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Brain Research Nov 2021Prediction in language processing has been a topic of major interest in psycholinguistics for at least the last two decades, but most investigations focus on semantic... (Review)
Review
Prediction in language processing has been a topic of major interest in psycholinguistics for at least the last two decades, but most investigations focus on semantic rather than syntactic prediction. This review begins with a discussion of some influential models of parsing which assume that comprehenders have the ability to anticipate syntactic nodes, beginning with left-corner parsers and the garden-path model and ending with current information-theoretic approaches that emphasize online probabilistic prediction. We then turn to evidence for the prediction of specific syntactic forms, including coordinate clauses and noun phrases, verb arguments, and individual nouns, as well as studies that use morphosyntactic constraints to assess whether a specific semantic prediction has been made. The last section considers the implications of syntactic prediction for theories of language architecture and describes four avenues for future research.
Topics: Comprehension; Humans; Language; Psycholinguistics; Reading
PubMed: 34453937
DOI: 10.1016/j.brainres.2021.147632 -
Journal of Psycholinguistic Research Dec 2021In the long history of psycholinguistic research on verifying negative sentences, an often-reported finding is that participants take longer to correctly judge negative... (Review)
Review
In the long history of psycholinguistic research on verifying negative sentences, an often-reported finding is that participants take longer to correctly judge negative sentences true than false, while being faster to judge their positive counterparts true (e.g. Clark & Chase, Cogn Psychol 3(3):472-517, 1972; Carpenter & Just, Psychol Rev 82(1):45-73, 1975). While many linguists and psycholinguists have strongly advocated the idea that the costs and complexity of negation can be explained by appeal to context, context-based approaches have not been able to provide a satisfying account of this polarity*truth-value interaction. By contrast, the alternative theory of negation processing, which says that negation is processed by separately representing the positive, does provide a plausible account. Our proposals provide a means for reconciliation between the two views since we argue that negation is a strong cue to a positive context. Here we present our account of why and when negation is often apparently processed via the positive. We review many of the factors that are seen to be at play in sentence verification involving negation. We present evidence that participants' adoption of the positive-first procedure in sentence-picture verification tasks is conditioned by context.
Topics: Comprehension; Humans; Language; Psycholinguistics
PubMed: 34455529
DOI: 10.1007/s10936-021-09798-9 -
Journal of Psycholinguistic Research Dec 2021Negation is a universal component of human language; polarity sensitivity (i.e., lexical distributional constraints in relation to negation) is arguably so while being... (Review)
Review
Negation is a universal component of human language; polarity sensitivity (i.e., lexical distributional constraints in relation to negation) is arguably so while being pervasive across languages. Negation has long been a field of inquiry in psychological theories and experiments of reasoning, which inspired many follow-up studies of negation and negation-related phenomena in psycholinguistics. In generative theoretical linguistics, negation and polarity sensitivity have been extensively studied, as the related phenomena are situated at the interfaces of syntax, semantics and pragmatics, and are thus extremely revealing about the architecture of grammar. With the now long tradition of research on negation and polarity in psychology and psycholinguistics, and the emerging field of experimental semantics and pragmatics, a multitude of interests and experimental paradigms have emerged which call for re-evaluations and further development and integration. This special issue contains a collection of 16 research articles on the processing of negation and negation-related phenomena including polarity items, questions, conditionals, and irony, using a combination of behavioral (e.g., rating, reading, eye-tracking and sentence completion) and neuroimaging techniques (e.g., EEG). They showcase the processing of negation and polarity with or without context, in various languages and across different populations (adults, typically developing and ADHD children). The integration of multiple theoretical and empirical perspectives in this collection provides new insights, methodological advances and directions for future research.
Topics: Adult; Child; Humans; Language; Linguistics; Psycholinguistics; Reading; Semantics
PubMed: 34787786
DOI: 10.1007/s10936-021-09817-9 -
Cerebral Cortex (New York, N.Y. : 1991) Mar 2020Syntax, the structure of sentences, enables humans to express an infinite range of meanings through finite means. The neurobiology of syntax has been intensely studied...
