Processing Of Complex Sentences Research Articles

Transcranial photobiomodulation on the left inferior frontal gyrus enhances Mandarin Chinese L1 and L2 complex sentence processing performances

This study investigated the causal enhancing effect of transcranial photobiomodulation (tPBM) over the left inferior frontal gyrus (LIFG) on syntactically complex Mandarin Chinese first language (L1) and second language (L2) sentence processing performances. Two (L1 and L2) groups of participants (thirty per group) were recruited to receive the double-blind, sham-controlled tPBM intervention via LIFG, followed by the sentence processing, the verbal working memory (WM), and the visual WM tasks. Results revealed a consistent pattern for both groups: (a) tPBM enhanced sentence processing performance but not verbal WM for linear processing of unstructured sequences and visual WM performances; (b) Participants with lower sentence processing performances under sham tPBM benefited more from active tPBM. Taken together, the current study substantiated that tPBM enhanced L1 and L2 sentence processing, and would serve as a promising and cost-effective noninvasive brain stimulation (NIBS) tool for future applications on upregulating the human language faculty.

Modulating Complex Sentence Processing in Aphasia Through Attention and Semantic Networks.

Lexical processing impairments such as delayed and reduced activation of lexical-semantic information have been linked to syntactic processing disruptions and sentence comprehension deficits in individuals with aphasia (IWAs). Lexical-level deficits can also preclude successful lexical encoding during sentence processing and amplify the processing costs of similarity-based interference during syntactic retrieval. We investigate whether two manipulations to engage attention and pre-activate semantic features of a target (to-be-retrieved) noun will (a) boost lexical activation during initial lexical encoding and (b) facilitate syntactic dependency linking through improved resolution of interference in IWAs and neurologically unimpaired age-matched controls (AMCs). Eye-tracking-while-listening with a visual world paradigm was used to investigate whether semantic and attentional manipulations modulated initial lexical processing and downstream syntactic retrieval of the direct-object noun in object-relative sentences. In the attention and semantic manipulations, the AMC group showed no changes in initial lexical access levels; however, gaze patterns revealed clear facilitations in dependency linking and interference resolution. In the IWA group, the attentional cue increased and maintained activation of N1 with modest facilitations in dependency linking. In the semantic condition, IWA results showed a greater degree of facilitation during dependency linking. The results suggest that attention and semantic activation are parameters that may be manipulated to strengthen encoding of lexical representations to facilitate retrieval (i.e., dependency linking) and mitigate similarity-based interference. In IWAs, these manipulations may help to reduce lexical processing deficits that can preclude successful encoding.

Is there an influence of perceptual or cognitive impairment on complex sentence processing in hearing aid users?

Hearing-impaired listeners often have difficulty understanding complex sentences. It is not clear if perceptual or cognitive deficits have more impact on reduced language processing abilities, and how a hearing aid might compensate for that. In a prospective study with 5 hearing aid users and 5 normal hearing, age-matched participants, processing of complex sentences was investigated. Audiometric and working memory tests were performed. Subject- and object-initial sentences from the Oldenburg Corpus of Linguistically and audiologically controlled Sentences (OLACS) were presented to the participants during recording of an electroencephalogram (EEG). The perceptual difference between object and subject leading sentences does not lead to processing changes whereas the ambiguity in object leading sentences with feminine or neuter articles evokes a P600 potential. For hearing aid users, this P600 has a longer latency compared to normal hearing subjects. The EEG is a suitable method for investigating differences in complex speech processing for hearing aid users. Longer P600 latencies indicate higher cognitive effort for processing complex sentences in hearing aid users.

Children's syntax is supported by the maturation of BA44 at 4years, but of the posterior STS at 3years of age.

Within the first years of life, children learn major aspects of their native language. However, the ability to process complex sentence structures, a core faculty in human language called syntax, emerges only slowly. A milestone in syntax acquisition is reached around the age of 4years, when children learn a variety of syntactic concepts. Here, we ask which maturational changes in the child's brain underlie the emergence of syntactically complex sentence processing around this critical age. We relate markers of cortical brain maturation to 3- and 4-year-olds' sentence processing in contrast to other language abilities. Our results show that distinct cortical brain areas support sentence processing in the two age groups. Sentence production abilities at 3years were associated with increased surface area in the most posterior part of the left superior temporal sulcus, whereas 4-year-olds showed an association with cortical thickness in the left posterior part of Broca's area, i.e. BA44. The present findings suggest that sentence processing abilities rely on the maturation of distinct cortical regions in 3- compared to 4-year-olds. The observed shift to more mature regions involved in processing syntactically complex sentences may underlie behavioral milestones in syntax acquisition at around 4years.

