L1 and L2 speakers (Zona \& Felser, 2023), and from a sample of L1 speakers from across the adult lifespan (Zona \& Reifegerste, under review). In addition, the moment-by-moment dynamics of thematic-role assignment were investigated with mouse tracking in a young L1 sample (Zona, under review). The following questions were addressed: (1) How do visual scenes influence thematic-role representations of canonical and noncanonical sentences? (2) How does reliance on visual-scene, case, and word-order cues vary in L1 and L2 speakers? (3) How does reliance on visual-scene, case, and word-order cues change across the lifespan? The results showed reliable effects of incongruence of visually and linguistically conveyed thematic relations on thematic-role representations. Incongruent (vs. congruent) scenes yielded slower and less accurate responses to agent-identification probes presented post-sentence. The recently inspected agent was considered as the most likely agent ~300ms after trial onset, and the convergence of visual scenes and word order enabled comprehenders to assign thematic roles predictively. L2 (vs. L1) participants relied more on word order overall. In response to noncanonical clauses presented with incongruent visual scenes, sensitivity to case predicted the size of incongruence effects better than L1-L2 grouping. These results suggest that the individual's ability to exploit specific cues might predict their weighting. Sensitivity to case was stable throughout the lifespan, while visual effects increased with increasing age and were modulated by individual interference-inhibition levels. Thus, age-related changes in comprehension may stem from stronger reliance on visually (vs. linguistically) conveyed meaning. These patterns represent evidence for a recent-role preference - i.e., a tendency to re-assign visually conveyed thematic roles to the same referents in temporally coordinated utterances. The findings (i) extend the generalizability of CIA predictions across stimuli, tasks, populations, and measures of interest, (ii) contribute to specifying the outcomes and mechanisms of detecting and indexing incongruent representations within the CIA, and (iii) speak to current efforts to understand the sources of variability in sentence comprehension.}, language = {en} } @article{HeffnerFuhrmeisterLuthraetal.2022, author = {Heffner, Christopher C. and Fuhrmeister, Pamela and Luthra, Sahil and Mechtenberg, Hannah and Saltzman, David and Myers, Emily B.}, title = {Reliability and validity for perceptual flexibility in speech}, series = {Brain and language : a journal of clinical, experimental and theoretical research}, volume = {226}, journal = {Brain and language : a journal of clinical, experimental and theoretical research}, publisher = {Elsevier}, address = {Amsterdam [u.a.]}, issn = {0093-934X}, doi = {10.1016/j.bandl.2021.105070}, pages = {11}, year = {2022}, abstract = {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.}, language = {en} } @article{LaurinavichyutevonderMalsburg2022, author = {Laurinavichyute, Anna and von der Malsburg, Titus}, title = {Semantic attraction in sentence comprehension}, series = {Cognitive science}, volume = {46}, journal = {Cognitive science}, number = {2}, publisher = {Wiley}, address = {Hoboken}, issn = {0364-0213}, doi = {10.1111/cogs.13086}, pages = {38}, year = {2022}, abstract = {Agreement attraction is a cross-linguistic phenomenon where a verb occasionally agrees not with its subject, as required by grammar, but instead with an unrelated noun ("The key to the cabinets were horizontal ellipsis "). Despite the clear violation of grammatical rules, comprehenders often rate these sentences as acceptable. Contenders for explaining agreement attraction fall into two broad classes: Morphosyntactic accounts specifically designed to explain agreement attraction, and more general sentence processing models, such as the Lewis and Vasishth model, which explain attraction as a consequence of how linguistic structure is stored and accessed in content-addressable memory. In the present research, we disambiguate between these two classes by testing a surprising prediction made by the Lewis and Vasishth model but not by the morphosyntactic accounts, namely, that attraction should not be limited to morphosyntax, but that semantic features of unrelated nouns equally induce attraction. A recent study by Cunnings and Sturt provided initial evidence that this may be the case. Here, we report three single-trial experiments in English that compared semantic and agreement attraction and tested whether and how the two interact. All three experiments showed strong semantically induced attraction effects closely mirroring agreement attraction effects. We complement these results with computational simulations which confirmed that the Lewis and Vasishth model can faithfully reproduce the observed results. In sum, our findings suggest that attraction is a more general phenomenon than is commonly believed, and therefore favor more general sentence processing models, such as the Lewis and Vasishth model.}, language = {en} } @phdthesis{Rubertus2024, author = {Rubertus, Elina}, title = {Coarticulatory changes across childhood}, doi = {10.25932/publishup-63012}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-630123}, school = {Universit{\"a}t Potsdam}, pages = {X, 131}, year = {2024}, abstract = {The present dissertation investigates changes in lingual coarticulation across childhood in German-speaking children from three to nine years of age and adults. Coarticulation refers to the mismatch between the abstract phonological units and their seemingly commingled realization in continuous speech. Being a process at the intersection of phonology and phonetics, addressing its changes across childhood allows for insights in speech motor as well as phonological developments. Because specific predictions for changes in coarticulation across childhood can be derived from existing speech production models, investigating children's coarticulatory patterns can help us model human speech production. While coarticulatory changes may shed light on some of the central questions of speech production development, previous studies on the topic were sparse and presented a puzzling picture of conflicting findings. One of the reasons for this lack is the difficulty in articulatory data acquisition in a young population. Within the research program this dissertation is embedded in, we accepted this challenge and successfully set up the hitherto largest corpus of articulatory data from children using ultrasound tongue imaging. In contrast to earlier studies, a high number of participants in tight age cohorts across a wide age range and a thoroughly controlled set of pseudowords allowed for statistically powerful investigations of a process known as variable and complicated to track. The specific focus of my studies is on lingual vocalic coarticulation as measured in the horizontal position of the highest point of the tongue dorsum. Based on three studies on a) anticipatory coarticulation towards the left, b) carryover coarticulation towards the right side of the utterance, and c) anticipatory coarticulatory extent in repeated versus read aloud speech, I deduct the following main theses: 1. Maturing speech motor control is responsible for some developmental changes in coarticulation. 2. Coarticulation can be modeled as the coproduction of articulatory gestures. 3. The developmental change in coarticulation results from a decrease of vocalic activation width.}, language = {en} } @phdthesis{Shipova2024, author = {Shipova, Evgeniya}, title = {Formal analysis of {\`e}to-clefts in Russian: syntax and semantics}, doi = {10.25932/publishup-63014}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-630149}, school = {Universit{\"a}t Potsdam}, pages = {219}, year = {2024}, abstract = {{\`E}to-clefts are Russian focus constructions with the demonstrative pronoun {\`e}to 'this' at the beginning: "{\`E}to Mark vyigral gonku" ("It was Mark who won the race"). They are often being compared with English it-clefts, German es-clefts, as well as the corresponding focus-background structures in other languages. In terms of semantics, {\`e}to-clefts have two important properties which are cross-linguistically typical for clefts: existence presupposition ("Someone won the race") and exhaustivity ("Nobody except Mark won the race"). However, the exhaustivity effects are not as strong as exhaustivity effects in structures with the exclusive only and require more research. At the same time, the question if the syntactic structure of {\`e}to-clefts matches the biclausal structure of English and German clefts, remains open. There are arguments in favor of biclausality, as well as monoclausality. Besides, there is no consistency regarding the status of {\`e}to itself. Finally, the information structure of {\`e}to-clefts has remained underexplored in the existing literature. This research investigates the information-structural, syntactic, and semantic properties of Russian clefts, both theoretically (supported by examples from Russian text corpora and judgments from native speakers) and experimentally. It is determined which desired changes in the information structure motivate native speakers to choose an {\`e}to-cleft and not the canonical structure or other focus realization tools. Novel syntactic tests are conducted to find evidence for bi-/monoclausality of {\`e}to-clefts, as well as for base-generation or movement of the cleft pivot. It is hypothesized that {\`e}to has a certain important function in clefts, and its status is investigated. Finally, new experiments on the nature of exhaustivity in {\`e}to-clefts are conducted. They allow for direct cross-linguistic comparison, using an incremental-information paradigm with truth-value judgments. In terms of information structure, this research makes a new proposal that presents {\`e}to-clefts as structures with an inherent focus-background bipartitioning. Even though {\`e}to-clefts are used in typical focus contexts, evidence was found that {\`e}to-clefts (as well as Russian thetic clefts) allow for both new information focus and contrastive focus. {\`E}to-clefts are pragmatically acceptable when a singleton answer to the implied question is expected (e.g. "It was Mark who won the race" but not "It was Mark who came to the party"). Importantly, {\`e}to in Russian clefts is neither dummy, nor redundant, but is a topic expression; conveys familiarity which triggers existence presupposition; refers to an instantiated event, or a known/perceivable situation; finally, {\`e}to plays an important role in the spoken language as a tool for speech coherency and a focus marker. In terms of syntax, this research makes a new monoclausal proposal and shows evidence that the cleft pivot undergoes movement to the left peripheral position. {\`E}to is proposed to be TopP. Finally, in terms of semantics, a novel cross-linguistic evaluation of Russian clefts is made. Experiments show that the exhaustivity inference in {\`e}to-clefts is not robust. Participants used different strategies in resolving exhaustivity, falling into 2 groups: one group considered {\`e}to-clefts exhaustive, while another group considered them non-exhaustive. Hence, there is evidence for the pragmatic nature of exhaustivity in {\`e}to-clefts. The experimental results for {\`e}to-clefts are similar to the experimental results for clefts in German, French and Akan. It is concluded that speakers use different tools available in their languages to produce structures with similar interpretive properties.}, language = {en} } @phdthesis{Boila2024, author = {Boila, Chiara}, title = {The processing of OVS and passive sentences in German monolingual and German-Italian simultaneous bilingual children}, doi = {10.25932/publishup-62972}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-629723}, school = {Universit{\"a}t Potsdam}, pages = {xv, 223}, year = {2024}, abstract = {It is a common finding that preschoolers have difficulties in identifying who is doing what to whom in non-canonical sentences, such as (object-verb-subject) OVS and passive sentences in German. This dissertation investigates how German monolingual and German-Italian simultaneous bilingual children process German OVS sentences in Study 1 and German passives in Study 2. Offline data (i.e., accuracy data) and online data (i.e., eye-gaze and pupillometry data) were analyzed to explore whether children can assign thematic roles during sentence comprehension and processing. Executive functions, language-internal and -external factors were investigated as potential predictors for children's sentence comprehension and processing. Throughout the literature, there are contradicting findings on the relation between language and executive functions. While some results show a bilingual cognitive advantage over monolingual speakers, others suggest there is no relationship between bilingualism and executive functions. If bilingual children possess more advanced executive function abilities than monolingual children, then this might also be reflected in a better performance on linguistic tasks. In the current studies monolingual and bilingual children were tested by means of two executive function tasks: the Flanker task and the task-switching paradigm. However, these findings showed no bilingual cognitive advantages and no better performance by bilingual children in the linguistic tasks. The performance was rather comparable between bilingual and monolingual children, or even better for the monolingual group. This may be due to cross-linguistic influences and language experience (i.e., language input and output). Italian was used because it does not syntactically overlap with the structure of German OVS sentences, and it only overlapped with one of the two types of sentence condition used for the passive study - considering the subject-(finite)verb alignment. The findings showed a better performance of bilingual children in the passive sentence structure that syntactically overlapped in the two languages, providing evidence for cross-linguistic influences. Further factors for children's sentence comprehension were considered. The parents' education, the number of older siblings and language experience variables were derived from a language background questionnaire completed by parents. Scores of receptive vocabulary and grammar, visual and short-term memory and reasoning ability were measured by means of standardized tests. It was shown that higher German language experience by bilinguals correlates with better accuracy in German OVS sentences but not in passive sentences. Memory capacity had a positive effect on the comprehension of OVS and passive sentences in the bilingual group. Additionally, a role was played by executive function abilities in the comprehension of OVS sentences and not of passive sentences. It is suggested that executive function abilities might help children in the sentence comprehension task when the linguistic structures are not yet fully mastered. Altogether, these findings show that bilinguals' poorer performance in the comprehension and processing of German OVS is mainly due to reduced language experience in German, and that the different performance of bilingual children with the two types of passives is mainly due to cross-linguistic influences.}, language = {en} } @article{KiddGarcia2022, author = {Kidd, Evan and Garcia, Rowena}, title = {How diverse is child language acquisition research?}, series = {First language}, volume = {42}, journal = {First language}, number = {6}, publisher = {Sage}, address = {London [u.a.]