Syntax, the structure of sentences, enables humans to express an infinite range of meanings through finite means. The neurobiology of syntax has been intensely studied but with little consensus. Two main candidate regions have been identified: the posterior inferior frontal gyrus (pIFG) and the posterior middle temporal gyrus (pMTG). Integrating research in linguistics, psycholinguistics, and neuroscience, we propose a neuroanatomical framework for syntax that attributes distinct syntactic computations to these regions in a unified model. The key theoretical advances are adopting a modern lexicalized view of syntax in which the lexicon and syntactic rules are intertwined, and recognizing a computational asymmetry in the role of syntax during comprehension and production. Our model postulates a hierarchical lexical-syntactic function to the pMTG, which interconnects previously identified speech perception and conceptual-semantic systems in the temporal and inferior parietal lobes, crucial for both sentence production and comprehension. These relational hierarchies are transformed via the pIFG into morpho-syntactic sequences, primarily tied to production. We show how this architecture provides a better account of the full range of data and is consistent with recent proposals regarding the organization of phonological processes in the brain.
Topics: Brain Mapping; Comprehension; Female; Humans; Language; Magnetic Resonance Imaging; Male; Prefrontal Cortex; Psycholinguistics; Speech Perception
PubMed: 31670779
DOI: 10.1093/cercor/bhz180 -
Scientific Data Jul 2022The growing interdisciplinary research field of psycholinguistics is in constant need of new and up-to-date tools which will allow researchers to answer complex...
The growing interdisciplinary research field of psycholinguistics is in constant need of new and up-to-date tools which will allow researchers to answer complex questions, but also expand on languages other than English, which dominates the field. One type of such tools are picture datasets which provide naming norms for everyday objects. However, existing databases tend to be small in terms of the number of items they include, and have also been normed in a limited number of languages, despite the recent boom in multilingualism research. In this paper we present the Multilingual Picture (Multipic) database, containing naming norms and familiarity scores for 500 coloured pictures, in thirty-two languages or language varieties from around the world. The data was validated with standard methods that have been used for existing picture datasets. This is the first dataset to provide naming norms, and translation equivalents, for such a variety of languages; as such, it will be of particular value to psycholinguists and other interested researchers. The dataset has been made freely available.
Topics: Databases, Factual; Humans; Language; Multilingualism; Psycholinguistics; Recognition, Psychology
PubMed: 35864133
DOI: 10.1038/s41597-022-01552-7 -
Nature Reviews. Neuroscience Jan 2012Speech production has been studied predominantly from within two traditions, psycholinguistics and motor control. These traditions have rarely interacted, and the... (Review)
Review
Speech production has been studied predominantly from within two traditions, psycholinguistics and motor control. These traditions have rarely interacted, and the resulting chasm between these approaches seems to reflect a level of analysis difference: whereas motor control is concerned with lower-level articulatory control, psycholinguistics focuses on higher-level linguistic processing. However, closer examination of both approaches reveals a substantial convergence of ideas. The goal of this article is to integrate psycholinguistic and motor control approaches to speech production. The result of this synthesis is a neuroanatomically grounded, hierarchical state feedback control model of speech production.
Topics: Cerebral Cortex; Feedback; Humans; Models, Biological; Neuroanatomy; Psycholinguistics; Speech
PubMed: 22218206
DOI: 10.1038/nrn3158 -
Cognitive Science May 2021Compositionality has been a central concept in linguistics and philosophy for decades, and it is increasingly prominent in many other areas of cognitive science. Its... (Review)
Review
Compositionality has been a central concept in linguistics and philosophy for decades, and it is increasingly prominent in many other areas of cognitive science. Its status, however, remains contentious. Here, I reassess the nature and scope of the principle of compositionality (Partee, 1995) from the perspective of psycholinguistics and cognitive neuroscience. First, I review classic arguments for compositionality and conclude that they fail to establish compositionality as a property of human language. Next, I state a new competence argument, acknowledging the fact that any competent user of a language L can assign to most expressions in L at least one meaning which is a function only of the meanings of the expression's parts and of its syntactic structure. I then discuss selected results from cognitive neuroscience, indicating that the human brain possesses the processing capacities presupposed by the competence argument. Finally, I outline a language processing architecture consistent with the neuroscience results, where semantic representations may be generated by a syntax-driven stream and by an "asyntactic" processing stream, jointly or independently. Compositionality is viewed as a constraint on computation in the former stream only.
