@article{PattersonEsaulovaFelser2017, author = {Patterson, Clare and Esaulova, Yulia and Felser, Claudia}, title = {The impact of focus on pronoun resolution in native and non-native sentence comprehension}, series = {Second language research}, volume = {33}, journal = {Second language research}, publisher = {Sage Publ.}, address = {London}, issn = {0267-6583}, doi = {10.1177/0267658317697786}, pages = {403 -- 429}, year = {2017}, language = {en} } @article{ArslanGuerFelser2017, author = {Arslan, Se{\c{c}}kin and G{\"u}r, Eren and Felser, Claudia}, title = {Predicting the sources of impaired wh-question comprehension in non-fluent aphasia}, series = {Cognitive neuropsychology}, volume = {34}, journal = {Cognitive neuropsychology}, publisher = {Taylor \& Francis}, address = {Abingdon}, issn = {0264-3294}, doi = {10.1080/02643294.2017.1394284}, pages = {312 -- 331}, year = {2017}, abstract = {This study investigates the comprehension of wh-questions in individuals with aphasia (IWA) speaking Turkish, a non-wh-movement language, and German, a wh-movement language. We examined six German-speaking and 11 Turkish-speaking IWA using picture-pointing tasks. Findings from our experiments show that the Turkish IWA responded more accurately to both object who and object which questions than to subject questions, while the German IWA performed better for subject which questions than in all other conditions. Using random forest models, a machine learning technique used in tree-structured classification, on the individual data revealed that both the Turkish and German IWA's response accuracy is largely predicted by the presence of overt and unambiguous case marking. We discuss our results with regard to different theoretical approaches to the comprehension of wh-questions in aphasia.}, language = {en} } @article{ReifegersteFelser2017, author = {Reifegerste, Jana and Felser, Claudia}, title = {Effects of Aging on Interference During Pronoun Resolution}, series = {Journal of speech, language, and hearing research}, volume = {60}, journal = {Journal of speech, language, and hearing research}, publisher = {American Speech-Language-Hearing Assoc.}, address = {Rockville}, issn = {1092-4388}, doi = {10.1044/2017_JSLHR-L-17-0183}, pages = {3573 -- 3589}, year = {2017}, abstract = {Purpose: The purpose of this study is to investigate the effects of healthy aging on the ability to suppress grammatically illicit antecedents during pronoun resolution. Method: In 2 reading-based acceptability-judgment experiments, younger and older speakers of German read sentences containing an object pronoun and 2 potential antecedent noun phrases, only 1 of which was a grammatically licit antecedent. Using a gender-mismatch paradigm, we compared to what extent younger and older speakers were sensitive to feature (mis)matches between the pronoun and either of the 2 antecedents. All participants were fluent readers of German and had finished at least secondary education. Results: Experiment 1 used a self-paced reading paradigm. Older speakers showed greater sensitivity than younger ones to mismatching licit antecedents, but no group showed any evidence of interference from an intervening competitor antecedent. In Experiment 2, we increased the processing demand by using paced word-by-word stimulus presentation and longer sentences. Here, older participants showed reduced sensitivity, in comparison with younger people, to mismatching licit antecedents. Unlike our younger participants, they showed signs of distraction by the presence of a linearly closer but grammatically inappropriate antecedent when no appropriate antecedent was available.}, language = {en} } @article{ReifegersteHauerFelser2017, author = {Reifegerste, Jana and Hauer, Franziska and Felser, Claudia}, title = {Agreement processing and attraction errors in aging}, series = {Aging, neuropsychology, and cognition : a journal on normal and dysfunctional development}, volume = {24}, journal = {Aging, neuropsychology, and cognition : a journal on normal and dysfunctional development}, number = {6}, publisher = {Taylor \& Francis Group}, address = {Abingdon}, issn = {1382-5585}, doi = {10.1080/13825585.2016.1251550}, pages = {672 -- 702}, year = {2017}, abstract = {Effects of aging on lexical processing are well attested, but the picture is less clear