}, issn = {0142-7237}, doi = {10.1177/01427237211066405}, pages = {703 -- 735}, year = {2022}, abstract = {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.}, language = {en} } @article{SkopeteasVerhoevenFanselow2022, author = {Skopeteas, Stavros and Verhoeven, Elisabeth and Fanselow, Gisbert}, title = {Discontinuous noun phrases in Yucatec Maya}, series = {Journal of linguistics : JL / publ. for the Linguistics Association of Great Britain}, volume = {58}, journal = {Journal of linguistics : JL / publ. for the Linguistics Association of Great Britain}, number = {3}, publisher = {Cambridge University Press}, address = {New York}, issn = {0022-2267}, doi = {10.1017/S0022226720000419}, pages = {609 -- 648}, year = {2022}, abstract = {Languages differ in whether or not they allow discontinuous noun phrases. If they do, they further vary in the ways the nominal projections interact with the available syntactic operations. Yucatec Maya has two left-peripheral configurations that differ syntactically: a preverbal position for foci or wh-elements that is filled in by movement, and the possibility to adjoin topics at the highest clausal layer. These two structural options are reflected in different ways of the formation of discontinuous patterns. Subextraction from nominal projections to the focus position yielding discontinuous NPs is possible, but subject to several restrictions. It observes conditions on extraction domains, and does not apply to the left branch of nominal structures. The topic position also appears to license discontinuity, typically involving a non-referential nominal expression as the topic and quantifiers/adjectives that form an elliptical nominal projection within the clause proper. Such constructions can involve several morphological and syntactic mismatches between their parts that are excluded for continuous noun phrases, and they are not sensitive to syntactic island restrictions. Thus, in a strict sense, discontinuities involving the topic position are only apparent, because the construction involves two independent nominal projections that are semantically linked.}, language = {en} } @article{YadavHusainFutrell2021, author = {Yadav, Himanshu and Husain, Samar and Futrell, Richard}, title = {Do dependency lengths explain constraints on crossing dependencies?}, series = {Linguistics vanguard : multimodal online journal}, volume = {7}, journal = {Linguistics vanguard : multimodal online journal}, publisher = {De Gruyter Mouton}, address = {Berlin ; New York, NY}, issn = {2199-174X}, doi = {10.1515/lingvan-2019-0070}, pages = {15}, year = {2021}, abstract = {In syntactic dependency trees, when arcs are drawn from syntactic heads to dependents, they rarely cross. Constraints on these crossing dependencies are critical for determining the syntactic properties of human language, because they define the position of natural language in formal language hierarchies. We study whether the apparent constraints on crossing syntactic dependencies in natural language might be explained by constraints on dependency lengths (the linear distance between heads and dependents). We compare real dependency trees from treebanks of 52 languages against baselines of random trees which are matched with the real trees in terms of their dependency lengths. We find that these baseline trees have many more crossing dependencies than real trees, indicating that a constraint on dependency lengths alone cannot explain the empirical rarity of crossing dependencies. However, we find evidence that a combined constraint on dependency length and the rate of crossing dependencies might be able to explain two of the most-studied formal restrictions on dependency trees: gap degree and well-nestedness.}, language = {en} } @article{CzapkaSchwieterFestman2022, author = {Czapka, Sophia and Schwieter, John W. and Festman, Julia}, title = {The influence of peripheral emotions on inhibitory control among children}, series = {Acta psychologica : international journal of psychonomics}, volume = {223}, journal = {Acta psychologica : international journal of psychonomics}, publisher = {Elsevier}, address = {Amsterdam}, issn = {0001-6918}, doi = {10.1016/j.actpsy.2022.103507}, pages = {10}, year = {2022}, abstract = {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.}, language = {en} } @article{VicenteBarrosMessicketal.2021, author = {Vicente, Luis and Barros, Matthew and Messick, Troy and Saab, Andres}, title = {On a nonargument for cleft sources in sluicing}, series = {Linguistic inquiry}, volume = {52}, journal = {Linguistic inquiry}, number = {4}, publisher = {MIT Press}, address = {Cambridge}, issn = {0024-3892}, doi = {10.1162/ling_a_00390}, pages = {867 -- 880}, year = {2021}, abstract = {On the basis of certain semantic intuitions, Barros (2012) argues that ellipsis does not require structural isomorphism between elided structure and its antecedent. We tackle this claim. Semantic intuitions cannot be a pointer to the analysis of silent structure. We provide empirical evidence that raises the question of to what extent semantic intuitions about plausible articulable syntax must inform one's analysis of silent structure. We conclude that the answer to this question must be crosslinguistically informed. We conjecture that ellipsis introduces ellipsis-specific interpretive mechanisms, so that intuitions about "how the unelided structure would be interpreted" are not empirically relevant.}, language = {en} } @article{AlbertNicenboim2022, author = {Albert, Aviad and Nicenboim, Bruno}, title = {Modeling sonority in terms of pitch intelligibility with the nucleus attraction principle}, series = {Cognitive science : a multidisciplinary journal of anthropology, artificial intelligence, education, linguistics, neuroscience, philosophy, psychology ; journal of the Cognitive Science Society}, volume = {46}, journal = {Cognitive science : a multidisciplinary journal of anthropology, artificial intelligence, education, linguistics, neuroscience, philosophy, psychology ; journal of the Cognitive Science Society}, number = {7}, publisher = {Wiley}, address = {Hoboken}, issn = {0364-0213}, doi = {10.1111/cogs.13161}, pages = {68}, year = {2022}, abstract = {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.}, language = {en} } @article{CiaccioVerissimo2022, author = {Ciaccio, Laura Anna and Ver{\´i}ssimo, Jo{\~a}o}, title = {Investigating variability in morphological processing with Bayesian distributional models}, series = {Psychonomic bulletin \& review : a journal of the Psychonomic Society}, journal = {Psychonomic bulletin \& review : a journal of the Psychonomic Society}, publisher = {Springer}, address = {New York}, issn = {1069-9384}, doi = {10.3758/s13423-022-02109-w}, pages = {2264 -- 2274}, year = {2022}, abstract = {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.}, language = {en} } @article{BarthWeingartenKuettnerRaymond2021, author = {Barth-Weingarten, Dagmar and K{\"u}ttner, Uwe-Alexander and Raymond, Chase Wesley}, title = {Pivots revisited}, series = {Open linguistics}, volume = {7}, journal = {Open linguistics}, number = {1}, publisher = {de Gruyter}, address = {Warsaw}, issn = {2300-9969}, doi = {10.1515/opli-2020-0152}, pages = {613 -- 637}, year = {2021}, abstract = {The term "pivot" usually refers to two overlapping syntactic units such that the completion of the first unit simultaneously launches the second. In addition, pivots are generally said to be characterized by the smooth prosodic integration of their syntactic parts. This prosodic integration is typically achieved by prosodic-phonetic matching of the pivot components. As research on such turns in a range of languages has illustrated, speakers routinely deploy pivots so as to be able to continue past a point of possible turn completion, in the service of implementing some additional or revised action. This article seeks to build on, and complement, earlier research by exploring two issues in more detail as follows: (1) what exactly do pivotal turn extensions accomplish on the action dimension, and (2) what role does prosodic-phonetic packaging play in this? We will show that pivot constructions not only exhibit various degrees of prosodic-phonetic (non-)integration, i.e., differently strong cesuras, but that they can be ordered on a continuum, and that this cline maps onto the relationship of the actions accomplished by the components of the pivot construction. While tighter prosodic-phonetic integration, i.e., weak(er) cesuring, co-occurs with post-pivot actions whose relationship to that of the pre-pivot tends to be rather retrospective in character, looser prosodic-phonetic integration, i.e., strong(er) cesuring, is associated with a more prospective orientation of the post-pivot's action. These observations also raise more general questions with regard to the analysis of action.}, 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} } @article{GianelliKuehneLoPrestietal.2020, author = {Gianelli, Claudia and K{\"u}hne, Katharina and Lo Presti, Sara and Mencaraglia, Silvia and Dalla Volta, Riccardo}, title = {Action processing in the motor system}, series = {Brain and cognition : a journal of experimental and clinical research}, volume = {139}, journal = {Brain and cognition : a journal of experimental and clinical research}, publisher = {Elsevier}, address = {San Diego}, issn = {0278-2626}, doi = {10.1016/j.bandc.2019.105510}, pages = {10}, year = {2020}, abstract = {In two experiments, we compared the dynamics of corticospinal excitability when processing visually or linguistically presented tool-oriented hand actions in native speakers and sequential bilinguals. In a third experiment we used the same procedure to test non-motor, low-level stimuli, i.e. scrambled images and pseudo-words. Stimuli were presented in sequence: pictures (tool + tool-oriented hand action or their scrambled counterpart) and words (tool noun + tool-action verb or pseudo-words). Experiment 1 presented German linguistic stimuli to native speakers, while Experiment 2 presented English stimuli to non-natives. Experiment 3 tested Italian native speakers. Single-pulse trascranial magnetic stimulation (spTMS) was applied to the left motor cortex at five different timings: baseline, 200 ms after tool/noun onset, 150, 350 and 500 ms after hand/verb onset with motor-evoked potentials (MEPs) recorded from the first dorsal interosseous (FDI) and abductor digiti minimi (ADM) muscles. We report strong similarities in the dynamics of corticospinal excitability across the visual and linguistic modalities. MEPs' suppression started as early as 150 ms and lasted for the duration of stimulus presentation (500 ms). Moreover, we show that this modulation is absent for stimuli with no motor content. Overall, our study supports the notion of a core, overarching system of action semantics shared by different modalities.}, language = {en} } @article{SotiropoulouGibsonGafos2020, author = {Sotiropoulou, Stavroula and Gibson, Mark and Gafos, Adamantios I.}, title = {Global organization in Spanish onsets}, series = {Journal of phonetics}, volume = {82}, journal = {Journal of phonetics}, publisher = {Elsevier}, address = {London}, issn = {0095-4470}, doi = {10.1016/j.wocn.2020.100995}, pages = {22}, year = {2020}, abstract = {This paper addresses the relation between syllable structure and inter-segmental temporal coordination. The data examined are Electromagnetic Articulometry recordings from six speakers of Central Peninsular Spanish (henceforth, Spanish), producing words beginning with the clusters /pl, bl, kl, gl, p(sic), k(sic), t(sic)/ as well as corresponding unclustered sonorant-initial words in three vowel contexts /a, e, o/. In our results, we find evidence for a global organization of the segments involved in these combinations. This is reflected in a number of ways: shortening of the prevocalic sonorant in the cluster-initial case compared to the unclustered case, reorganization of the relative timing of the internal CV subsequence (in a CCV) in the obstruent-lateral context, early vowel initiation, and a strong compensatory relation between the duration of the obstruent-to-lateral transition and the duration of the lateral. In other words, we find that the global organization presiding over the segments partaking in these tautosyllabic CCVs is pleiotropic, that is, simultaneously expressed over a set of different phonetic parameters rather than via a privileged metric such as c-center stability or any other such given single measure (employed in prior works).}, language = {en} } @article{NicenboimVasishthRoesler2020, author = {Nicenboim, Bruno and Vasishth, Shravan and R{\"o}sler, Frank}, title = {Are words pre-activated probabilistically during sentence comprehension?}, series = {Neuropsychologia : an international journal in behavioural and cognitive neuroscience}, volume = {142}, journal = {Neuropsychologia : an international journal in behavioural and cognitive neuroscience}, publisher = {Elsevier Science}, address = {Oxford}, issn = {0028-3932}, doi = {10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2020.107427}, pages = {27}, year = {2020}, abstract = {Several studies (e.g., Wicha et al., 2003b; DeLong et al., 2005) have shown that readers use information from the sentential context to predict nouns (or some of their features), and that predictability effects can be inferred from the EEG signal in determiners or adjectives appearing before the predicted noun. While these findings provide evidence for the pre-activation proposal, recent replication attempts together with inconsistencies in the results from the literature cast doubt on the robustness of this phenomenon. Our study presents the first attempt to use the effect of gender on predictability in German to study the pre-activation hypothesis, capitalizing on the fact that all German nouns have a gender and that their preceding determiners can show an unambiguous gender marking when the noun phrase has accusative case. Despite having a relatively large sample size (of 120 subjects), both our preregistered and exploratory analyses failed to yield conclusive evidence for or against an effect of pre-activation. The sign of the effect is, however, in the expected direction: the more unexpected the gender of the determiner, the larger the negativity. The recent, inconclusive replication attempts by Nieuwland et al. (2018) and others also show effects with signs in the expected direction. We conducted a Bayesian random-ef-fects meta-analysis using our data and the publicly available data from these recent replication attempts. Our meta-analysis shows a relatively clear but very small effect that is consistent with the pre-activation account and demonstrates a very important advantage of the Bayesian data analysis methodology: we can incrementally accumulate evidence to obtain increasingly precise estimates of the effect of interest.