Sources of Discreteness and Gradience in Island Effects

This paper provides an overview of categorical and gradient effects in islands, with a focus on English, and argues that most islands are gradient. In some cases, the island is circumvented by the construction type in which the extraction takes place, and there is growing evidence that the critical factor is pragmatic in nature, contrary to classic and categorical accounts of island effects that are favored in generative circles to this day. In other cases, the island effect is malleable and can weaken with increased exposure to the extraction pattern, a phenomenon traditionally referred to as ‘syntactic satiation’. However, it is not clear what satiation consists of. Some argue that it is nothing more than task adaptation (mere increased familiarity with the experimental paradigm, impacting difficult sentences more than easy ones), whereas others propose that it consists of a form of error-driven structure-dependent form of learning. The present paper discusses this controversy, and the broader adaptation debate, and argues that both task adaptation and grammatical adaptation are taking place during the processing of complex sentences, and that both frequency and attention are plausible factors to stimulate adaptation.

Moment-to-Moment Processing of Complex Sentences by Adults with and without Developmental Language Disorder

Introduction. Limited evidence suggests that adults with developmental language disorder (DLD) take different information into account as they process sentences as compared to peers with typical language. The purpose of this study was to evaluate how two factors affect sentence processing in adults with DLD: online storage costs and lexical expectations created by nouns. Methods. Forty-three adults, 21 with DLD, listened to complex sentences presented word-by-word, and their listening times were recorded. The sentences included either object relative clauses or sentential complements which differed in online storage demands. The main clause subject nouns differed in co-occurrence frequency with “that” in sentences produced by typical adults. Participants completed a running span task to assess verbal working memory capacity. Results. Mixed effects models found differences by sentence region. Participants with DLD processed embedded clause verbs faster than participants with typical language, and poorer language ability was associated with faster processing of conjunctions “that” and “which.” Participants with greater verbal working memory capacity or typical language were affected by noun co-occurrence frequencies but those with lower working memory or DLD were not. Conclusions. The results align with prior findings that verbal working memory capacity influences what information affects moment-to-moment sentence processing. Those with greater capacity appeared to be more affected by temporary ambiguity. As compared to adults with typical language, processing times of adults with DLD were less sensitive to information on words that frequently co-occur with nouns. This aligns with prior findings suggesting that adults with DLD are less sensitive to the frequency of the structures and arguments that co-occur with verbs.

Language Decline Characterizes Amnestic Mild Cognitive Impairment Independent of Cognitive Decline.

Purpose This research investigated the nature of cognitive decline in prodromal Alzheimer's disease (AD), particularly in mild cognitive impairment, amnestic type (aMCI). We assessed language in aMCI as compared with healthy aging (HA) and healthy young (HY) with new psycholinguistic assessment of complex sentences, and we tested the degree to which deficits on this language measure relate to performance in other general cognitive domains such as memory. Method Sixty-one individuals with aMCI were compared with 24 HA and 10 HY adults on a psycholinguistic measure of complex sentence production (relative clauses). In addition, HA, HY, and a subset of the aMCI participants (n = 22) were also tested on a multidomain cognitive screen, the Addenbrooke's Cognitive Examination-Revised (ACE-R), and on a verbal working memory Brown-Peterson (BP) test. General and generalized linear mixed models were used to test psycholinguistic results and to test whether ACE-R and BP performance predicted performance on the psycholinguistic test similarly in the aMCI and HA groups. Results On the psycholinguistic measure, sentence imitation was significantly deficited in aMCI in comparison with that in HA and HY. Experimental factorial designs revealed that individuals with aMCI had particular difficulty repeating sentences that especially challenged syntax-semantics integration. As expected, the aMCI group also performed significantly below the HY and HA groups on the ACE-R. Neither the ACE-R Memory subtest nor the BP total scores predicted performance on the psycholinguistic task for either the aMCI or the HA group. However, the ACE-R total score significantly predicted psycholinguistic task performance, with increased ACE-R performance predicting increased psycholinguistic task performance only for the HA group, not for the aMCI group. Conclusions Results suggest a selective deterioration in language in aMCI, specifically a weakening of syntax-semantics integration in complex sentence processing, and a general independence of this language deficit and memory decline. Results cohere with previous assessments of the nature of difficulty in complex sentence formation in aMCI. We argue that clinical screening for prodromal AD can be strengthened by supplementary testing of language, as well as memory, and extended evaluation of strength of their relation.

