TY - JOUR A1 - Stone, Kate A1 - von der Malsburg, Titus Raban A1 - Vasishth, Shravan T1 - The effect of decay and lexical uncertainty on processing long-distance dependencies in reading JF - PeerJ N2 - 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. KW - reading KW - comprehension KW - temporal decay KW - preactivation KW - long distance KW - dependencies KW - entropy KW - psycholinguistics KW - locality KW - antilocality Y1 - 2020 U6 - https://doi.org/10.7717/peerj.10438 SN - 2167-8359 VL - 8 PB - PeerJ Inc. CY - London ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Smith, Garrett A1 - Vasishth, Shravan T1 - A principled approach to feature selection in models of sentence processing JF - Cognitive science : a multidisciplinary journal of anthropology, artificial intelligence, education, linguistics, neuroscience, philosophy, psychology ; journal of the Cognitive Science Society N2 - Among theories of human language comprehension, cue-based memory retrieval has proven to be a useful framework for understanding when and how processing difficulty arises in the resolution of long-distance dependencies. Most previous work in this area has assumed that very general retrieval cues like [+subject] or [+singular] do the work of identifying (and sometimes misidentifying) a retrieval target in order to establish a dependency between words. However, recent work suggests that general, handpicked retrieval cues like these may not be enough to explain illusions of plausibility (Cunnings & Sturt, 2018), which can arise in sentences like The letter next to the porcelain plate shattered. Capturing such retrieval interference effects requires lexically specific features and retrieval cues, but handpicking the features is hard to do in a principled way and greatly increases modeler degrees of freedom. To remedy this, we use well-established word embedding methods for creating distributed lexical feature representations that encode information relevant for retrieval using distributed retrieval cue vectors. We show that the similarity between the feature and cue vectors (a measure of plausibility) predicts total reading times in Cunnings and Sturt's eye-tracking data. The features can easily be plugged into existing parsing models (including cue-based retrieval and self-organized parsing), putting very different models on more equal footing and facilitating future quantitative comparisons. KW - Cue‐based retrieval KW - plausibility KW - word embeddings KW - linguistic KW - features Y1 - 2020 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1111/cogs.12918 SN - 0364-0213 SN - 1551-6709 VL - 44 IS - 12 PB - Wiley CY - Hoboken ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Bürki-Foschini, Audrey Damaris A1 - Elbuy, Shereen A1 - Madec, Sylvain A1 - Vasishth, Shravan T1 - What did we learn from forty years of research on semantic interference? BT - a Bayesian meta-analysis JF - Journal of memory and language N2 - When participants in an experiment have to name pictures while ignoring distractor words superimposed on the picture or presented auditorily (i.e., picture-word interference paradigm), they take more time when the word to be named (or target) and distractor words are from the same semantic category (e.g., cat-dog). This experimental effect is known as the semantic interference effect, and is probably one of the most studied in the language production literature. The functional origin of the effect and the exact conditions in which it occurs are however still debated. Since Lupker (1979) reported the effect in the first response time experiment about 40 years ago, more than 300 similar experiments have been conducted. The semantic interference effect was replicated in many experiments, but several studies also reported the absence of an effect in a subset of experimental conditions. The aim of the present study is to provide a comprehensive theoretical review of the existing evidence to date and several Bayesian meta-analyses and meta-regressions to determine the size of the effect and explore the experimental conditions in which the effect surfaces. The results are discussed in the light of current debates about the functional origin of the semantic interference effect and its implications for our understanding of the language production system. KW - Bayesian random effects meta-analysis KW - picture-word interference KW - semantic interference KW - language production Y1 - 2020 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jml.2020.104125 SN - 0749-596X SN - 1096-0821 VL - 114 PB - Elsevier CY - San Diego ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Vasishth, Shravan T1 - Using approximate Bayesian computation for estimating parameters in the cue-based retrieval model of sentence processing JF - MethodsX N2 - A commonly used approach to parameter estimation in computational models is the so-called grid search procedure: the entire parameter space is searched in small steps to determine the parameter value that provides the best fit to the observed data. This approach has several disadvantages: first, it can be computationally very expensive; second, one optimal point value of the parameter is reported as the best fit value; we cannot quantify our uncertainty about the parameter estimate. In the main journal article that this methods article accompanies (Jager et al., 2020, Interference patterns in subject-verb agreement and reflexives revisited: A large-sample study, Journal of Memory and Language), we carried out parameter estimation using Approximate Bayesian Computation (ABC), which is a Bayesian approach that allows us to quantify our uncertainty about the parameter's values given data. This customization has the further advantage that it allows us to generate both prior and posterior predictive distributions of reading times from the cue-based retrieval model of Lewis and Vasishth, 2005.
Instead of the conventional method of using grid search, we use Approximate Bayesian Computation (ABC) for parameter estimation in the [4] model.