}, 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{HornFritzscheEhlertetal.2021, author = {Horn, Peter and Fritzsche, Tom and Ehlert, Antje and Adani, Flavia}, title = {Tapping into the interplay of lexical and number knowledge using fast mapping}, series = {Infant behavior \& development : an international and interdisciplinary journal}, volume = {64}, journal = {Infant behavior \& development : an international and interdisciplinary journal}, publisher = {Elsevier}, address = {Amsterdam}, issn = {0163-6383}, doi = {10.1016/j.infbeh.2021.101573}, pages = {11}, year = {2021}, abstract = {Language skills and mathematical competencies are argued to influence each other during development. While a relation between the development of vocabulary size and mathematical skills is already documented in the literature, this study further examines how children's ability to map a novel word to an unknown object as well as their ability to retain this word from memory may be related to their knowledge of number words. Twenty-five children were tested longitudinally (at 30 and at 36 months of age) using an eye-tracking-based fast mapping task, the Give-a Number task, and standardized measures of vocabulary. The results reveal that children's ability to create and retain a mental representation of a novel word was related to number knowledge at 30 months, but not at 36 months while vocabulary size correlated with number knowledge only at 36 months. These results show that even specific mapping processes are initially related to the acquisition of number words and they speak for a parallelism between the development of lexical and number-concept knowledge despite their semantic and syntactic differences.}, language = {en} } @article{MuellerBeerFrank2022, author = {M{\"u}ller, Nina and Beer, Carola de and Frank, Ulrike}, title = {Ist die therapeutische Mundpflege bei Dysphagiepatient*innen verschwendete Zeit?}, series = {Sprache, Stimme, Geh{\"o}r : Zeitschrift f{\"u}r Kommunikationsst{\"o}rungen}, volume = {46}, journal = {Sprache, Stimme, Geh{\"o}r : Zeitschrift f{\"u}r Kommunikationsst{\"o}rungen}, number = {03}, publisher = {Thieme}, address = {Stuttgart}, issn = {0342-0477}, doi = {10.1055/a-1714-1587}, pages = {150 -- 155}, year = {2022}, abstract = {Aspirationspneumonien sind eine h{\"a}ufige Todesursache bei Dysphagiepatient*innen. In diesem Beitrag wird durch die Evaluation relevanter Studien die Frage untersucht, ob die therapeutische Mundpflege bei Dysphagiepatient*innen zur Verringerung des Pneumonierisikos beitragen kann. Zudem wird auf dieser Grundlage eine Handlungsempfehlung f{\"u}r die Umsetzung der Mundpflege entwickelt. Die ausgew{\"a}hlten Studien zeigen, dass die Mundpflege einen positiven Effekt auf das Pneumonie-Risiko von Dysphagiepatient*innen hat. Sie sollte auf den Grunds{\"a}tzen Einfachheit, Sicherheit, Arbeitskr{\"a}fteentlastung, Wirksamkeit, Universalit{\"a}t, Wirtschaftlichkeit und vollst{\"a}ndige Mundpflege aller Teile der Mundh{\"o}hle beruhen und nimmt weniger als f{\"u}nf Minuten t{\"a}glich ein. Sie bereitet durch die taktile Stimulation auf die anschließende Dysphagie-Therapie vor und ist somit sinnvoll investierte Therapiezeit.}, language = {de} } @article{FuhrmeisterMadecLorenzetal.2022, author = {Fuhrmeister, Pamela and Madec, Sylvain and Lorenz, Antje and Elbuy, Shereen and B{\"u}rki Foschini, Audrey Damaris}, title = {Behavioural and EEG evidence for inter-individual variability in late encoding stages of word production}, 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 = {10.1080/23273798.2022.2030483}, pages = {902 -- 924}, year = {2022}, abstract = {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.}, language = {en} } @article{PerugiaPaetzelPruesmannAlanenpaeaeetal.2021, author = {Perugia, Giulia and Paetzel-Pr{\"u}smann, Maike and Alanenp{\"a}{\"a}, Madelene and Castellano, Ginevra}, title = {I can see it in your eyes}, series = {Frontiers in robotics and AI}, volume = {8}, journal = {Frontiers in robotics and AI}, publisher = {Frontiers Media}, address = {Lausanne}, issn = {2296-9144}, doi = {10.3389/frobt.2021.645956}, pages = {18}, year = {2021}, abstract = {Over the past years, extensive research has been dedicated to developing robust platforms and data-driven dialog models to support long-term human-robot interactions. However, little is known about how people's perception of robots and engagement with them develop over time and how these can be accurately assessed through implicit and continuous measurement techniques. In this paper, we explore this by involving participants in three interaction sessions with multiple days of zero exposure in between. Each session consists of a joint task with a robot as well as two short social chats with it before and after the task. We measure participants' gaze patterns with a wearable eye-tracker and gauge their perception of the robot and engagement with it and the joint task using questionnaires. Results disclose that aversion of gaze in a social chat is an indicator of a robot's uncanniness and that the more people gaze at the robot in a joint task, the worse they perform. In contrast with most HRI literature, our results show that gaze toward an object of shared attention, rather than gaze toward a robotic partner, is the most meaningful predictor of engagement in a joint task. Furthermore, the analyses of gaze patterns in repeated interactions disclose that people's mutual gaze in a social chat develops congruently with their perceptions of the robot over time. These are key findings for the HRI community as they entail that gaze behavior can be used as an implicit measure of people's perception of robots in a social chat and of their engagement and task performance in a joint task.}, language = {en} } @article{SalzmannWierzbaGeorgi2023, author = {Salzmann, Martin and Wierzba, Marta and Georgi, Doreen}, title = {Condition C in German A'-movement}, series = {Journal of linguistics : JL}, volume = {59}, journal = {Journal of linguistics : JL}, number = {3}, publisher = {Cambridge Univ. Press}, address = {London [u.a.]}, issn = {0022-2267}, doi = {10.1017/S0022226722000214}, pages = {577 -- 622}, year = {2023}, abstract = {In recent experimental work, arguments for or against Condition C reconstruction in A'-movement have been based on low/high availability of coreference in sentences with and without A'-movement. We argue that this reasoning is problematic: It involves arbitrary thresholds, and the results are potentially confounded by the different surface orders of the compared structures and non-syntactic factors. We present three experiments with designs that do not require defining thresholds of 'low' or 'high' coreference values. Instead, we focus on grammatical contrasts (wh-movement vs. relativization, subject vs. object wh-movement) and aim to identify and reduce confounds. The results show that reconstruction for A'-movement of DPs is not very robust in German, contra previous findings. Our results are compatible with the view that the surface order and non-syntactic factors (e.g. plausibility, referential accessibility of an R-expression) heavily influence coreference possibilities. Thus, the data argue against a theory that includes both reconstruction and a hard Condition C constraint. There is a residual contrast between sentences with subject/object movement, which is compatible with an account without reconstruction (and an additional non-syntactic factor) or an account with reconstruction (and a soft Condition C constraint).}, language = {en} } @article{StoneVasishthvonderMalsburg2022, author = {Stone, Kate and Vasishth, Shravan and von der Malsburg, Titus Raban}, title = {Does entropy modulate the prediction of German long-distance verb particles?}, series = {PLOS ONE}, volume = {17}, journal = {PLOS ONE}, number = {8}, publisher = {PLOS}, address = {San Francisco, California, US}, issn = {1932-6203}, doi = {10.1371/journal.pone.0267813}, pages = {25}, year = {2022}, abstract = {In this paper we examine the effect of uncertainty on readers' predictions about meaning. In particular, we were interested in how uncertainty might influence the likelihood of committing to a specific sentence meaning. We conducted two event-related potential (ERP) experiments using particle verbs such as turn down and manipulated uncertainty by constraining the context such that readers could be either highly certain about the identity of a distant verb particle, such as turn the bed [...] down, or less certain due to competing particles, such as turn the music [...] up/down. The study was conducted in German, where verb particles appear clause-finally and may be separated from the verb by a large amount of material. We hypothesised that this separation would encourage readers to predict the particle, and that high certainty would make prediction of a specific particle more likely than lower certainty. If a specific particle was predicted, this would reflect a strong commitment to sentence meaning that should incur a higher processing cost if the prediction is wrong. If a specific particle was less likely to be predicted, commitment should be weaker and the processing cost of a wrong prediction lower. If true, this could suggest that uncertainty discourages predictions via an unacceptable cost-benefit ratio. However, given the clear predictions made by the literature, it was surprisingly unclear whether the uncertainty manipulation affected the two ERP components studied, the N400 and the PNP. Bayes factor analyses showed that evidence for our a priori hypothesised effect sizes was inconclusive, although there was decisive evidence against a priori hypothesised effect sizes larger than 1 mu Vfor the N400 and larger than 3 mu V for the PNP. We attribute the inconclusive finding to the properties of verb-particle dependencies that differ from the verb-noun dependencies in which the N400 and PNP are often studied.}, language = {en} } @article{vanOmmenBollAvetisyanLarrazaetal.2020, author = {van Ommen, Sandrien and Boll-Avetisyan, Natalie and Larraza, Saioa and Wellmann, Caroline and Bijeljac-Babic, Ranka and H{\"o}hle, Barbara and Nazzi, Thierry}, title = {Language-specific prosodic acquisition}, series = {Journal of memory and language: JML}, volume = {112}, journal = {Journal of memory and language: JML}, publisher = {Elsevier}, address = {Amsterdam}, issn = {0749-596X}, doi = {10.1016/j.jml.2020.104108}, pages = {16}, year = {2020}, abstract = {This study compares the development of prosodic processing in French- and German-learning infants. The emergence of language-specific perception of phrase boundaries was directly tested using the same stimuli across these two languages. French-learning (Experiment 1, 2) and German-learning 6- and 8-month-olds (Experiment 3) listened to the same French noun sequences with or without major prosodic boundaries ([Loulou et Manou] [et Nina]; [Loulou et Manou et Nina], respectively). The boundaries were either naturally cued (Experiment 1), or cued exclusively by pitch and duration (Experiment 2, 3). French-learning 6- and 8-month-olds both perceived the natural boundary, but neither perceived the boundary when only two cues were present. In contrast, German-learning infants develop from not perceiving the two-cue boundary at 6 months to perceiving it at 8 months, just like German-learning 8-month-olds listening to German (Wellmann, Holzgrefe, Truckenbrodt, Wartenburger, \& Hohle, 2012). In a control experiment (Experiment 4), we found little difference between German and French adult listeners, suggesting that later, French listeners catch up with German listeners. Taken together, these cross-linguistic differences in the perception of identical stimuli provide direct evidence for language-specific development of prosodic boundary perception.}, language = {en} } @article{LialiouSotiropoulouGafos2021, author = {Lialiou, Maria and Sotiropoulou, Stavroula and Gafos, Adamantios I.}, title = {Spatiotemporal coordination in word-medial stop-lateral and s-stop clusters of American English}, series = {Phonetica : international journal of phonetic science}, volume = {78}, journal = {Phonetica : international journal of phonetic science}, number = {5-6}, publisher = {De Gruyter Mouton}, address = {Berlin}, issn = {0031-8388}, doi = {10.1515/phon-2021-2010}, pages = {385 -- 433}, year = {2021}, abstract = {This paper is concerned with the relation between syllabic organization and intersegmental spatiotemporal coordination using Electromagnetic Articulometry recordings from seven speakers of American English (henceforth, English). Whereas previous work on English has focused on word-initial clusters (preceding a vowel whose identity was not systematically varied), the present work examined word-medial clusters /pl, kl, sp, sk/ in the context of three different vowel heights (high, mid, low). Our results provide evidence for a global organization for the segments involved in these cluster-vowel combinations. This is reflected in a number of ways: compression of the prevocalic consonant and reduction of CV timing in the word-medial cluster case compared to its singleton paired word in both stop-lateral and s-stop clusters, early vowel initiation (as permitted by the clusters' phonetic properties), and presence of compensatory relations between phonetic properties of different segments or intersegmental transitions within each cluster. In other words, we find that the global organization presiding over the segments partaking in these word-medial tautosyllabic CCVs is pleiotropic, that is, simultaneously expressed in multiple phonetic exponents rather than via a privileged metric such as c-center stability or any other such given single measure employed in previous works.}, language = {en} } @article{PueblaAntunesFelser2022, author = {Puebla Antunes, Cecilia and Felser, Claudia}, title = {Discourse Prominence and Antecedent MisRetrieval during Native and Non-Native Pronoun Resolution}, series = {Discours : revue de linguistique, psycholinguistique et informatique}, journal = {Discours : revue de linguistique, psycholinguistique et informatique}, number = {29}, publisher = {Universit{\´e} de Paris-Sorbonne, Maion Recherche}, address = {Paris}, issn = {1963-1723}, doi = {10.4000/discours.11720}, pages = {33}, year = {2022}, abstract = {Previous studies on non-native (L2) anaphor resolution suggest that L2 comprehenders are guided more strongly by discourse-level cues compared to native (L1) comprehenders. Here we examine whether and how a grammatically inappropriate antecedent's discourse status affects the likelihood of it being considered during L1 and L2 pronoun resolution. We used an interference paradigm to examine how the extrasentential discourse impacts the resolution of German object pronouns. In an eye-tracking-during-reading experiment we examined whether an elaborated local antecedent ruled out by binding Condition B would be mis-retrieved during pronoun resolution, and whether initially introducing this antecedent as the discourse topic would affect the chances of it being mis-retrieved. While both participant groups rejected the inappropriate antecedent in an offline questionnaire irrespective of its discourse prominence, their real-time processing patterns differed. L1 speakers initially mis-retrieved the inappropriate antecedent regardless of its contextual prominence. L1 Russian/L2 German speakers, in contrast, were affected by the antecedent's discourse status, considering it only when it was discourse-new but not when it had previously been introduced as the discourse topic. Our findings show that L2 comprehenders are highly sensitive to discourse dynamics such as topic shifts, supporting the claim that discourse-level cues are more strongly weighted during L2 compared to L1 processing.}, language = {en} } @article{PaapeVasishth2022, author = {Paape, Dario and Vasishth, Shravan}, title = {Estimating the true cost of garden pathing:}, series = {Cognitive science}, volume = {46}, journal = {Cognitive science}, number = {8}, publisher = {Wiley-Blackwell}, address = {Malden, Mass.