It’s about time! Time as a parameter for lexical and syntactic processing: an eye-tracking-while-listening investigation

ABSTRACT We examined the time-course of lexical activation, deactivation, and the syntactic operation of dependency linking during the online processing of object-relative sentence constructions using eye-tracking-while-listening. We explored how manipulating temporal aspects of the language input affects the tight lexical and syntactic temporal constraints found in sentence processing. The three temporal manipulations were (1) increasing the duration of the direct object noun, (2) adding the disfluency uh after the noun, and (3) replacing the disfluency with a silent pause. The findings from this experiment revealed that the disfluent and silence temporal manipulations enhanced the processing of subject and object noun phrases by modulating activation and deactivation. The manipulations also changed the time-course of dependency linking (increased reactivation of the direct object). The modulated activation dynamics of these lexical items are thought to play a role in mitigating interference and suggest that deactivation plays a beneficial role in complex sentence processing.

Effects of age-related hearing loss and hearing aid experience on sentence processing

Age-related hearing loss typically affects the hearing of high frequencies in older adults. Such hearing loss influences the processing of spoken language, including higher-level processing such as that of complex sentences. Hearing aids may alleviate some of the speech processing disadvantages associated with hearing loss. However, little is known about the relation between hearing loss, hearing aid use, and their effects on higher-level language processes. This neuroimaging (fMRI) study examined these factors by measuring the comprehension and neural processing of simple and complex spoken sentences in hard-of-hearing older adults (n = 39). Neither hearing loss severity nor hearing aid experience influenced sentence comprehension at the behavioral level. In contrast, hearing loss severity was associated with increased activity in left superior frontal areas and the left anterior insula, but only when processing specific complex sentences (i.e. object-before-subject) compared to simple sentences. Longer hearing aid experience in a sub-set of participants (n = 19) was associated with recruitment of several areas outside of the core speech processing network in the right hemisphere, including the cerebellum, the precentral gyrus, and the cingulate cortex, but only when processing complex sentences. Overall, these results indicate that brain activation for language processing is affected by hearing loss as well as subsequent hearing aid use. Crucially, they show that these effects become apparent through investigation of complex but not simple sentences.

When Hearing Does Not Mean Understanding: On the Neural Processing of Syntactically Complex Sentences by Listeners With Hearing Loss.

Purpose Adults with mild-to-moderate age-related hearing loss typically exhibit issues with speech understanding, but their processing of syntactically complex sentences is not well understood. We test the hypothesis that listeners with hearing loss' difficulties with comprehension and processing of syntactically complex sentences are due to the processing of degraded input interfering with the successful processing of complex sentences. Method We performed a neuroimaging study with a sentence comprehension task, varying sentence complexity (through subject-object order and verb-arguments order) and cognitive demands (presence or absence of a secondary task) within subjects. Groups of older subjects with hearing loss (n = 20) and age-matched normal-hearing controls (n = 20) were tested. Results The comprehension data show effects of syntactic complexity and hearing ability, with normal-hearing controls outperforming listeners with hearing loss, seemingly more so on syntactically complex sentences. The secondary task did not influence off-line comprehension. The imaging data show effects of group, sentence complexity, and task, with listeners with hearing loss showing decreased activation in typical speech processing areas, such as the inferior frontal gyrus and superior temporal gyrus. No interactions between group, sentence complexity, and task were found in the neuroimaging data. Conclusions The results suggest that listeners with hearing loss process speech differently from their normal-hearing peers, possibly due to the increased demands of processing degraded auditory input. Increased cognitive demands by means of a secondary visual shape processing task influence neural sentence processing, but no evidence was found that it does so in a different way for listeners with hearing loss and normal-hearing listeners.