The ABC method of parameter estimation has the advantage that the uncertainty of the parameter can be quantified. KW - Bayesian parameter estimation KW - Prior and posterior predictive KW - distributions KW - Psycholinguistics Y1 - 2020 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.mex.2020.100850 SN - 2215-0161 VL - 7 PB - Elsevier CY - Amsterdam ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Paape, Dario A1 - Vasishth, Shravan A1 - von der Malsburg, Titus Raban T1 - Quadruplex negatio invertit? BT - the on-line processing of depth charge sentences JF - Journal of semantics N2 - 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. Y1 - 2020 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1093/jos/ffaa009 SN - 0167-5133 SN - 1477-4593 VL - 37 IS - 4 SP - 509 EP - 555 PB - Oxford Univ. Press CY - Oxford ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Stone, Kate A1 - Nicenboim, Bruno A1 - Vasishth, Shravan A1 - Rösler, Frank T1 - Understanding the effects of constraint and predictability in ERP JF - Neurobiology of Language N2 - 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. KW - N400 KW - anterior PNP KW - posterior P600 KW - probabilistic processing KW - constraint KW - predictability KW - entropy Y1 - 2022 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1162/nol_a_00094 SN - 2641-4368 VL - 4 EP - 2 PB - MIT Press CY - Cambridge, MA, USA ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Engbert, Ralf A1 - Rabe, Maximilian Michael A1 - Schwetlick, Lisa A1 - Seelig, Stefan A. A1 - Reich, Sebastian A1 - Vasishth, Shravan T1 - Data assimilation in dynamical cognitive science JF - Trends in cognitive sciences N2 - Dynamical models make specific assumptions about cognitive processes that generate human behavior. In data assimilation, these models are tested against timeordered data. Recent progress on Bayesian data assimilation demonstrates that this approach combines the strengths of statistical modeling of individual differences with the those of dynamical cognitive models. Y1 - 2022 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tics.2021.11.006 SN - 1364-6613 SN - 1879-307X VL - 26 IS - 2 SP - 99 EP - 102 PB - Elsevier CY - Amsterdam ER - TY - GEN A1 - Stone, Kate A1 - Vasishth, Shravan A1 - Malsburg, Titus von der T1 - Does entropy modulate the prediction of German long-distance verb particles? T2 - Zweitveröffentlichungen der Universität Potsdam : Humanwissenschaftliche Reihe N2 - 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 1μV for the N400 and larger than 3μV 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. T3 - Zweitveröffentlichungen der Universität Potsdam : Humanwissenschaftliche Reihe - 785 Y1 - 2022 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-562312 SN - 1866-8364 SP - 1 EP - 25 PB - Universitätsverlag Potsdam CY - Potsdam ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Jaeger, Lena A. A1 - Engelmann, Felix A1 - Vasishth, Shravan T1 - Similarity-based interference in sentence comprehension: Literature review and Bayesian meta-analysis JF - Journal of memory and language N2 - We report a comprehensive review of the published reading studies on retrieval interference in reflexive-/reciprocal-antecedent and subject-verb dependencies. We also provide a quantitative random-effects meta-analysis of eyetracking and self-paced reading studies. We show that the empirical evidence is only partly consistent with cue-based retrieval as implemented in the ACT-R-based model of sentence processing by Lewis and Vasishth (2005) (LV05) and that there are important differences between the reviewed dependency types. In non-agreement subject-verb dependencies, there is evidence for inhibitory interference in configurations where the correct dependent fully matches the retrieval cues. This is consistent with the LV05 cue-based retrieval account. By contrast, in subject-verb agreement as well as in reflexive-/reciprocal-antecedent dependencies, no evidence for inhibitory interference is found in configurations with a fully cue-matching subject/antecedent. In configurations with only a partially cue-matching subject or antecedent, the meta-analysis reveals facilitatory interference in subject-verb agreement and inhibitory interference in reflexives/reciprocals. The former is consistent with the LV05 account, but the latter is not. Moreover, the meta-analysis reveals that (i) interference type (proactive versus retroactive) leads to different effects in the reviewed dependency types and (ii) the prominence of the distractor strongly influences the interference effect. In sum, the meta-analysis suggests that the LV05 needs important modifications to account for the unexplained interference patterns and the differences between the dependency types. More generally, the meta-analysis provides a quantitative empirical basis for comparing the predictions of competing accounts of retrieval processes in sentence comprehension. (C) 2017 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. KW - Cue-based retrieval KW - Syntactic dependency processing KW - Interference KW - Bayesian meta-analysis KW - Agreement KW - Reflexives Y1 - 2017 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jml.2017.01.004 SN - 0749-596X SN - 1096-0821 VL - 94 SP - 316 EP - 339 PB - Elsevier CY - San Diego ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Frank, Stefan L. A1 - Trompenaars, Thijs A1 - Vasishth, Shravan T1 - Cross-Linguistic Differences in Processing Double-Embedded Relative Clauses: Working-Memory Constraints or Language Statistics? JF - Cognitive science : a multidisciplinary journal of anthropology, artificial intelligence, education, linguistics, neuroscience, philosophy, psychology ; journal of the Cognitive Science Society N2 - An English double-embedded relative clause from which the middle verb is omitted can often be processed more easily than its grammatical counterpart, a phenomenon known as the grammaticality illusion. This effect has been found to be reversed in German, suggesting that the illusion is language specific rather than a consequence of universal working memory constraints. We present results from three self-paced reading experiments which show that Dutch native speakers also do not show the grammaticality illusion in Dutch, whereas both German and Dutch native speakers do show the illusion when reading English sentences. These findings provide evidence against working memory constraints as an explanation for the observed effect in English. We propose an alternative account based on the statistical patterns of the languages involved. In support of this alternative, a single recurrent neural network model that is trained on both Dutch and English sentences is shown to predict the cross-linguistic difference in the grammaticality effect. KW - Bilingualism KW - Cross-linguistic differences KW - Sentence comprehension KW - Relative clauses KW - Centre embedding KW - Grammaticality illusion KW - Self-paced reading KW - Recurrent neural network model Y1 - 2016 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1111/cogs.12247 SN - 0364-0213 SN - 1551-6709 VL - 40 SP - 554 EP - 578 PB - Wiley-Blackwell CY - Hoboken ER -