}, issn = {0364-0213}, doi = {10.1111/cogs.13186}, pages = {23}, year = {2022}, abstract = {What is the processing cost of being garden-pathed by a temporary syntactic ambiguity? We argue that comparing average reading times in garden-path versus non-garden-path sentences is not enough to answer this question. Trial-level contaminants such as inattention, the fact that garden pathing may occur non-deterministically in the ambiguous condition, and "triage" (rejecting the sentence without reanalysis; Fodor \& Inoue, 2000) lead to systematic underestimates of the true cost of garden pathing. Furthermore, the "pure" garden-path effect due to encountering an unexpected word needs to be separated from the additional cost of syntactic reanalysis. To get more realistic estimates for the individual processing costs of garden pathing and syntactic reanalysis, we implement a novel computational model that includes trial-level contaminants as probabilistically occurring latent cognitive processes. The model shows a good predictive fit to existing reading time and judgment data. Furthermore, the latent-process approach captures differences between noun phrase/zero complement (NP/Z) garden-path sentences and semantically biased reduced relative clause (RRC) garden-path sentences: The NP/Z garden path occurs nearly deterministically but can be mostly eliminated by adding a comma. By contrast, the RRC garden path occurs with a lower probability, but disambiguation via semantic plausibility is not always effective.}, language = {en} } @article{SchadVasishth2022, author = {Schad, Daniel and Vasishth, Shravan}, title = {The posterior probability of a null hypothesis given a statistically significant result}, series = {The quantitative methods for psychology}, volume = {18}, journal = {The quantitative methods for psychology}, number = {2}, publisher = {University of Montreal, Department of Psychology}, address = {Montreal}, issn = {1913-4126}, doi = {10.20982/tqmp.18.2.p011}, pages = {130 -- 141}, year = {2022}, abstract = {When researchers carry out a null hypothesis significance test, it is tempting to assume that a statistically significant result lowers Prob(H0), the probability of the null hypothesis being true. Technically, such a statement is meaningless for various reasons: e.g., the null hypothesis does not have a probability associated with it. However, it is possible to relax certain assumptions to compute the posterior probability Prob(H0) under repeated sampling. We show in a step-by-step guide that the intuitively appealing belief, that Prob(H0) is low when significant results have been obtained under repeated sampling, is in general incorrect and depends greatly on: (a) the prior probability of the null being true; (b) type-I error rate, (c) type-II error rate, and (d) replication of a result. Through step-by-step simulations using open-source code in the R System of Statistical Computing, we show that uncertainty about the null hypothesis being true often remains high despite a significant result. To help the reader develop intuitions about this common misconception, we provide a Shiny app (https://danielschad.shinyapps.io/probnull/). We expect that this tutorial will help researchers better understand and judge results from null hypothesis significance tests.}, language = {en} } @article{PetersvanHattum2021, author = {Peters, Arne and van Hattum, Marije}, title = {Pseudonyms as carriers of contextualised threat in 19th-century Irish English threatening notices}, series = {English world-wide : a journal of varieties of English}, volume = {42}, journal = {English world-wide : a journal of varieties of English}, number = {1}, publisher = {John Benjamins Publishing Co.}, address = {Amsterdam}, issn = {0172-8865}, doi = {10.1075/eww.00059.pet}, pages = {29 -- 53}, year = {2021}, abstract = {This paper explores functions of pseudonyms in written threatening communication from a cognitive sociolinguistic perspective. It addresses the semantic domains present in pseudonyms in a corpus of 19th-century Irish English threatening notices and their cognitive functions in the construction of both cultural-contextualised threat and the threatener's identity. We identify eight semantic domains that are accessed recurrently in order to create threat. Contributing to the notion of threat involves menacing war, violence, darkness and perdition directly, while also constructing a certain persona for the threatener that highlights their motivation, moral superiority, historical, local and circumstantial expertise, and their physical and mental aptitude. We argue that pseudonyms contribute to the deontic force of the threat by accessing cultural categories and schemas as well as conceptual metaphors and metonymies. Finally, we suggest that pseudonyms function as post-positioned semantic frame setters, providing a cognitive lens through which the entire threatening notice must be interpreted.}, language = {en} } @phdthesis{Philipp2023, author = {Philipp, Mareike}, title = {Quantifier scope ambiguities in English, German, and Asante Twi (Akan): structural and pragmatic factors}, doi = {10.25932/publishup-61235}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-612356}, school = {Universit{\"a}t Potsdam}, pages = {ix, 291}, year = {2023}, abstract = {This thesis is concerned with the phenomenon of quantifier scope ambiguities. This phenomenon has been researched extensively, both from a theoretical and from an empirical point of view. Nevertheless, there are still a number of under-researched topics in the field of quantifier scope, which will be the main focus of this thesis. I will take a closer look at three languages, English, German, and the Asante Twi dialect of Akan (Kwa, Niger-Kongo). The goal is a better understanding of the phenomenon of quantifier scope both within each language, as well as from a cross-linguistic perspective. First, this thesis will provide a series of experiments that allow a direct cross-linguistic comparison between English and German - two languages about which specific claims have been made in the literature. I will also provide exploratory research in the case of Asante Twi, where so far, no work has been dedicated specifically to the study of quantifier scope. The work on Asante Twi will go beyond quantifier scope and also target the quantifier and determiner system in general. The question is not only if particular scope readings are possible or not, but also which factors contribute to an increase or decrease of scope availability, and if there are factors that block certain scope readings altogether. While some of the results confirm and thereby strengthen previous claims, other results contradict general assumptions in the literature. This is particularly the case for inverse readings in German and inverse readings across clause-boundaries.}, language = {en} } @article{SunNgO'Brienetal.2020, author = {Sun, He and Ng, Siew Chin and O'Brien, Beth Ann and Fritzsche, Tom}, title = {Child, family, and school factors in bilingual preschoolers' vocabulary development in heritage languages}, series = {Journal of Child Language}, volume = {47}, journal = {Journal of Child Language}, number = {4}, publisher = {Cambridge University Press}, address = {New York}, issn = {0305-0009}, doi = {10.1017/S0305000919000904}, pages = {817 -- 843}, year = {2020}, abstract = {Child characteristics, family factors, and preschool factors are all found to affect the rate of bilingual children's vocabulary development in heritage language (HL). However, what remains unknown is the relative importance of these three sets of factors in HL vocabulary growth. The current study explored the complex issue with 457 Singaporean preschool children who are speaking either Mandarin, Malay, or Tamil as their HL. A series of internal factors (e.g., non-verbal intelligence) and external factors (e.g., maternal educational level) were used to predict children's HL vocabulary growth over a year at preschool with linear mixed effects models. The results demonstrated that external factors (i.e., family and preschool factors) are relatively more important than child characteristics in enhancing bilingual children's HL vocabulary growth. Specifically, children's language input quantity (i.e., home language dominance), input quality (e.g., number of books in HL), and HL input quantity at school (i.e., the time between two waves of tests at preschool) predict the participants' HL vocabulary growth, with initial vocabulary controlled. The relative importance of external factors in bilingual children's HL vocabulary development is attributed to the general bilingual setting in Singapore, where HL is taken as a subject to learn at preschool and children have fairly limited exposure to HL in general. The limited amount of input might not suffice to trigger the full expression of internal resources. Our findings suggest the crucial roles that caregivers and preschools play in early HL education, and the necessity of more parental involvement in early HL learning in particular.}, language = {en} } @misc{TanDueringWildeetal.2023, author = {Tan, Sarah and D{\"u}ring, Sarah and Wilde, Alina and Hamburger, Lara and Fritzsche, Tom and Felsing, Ulrike and Lauer, Norina and Corsten, Sabine and Ostermann, Frank and Nonn, Kerstin and Nerz, Verena and Neumann, Sandra and Zauke, Svenja and Sandrieser, Patricia and Steinberg, Romy Simone and Thurmann, Anika and D{\"o}rr, Fiona and Bilda, Kerstin and Kluth, Alicia and Lemire-Tremblay, Marilyne and Jamey, Kevin and Dalla Bella, Simone and Falk, Simone and Kleing{\"u}nther, Constanze and Gabler, Katrin and Elligsen, Chiara and Weiland, Katharina and Wiehe, Lea and Wahl, Michael and Binczyk, Sarah and Staebel, Cornelia and Jung, Stefanie and Eikerling, Maren and Czok, Clara and Sallat, Stephan and Collasius, Valerie and Grahovac, Tena}, title = {Spektrum Patholinguistik Band 16. Schwerpunktthema: Schnittstelle Alltag: Transfer und Teilhabe in der Sprachtherapie}, number = {16}, editor = {Tan, Sarah and D{\"u}ring, Sarah and Wilde, Alina and Hamburger, Lara and Fritzsche, Tom}, publisher = {Universit{\"a}tsverlag Potsdam}, address = {Potsdam}, isbn = {978-3-86956-559-0}, issn = {1866-9433}, doi = {10.25932/publishup-59043}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-590433}, pages = {viii, 234}, year = {2023}, abstract = {Das 16. Herbsttreffen Patholinguistik mit dem Schwerpunktthema »Schnittstelle Alltag: Transfer und Teilhabe in der Sprachtherapie« fand am 19.11.2022 als Online-Veranstaltung statt. Das Herbsttreffen wird seit 2007 j{\"a}hrlich vom Verband f{\"u}r Patholinguistik e.V. (vpl), seit 2021 vom Deutschen Bundesverband f{\"u}r akademische Sprachtherapie und Logop{\"a}die (dbs) in Kooperation mit der Universit{\"a}t Potsdam durchgef{\"u}hrt. Der vorliegende Tagungsband beinhaltet die Vortr{\"a}ge zum Schwerpunktthema sowie die Posterpr{\"a}sentationen zu weiteren Themen aus der sprachtherapeutischen Forschung und Praxis.}, language = {de} } @article{LopukhinaLopukhinLaurinavichyute2021, author = {Lopukhina, Anastasiya and Lopukhin, Konstantin and Laurinavichyute, Anna}, title = {Morphosyntactic but not lexical corpus-based probabilities can substitute for cloze probabilities in reading experiments}, series = {PLOS ONE / Public Library of Science}, volume = {16}, journal = {PLOS ONE / Public Library of Science}, number = {1}, publisher = {PLoS}, address = {San Fransisco}, issn = {1932-6203}, doi = {10.1371/journal.pone.0246133}, pages = {26}, year = {2021}, abstract = {During reading or listening, people can generate predictions about the lexical and morphosyntactic properties of upcoming input based on available context. Psycholinguistic experiments that study predictability or control for it conventionally rely on a human-based approach and estimate predictability via the cloze task. Our study investigated an alternative corpus-based approach for estimating predictability via language predictability models. We obtained cloze and corpus-based probabilities for all words in 144 Russian sentences, correlated the two measures, and found a strong correlation between them. Importantly, we estimated how much variance in eye movements registered while reading the same sentences was explained by each of the two probabilities and whether the two probabilities explain the same variance. Along with lexical predictability (the activation of a particular word form), we analyzed morphosyntactic predictability (the activation of morphological features of words) and its effect on reading times over and above lexical predictability. We found that for predicting reading times, cloze and corpus-based measures of both lexical and morphosyntactic predictability explained the same amount of variance. However, cloze and corpus-based lexical probabilities both independently contributed to a better model fit, whereas for morphosyntactic probabilities, the contributions of cloze and corpus-based measures were interchangeable. Therefore, morphosyntactic but not lexical corpus-based probabilities can substitute for cloze probabilities in reading experiments. Our results also indicate that in languages with rich inflectional morphology, such as Russian, when people engage in prediction, they are much more successful in predicting isolated morphosyntactic features than predicting the particular lexeme and its full morphosyntactic markup.}, language = {en} } @article{HoehleBijeljacBabicNazzi2019, author = {H{\"o}hle, Barbara and Bijeljac-Babic, Ranka and Nazzi, Thierry}, title = {Variability and stability in early language acquisition}, series = {Bilingualism : language and cognition}, volume = {23}, journal = {Bilingualism : language and cognition}, number = {1}, publisher = {Cambridge Univ. Press}, address = {New York}, issn = {1366-7289}, doi = {10.1017/S1366728919000348}, pages = {56 -- 71}, year = {2019}, abstract = {Many human infants grow up learning more than one language simultaneously but only recently has research started to study early language acquisition in this population more systematically. The paper gives an overview on findings on early language acquisition in bilingual infants during the first two years of life and compares these findings to current knowledge on early language acquisition in monolingual infants. Given the state of the research, the overview focuses on research on phonological and early lexical development in the first two years of life. We will show that the developmental trajectory of early language acquisition in these areas is very similar in mono- and bilingual infants suggesting that these early steps into language are guided by mechanisms that are rather robust against the differences in the conditions of language exposure that mono- and bilingual infants typically experience.}, language = {en} } @article{SotiropoulouGafos2022, author = {Sotiropoulou, Stavroula and Gafos, Adamantios I.}, title = {Phonetic indices of syllabic organization in German stop-lateral clusters}, series = {Laboratory Phonology}, volume = {13}, journal = {Laboratory Phonology}, number = {1}, publisher = {Open Library of humanities}, address = {Cambridge}, issn = {1868-6346}, doi = {10.16995/labphon.6440}, pages = {42}, year = {2022}, abstract = {Using articulatory data from five German speakers, we study how segmental sequences under different syllabic organizations respond to perturbations of phonetic parameters in the segments that compose them. Target words contained stop-lateral sequences /bl, gl, kl, pl/ in word-initial and cross-word contexts and were embedded in carrier phrases with different prosodic boundaries, i.e., no phrase boundary versus an utterance phrase boundary preceded the target word in the case of word-initial clusters, or separated the consonants in the case of cross-word sequences. For word-initial cluster (CCV) onsets, we find that increasing C1 stop duration or the lag between two consonants leads to earlier vowel initiation and reduced local timing stability across CV, CCV. Furthermore, as the inter-consonantal lag increases, C2 duration decreases. In contrast, for cross-word C\#CV sequences, increasing inter-consonantal lag does not lead to earlier vowel initiation and robust local timing stability is maintained across CV, C\#CV. In other words, in CCV sequences within words, local perturbations to segments have effects that ripple through the rest of the sequence. Instead, in cross-word C\#CV sequences, local perturbations stay local. Overall, the findings indicate that the effects of phonetic perturbations on coordination patterns depend on the syllabic organization superimposed on these clusters.