Neural Mechanisms Underlying the Processing of Complex Sentences: An fMRI Study.

Previous research has shown effects of syntactic complexity on sentence processing. In linguistics, syntactic complexity (caused by different word orders) is traditionally explained by distinct linguistic operations. This study investigates whether different complex word orders indeed result in distinct patterns of neural activity, as would be expected when distinct linguistic operations are applied. Twenty-two older adults performed an auditory sentence processing paradigm in German with and without increased cognitive load. The results show that without increased cognitive load, complex sentences show distinct activation patterns compared with less complex, canonical sentences: complex object-initial sentences show increased activity in the left inferior frontal and temporal regions, whereas complex adjunct-initial sentences show increased activity in occipital and right superior frontal regions. Increased cognitive load seems to affect the processing of different sentence structures differently, increasing neural activity for canonical sentences, but leaving complex sentences relatively unaffected. We discuss these results in the context of the idea that linguistic operations required for processing sentence structures with higher levels of complexity involve distinct brain operations.

Auditory Sentence Processing in Bilinguals: The Role of Cognitive Control.

A number of research studies have shown that the unique need in bilinguals to manage both of their languages positively impacts their cognitive control processes. Yet, due to a dearth of studies at the sentence level, it is still unclear if this benefit extends to sentence processing. In monolinguals and bilinguals, cognitive control helps in reinterpretation of garden path sentences but it is still unknown how it supports the real-time resolution of interference during parsing, such as the type of interference seen in the processing of object relative (OR) sentences. In this study, we compared monolinguals and bilinguals during online spoken OR sentence processing and examined if both groups used cognitive control to resolve interference. In this eye-tracking visual world (ETL-vw) study, OR sentences were aurally presented to 19 monolingual and 21 Spanish-English bilingual adults while gaze patterns were captured throughout the time course of the sentence. Of particular interest was the post-verb position, where the listener connects the verb to its direct object. In OR constructions (e.g., “The man that the boy pushes__ has a red shirt.”), the verb (‘pushes’) links to its syntactically licensed direct object (‘the man’) at verb offset. During syntactic linking, the parser crosses over an intervening noun phrase (NP, ‘the boy’) and the two NP activations create interference. The nature of this paradigm allows us to measure interference and its resolution between the intervening NP and the displaced object in real-time. By relating sentence processing patterns with cognitive control measures, high- and no- conflict N-Back tasks, we investigated group differences in the use of cognitive control during sentence processing. Overall, bilinguals showed less interference than monolinguals from the intervening NP during the real time processing of OR sentences. This interference effect and its resolution was significantly predicted by cognitive control skills for bilingual, but not monolingual listeners. This enhanced effect in bilinguals extends previous findings of interference resolution to real time spoken sentence processing suggesting that bilinguals are more efficient than monolinguals at managing interference during complex sentence processing.

Morpho-Functional Basis of Complex Sentence Processing in Adults and Children

The review discusses the neurophysiological basis of the analysis of complex sentences, such as passives or reverse word order sentences. We adhere to the hypothesis that reanalysis is an obligatory stage of complex sentence processing and is based on the context analysis and integration of semantic and syntactic sentence features. Brain activation patterns observed during the analysis were compared for different complex sentences. It was concluded that, in adults, the same brain regions are involved in the processing of syntactically complex and simple sentences and that only the degree of activation of cerebral structures differs (mostly in the left middle temporal gyrus, left inferior frontal gyrus, and left angular gyrus). The review describes the ontogenesis of brain zones involved in sentence analysis and the pathways that connect the zones. The available data demonstrate that complex sentence processing mechanisms may change with age. A transition to a more productive analysis strategy is based on the ability to use syntactic markers and develops after 6–7 years of age, when the dorsal pathway of speech processing is formed.