for grammatical processing. Where age differences emerge, these are usually ascribed to working-memory (WM) decline. Previous studies on the influence of WM on agreement computation have yielded inconclusive results, and work on aging and subject-verb agreement processing is lacking. In two experiments (Experiment 1: timed grammaticality judgment, Experiment 2: self-paced reading + WM test), we investigated older (OA) and younger (YA) adults' susceptibility to agreement attraction errors. We found longer reading latencies and judgment reaction times (RTs) for OAs. Further, OAs, particularly those with low WM scores, were more accepting of sentences with attraction errors than YAs. OAs showed longer reading latencies for ungrammatical sentences, again modulated by WM, than YAs. Our results indicate that OAs have greater difficulty blocking intervening nouns from interfering with the computation of agreement dependencies. WM can modulate this effect.}, language = {en} } @misc{FelserPhillipsWagers2017, author = {Felser, Claudia and Phillips, Colin and Wagers, Matthew}, title = {Editorial: Encoding and Navigating Linguistic Representations in Memory}, series = {Frontiers in psychology}, volume = {8}, journal = {Frontiers in psychology}, publisher = {Frontiers Research Foundation}, address = {Lausanne}, issn = {1664-1078}, doi = {10.3389/fpsyg.2017.00164}, pages = {6}, year = {2017}, language = {en} } @article{JessenFestmanBoxelletal.2017, author = {Jessen, Anna and Festman, Julia and Boxell, Oliver and Felser, Claudia}, title = {Native and non-native speakers' brain responses to filled indirect Object Gaps}, series = {Journal of Psycholinguistic Research}, volume = {46}, journal = {Journal of Psycholinguistic Research}, publisher = {Springer}, address = {New York}, issn = {0090-6905}, doi = {10.1007/s10936-017-9496-9}, pages = {1319 -- 1338}, year = {2017}, abstract = {We examined native and non-native English speakers' processing of indirect object wh-dependencies using a filled-gap paradigm while recording event-related potentials (ERPs). The non-native group was comprised of native German-speaking, proficient non-native speakers of English. Both participant groups showed evidence of linking fronted indirect objects to the subcategorizing verb when this was encountered, reflected in an N400 component. Evidence for continued filler activation beyond the verb was seen only in the non-native group, in the shape of a prolonged left-anterior negativity. Both participant groups showed sensitivity to filled indirect object gaps reflected in a P600 response, which was more pronounced and more globally distributed in our non-native group. Taken together, our results indicate that resolving indirect object dependencies is a two-step process in both native and non-native sentence comprehension, with greater processing cost incurred in non-native compared to native comprehension.}, language = {en} } @misc{ClahsenFelser2017, author = {Clahsen, Harald and Felser, Claudia}, title = {Some notes on the shallow structure hypothesis}, series = {Studies in second language acquisition}, volume = {40}, journal = {Studies in second language acquisition}, number = {3}, publisher = {Cambridge University Press}, address = {New York}, issn = {0272-2631}, doi = {10.1017/S0272263117000250}, pages = {693 -- 706}, year = {2017}, abstract = {Since the Shallow Structure Hypothesis (SSH) was first put forward in 2006, it has inspired a growing body of research on grammatical processing in nonnative (L2) speakers. More than 10 years later, we think it is time for the SSH to be reconsidered in the light of new empirical findings and current theoretical assumptions about human language processing. The purpose of our critical commentary is twofold: to clarify some issues regarding the SSH and to sketch possible ways in which this hypothesis might be refined and improved to better account for L1 and L2 speakers' performance patterns.