}, language = {en} } @article{BollAvetisyanBhataraUngeretal.2020, author = {Boll-Avetisyan, Natalie and Bhatara, Anjali and Unger, Annika and Nazzi, Thierry and H{\"o}hle, Barbara}, title = {Rhythmic grouping biases in simultaneous bilinguals}, series = {Bilingualism : language and cognition}, volume = {23}, journal = {Bilingualism : language and cognition}, number = {5}, publisher = {Cambridge Univ. Press}, address = {New York}, issn = {1366-7289}, doi = {10.1017/S1366728920000140}, pages = {1070 -- 1081}, year = {2020}, abstract = {This study provides a novel approach for testing the universality of perceptual biases by looking at speech processing in simultaneous bilingual adults learning two languages that support the maintenance of this bias to different degrees. Specifically, we investigated the Iambic/Trochaic Law, an assumed universal grouping bias, in simultaneous French-German bilinguals, presenting them with streams of syllables varying in intensity, duration or neither and asking them whether they perceived them as strong-weak or weak-strong groupings. Results showed robust, consistent grouping preferences. A comparison to monolinguals from previous studies revealed that they pattern with German-speaking monolinguals, and differ from French-speaking monolinguals. The distribution of simultaneous bilinguals' individual performance was best explained by a model fitting a unimodal (not bimodal) distribution, failing to support two subgroups of language dominance. Moreover, neither language experience nor language context predicted their performance. These findings suggest a special role for universal biases in simultaneous bilinguals.}, language = {en} } @article{SchreiberOneaGaspar2021, author = {Schreiber, Alexander and Onea G{\´a}sp{\´a}r, Edgar}, title = {Are narrow focus exhaustivity inferences Bayesian inferences?}, series = {Frontiers in psychology / Frontiers Research Foundation}, volume = {12}, journal = {Frontiers in psychology / Frontiers Research Foundation}, publisher = {Frontiers Research Foundation}, address = {Lausanne}, issn = {1664-1078}, doi = {10.3389/fpsyg.2021.677223}, pages = {19}, year = {2021}, abstract = {In successful communication, the literal meaning of linguistic utterances is often enriched by pragmatic inferences. Part of the pragmatic reasoning underlying such inferences has been successfully modeled as Bayesian goal recognition in the Rational Speech Act (RSA) framework. In this paper, we try to model the interpretation of question-answer sequences with narrow focus in the answer in the RSA framework, thereby exploring the effects of domain size and prior probabilities on interpretation. Should narrow focus exhaustivity inferences be actually based on Bayesian inference involving prior probabilities of states, RSA models should predict a dependency of exhaustivity on these factors. We present experimental data that suggest that interlocutors do not act according to the predictions of the RSA model and that exhaustivity is in fact approximately constant across different domain sizes and priors. The results constitute a conceptual challenge for Bayesian accounts of the underlying pragmatic inferences.}, 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{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{MuehlenbeckPritschWartenburgeretal.2020, author = {M{\"u}hlenbeck, Cordelia Anna and Pritsch, Carla and Wartenburger, Isabell and Telkemeyer, Silke and Liebal, Katja}, title = {Attentional bias to facial expressions of different emotions}, series = {Frontiers in psychology}, volume = {11}, journal = {Frontiers in psychology}, publisher = {Frontiers Research Foundation}, address = {Lausanne}, issn = {1664-1078}, doi = {10.3389/fpsyg.2020.00795}, pages = {9}, year = {2020}, abstract = {The attentional bias to negative information enables humans to quickly identify and to respond appropriately to potentially threatening situations. Because of its adaptive function, the enhanced sensitivity to negative information is expected to represent a universal trait, shared by all humans regardless of their cultural background. However, existing research focuses almost exclusively on humans from Western industrialized societies, who are not representative for the human species. Therefore, we compare humans from two distinct cultural contexts: adolescents and children from Germany, a Western industrialized society, and from the not equal Akhoe Hai parallel to om, semi-nomadic hunter-gatherers in Namibia. We predicted that both groups show an attentional bias toward negative facial expressions as compared to neutral or positive faces. We used eye-tracking to measure their fixation duration on facial expressions depicting different emotions, including negative (fear, anger), positive (happy), and neutral faces. Both Germans and the not equal Akhoe Hai parallel to om gazed longer at fearful faces, but shorter on angry faces, challenging the notion of a general bias toward negative emotions. For happy faces, fixation durations varied between the two groups, suggesting more flexibility in the response to positive emotions. Our findings emphasize the need for placing research on emotion perception into an evolutionary, cross-cultural comparative framework that considers the adaptive significance of specific emotions, rather than differentiating between positive and negative information, and enables systematic comparisons across participants from diverse cultural backgrounds.}, language = {en} } @article{VasishthGelman2021, author = {Vasishth, Shravan and Gelman, Andrew}, title = {How to embrace variation and accept uncertainty in linguistic and psycholinguistic data analysis}, series = {Linguistics : an interdisciplinary journal of the language sciences}, volume = {59}, journal = {Linguistics : an interdisciplinary journal of the language sciences}, number = {5}, publisher = {De Gruyter Mouton}, address = {Berlin}, issn = {0024-3949}, doi = {10.1515/ling-2019-0051}, pages = {1311 -- 1342}, year = {2021}, abstract = {The use of statistical inference in linguistics and related areas like psychology typically involves a binary decision: either reject or accept some null hypothesis using statistical significance testing. When statistical power is low, this frequentist data-analytic approach breaks down: null results are uninformative, and effect size estimates associated with significant results are overestimated. Using an example from psycholinguistics, several alternative approaches are demonstrated for reporting inconsistencies between the data and a theoretical prediction. The key here is to focus on committing to a falsifiable prediction, on quantifying uncertainty statistically, and learning to accept the fact that - in almost all practical data analysis situations - we can only draw uncertain conclusions from data, regardless of whether we manage to obtain statistical significance or not. A focus on uncertainty quantification is likely to lead to fewer excessively bold claims that, on closer investigation, may turn out to be not supported by the data.}, language = {en} } @article{HeinMurphy2022, author = {Hein, Johannes and Murphy, Andrew}, title = {VP-nominalization and the Final-over-Final Condition}, series = {Linguistic inquiry}, volume = {53}, journal = {Linguistic inquiry}, number = {2}, publisher = {MIT Press}, address = {Cambridge}, issn = {0024-3892}, doi = {10.1162/ling_a_00407}, pages = {337 -- 370}, year = {2022}, abstract = {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.}, language = {en} } @article{MazzarellaGotzner2021, author = {Mazzarella, Diana and Gotzner, Nicole}, title = {The polarity asymmetry of negative strengthening}, series = {Glossa : a journal of general linguistics}, volume = {6}, journal = {Glossa : a journal of general linguistics}, number = {1}, publisher = {Open Library of Humanities}, address = {London}, issn = {2397-1835}, doi = {10.5334/gjgl.1342}, pages = {17}, year = {2021}, abstract = {The interpretation of negated antonyms is characterised by a polarity asymmetry: the negation of a positive polarity antonym (X is not interesting) is more likely to be strengthened to convey its opposite ('X is uninteresting') than the negation of a negative polarity antonym (X is not uninteresting to convey that 'X is interesting') is. A classical explanation of this asymmetry relies on face-management. Since the predication of a negative polarity antonym (X is uninteresting) is potentially face-threatening in most contexts, the negation of the corresponding positive polarity antonym (X is not interesting) is more likely to be interpreted as an indirect strategy to minimise face-threat while getting the message across. We present two experimental studies in which we test the predictions of this explanation. In contrast with it, our results show that adjectival polarity, but not face-threatening potential, appears to be responsible for the asymmetric interpretation of negated antonyms.}, language = {en} } @article{HohausZimmermann2021, author = {Hohaus, Vera and Zimmermann, Malte}, title = {Comparisons of equality with German so ... wie, and the relationship between degrees and properties}, series = {Journal of semantics}, volume = {38}, journal = {Journal of semantics}, number = {1}, publisher = {Oxford Univ. Press}, address = {Oxford}, issn = {0167-5133}, doi = {10.1093/jos/ffaa011}, pages = {95 -- 143}, year = {2021}, abstract = {We present a compositionally transparent, unified semantic analysis of two kinds of so ... wie-equative constructions in German, namely degree equatives and property equatives in the domain of individuals or events. Unlike in English and many other European languages (Haspelmath \& Buchholz 1998, Rett 2013), both equative types in German feature the parameter marker so, suggesting a unified analysis. We show that the parallel formal expression of German degree and property equatives is accompanied by a parallel syntactic distribution (in predicative, attributive, and adverbial position), and by identical semantic properties: Both equative types allow for scope ambiguities, show negative island effects out of context, and license the negative polarity item uberhaupt 'at all' in the complement clause. As the same properties are also shared by German comparatives, we adopt the influential quantificational analysis of comparatives in von Stechow (1984ab), Heim (1985, 2001, 2007), and Beck (2011), and treat both German equative types in a uniform manner as expressing universal quantification over sets of degrees or over sets of properties (of individuals or events). Conceptually, the uniform marking of degree-related and property-related meanings is expected given that the abstract semantic category degree (type ) can be reconstructed in terms of equivalence classes, i.e., ontologically simpler sets of individuals (type ) or events (type ). These are found in any language, showing that whether or not a language makes explicit reference to degrees (by means of gradable adjectives, degree question words, degree-only equatives) does not follow on general conceptual or semantic grounds, but is determined by the grammar of that language.}, language = {en} } @article{PaapeAvetisyanLagoetal.2021, author = {Paape, Dario and Avetisyan, Serine and Lago, Sol and Vasishth, Shravan}, title = {Modeling misretrieval and feature substitution in agreement attraction}, series = {Cognitive science}, volume = {45}, journal = {Cognitive science}, number = {8}, publisher = {Wiley-Blackwell}, address = {Malden, Mass.}, issn = {0364-0213}, doi = {10.1111/cogs.13019}, pages = {30}, year = {2021}, abstract = {We present computational modeling results based on a self-paced reading study investigating number attraction effects in Eastern Armenian. We implement three novel computational models of agreement attraction in a Bayesian framework and compare their predictive fit to the data using k-fold cross-validation. We find that our data are better accounted for by an encoding-based model of agreement attraction, compared to a retrieval-based model. A novel methodological contribution of our study is the use of comprehension questions with open-ended responses, so that both misinterpretation of the number feature of the subject phrase and misassignment of the thematic subject role of the verb can be investigated at the same time. We find evidence for both types of misinterpretation in our study, sometimes in the same trial. However, the specific error patterns in our data are not fully consistent with any previously proposed model.}, language = {en} } @article{KorochkinaBuerkiFoschiniNickels2021, author = {Korochkina, Maria and B{\"u}rki-Foschini, Audrey Damaris and Nickels, Lyndsey}, title = {Apples and oranges}, series = {Journal of memory and language : JML}, volume = {120}, journal = {Journal of memory and language : JML}, publisher = {Elsevier}, address = {Amsterdam}, issn = {0749-596X}, doi = {10.1016/j.jml.2021.104246}, pages = {17}, year = {2021}, abstract = {Despite scarce empirical evidence, introducing new vocabulary in semantic categories has long been standard in second language teaching. We examined the effect of learning context on encoding, immediate recall and integration of new vocabulary into semantic memory by contrasting categorically related (novel names for familiar concepts blocked by semantic category) and unrelated (mixed semantic categories) learning contexts. Two learning sessions were conducted 24 hours apart, with each participant exposed to both contexts. Subsequently, a test phase examined picture naming, translation and picture-word interference tasks. Compared to the unrelated context, the categorically related context resulted in poorer naming accuracy in the learning phase, slower response latencies at the immediate recall tasks and greater semantic interference in the picture-word interference task (picture naming in L1 with semantically related novel word distractors). We develop a theoretical account of word learning that attributes observed differences to episodic rather than semantic memory.}, language = {en} } @article{MertzenLagoVasishth2021, author = {Mertzen, Daniela and Lago, Sol and Vasishth, Shravan}, title = {The benefits of preregistration for hypothesis-driven bilingualism research}, series = {Bilingualism : language and cognition}, volume = {24}, journal = {Bilingualism : language and cognition}, number = {5}, publisher = {Cambridge Univ. Press}, address = {Cambridge}, issn = {1366-7289}, doi = {10.1017/S1366728921000031}, pages = {807 -- 812}, year = {2021}, abstract = {Preregistration is an open science practice that requires the specification of research hypotheses and analysis plans before the data are inspected. Here, we discuss the benefits of preregistration for hypothesis-driven, confirmatory bilingualism research. Using examples from psycholinguistics and bilingualism, we illustrate how non-peer reviewed preregistrations can serve to implement a clean distinction between hypothesis testing and data exploration. This distinction helps researchers avoid casting post-hoc hypotheses and analyses as confirmatory ones. We argue that, in keeping with current best practices in the experimental sciences, preregistration, along with sharing data and code, should be an integral part of hypothesis-driven bilingualism research.