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Topics in Cognitive Science Oct 2016It is well established that language production and comprehension are influenced by information status, for example, whether information is given, new, topical, or... (Review)
Review
It is well established that language production and comprehension are influenced by information status, for example, whether information is given, new, topical, or predictable, and many scholars suggest that an important component of information status is keeping track of what information is in common ground (i.e., what is shared), and what is not. Information status affects both speakers' choices (e.g., word order, pronoun use, prosodic prominence) and how listeners interpret the speaker's meaning (e.g., Chafe, 1994; Prince, 1981). Although there is a wealth of scholarly work on information status (for a review, see Arnold, Kaiser, Kahn, & Kim, 2013), there is no consensus on the mechanisms by which it is used, and in fact relatively little discussion of the underlying representations and psycholinguistic mechanisms. Moreover, a major challenge to understanding information status is that its effects are notoriously variable. This study considers existing proposals about information status, focusing on two questions: (a) how is it represented; and (b) by what mechanisms is it used? I propose that it is important to consider whether representations and mechanisms can be classified as either explicit or emergent. Based on a review of existing evidence, I argue that information status representations are most likely emergent, but the mechanisms by which they are used are both explicit and emergent. This review provides one of the first considerations of information status processing across multiple domains.
Topics: Choice Behavior; Comprehension; Humans; Language; Psycholinguistics; Speech Perception
PubMed: 27766755
DOI: 10.1111/tops.12220 -
Journal of Psycholinguistic Research Jun 2015
Topics: Asia, Eastern; Humans; Psycholinguistics
PubMed: 25957959
DOI: 10.1007/s10936-015-9373-3 -
Behavior Research Methods Oct 2021This paper introduces the Grievance Dictionary, a psycholinguistic dictionary that can be used to automatically understand language use in the context of...
This paper introduces the Grievance Dictionary, a psycholinguistic dictionary that can be used to automatically understand language use in the context of grievance-fueled violence threat assessment. We describe the development of the dictionary, which was informed by suggestions from experienced threat assessment practitioners. These suggestions and subsequent human and computational word list generation resulted in a dictionary of 20,502 words annotated by 2318 participants. The dictionary was validated by applying it to texts written by violent and non-violent individuals, showing strong evidence for a difference between populations in several dictionary categories. Further classification tasks showed promising performance, but future improvements are still needed. Finally, we provide instructions and suggestions for the use of the Grievance Dictionary by security professionals and (violence) researchers.
Topics: Humans; Language; Psycholinguistics; Writing
PubMed: 33755932
DOI: 10.3758/s13428-021-01536-2 -
Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews.... 2015This review provides a summary of the most recent advances on the study of how prosody is used during language comprehension. Prosody is characterized as an abstract... (Review)
Review
This review provides a summary of the most recent advances on the study of how prosody is used during language comprehension. Prosody is characterized as an abstract structure composed of discrete tonal elements aligned with the segmental composition of the sentence organized in constituents of increasing size, and this structure is influenced by the phonological, syntactic, and informational structures of the sentence. Here, we discuss evidence that listeners are affected by prosody when establishing those linguistic structures. Prosody has been shown to influence the segmentation of the utterance into syllables and words, and, in some cases, whether a syllable or word is judged to be present or not. The literature on how prosody informs the structural relationship between words and phrases is also discussed, contrasting views that assume a direct (albeit probabilistic) link between syntax and prosody with those that posit a complex interface between syntax and prosodic structure. Finally, the role of prosody in conveying important aspects pertaining to the sentence's information structure (i.e., which parts of the sentence's meaning are highlighted and brought forward to the discourse, which ones are presupposed and left in the background, which attitudes are being conveyed about the concepts or propositional content) has long been recognized. Current research focuses on which prosodic elements contribute to marking the dimensions (or semantic primitives) of the information structure.
Topics: Comprehension; Humans; Language; Phonetics; Psycholinguistics
PubMed: 26267554
DOI: 10.1002/wcs.1355 -
Journal of Psycholinguistic Research Aug 2020
Topics: Culture; Humans; Psycholinguistics
PubMed: 32740879
DOI: 10.1007/s10936-020-09724-5 -
Behavior Research Methods Apr 2023We present a database of category production (aka semantic fluency) norms collected in the UK for 117 categories (67 concrete and 50 abstract). Participants verbally...