Topics: Brain; Humans; Language; Linguistics; Psycholinguistics; Semantics
PubMed: 34018238
DOI: 10.1111/cogs.12949 -
Topics in Cognitive Science Jul 2020Human languages all have a grammar, that is, rules that determine how symbols in a language can be combined to create complex meaningful expressions. Despite decades of...
Human languages all have a grammar, that is, rules that determine how symbols in a language can be combined to create complex meaningful expressions. Despite decades of research, the evolutionary, developmental, cognitive, and computational bases of grammatical abilities are still not fully understood. "Artificial Grammar Learning" (AGL) studies provide important insights into how rules and structured sequences are learned, the relevance of these processes to language in humans, and whether the cognitive systems involved are shared with other animals. AGL tasks can be used to study how human adults, infants, animals, or machines learn artificial grammars of various sorts, consisting of rules defined typically over syllables, sounds, or visual items. In this introduction, we distill some lessons from the nine other papers in this special issue, which review the advances made from this growing body of literature. We provide a critical synthesis, identify the questions that remain open, and recognize the challenges that lie ahead. A key observation across the disciplines is that the limits of human, animal, and machine capabilities have yet to be found. Thus, this interdisciplinary area of research firmly rooted in the cognitive sciences has unearthed exciting new questions and venues for research, along the way fostering impactful collaborations between traditionally disconnected disciplines that are breaking scientific ground.
Topics: Animals; Humans; Infant; Language Development; Learning; Linguistics; Models, Theoretical; Psycholinguistics
PubMed: 32134565
DOI: 10.1111/tops.12493 -
Topics in Cognitive Science Jul 2018Our ability to deal with abstract concepts is one of the most intriguing faculties of human cognition. Still, we know little about how such concepts are formed,...
Our ability to deal with abstract concepts is one of the most intriguing faculties of human cognition. Still, we know little about how such concepts are formed, processed, and represented in mind. For example, because abstract concepts do not designate referents that can be experienced through our body, the role of perceptual experiences in shaping their content remains controversial. Current theories suggest a variety of alternative explanations to the question of "how abstract concepts are represented in the human mind." These views pinpoint specific streams of semantic information that would play a prominent role in shaping the content of abstract concepts, such as situation-based information (e.g., Barsalou & Wiemer-Hastings, ), affective information (Kousta, Vigliocco, Vinson, Andrews, & Del Campo, ), and linguistic information (Louwerse, ). Rarely, these theoretical views are directly compared. In this special issue, current views are presented in their most recent and advanced form, and directly compared and discussed in a debate, which is reported at the end of each article. As a result, new exciting questions and challenges arise. These questions and challenges, reported in this introductory article, can arguably pave the way to new empirical studies and theoretical developments on the nature of abstract concepts.
Topics: Concept Formation; Humans; Models, Theoretical; Psycholinguistics
PubMed: 29932299
DOI: 10.1111/tops.12354 -
Topics in Cognitive Science Apr 2023Despite its many twists and turns, the arc of cognitive science generally bends toward progress, thanks to its interdisciplinary nature. By glancing at the last few...
Despite its many twists and turns, the arc of cognitive science generally bends toward progress, thanks to its interdisciplinary nature. By glancing at the last few decades of experimental and computational advances, it can be argued that-far from failing to converge on a shared set of conceptual assumptions-the field is indeed making steady consensual progress toward what can broadly be referred to as interactive frameworks. This inclination is apparent in the subfields of psycholinguistics, visual perception, embodied cognition, extended cognition, neural networks, dynamical systems theory, and more. This pictorial essay briefly documents this steady progress both from a bird's eye view and from the trenches. The conclusion is one of optimism that cognitive science is getting there, albeit slowly and arduously, like any good science should.
Topics: Humans; Cognition; Visual Perception; Psycholinguistics; Neural Networks, Computer; Cognitive Science
PubMed: 36949655
DOI: 10.1111/tops.12645