Contextual Updating Research Articles

Beyond extrastriate body area (EBA) and fusiform body area (FBA): context integration in the meaning of actions

Beyond extrastriate body area (EBA) and fusiform body area (FBA): context integration in the meaning of actions

NPI licensing in temporal clauses

This paper offers a systematic semantically-based approach to NPI licensing in temporal clauses based on Beaver and Condoravdi (2003, in progress). It motivates the presuppositional nature of temporal clauses and shows how temporal ordering induces an ordering of semantic strength in each case. The proposed analysis is uniform across veridical and non-veridical readings of before and brings under the semantic fold seemingly exceptional or pragmatically-based cases of NPI licensing observed with after, since and until. Crucial throughout is the more restricted, presupposition-dependent notion of entailment, Strawson entailment, proposed by von Fintel (1999). The paper also relates Strawson entailment to the alternative-based analysis of NPIs by Krifka (1995), proposing a particular kind of contextual update, Strawson update, for calculating informational strength.

Neurokognitive Veränderungen und Negativsymptomatik bei schizophrenen Erkrankungen

It is widely recognized that schizophrenic disorders are often associated with impairments of cognitive performance. More recently, disorders of higher cognitive control processes ("executive control functions") have captured the attention of researchers as they can considerably impair patients' abilities to live an independent life. Apart from that, considering the heterogeneity of schizophrenia, there have been attempts to relate psychopathological syndromes to changes in distinct cognitive domains. The present review selectively focuses on evidence associating negative symptoms in schizophrenia with deficient performance in specific executive domains. Neurobiological evidence points to biochemical, structural and functional abnormalities in the frontal cortex and associated fronto-subcortical circuits as a common basis of both schizophrenic negative symptoms and disorders of executive control. In a multitude of neuropsychological studies, an association between negative symptoms and problems in the domains of response inhibition, multitasking, cognitive flexibility, contextual updating, problem solving and verbal fluency has been reported. In some cases, however, the disorganization syndrome but not the negative syndrome has been linked with impaired behaviour in these domains. The inconsistencies might be partly due to the unsatisfactory differentiation between the two symptom complexes. Future research should furthermore consider a more precise differentiation between primary and secondary negative symptoms. Finally, the assessment of executive control functions should be both specific and ecologically valid.

Clarification, Ellipsis, and the Nature of Contextual Updates in Dialogue

The paper investigates an elliptical construction, Clarification Ellipsis, that occurs in dialogue. We suggest that this provides data that demonstrates that updates result- ing from utterances cannot be defined in purely semantic terms, contrary to the prevailing assumptions of existing approaches to dynamic semantics. We offer a computationally oriented analysis of the resolution of ellipsis in certain cases of dialogue clarification. We show that this goes beyond standard techniques used in anaphora and ellipsis resolution and requires operations on highly structured, linguistically heterogeneous representations. We characterize these operations and the representations on which they operate. We offer an analysis couched in a version of Head-Driven Phrase Structure Grammar combined with a theory of information states (IS) in dialogue. We sketch an algorithm for the process of utterance integration in IS which leads to grounding or clarification. The account proposed here has direct applications to the theory of attitude reports, an issue which is explored briefly in the concluding remarks of the paper.

Participant structure and the on-line production of discourse context

Abstract This paper presents the micro-analysis of one interrupted and unfinished Dutch 'sentence' that was heard in a popular Dutch Talk Show called 'Sonja op Zaterdag'.1 It contains a self-correction that is produced as a change in 'footing' (Goffman 1979). The issue is raised whether the abandonment of the sentence-under-construction should be considered a random, 'performance' type phenomenon or whether it can be accounted for systematically in terms of discourse-level constraints on the interruptability of sentences (cf. Schegloff 1979). I will argue that the latter seems to be the case. Analyses of the data and hypothetical alternatives to it reveal that observed differences can be articulated in a dynamic discourse model in which utterances may themselves produce contextual updates (Polanyi and Scha 1983; Polanyi 1988; applied to classroom data by van Dam van Isselt 1993). It is suggested that the model should be extended to acknowledge 'defective' sentences.

Contextual updating of infants' reactivated memories.

The ease with which a reactivated memory is updated has major implications for whether or not a prior memory is likely to be retrieved in the future. In three experiments, we explored this problem with nonverbal human infants, whose newly acquired memory of training in a specific context is readily updated by novel contextual information. In Experiment 1, exposing infants to a novel context immediately after a successful reactivation treatment neither impaired their retention in the original context nor facilitated it in the novel exposure one. In Experiment 2, increasing the delay between the reactivation treatment and exposure to the novel context also failed to facilitate retention in the novel test context. In Experiment 3, the reactivated memory was updated when the contingency was briefly experienced in the novel context immediately after the reactivation treatment. Under these circumstances, previously trained infants exhibited retention in the novel context, but infants who had not been trained 3 weeks earlier or whose original memory had not been reactivated exhibited none. The resistance of a reactivated memory to contextual updating unless the new context is predictive apparently buffers infants' memories against revision after long delays by contexts that could be inappropriate.