We present a database of category production (aka semantic fluency) norms collected in the UK for 117 categories (67 concrete and 50 abstract). Participants verbally named as many category members as possible within 60 seconds, resulting in a large variety of over 2000 generated member concepts. The norms feature common measures of category production (production frequency, mean ordinal rank, first-rank frequency), as well as response times for all first-named category members, and typicality ratings collected from a separate participant sample. We provide two versions of the dataset: a referential version that groups together responses that relate to the same referent (e.g., hippo, hippopotamus) and a full version that retains all original responses to enable future lexical analysis. Correlational analyses with previous norms from the USA and UK demonstrate both consistencies and differences in English-language norms over time and between geographical regions. Further exploration of the norms reveals a number of structural and psycholinguistic differences between abstract and concrete categories. The data and analyses will be of use in the fields of cognitive psychology, neuropsychology, psycholinguistics, and cognitive modelling, and to any researchers interested in semantic category structure. All data, including original participant recordings, are available at https://osf.io/jgcu6/ .
Topics: Humans; Language; Semantics; Psycholinguistics; Databases, Factual; Reaction Time
PubMed: 35650380
DOI: 10.3758/s13428-021-01787-z -
Topics in Cognitive Science Jan 2018In this commentary on "Memory and Common Ground Processes in Language Use," I draw attention to relevant work on mindreading. The concerns of research on common ground... (Review)
Review
In this commentary on "Memory and Common Ground Processes in Language Use," I draw attention to relevant work on mindreading. The concerns of research on common ground and mindreading have significant overlap, but these literatures have worked in relative isolation of each other. I attempt an assimilation, pointing out shared and distinctive concerns and mutually informative results.
Topics: Humans; Psycholinguistics; Social Perception; Theory of Mind
PubMed: 29143472
DOI: 10.1111/tops.12308 -
Journal of Psycholinguistic Research Apr 2021Bilingualism and multilingualism are common in almost all communities worldwide today. Research studies on the psycholinguistics of bilingualism and multilingualism in...
Bilingualism and multilingualism are common in almost all communities worldwide today. Research studies on the psycholinguistics of bilingualism and multilingualism in East Asia region has developed tremendously in the past 20 years. Along with the new methodologies, innovative approaches, and the development of those state-of-the-art technologies (Altarriba and Heredia (eds) in An introduction to bilingualism: principles and processes, Routledge, 2018), a lot of new research findings on this line of research have been reported.
Topics: Cognition; Asia, Eastern; Humans; Linguistics; Multilingualism; Psycholinguistics
PubMed: 33846904
DOI: 10.1007/s10936-021-09779-y -
Topics in Cognitive Science Jul 2020In many domains of human cognition, hierarchically structured representations are thought to play a key role. In this paper, we start with some foundational definitions... (Review)
Review
In many domains of human cognition, hierarchically structured representations are thought to play a key role. In this paper, we start with some foundational definitions of key phenomena like "sequence" and "hierarchy," and then outline potential signatures of hierarchical structure that can be observed in behavioral and neuroimaging data. Appropriate behavioral methods include classic ones from psycholinguistics along with some from the more recent artificial grammar learning and sentence processing literature. We then turn to neuroimaging evidence for hierarchical structure with a focus on the functional MRI literature. We conclude that, although a broad consensus exists about a role for a neural circuit incorporating the inferior frontal gyrus, the superior temporal sulcus, and the arcuate fasciculus, considerable uncertainty remains about the precise computational function(s) of this circuitry. An explicit theoretical framework, combined with an empirical approach focusing on distinguishing between plausible alternative hypotheses, will be necessary for further progress.
Topics: Functional Neuroimaging; Humans; Memory; Models, Theoretical; Nerve Net; Psycholinguistics
PubMed: 31364310
DOI: 10.1111/tops.12442 -
Quarterly Journal of Experimental... 2015This paper introduces and summarizes the special issue on megastudies, crowdsourcing, and large datasets in psycholinguistics. We provide a brief historical overview and... (Review)
Review
This paper introduces and summarizes the special issue on megastudies, crowdsourcing, and large datasets in psycholinguistics. We provide a brief historical overview and show how the papers in this issue have extended the field by compiling new databases and making important theoretical contributions. In addition, we discuss several studies that use text corpora to build distributional semantic models to tackle various interesting problems in psycholinguistics. Finally, as is the case across the papers, we highlight some methodological issues that are brought forth via the analyses of such datasets.
Topics: Crowdsourcing; History, 20th Century; History, 21st Century; Humans; Psycholinguistics; Semantics
PubMed: 25975773
DOI: 10.1080/17470218.2015.1051065