}, language = {en} } @article{ArslanFelser2017, author = {Arslan, Seckin and Felser, Claudia}, title = {Comprehension of wh-questions in Turkish-German bilinguals with aphasia}, series = {Clinical linguistics \& phonetics}, volume = {32}, journal = {Clinical linguistics \& phonetics}, number = {7}, publisher = {Taylor \& Francis Group}, address = {Philadelphia}, issn = {0269-9206}, doi = {10.1080/02699206.2017.1416493}, pages = {640 -- 660}, year = {2017}, abstract = {The aim of our study was to examine the extent to which linguistic approaches to sentence comprehension deficits in aphasia can account for differential impairment patterns in the comprehension of wh-questions in bilingual persons with aphasia (PWA). We investigated the comprehension of subject and object wh-questions in both Turkish, a wh-in-situ language, and German, a wh-fronting language, in two bilingual PWA using a sentence-to-picture matching task. Both PWA showed differential impairment patterns in their two languages. SK, an early bilingual PWA, had particular difficulty comprehending subject which-questions in Turkish but performed normal across all conditions in German. CT, a late bilingual PWA, performed more poorly for object which-questions in German than in all other conditions, whilst in Turkish his accuracy was at chance level across all conditions. We conclude that the observed patterns of selective cross-linguistic impairments cannot solely be attributed either to difficulty with wh-movement or to problems with the integration of discourse-level information. Instead our results suggest that differences between our PWA's individual bilingualism profiles (e.g. onset of bilingualism, premorbid language dominance) considerably affected the nature and extent of their impairments.}, language = {en} } @article{BoxellFelserCunnings2017, author = {Boxell, Oliver and Felser, Claudia and Cunnings, Ian}, title = {Antecedent contained deletions in native and non-native sentence processing}, series = {Linguistic approaches to bilingualism}, volume = {7}, journal = {Linguistic approaches to bilingualism}, number = {5}, publisher = {John Benjamins Publishing Co.}, address = {Amsterdam}, issn = {1879-9264}, doi = {10.1075/lab.15006.box}, pages = {554 -- 582}, year = {2017}, abstract = {We report the results from an eye-movement monitoring study investigating native (L1) and non-native (L2) speakers' real-time processing of antecedent-contained deletion (ACD), a type of verb phrase ellipsis in which the ellipsis gap forms part of its own antecedent. The resulting interpretation problem is traditionally thought to be solved by quantifier raising, a covert scope-shifting operation that serves to remove the gap from within its antecedent. Our L2 group comprised advanced, native German-speaking L2 learners of English. The analysis of the eye-movement data showed that both L1 and L2 English speakers tried to recover the missing verb phrase after encountering the gap. Only the native speakers showed evidence of ellipsis resolution being affected by quantification, however. No effects of quantification following gap detection were found in the L2 group, by contrast, indicating that recovery of the elided material was accomplished independently from the object's quantificational status in this group.}, language = {en} } @misc{ArslanGuerFelser2017, author = {Arslan, Se{\c{c}}kin and G{\"u}r, Eren and Felser, Claudia}, title = {Predicting the sources of impaired wh-question comprehension in non-fluent aphasia}, series = {Postprints der Universit{\"a}t Potsdam : Humanwissenschaftliche Reihe}, journal = {Postprints der Universit{\"a}t Potsdam : Humanwissenschaftliche Reihe}, number = {464}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-412717}, pages = {21}, year = {2017}, abstract = {This study investigates the comprehension of wh-questions in individuals with aphasia (IWA) speaking Turkish, a non-wh-movement language, and German, a wh-movement language. We examined six German-speaking and 11 Turkish-speaking IWA using picture-pointing tasks. Findings from our experiments show that the Turkish IWA responded more accurately to both object who and object which questions than to subject questions, while the German IWA performed better for subject which questions than in all other conditions. Using random forest models, a machine learning technique used in tree-structured classification, on the individual data revealed that both the Turkish and German IWA's response accuracy is largely predicted by the presence of overt and unambiguous case marking. We discuss our results with regard to different theoretical approaches to the comprehension of wh-questions in aphasia.}, language = {en} }