}, language = {en} } @article{GhaffarvandMokariGafosWilliams2020, author = {Ghaffarvand-Mokari, Payam and Gafos, Adamantios I. and Williams, Daniel}, title = {Perceptuomotor compatibility effects in vowels}, series = {Attention, perception, \& psychophysics}, volume = {82}, journal = {Attention, perception, \& psychophysics}, number = {5}, publisher = {Springer}, address = {New York}, issn = {1943-3921}, doi = {10.3758/s13414-020-02014-1}, pages = {2751 -- 2764}, year = {2020}, abstract = {Perceptuomotor compatibility between phonemically identical spoken and perceived syllables has been found to speed up response times (RTs) in speech production tasks. However, research on compatibility effects between perceived and produced stimuli at the subphonemic level is limited. Using a cue-distractor task, we investigated the effects of phonemic and subphonemic congruency in pairs of vowels. On each trial, a visual cue prompted individuals to produce a response vowel, and after the visual cue appeared a distractor vowel was auditorily presented while speakers were planning to produce the response vowel. The results revealed effects on RTs due to phonemic congruency (same vs. different vowels) between the response and distractor vowels, which resemble effects previously seen for consonants. Beyond phonemic congruency, we assessed how RTs are modulated as a function of the degree of subphonemic similarity between the response and distractor vowels. Higher similarity between the response and distractor in terms of phonological distance-defined by number of mismatching phonological features-resulted in faster RTs. However, the exact patterns of RTs varied across response-distractor vowel pairs. We discuss how different assumptions about phonological feature representations may account for the different patterns observed in RTs across response-distractor pairs. Our findings on the effects of perceived stimuli on produced speech at a more detailed level of representation than phonemic identity necessitate a more direct and specific formulation of the perception-production link. Additionally, these results extend previously reported perceptuomotor interactions mainly involving consonants to vowels.}, language = {en} } @article{BehzadniaRad2020, author = {Behzadnia, Ali and Rad, Mehdi Mehrani}, title = {Young children's activity involvement and responses to yes/no questions}, series = {Journal of psycholinguistic research}, volume = {49}, journal = {Journal of psycholinguistic research}, number = {3}, publisher = {Springer}, address = {New York}, issn = {0090-6905}, doi = {10.1007/s10936-019-09685-4}, pages = {401 -- 414}, year = {2020}, abstract = {In the present study, we investigated younger and older Persian preschoolers' response tendency and accuracy toward yes/no questions about a coloring activity. Overall, 107 three- to four-year-olds and five- to six-year-old children were asked positive and negative yes/no questions about a picture coloring activity. The questions focused on three question contents namely, actions, environment and person. As for children's response tendency, they showed a compliance tendency. That is, they provided yes and no responses to positively and negatively formed questions respectively. Children especially younger ones were more compliant toward positive questions and their tendency decreased by age. In addition, the results revealed children's highest rate of compliance tendency toward environment inquiries. Concerning response accuracy, the effects of age and question content were significant. Specifically, older children provided more accurate responses than their younger counterparts, especially to yes/no questions asked about the actions performed during the activity. The findings suggest that depending on the format and the content of yes/no questions younger and older children's response accuracy and tendency differ.}, language = {en} } @phdthesis{LopezGambino2023, author = {L{\´o}pez Gambino, Maria Soledad}, title = {Time Buying in Task-Oriented Spoken Dialogue Systems}, doi = {10.25932/publishup-59280}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-592806}, school = {Universit{\"a}t Potsdam}, pages = {148}, year = {2023}, abstract = {This dissertation focuses on the handling of time in dialogue. Specifically, it investigates how humans bridge time, or "buy time", when they are expected to convey information that is not yet available to them (e.g. a travel agent searching for a flight in a long list while the customer is on the line, waiting). It also explores the feasibility of modeling such time-bridging behavior in spoken dialogue systems, and it examines how endowing such systems with more human-like time-bridging capabilities may affect humans' perception of them. The relevance of time-bridging in human-human dialogue seems to stem largely from a need to avoid lengthy pauses, as these may cause both confusion and discomfort among the participants of a conversation (Levinson, 1983; Lundholm Fors, 2015). However, this avoidance of prolonged silence is at odds with the incremental nature of speech production in dialogue (Schlangen and Skantze, 2011): Speakers often start to verbalize their contribution before it is fully formulated, and sometimes even before they possess the information they need to provide, which may result in them running out of content mid-turn. In this work, we elicit conversational data from humans, to learn how they avoid being silent while they search for information to convey to their interlocutor. We identify commonalities in the types of resources employed by different speakers, and we propose a classification scheme. We explore ways of modeling human time-buying behavior computationally, and we evaluate the effect on human listeners of embedding this behavior in a spoken dialogue system. Our results suggest that a system using conversational speech to bridge time while searching for information to convey (as humans do) can provide a better experience in several respects than one which remains silent for a long period of time. However, not all speech serves this purpose equally: Our experiments also show that a system whose time-buying behavior is more varied (i.e. which exploits several categories from the classification scheme we developed and samples them based on information from human data) can prevent overestimation of waiting time when compared, for example, with a system that repeatedly asks the interlocutor to wait (even if these requests for waiting are phrased differently each time). Finally, this research shows that it is possible to model human time-buying behavior on a relatively small corpus, and that a system using such a model can be preferred by participants over one employing a simpler strategy, such as randomly choosing utterances to produce during the wait —even when the utterances used by both strategies are the same.}, language = {en} } @article{PfeifferWeiss2022, author = {Pfeiffer, Martin and Weiss, Clarissa}, title = {Reenactments during tellings}, series = {Journal of pragmatics : an interdisciplinary journal of language studies}, volume = {189}, journal = {Journal of pragmatics : an interdisciplinary journal of language studies}, publisher = {Elsevier}, address = {Amsterdam}, issn = {0378-2166}, doi = {10.1016/j.pragma.2021.11.017}, pages = {92 -- 113}, year = {2022}, abstract = {In this paper, we draw on German dyadic face-to-face conversations among friends in order to examine the interactional functions of gaze in reenactments, i.e. "re-presentations or depictions" (Sidnell, 2006: 377) of previously experienced or imagined events. Firstly, we show that reenactors use several different gaze patterns depending on whether the depicted original event is dialogic or non-dialogic. Secondly, we compare the use of different resources for initiating reenactments and switching roles during reenactments with regard to the interactional function of the different alternatives. Specifically, we describe a multimodal practice for switching characters during reenactments that are designed to invite laughter. In sum, the findings add to our knowledge about the various communicative functions of gaze in social interaction.}, language = {en} } @article{GotznerRomoli2022, author = {Gotzner, Nicole and Romoli, Jacopo}, title = {Meaning and alternatives}, series = {Annual review of linguistics}, volume = {8}, journal = {Annual review of linguistics}, publisher = {Annual Reviews}, address = {Palo Alto}, issn = {2333-9691}, doi = {10.1146/annurev-linguistics-031220-012013}, pages = {213 -- 234}, year = {2022}, abstract = {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.}, language = {en} } @article{PaetzelPruesmannPerugiaCastellano2021, author = {Paetzel-Pr{\"u}smann, Maike and Perugia, Giulia and Castellano, Ginevra}, title = {The influence of robot personality on the development of uncanny feelings}, series = {Computers in human behavior}, volume = {120}, journal = {Computers in human behavior}, publisher = {Elsevier}, address = {Amsterdam}, issn = {0747-5632}, doi = {10.1016/j.chb.2021.106756}, pages = {17}, year = {2021}, abstract = {Empirical investigations on the uncanny valley have almost solely focused on the analysis of people?s noninteractive perception of a robot at first sight. Recent studies suggest, however, that these uncanny first impressions may be significantly altered over an interaction. What is yet to discover is whether certain interaction patterns can lead to a faster decline in uncanny feelings. In this paper, we present a study in which participants with limited expertise in Computer Science played a collaborative geography game with a Furhat robot. During the game, Furhat displayed one of two personalities, which corresponded to two different interaction strategies. The robot was either optimistic and encouraging, or impatient and provocative. We performed the study in a science museum and recruited participants among the visitors. Our findings suggest that a robot that is rated high on agreeableness, emotional stability, and conscientiousness can indeed weaken uncanny feelings. This study has important implications for human-robot interaction design as it further highlights that a first impression, merely based on a robot?s appearance, is not indicative of the affinity people might develop towards it throughout an interaction. We thus argue that future work should emphasize investigations on exact interaction patterns that can help to overcome uncanny feelings.}, language = {en} } @article{JaegerMertzenVanDykeetal.2020, author = {J{\"a}ger, Lena Ann and Mertzen, Daniela and Van Dyke, Julie A. and Vasishth, Shravan}, title = {Interference patterns in subject-verb agreement and reflexives revisited}, series = {Journal of memory and language}, volume = {111}, journal = {Journal of memory and language}, publisher = {Elsevier}, address = {San Diego}, issn = {0749-596X}, doi = {10.1016/j.jml.2019.104063}, pages = {21}, year = {2020}, abstract = {Cue-based retrieval theories in sentence processing predict two classes of interference effect: (i) Inhibitory interference is predicted when multiple items match a retrieval cue: cue-overloading leads to an overall slowdown in reading time; and (ii) Facilitatory interference arises when a retrieval target as well as a distractor only partially match the retrieval cues; this partial matching leads to an overall speedup in retrieval time. Inhibitory interference effects are widely observed, but facilitatory interference apparently has an exception: reflexives have been claimed to show no facilitatory interference effects. Because the claim is based on underpowered studies, we conducted a large-sample experiment that investigated both facilitatory and inhibitory interference. In contrast to previous studies, we find facilitatory interference effects in reflexives. We also present a quantitative evaluation of the cue-based retrieval model of Engelmann, Jager, and Vasishth (2019).}, language = {en} } @article{GotznerSpalek2022, author = {Gotzner, Nicole and Spalek, Katharina}, title = {Expectations about upcoming discourse referents}, series = {International review of pragmatics : IRP}, volume = {14}, journal = {International review of pragmatics : IRP}, number = {1}, publisher = {Brill}, address = {Leiden}, issn = {1877-3095}, doi = {10.1163/18773109-01401003}, pages = {77 -- 94}, year = {2022}, abstract = {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.}, language = {en} } @article{SchlickeweiNienstedtFranketal.2021, author = {Schlickewei, Ole and Nienstedt, Julie Cl{\"a}re and Frank, Ulrike and Fr{\"u}ndt, Odette and P{\"o}tter-Nerger, Monika and Gerloff, Christian and Buhmann, Carsten and M{\"u}ller, Frank and Lezius, Susanne and Koseki, Jana-Christiane and Pflug, Christina}, title = {The ability of the eating assessment tool‑10 to detect penetration and aspiration in Parkinson's disease}, series = {European archives of oto-rhino-laryngology and head \& neck}, volume = {278}, journal = {European archives of oto-rhino-laryngology and head \& neck}, number = {5}, publisher = {Springer}, address = {Berlin}, issn = {0937-4477}, doi = {10.1007/s00405-020-06377-x}, pages = {1661 -- 1668}, year = {2021}, abstract = {Purpose: Dysphagia is common in patients with Parkinson's disease (PD) and often leads to pneumonia, malnutrition, and reduced quality of life. This study investigates the ability of the Eating Assessment Tool-10 (EAT-10), an established, easy self-administered screening tool, to detect aspiration in PD patients. This study aims to validate the ability of the EAT-10 to detect FEES-proven aspiration in patients with PD. Methods: In a controlled prospective cross-sectional study, a total of 50 PD patients completed the EAT-10 and, subsequently, were examined by Flexible Endoscopic Evaluation of Swallowing (FEES) to determine the swallowing status. The results were rated through the Penetration-Aspiration Scale (PAS) and data were analyzed retrospectively. Results: PAS and EAT-10 did not correlate significantly. Selected items of the EAT-10 could not predict aspiration or residues. 19 (38\%) out of 50 patients with either penetration or aspiration were not detected by the EAT-10. The diagnostic accuracy was established at only a sufficient level (AUC 0.65). An optimal cut-off value of >= 6 presented a sensitivity of 58\% and specificity of 82\%. Conclusions: The EAT-10 is not suited for the detection of penetration and aspiration in PD patients. Therefore, it cannot be used as a screening method in this patient population. There is still a need for a valid, simple, and efficient screening tool to assist physicians in their daily diagnostics and to avoid clinical complications.