Interactions between givenness and clause order in children’s processing of complex sentences

Understanding complex sentences that contain multiple clauses referring to events in the world and the relations between them is an important development in children's language learning. A number of theoretical positions have suggested that factors like syntactic structure (clause order), iconicity (whether the order of clauses reflects the order of events), and givenness (whether information is shared between speakers) affect ease of comprehension. We tested these accounts by investigating how these factors interact in British English-speaking children's comprehension of complex sentences with adverbial clauses (after, before, because, if), while controlling for language level, working memory and inhibitory control. 92 children in three age groups (4, 5 and 8 years) and 17 adults completed a picture selection task. Participants heard an initial context sentence, followed by a two-clause sentence which varied in: (1) the order of the main and subordinate clause; (2) the order of given and new information; and (3) whether the given information occurred in the main or subordinate clause. Accuracy and response times were measured. Our results showed that given-before-new improves comprehension for four- and five-year-olds, but only when the given information is in the initial subordinate clause (e.g., “Sue crawls on the floor. Before she crawls on the floor, she hops up and down”). Temporal adverbials (after, before) were processed faster than causal adverbials (because, if). These effects were not found for the eight-year-olds, whose performance was more similar to that of the adults. Providing a context sentence also improved performance compared to presenting the test sentences in isolation. We conclude that existing accounts based on either ease of processing or information structure cannot fully account for these findings, and suggest a more integrated explanation which reflects children's developing language and literacy skills.

Enhanced left inferior frontal to left superior temporal effective connectivity for complex sentence comprehension: fMRI evidence from Chinese relative clause processing

Previous studies investigating the processing of complex sentences have demonstrated the involvement of the left inferior frontal gyrus (LIFG) and left superior temporal gyrus (LSTG), which might subserve ordering and storage of linguistic components, respectively, for sentence comprehension. However, how these brain regions are interconnected, especially during the processing of Chinese sentences, need to be further explored. In this study, the neural network supporting the comprehension of Chinese relative clause was identified. Both the LIFG and LSTG exhibited higher activation in processing subject-extracted relative clauses (SRCs) than object-extracted relative clauses (ORCs). Moreover, a Granger causality analysis revealed that the effective connectivity from the LIFG to LSTG was significant only when participants read Chinese SRCs, which were argued to be more difficult than ORCs. Contrary to the observations of an SRC advantage in most other languages, the present results provide clear neuroimaging evidence for an ORC advantage in Chinese.

L2 Prediction during complex sentence processing

Recent studies have found that proficient second language (L2) listeners are able to predict upcoming linguistic information to the same extent as first language (L1) listeners during simple sentence processing, particularly when semantic cues are given and/or few cognitive resources are required for language processing. These findings may suggest that L2 listeners use the same mechanisms as L1 listeners for prediction. Yet, it has not been fully specified under which conditions L2 listeners can use predictive mechanisms. To address this issue, we investigated whether advanced L2 listeners make predictions while processing more complex constructions that are cognitively more taxing. Specifically, we investigated prediction in sentences containing a relative clause that can modify either of two noun phrases. In an eye-tracking study using a visual world paradigm, L2 learners listened to sentences containing a semantically biasing verb or a neutral one (e.g., “I know the friend of the dancer that will open/get the present”). We measured L2 listeners’ prediction by comparing the fixations to target objects (e.g., present among non-openable objects) between the two experimental conditions. Results showed that L2 listeners, similar to L1 listeners, made significantly more anticipatory looks to the targets in the semantically biasing condition than in the neutral condition, though their prediction started a bit (180 ms) later than L1 listeners’ prediction. These findings suggest that L2 speakers can use prediction mechanisms even during complex sentence processing and provide further evidence for the claim that there is no fundamental difference between L1 and L2 speakers, but that cognitive resources matter for prediction.

Examining Online Syntactic Processing of Spoken Complex Sentences in Chinese Using Dual-Modal Interference Tasks.

