@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} } @misc{VasishthvonderMalsburgEngelmann2013, author = {Vasishth, Shravan and von der Malsburg, Titus Raban and Engelmann, Felix}, title = {What eye movements can tell us about sentence comprehension}, series = {Wiley interdisciplinary reviews : Cognitive Science}, volume = {4}, journal = {Wiley interdisciplinary reviews : Cognitive Science}, number = {2}, publisher = {Wiley}, address = {San Fransisco}, issn = {1939-5078}, doi = {10.1002/wcs.1209}, pages = {125 -- 134}, year = {2013}, abstract = {Eye movement data have proven to be very useful for investigating human sentence processing. Eyetracking research has addressed a wide range of questions, such as recovery mechanisms following garden-pathing, the timing of processes driving comprehension, the role of anticipation and expectation in parsing, the role of semantic, pragmatic, and prosodic information, and so on. However, there are some limitations regarding the inferences that can be made on the basis of eye movements. One relates to the nontrivial interaction between parsing and the eye movement control system which complicates the interpretation of eye movement data. Detailed computational models that integrate parsing with eye movement control theories have the potential to unpack the complexity of eye movement data and can therefore aid in the interpretation of eye movements. Another limitation is the difficulty of capturing spatiotemporal patterns in eye movements using the traditional word-based eyetracking measures. Recent research has demonstrated the relevance of these patterns and has shown how they can be analyzed. In this review, we focus on reading, and present examples demonstrating how eye movement data reveal what events unfold when the parser runs into difficulty, and how the parsing system interacts with eye movement control. WIREs Cogn Sci 2013, 4:125134. doi: 10.1002/wcs.1209 For further resources related to this article, please visit the WIREs website.}, language = {en} } @article{vonderMalsburgVasishth2013, author = {von der Malsburg, Titus Raban and Vasishth, Shravan}, title = {Scanpaths reveal syntactic underspecification and reanalysis strategies}, series = {Language and cognitive processes}, volume = {28}, journal = {Language and cognitive processes}, number = {10}, publisher = {Wiley}, address = {Hove}, issn = {0169-0965}, doi = {10.1080/01690965.2012.728232}, pages = {1545 -- 1578}, year = {2013}, abstract = {What theories best characterise the parsing processes triggered upon encountering ambiguity, and what effects do these processes have on eye movement patterns in reading? The present eye-tracking study, which investigated processing of attachment ambiguities of an adjunct in Spanish, suggests that readers sometimes underspecify attachment to save memory resources, consistent with the good-enough account of parsing. Our results confirm a surprising prediction of the good-enough account: high-capacity readers commit to an attachment decision more often than low-capacity participants, leading to more errors and a greater need to reanalyse in garden-path sentences. These results emerged only when we separated functionally different types of regressive eye movements using a scanpath analysis; conventional eye-tracking measures alone would have led to different conclusions. The scanpath analysis also showed that rereading was the dominant strategy for recovering from garden-pathing. Our results may also have broader implications for models of reading processes: reanalysis effects in eye movements occurred late, which suggests that the coupling of oculo-motor control and the parser may not be as tight as assumed in current computational models of eye movement control in reading.}, language = {en} } @article{vonderMalsburgVasishth2011, author = {von der Malsburg, Titus Raban and Vasishth, Shravan}, title = {What is the scanpath signature of syntactic reanalysis?}, series = {Journal of memory and language}, volume = {65}, journal = {Journal of memory and language}, number = {2}, publisher = {Elsevier}, address = {San Diego}, issn = {0749-596X}, doi = {10.1016/j.jml.2011.02.004}, pages = {109 -- 127}, year = {2011}, abstract = {Which repair strategy does the language system deploy when it gets garden-pathed, and what can regressive eye movements in reading tell us about reanalysis strategies? Several influential eye-tracking studies on syntactic reanalysis (Frazier \& Rayner, 1982; Meseguer, Carreiras, \& Clifton, 2002; Mitchell, Shen, Green, \& Hodgson, 2008) have addressed this question by examining scanpaths, i.e., sequential patterns of eye fixations. However, in the absence of a suitable method for analyzing scanpaths, these studies relied on simplified dependent measures that are arguably ambiguous and hard to interpret. We address the theoretical question of repair strategy by developing a new method that quantifies scanpath similarity. Our method reveals several distinct fixation strategies associated with reanalysis that went undetected in a previously published data set (Meseguer et al., 2002). One prevalent pattern suggests re-parsing of the sentence, a strategy that has been discussed in the literature (Frazier \& Rayner, 1982); however, readers differed tremendously in how they orchestrated the various fixation strategies. Our results suggest that the human parsing system non-deterministically adopts different strategies when confronted with the disambiguating material in garden-path sentences.}, 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{MaruschvonderMalsburgBastiaanseetal.2013, author = {Marusch, Tina and von der Malsburg, Titus Raban and Bastiaanse, Roelien and Burchert, Frank}, title = {Tempusmorphologie bei deutschen Agrammatikern}, series = {Spektrum Patholinguistik}, journal = {Spektrum Patholinguistik}, number = {6}, editor = {Fritzsche, Tom and Meyer, Corinna B. and Adelt, Anne and Roß, Jennifer}, publisher = {Universit{\"a}tsverlag Potsdam}, address = {Potsdam}, issn = {1866-9085}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus-68595}, pages = {219 -- 223}, year = {2013}, abstract = {1 Einleitung 2 Ziele der Studie und Vorhersagen 3 Methodologie 4 Ergebnisse 5 Ausblick 6 Literatur}, language = {de} } @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{vonderMalsburgKlieglVasishth2015, author = {von der Malsburg, Titus Raban and Kliegl, Reinhold and Vasishth, Shravan}, title = {Determinants of Scanpath Regularity in Reading}, series = {Cognitive science : a multidisciplinary journal of anthropology, artificial intelligence, education, linguistics, neuroscience, philosophy, psychology ; journal of the Cognitive Science Society}, volume = {39}, 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-Blackwell}, address = {Hoboken}, issn = {0364-0213}, doi = {10.1111/cogs.12208}, pages = {1675 -- 1703}, year = {2015}, abstract = {Scanpaths have played an important role in classic research on reading behavior. Nevertheless, they have largely been neglected in later research perhaps due to a lack of suitable analytical tools. Recently, von der Malsburg and Vasishth (2011) proposed a new measure for quantifying differences between scanpaths and demonstrated that this measure can recover effects that were missed with the traditional eyetracking measures. However, the sentences used in that study were difficult to process and scanpath effects accordingly strong. The purpose of the present study was to test the validity, sensitivity, and scope of applicability of the scanpath measure, using simple sentences that are typically read from left to right. We derived predictions for the regularity of scanpaths from the literature on oculomotor control, sentence processing, and cognitive aging and tested these predictions using the scanpath measure and a large database of eye movements. All predictions were confirmed: Sentences with short words and syntactically more difficult sentences elicited more irregular scanpaths. Also, older readers produced more irregular scanpaths than younger readers. In addition, we found an effect that was not reported earlier: Syntax had a smaller influence on the eye movements of older readers than on those of young readers. We discuss this interaction of syntactic parsing cost with age in terms of shifts in processing strategies and a decline of executive control as readers age. Overall, our results demonstrate the validity and sensitivity of the scanpath measure and thus establish it as a productive and versatile tool for reading research.}, language = {en} }