}, language = {en} } @article{KrasotkinaGoetzHoehleetal.2021, author = {Krasotkina, Anna and G{\"o}tz, Antonia and H{\"o}hle, Barbara and Schwarzer, Gudrun}, title = {Bimodal familiarization re-sensitizes 12-month-old infants to other-race faces}, series = {Infant behavior \& development : an international and interdisciplinary journal}, volume = {62}, journal = {Infant behavior \& development : an international and interdisciplinary journal}, publisher = {Elsevier}, address = {Amsterdam}, issn = {0163-6383}, doi = {10.1016/j.infbeh.2020.101502}, pages = {8}, year = {2021}, abstract = {Perceptual narrowing in the domain of face perception typically begins to reduce infants' sensitivity to differences distinguishing other-race faces from approximately 6 months of age. The present study investigated whether it is possible to re-sensitize Caucasian 12-month-old infants to other-race Asian faces through statistical learning by familiarizing them with different statistical distributions of these faces. The familiarization faces were created by generating a morphed continuum from one Asian face identity to another. In the unimodal condition, infants were familiarized with a frequency distribution wherein they saw the midpoint face of the morphed continuum the most frequently. In the bimodal condition, infants were familiarized with a frequency distribution wherein they saw faces closer to the endpoints of the morphed continuum the most frequently. After familiarization, infants were tested on their discrimination of the two original Asian faces. The infants' looking times during the test indicated that infants in the bimodal condition could discriminate between the two faces, while infants in the unimodal condition could not. These findings therefore suggest that 12-month-old Caucasian infants could be re-sensitized to Asian faces by familiarizing them with a bimodal frequency distribution of such faces.}, language = {en} } @article{FanselowZimmermannPhilipp2022, author = {Fanselow, Gisbert and Zimmermann, Malte and Philipp, Mareike}, title = {Assessing the availability of inverse scope in German in the covered box paradigm}, series = {Glossa : a journal of general linguistics}, volume = {7}, journal = {Glossa : a journal of general linguistics}, number = {1}, publisher = {Open Library of Humanities}, address = {London}, issn = {2397-1835}, doi = {10.16995/glossa.5766}, pages = {1 -- 24}, year = {2022}, abstract = {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.}, language = {en} } @article{AvetisyanLagoVasishth2020, author = {Avetisyan, Serine and Lago, Sol and Vasishth, Shravan}, title = {Does case marking affect agreement attraction in comprehension?}, series = {Journal of memory and language}, volume = {112}, journal = {Journal of memory and language}, publisher = {Elsevier}, address = {San Diego}, issn = {0749-596X}, doi = {10.1016/j.jml.2020.104087}, pages = {18}, year = {2020}, abstract = {Previous studies have suggested that distinctive case marking on noun phrases reduces attraction effects in production, i.e., the tendency to produce a verb that agrees with a nonsubject noun. An important open question is whether attraction effects are modulated by case information in sentence comprehension. To address this question, we conducted three attraction experiments in Armenian, a language with a rich and productive case system. The experiments showed clear attraction effects, and they also revealed an overall role of case marking such that participants showed faster response and reading times when the nouns in the sentence had different case. However, we found little indication that distinctive case marking modulated attraction effects. We present a theoretical proposal of how case and number information may be used differentially during agreement licensing in comprehension. More generally, this work sheds light on the nature of the retrieval cues deployed when completing morphosyntactic dependencies.}, language = {en} } @article{BuerkiFoschiniViebahnGafos2020, author = {B{\"u}rki-Foschini, Audrey Damaris and Viebahn, Malte Clemens and Gafos, Adamantios I.}, title = {Plasticity and transfer in the sound system}, series = {Language, cognition and neuroscience}, volume = {35}, journal = {Language, cognition and neuroscience}, number = {10}, publisher = {Routledge, Taylor \& Francis Group}, address = {Abingdon}, issn = {2327-3798}, doi = {10.1080/23273798.2020.1782445}, pages = {1371 -- 1393}, year = {2020}, abstract = {This study focuses on the ability of the adult sound system to reorganise as a result of experience. Participants were exposed to existing and novel syllables in either a listening task or a production task over the course of two days. On the third day, they named disyllabic pseudowords while their electroencephalogram was recorded. The first syllable of these pseudowords had either been trained in the auditory modality, trained in production or had not been trained. The EEG response differed between existing and novel syllables for untrained but not for trained syllables, indicating that training novel sound sequences modifies the processes involved in the production of these sequences to make them more similar to those underlying the production of existing sound sequences. Effects of training on the EEG response were observed both after production training and mere auditory exposure.}, language = {en} } @article{CzapkaFestman2021, author = {Czapka, Sophia and Festman, Julia}, title = {Wisconsin Card Sorting Test reveals a monitoring advantage but not a switching advantage in multilingual children}, series = {Journal of experimental child psychology : JECP}, volume = {204}, journal = {Journal of experimental child psychology : JECP}, publisher = {Elsevier}, address = {Amsterdam}, issn = {0022-0965}, doi = {10.1016/j.jecp.2020.105038}, pages = {19}, year = {2021}, abstract = {The Wisconsin Card Sorting Test (WCST) is used to test higher-level executive functions or switching, depending on the measures chosen in a study and its goal. Many measures can be extracted from the WCST, but how to assign them to specific cognitive skills remains unclear. Thus, the current study first aimed at identifying which measures test the same cognitive abilities. Second, we compared the performance of mono- and multilingual children in the identified abilities because there is some evidence that bilingualism can improve executive functions. We tested 66 monolingual and 56 multilingual (i.e., bi- and trilingual) primary school children (M-age = 109 months) in an online version of the classic WCST. A principal component analysis revealed four factors: problem-solving, monitoring, efficient errors, and perseverations. Because the assignment of measures to factors is only partially coherent across the literature, we identified this as one of the sources of task impurity. In the second part, we calculated regression analyses to test for group differences while controlling for intelligence as a predictor for executive functions and for confounding variables such as age, German lexicon size, and socioeconomic status. Intelligence predicted problem solving and perseverations. In the monitoring component (measured by the reaction times preceding a rule switch), multilinguals outperformed monolinguals, thereby supporting the view that bi- or multilingualism can improve processing speed related to monitoring.}, language = {en} } @misc{StoneNicenboimVasishthetal.2022, author = {Stone, Kate and Nicenboim, Bruno and Vasishth, Shravan and R{\"o}sler, Frank}, title = {Understanding the effects of constraint and predictability in ERP}, series = {Zweitver{\"o}ffentlichungen der Universit{\"a}t Potsdam : Humanwissenschaftliche Reihe}, journal = {Zweitver{\"o}ffentlichungen der Universit{\"a}t Potsdam : Humanwissenschaftliche Reihe}, number = {829}, issn = {1866-8364}, doi = {10.25932/publishup-58759}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-587594}, pages = {71}, year = {2022}, abstract = {Intuitively, strongly constraining contexts should lead to stronger probabilistic representations of sentences in memory. Encountering unexpected words could therefore be expected to trigger costlier shifts in these representations than expected words. However, psycholinguistic measures commonly used to study probabilistic processing, such as the N400 event-related potential (ERP) component, are sensitive to word predictability but not to contextual constraint. Some research suggests that constraint-related processing cost may be measurable via an ERP positivity following the N400, known as the anterior post-N400 positivity (PNP). The PNP is argued to reflect update of a sentence representation and to be distinct from the posterior P600, which reflects conflict detection and reanalysis. However, constraint-related PNP findings are inconsistent. We sought to conceptually replicate Federmeier et al. (2007) and Kuperberg et al. (2020), who observed that the PNP, but not the N400 or the P600, was affected by constraint at unexpected but plausible words. Using a pre-registered design and statistical approach maximising power, we demonstrated a dissociated effect of predictability and constraint: strong evidence for predictability but not constraint in the N400 window, and strong evidence for constraint but not predictability in the later window. However, the constraint effect was consistent with a P600 and not a PNP, suggesting increased conflict between a strong representation and unexpected input rather than greater update of the representation. We conclude that either a simple strong/weak constraint design is not always sufficient to elicit the PNP, or that previous PNP constraint findings could be an artifact of smaller sample size.}, language = {en} } @article{StoneNicenboimVasishthetal.2023, author = {Stone, Kate and Nicenboim, Bruno and Vasishth, Shravan and R{\"o}sler, Frank}, title = {Understanding the effects of constraint and predictability in ERP}, series = {Neurobiology of language}, volume = {4}, journal = {Neurobiology of language}, number = {2}, publisher = {MIT Press}, address = {Cambridge, MA, USA}, issn = {2641-4368}, doi = {10.1162/nol_a_00094}, pages = {221 -- 256}, year = {2023}, abstract = {Intuitively, strongly constraining contexts should lead to stronger probabilistic representations of sentences in memory. Encountering unexpected words could therefore be expected to trigger costlier shifts in these representations than expected words. However, psycholinguistic measures commonly used to study probabilistic processing, such as the N400 event-related potential (ERP) component, are sensitive to word predictability but not to contextual constraint. Some research suggests that constraint-related processing cost may be measurable via an ERP positivity following the N400, known as the anterior post-N400 positivity (PNP). The PNP is argued to reflect update of a sentence representation and to be distinct from the posterior P600, which reflects conflict detection and reanalysis. However, constraint-related PNP findings are inconsistent. We sought to conceptually replicate Federmeier et al. (2007) and Kuperberg et al. (2020), who observed that the PNP, but not the N400 or the P600, was affected by constraint at unexpected but plausible words. Using a pre-registered design and statistical approach maximising power, we demonstrated a dissociated effect of predictability and constraint: strong evidence for predictability but not constraint in the N400 window, and strong evidence for constraint but not predictability in the later window. However, the constraint effect was consistent with a P600 and not a PNP, suggesting increased conflict between a strong representation and unexpected input rather than greater update of the representation. We conclude that either a simple strong/weak constraint design is not always sufficient to elicit the PNP, or that previous PNP constraint findings could be an artifact of smaller sample size.}, language = {en} } @article{PaapeVasishthvonderMalsburg2020, author = {Paape, Dario and Vasishth, Shravan and von der Malsburg, Titus Raban}, title = {Quadruplex negatio invertit?}, series = {Journal of semantics}, volume = {37}, journal = {Journal of semantics}, number = {4}, publisher = {Oxford Univ. Press}, address = {Oxford}, issn = {0167-5133}, doi = {10.1093/jos/ffaa009}, pages = {509 -- 555}, year = {2020}, abstract = {So-called "depth charge" sentences (No head injury is too trivial to be ignored) are interpreted by the vast majority of speakers to mean the opposite of what their compositional semantics would dictate. The semantic inversion that is observed for sentences of this type is the strongest and most persistent linguistic illusion known to the field (Wason \& Reich, 1979). However, it has recently been argued that the preferred interpretation arises not because of a prevailing failure of the processing system, but rather because the non-compositional meaning is grammaticalized in the form of a stored construction (Cook \& Stevenson, 2010; Fortuin, 2014). In a series of five experiments, we investigate whether the depth charge effect is better explained by processing failure due to memory overload (the overloading hypothesis) or by the existence of an underlying grammaticalized construction with two available meanings (the ambiguity hypothesis). To our knowledge, our experiments are the first to explore the on-line processing profile of depth charge sentences. Overall, the data are consistent with specific variants of the ambiguity and overloading hypotheses while providing evidence against other variants. As an extension of the overloading hypothesis, we suggest two heuristic processes that may ultimately yield the incorrect reading when compositional processing is suspended for strategic reasons.}, language = {en} } @article{RenHoehle2022, author = {Ren, Jie and H{\"o}hle, Barbara}, title = {The interplay between language acquisition and cognitive development}, series = {Infant behavior \& development : an international and interdisciplinary journal}, volume = {67}, journal = {Infant behavior \& development : an international and interdisciplinary journal}, publisher = {Elsevier Science}, address = {Amsterdam}, issn = {0163-6383}, doi = {10.1016/j.infbeh.2022.101718}, pages = {3}, year = {2022}, language = {en} } @article{StonevonderMalsburgVasishth2020, author = {Stone, Kate and von der Malsburg, Titus Raban and Vasishth, Shravan}, title = {The effect of decay and lexical uncertainty on processing long-distance dependencies in reading}, series = {PeerJ}, volume = {8}, journal = {PeerJ}, publisher = {PeerJ Inc.}, address = {London}, issn = {2167-8359}, doi = {10.7717/peerj.10438}, pages = {33}, year = {2020}, abstract = {To make sense of a sentence, a reader must keep track of dependent relationships between words, such as between a verb and its particle (e.g. turn the music down). In languages such as German, verb-particle dependencies often span long distances, with the particle only appearing at the end of the clause. This means that it may be necessary to process a large amount of intervening sentence material before the full verb of the sentence is known. To facilitate processing, previous studies have shown that readers can preactivate the lexical information of neighbouring upcoming words, but less is known about whether such preactivation can be sustained over longer distances. We asked the question, do readers preactivate lexical information about long-distance verb particles? In one self-paced reading and one eye tracking experiment, we delayed the appearance of an obligatory verb particle that varied only in the predictability of its lexical identity. We additionally manipulated the length of the delay in order to test two contrasting accounts of dependency processing: that increased distance between dependent elements may sharpen expectation of the distant word and facilitate its processing (an antilocality effect), or that it may slow processing via temporal activation decay (a locality effect). We isolated decay by delaying the particle with a neutral noun modifier containing no information about the identity of the upcoming particle, and no known sources of interference or working memory load. Under the assumption that readers would preactivate the lexical representations of plausible verb particles, we hypothesised that a smaller number of plausible particles would lead to stronger preactivation of each particle, and thus higher predictability of the target. This in turn should have made predictable target particles more resistant to the effects of decay than less predictable target particles. The eye tracking experiment provided evidence that higher predictability did facilitate reading times, but found evidence against any effect of decay or its interaction with predictability. The self-paced reading study provided evidence against any effect of predictability or temporal decay, or their interaction. In sum, we provide evidence from eye movements that readers preactivate long-distance lexical content and that adding neutral sentence information does not induce detectable decay of this activation. The findings are consistent with accounts suggesting that delaying dependency resolution may only affect processing if the intervening information either confirms expectations or adds to working memory load, and that temporal activation decay alone may not be a major predictor of processing time.