Working memory (WM) plays a central role in the comprehension of complex sentences. Its function in the processing of spoken complex sentences is especially evident because spoken complex sentence processing is memory-intensive. The dual-modal interference paradigm has been used to examine how the WM system is involved in complex syntactic processing. This article presents two exemplar experiments involving auditory processing with either intra- or extrasentential interferences. In the first experiment, auditory stimuli [spoken-Chinese relative clause (RC) sentences with two syntactic types: subject-gapped (SRC) vs. object-gapped (ORC)] are interfered with via a visually presented lexical decision task within a sentence and manipulated using three different interference timepoints. In the second experiment, the same auditory stimuli, presented via an auditory window moving technique, are interfered with via a visually presented digital recall task beyond the sentence and manipulated using three digital memory loads. By assessing how the primary task of comprehending the RC sentences is affected by the secondary task, we can tackle the controversial issue concerning Chinese RC processing asymmetry. Our results reveal different patterns of RC processing compared to those reported in previous studies. Experiment 1 manifests no clear RC processing advantages in either SRC or ORC; however, a preference for ORC is observed at the ends of sentences, and a preference for SRC is found at the main verb site. Likewise, Experiment 2 presents a dynamic pattern. Under a no-digit load, SRCs show processing advantages in the RC marker region. However, under higher-digit-load interference, ORCs show processing advantages in the same region. These results lead to the conjecture that no obvious or intrinsic processing asymmetry exists in the processing of Chinese RCs. Using the approach of assessing specific interference during syntactic processing, these experiments demonstrate future research applications that explore the processing metrics of spoken sentences involving working memory.

Linguistic and Cognitive Effects of Bilingualism with Regional Minority Languages: A Study of Sardinian-Italian Adult Speakers.

This study explores the effects of bilingualism in Sardinian as a regional minority language on the linguistic competence in Italian as the dominant language and on non-linguistic cognitive abilities. Sardinian/Italian adult speakers and monolingual Italian speakers living in the same geographical area of Sardinia were compared in two kinds of tasks: (a) verbal and non-verbal cognitive tasks targeting working memory and attentional control and (b) tasks of linguistic abilities in Italian focused on the comprehension of sentences differing in grammatical complexity. Although no difference was found between bilinguals and monolinguals in the cognitive control of attention, bilinguals performed better on working memory tasks. Bilinguals with lower formal education were found to be faster at comprehension of one type of complex sentence (center embedded object relative clauses). In contrast, bilinguals and monolinguals with higher education showed comparable slower processing of complex sentences. These results show that the effects of bilingualism are modulated by type of language experience and education background: positive effects of active bilingualism on the dominant language are visible in bilinguals with lower education, whereas the effects of higher literacy in Italian obliterate those of active bilingualism in bilinguals and monolinguals with higher education.

Children's processing and comprehension of complex sentences containing temporal connectives: The influence of memory on the time course of accurate responses.

In a touch-screen paradigm, we recorded 3- to 7-year-olds’ (N = 108) accuracy and response times (RTs) to assess their comprehension of 2-clause sentences containing before and after. Children were influenced by order: performance was most accurate when the presentation order of the 2 clauses matched the chronological order of events: “She drank the juice, before she walked in the park” (chronological order) versus “Before she walked in the park, she drank the juice” (reverse order). Differences in RTs for correct responses varied by sentence type: accurate responses were made more speedily for sentences that afforded an incremental processing of meaning. An independent measure of memory predicted this pattern of performance. We discuss these findings in relation to children’s knowledge of connective meaning and the processing requirements of sentences containing temporal connectives.

Brain structural correlates of complex sentence comprehension in children

Prior structural imaging studies found initial evidence for the link between structural gray matter changes and the development of language performance in children. However, previous studies generally only focused on sentence comprehension. Therefore, little is known about the relationship between structural properties of brain regions relevant to sentence processing and more specific cognitive abilities underlying complex sentence comprehension. In this study, whole-brain magnetic resonance images from 59 children between 5 and 8 years were assessed. Scores on a standardized sentence comprehension test determined grammatical proficiency of our participants. A confirmatory factory analysis corroborated a grammar-relevant and a verbal working memory-relevant factor underlying the measured performance. Voxel-based morphometry of gray matter revealed that while children's ability to assign thematic roles is positively correlated with gray matter probability (GMP) in the left inferior temporal gyrus and the left inferior frontal gyrus, verbal working memory-related performance is positively correlated with GMP in the left parietal operculum extending into the posterior superior temporal gyrus. Since these areas are known to be differentially engaged in adults’ complex sentence processing, our data suggest a specific correspondence between children's GMP in language-relevant brain regions and differential cognitive abilities that guide their sentence comprehension.