}, language = {en} } @article{KrasotkinaGoetzHoehleetal.2020, author = {Krasotkina, Anna and G{\"o}tz, Antonia and H{\"o}hle, Barbara and Schwarzer, Gudrun}, title = {Infants' gaze patterns for same-race and other-race faces, and the other-race effect}, series = {Brain Sciences}, volume = {10}, journal = {Brain Sciences}, number = {6}, publisher = {Brain Sciences}, address = {Basel}, issn = {2076-3425}, doi = {10.3390/brainsci10060331}, pages = {12}, year = {2020}, abstract = {The other-race effect (ORE) can be described as difficulties in discriminating between faces of ethnicities other than one's own, and can already be observed at approximately 9 months of age. Recent studies also showed that infants visually explore same-and other-race faces differently. However, it is still unclear whether infants' looking behavior for same- and other-race faces is related to their face discrimination abilities. To investigate this question we conducted a habituation-dishabituation experiment to examine Caucasian 9-month-old infants' gaze behavior, and their discrimination of same- and other-race faces, using eye-tracking measurements. We found that infants looked longer at the eyes of same-race faces over the course of habituation, as compared to other-race faces. After habituation, infants demonstrated a clear other-race effect by successfully discriminating between same-race faces, but not other-race faces. Importantly, the infants' ability to discriminate between same-race faces significantly correlated with their fixation time towards the eyes of same-race faces during habituation. Thus, our findings suggest that for infants old enough to begin exhibiting the ORE, gaze behavior during habituation is related to their ability to differentiate among same-race faces, compared to other-race faces.}, language = {en} } @article{GenzelKuegler2018, author = {Genzel, Susanne and K{\"u}gler, Frank}, title = {Production and perception of question prosody in Akan}, series = {Journal of the International Phonetic Association}, volume = {50}, journal = {Journal of the International Phonetic Association}, number = {1}, publisher = {Cambridge Univ. Press}, address = {Cambridge}, issn = {0025-1003}, doi = {10.1017/S0025100318000191}, pages = {61 -- 92}, year = {2018}, abstract = {The paper presents a production experiment investigating the phonetic parameters speakers employ to differentiate Yes-No questions from string-identical statements in Akan, a West-African two-tone Kwa language. Results show that, in comparison to the statement, speakers use a higher pitch register throughout the utterance as a global parameter, and falling f0, longer duration and higher intensity as local parameters on the final syllable of the Yes-No question. Further, two perception experiments (forced-choice identification and gating) investigate the perceptual relevance of the global parameter and the local final parameters. Results show that listeners cannot assess the higher pitch register information to identify the mode of a sentence early on. Rather, identification takes place when the local phonetic parameters on the final vowel are available. The findings point to the superiority of language-specific cues in sentence mode perception. It is suggested that Akan uses a low boundary tone that associates with the right edge of the intonation phrase (L\%) in Yes-No questions. The results are discussed from the point of view of question intonation typology in African languages. It is argued that a classification along the lines of functionally relevant cues is preferable to an impressionistic analysis.}, language = {en} } @article{AmaechiGeorgi2020, author = {Amaechi, Mary Chimaobi and Georgi, Doreen}, title = {On optional wh-/focus fronting in Igbo}, series = {Zeitschrift f{\"u}r Sprachwissenschaft}, volume = {39}, journal = {Zeitschrift f{\"u}r Sprachwissenschaft}, number = {3}, publisher = {De Gruyter}, address = {Berlin}, issn = {0721-9067}, doi = {10.1515/zfs-2020-2017}, pages = {299 -- 327}, year = {2020}, abstract = {This paper discusses surface optionality in focus fronting in the Benue-Congo language Igbo. A focused XP can occur in-situ or ex-situ. We argue that the optionality does not have its origins in the syntax: in fact, exactly one focused XP has to move to the designated focus position in the left periphery in the syntax. The alternation between in-situ and ex-situ rather arises at PF: either the lowest or the topmost copy of the focus chain is pronounced. The choice is determined by semantic-pragmatic factors, i. e., we see an interaction between PF and LF. This constitutes a challenge for a strict version of the Y-model of grammar.}, language = {en} } @phdthesis{Yadav2023, author = {Yadav, Himanshu}, title = {A computational evaluation of feature distortion and cue weighting in sentence comprehension}, doi = {10.25932/publishup-58505}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-585055}, school = {Universit{\"a}t Potsdam}, pages = {iv, 115}, year = {2023}, abstract = {Successful sentence comprehension requires the comprehender to correctly figure out who did what to whom. For example, in the sentence John kicked the ball, the comprehender has to figure out who did the action of kicking and what was being kicked. This process of identifying and connecting the syntactically-related words in a sentence is called dependency completion. What are the cognitive constraints that determine dependency completion? A widely-accepted theory is cue-based retrieval. The theory maintains that dependency completion is driven by a content-addressable search for the co-dependents in memory. The cue-based retrieval explains a wide range of empirical data from several constructions including subject-verb agreement, subject-verb non-agreement, plausibility mismatch configurations, and negative polarity items. However, there are two major empirical challenges to the theory: (i) Grammatical sentences' data from subject-verb number agreement dependencies, where the theory predicts a slowdown at the verb in sentences like the key to the cabinet was rusty compared to the key to the cabinets was rusty, but the data are inconsistent with this prediction; and, (ii) Data from antecedent-reflexive dependencies, where a facilitation in reading times is predicted at the reflexive in the bodybuilder who worked with the trainers injured themselves vs. the bodybuilder who worked with the trainer injured themselves, but the data do not show a facilitatory effect. The work presented in this dissertation is dedicated to building a more general theory of dependency completion that can account for the above two datasets without losing the original empirical coverage of the cue-based retrieval assumption. In two journal articles, I present computational modeling work that addresses the above two empirical challenges. To explain the grammatical sentences' data from subject-verb number agreement dependencies, I propose a new model that assumes that the cue-based retrieval operates on a probabilistically distorted representation of nouns in memory (Article I). This hybrid distortion-plus-retrieval model was compared against the existing candidate models using data from 17 studies on subject-verb number agreement in 4 languages. I find that the hybrid model outperforms the existing models of number agreement processing suggesting that the cue-based retrieval theory must incorporate a feature distortion assumption. To account for the absence of facilitatory effect in antecedent-reflexive dependen� cies, I propose an individual difference model, which was built within the cue-based retrieval framework (Article II). The model assumes that individuals may differ in how strongly they weigh a syntactic cue over a number cue. The model was fitted to data from two studies on antecedent-reflexive dependencies, and the participant-level cue-weighting was estimated. We find that one-fourth of the participants, in both studies, weigh the syntactic cue higher than the number cue in processing reflexive dependencies and the remaining participants weigh the two cues equally. The result indicates that the absence of predicted facilitatory effect at the level of grouped data is driven by some, not all, participants who weigh syntactic cues higher than the number cue. More generally, the result demonstrates that the assumption of differential cue weighting is important for a theory of dependency completion processes. This differential cue weighting idea was independently supported by a modeling study on subject-verb non-agreement dependencies (Article III). Overall, the cue-based retrieval, which is a general theory of dependency completion, needs to incorporate two new assumptions: (i) the nouns stored in memory can undergo probabilistic feature distortion, and (ii) the linguistic cues used for retrieval can be weighted differentially. This is the cumulative result of the modeling work presented in this dissertation. The dissertation makes an important theoretical contribution: Sentence comprehension in humans is driven by a mechanism that assumes cue-based retrieval, probabilistic feature distortion, and differential cue weighting. This insight is theoretically important because there is some independent support for these three assumptions in sentence processing and the broader memory literature. The modeling work presented here is also methodologically important because for the first time, it demonstrates (i) how the complex models of sentence processing can be evaluated using data from multiple studies simultaneously, without oversimplifying the models, and (ii) how the inferences drawn from the individual-level behavior can be used in theory development.}, language = {en} } @article{GafosLieshout2020, author = {Gafos, Adamantios I. and Lieshout, Pascal H. H. M. van}, title = {Models and theories of speech production}, series = {Frontiers in psychology}, volume = {11}, journal = {Frontiers in psychology}, publisher = {Frontiers Research Foundation}, address = {Lausanne}, issn = {1664-1078}, doi = {10.3389/fpsyg.2020.01238}, pages = {4}, year = {2020}, language = {en} } @article{FuhrmeisterSmithMyers2020, author = {Fuhrmeister, Pamela and Smith, Garrett and Myers, Emily B.}, title = {Overlearning of non-native speech sounds does not result in superior consolidation after a period of sleep}, series = {The journal of the Acoustical Society of America}, volume = {147}, journal = {The journal of the Acoustical Society of America}, number = {3}, publisher = {American Institute of Physics}, address = {Melville}, issn = {0001-4966}, doi = {10.1121/10.0000943}, pages = {EL289 -- EL294}, year = {2020}, abstract = {Recent studies suggest that sleep-mediated consolidation processes help adults learn non-native speech sounds. However, overnight improvement was not seen when participants learned in the morning, perhaps resulting from native-language interference. The current study trained participants to perceive the Hindi dental/retroflex contrast in the morning and tested whether increased training can lead to overnight improvement. Results showed overnight effects regardless of training amount. In contrast to previous studies, participants in this study heard sounds in limited contexts (i.e., one talker and one vowel context), corroborating other findings, suggesting that overnight improvement is seen in non-native phonetic learning when variability is limited.}, language = {en} } @phdthesis{Galetzka2022, author = {Galetzka, Fabian}, title = {Investigating and improving background context consistency in neural conversation models}, doi = {10.25932/publishup-58463}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-584637}, school = {Universit{\"a}t Potsdam}, pages = {viii, 173}, year = {2022}, abstract = {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.}, language = {en} } @article{FrankFrank2022, author = {Frank, Ulrike and Frank, Katrin}, title = {COVID-19}, series = {Der Nervenarzt : Organ der Deutschen Gesellschaft f{\"u}r Psychiatrie, Psychotherapie und Nervenheilkunde ; Mitteilungsblatt der Deutschen Gesellschaft f{\"u}r Neurologie}, volume = {93}, journal = {Der Nervenarzt : Organ der Deutschen Gesellschaft f{\"u}r Psychiatrie, Psychotherapie und Nervenheilkunde ; Mitteilungsblatt der Deutschen Gesellschaft f{\"u}r Neurologie}, number = {2}, publisher = {Springer}, address = {New York}, issn = {0028-2804}, doi = {10.1007/s00115-021-01162-5}, pages = {167 -- 174}, year = {2022}, abstract = {Eine COVID-19-Erkrankung kann zu schweren Krankheitsverl{\"a}ufen mit multiplen Organbeteiligungen und respiratorischen und neurologischen Funktionseinschr{\"a}nkungen f{\"u}hren. Schluckst{\"o}rungen (Dysphagien) k{\"o}nnen in dieser Patientengruppe durch prim{\"a}re Sch{\"a}digungen des zentralen und peripheren neuronalen Netzwerkes der Schluckfunktion entstehen, aber auch bedingt durch die h{\"a}ufig l{\"a}ngere intensivmedizinische Behandlung und Beatmung. Erste klinische Befunde zeigen persistierende Dysphagien im Rahmen des Post-COVID-Syndroms („Long-COVID"), sodass die Patienten auch l{\"a}ngerfristige Maßnahmen zur Rehabilitation einer sicheren und suffizienten oralen Nahrungsaufnahme ben{\"o}tigen. Daher sollte in die Behandlung von COVID-19-Patienten ein strukturiertes erkrankungsspezifisches Monitoring in Bezug auf Dysphagiesymptome integriert werden, und atemtherapeutische Maßnahmen zur Regulation von Husteneffektivit{\"a}t und Atem-Schluck-Koordination sollten auch bei diesen Patienten essenzieller Bestandteil des Dysphagiemanagements sein. Herausforderungen ergeben sich dabei einerseits durch die erforderlichen Anpassungen etablierter Behandlungsstandards an den Infektionsschutz. Zudem m{\"u}ssen Auswahl und Durchf{\"u}hrungsintensit{\"a}t therapeutischer Maßnahmen an die Kapazit{\"a}ten und die spezifische Pathophysiologie der COVID-19- und Long-COVID-Patienten angepasst werden, um weitere funktionelle Verschlechterungen zu vermindern.}, language = {de} } @article{PueblaGarcia2021, author = {Puebla, Cecilia and Garcia, Juan}, title = {Advocating the inclusion of older adults in digital language learning technology and research}, series = {Bilingualism : language and cognition}, volume = {25}, journal = {Bilingualism : language and cognition}, number = {3}, publisher = {Cambridge Univ. Press}, address = {New York}, issn = {1366-7289}, doi = {10.1017/S1366728921000742}, pages = {398 -- 399}, year = {2021}, language = {en} }