Cross-modal Priming Research Articles

Neural processing of Mandarin and Cantonese lexical tone alternations: implications for the nature of phonological representations

This study provides neurocognitive evidence to shed further insight into the architecture of phonological representations. We tap into these representations by focusing on the neural processing of phonological alternations. Traditional generative accounts postulate abstract representations which are transformed by phonological processes into different alternants. Recent psycholinguistically-based frameworks posit that different alternants are listed in parallel in the abstract representation. Exemplar-based theories posit that alternation is a manifestation of frequency effects among concrete phonetic forms stored in memory. However, it is unclear the extent to which phonological representations of different levels of abstractedness are neurocognitive realities, beyond formal entities for linguistic analysis. This study tests the hypothesis that phonological representations are neurocognitive primitives that modulate speech processing and lexical access. We examined the processing of two surface-similar, but distributionally distinct lexical tone alternation patterns in Mandarin and Cantonese. With a cross-modal priming paradigm, differential neurophysiological components (LPC vs. N400) associated with the processing of alternation violations were identified cross-linguistically. Results support our hypothesis, suggesting that cross-linguistically distinct abstract phonological representations differentially modulate phonotactic detection, lexical access, and phonological restructuring processes. Results also lend theoretical insight into the multiform nature of the phonological representation, which encompasses both abstract and concrete levels of representations.

Rate of speech affects the comprehension of pronouns in children with developmental language disorder.

This study examined whether children with Developmental Language Disorder (DLD) have knowledge of binding principles (i.e., linking pronouns to their structurally licensed antecedent) during real-time sentence processing (cross-modal priming, real-time) and overt comprehension (sentence-picture matching, interpretative) and whether rate of speech impacted access to that knowledge. Fourteen children with DLD participated in two experiments, with sentences presented auditorily at either a regular or slow speech rate. Sentences were matched except to contain a pronoun, reflexive, or noun phrase (control) in the same syntactic position. Experiment (1) used a cross-modal picture priming paradigm to test real-time pronoun-antecedent linking abilities at both rates of speech. Children were instructed to make a binary decision during the uninterrupted auditory presentation of a sentence to a visually presented image (of the antecedent) at the offset of a pronoun, a reflexive, or a control noun. Response times between conditions (e.g., pronoun vs. control noun) were compared to determine whether participants showed evidence of facilitative priming (faster response times in the pronoun than control noun condition) at either speech rate. Experiment (2) used an auditory sentence-picture-matching task to test final comprehension of similar sentences containing a pronoun or reflexive. Accuracy was compared across both speech rates. For Experiment (1), children with DLD did not show evidence of real-time pronoun-antecedent priming at the regular speech rate. However, when sentences were slowed, they showed facilitative priming for the pronoun condition. For experiment (2), children with DLD performed at-chance when interpreting sentences with pronouns regardless of speech rate. While children with DLD have been shown to have difficulty processing sentences containing anaphors (such as pronouns), results suggest that this is not due to loss of intrinsic knowledge of binding principles. By slowing the rate of speech input, we showed that children with DLD do have access to that knowledge and can make the correct link during real-time processing between a pronoun and its structurally licensed antecedent (Experiment 1) but need more time to do so. However, the effect of slowed speech input does not extend to final comprehension (Experiment 2).

Morphological processing across the adult lifespan: a tale of gains and losses

Despite increasing research on language in aging, age effects on morphological processing have received comparatively little attention. Some previous evidence suggests that while regular morphology (e.g., walk-walked) may remain relatively stable in older age, irregular morphology (e.g., bring-brought) shows signs of age-related decreases in processing efficiency. However, the underlying reasons for these declines are unclear. The current study sought to investigate the cognitive underpinnings of age-related effects on German noun plurals: default plurals (posited to follow a default rule [e.g., Zebra-Zebras 'zebra(s)']) and predictable and unpredictable non-default plurals (closed class plurals, in which the plural is either phonologically predictable from the singular [e.g., Flasche-Flaschen 'bottle(s)'] or unpredictable [e.g., Nest-Nester 'nest(s)']). In a cross-modal priming experiment, 283 healthy German native speakers (aged 18–91 years) performed lexical decisions on singular nouns which take different types of plural affixes, and which were primed by either their plural form ("morphological condition") or an unrelated noun ("unrelated condition"). Additionally, several cognitive abilities (declarative, procedural, and working memory, interference control, processing speed) were tested to assess their mediating role for morphological processing. The results revealed distinct developmental trajectories for default versus non-default plurals: priming effects (unrelated-morphological condition) for predictable and unpredictable non-default plurals decreased with increasing age, with age-related declines in declarative memory mediating these declines. In contrast, priming effects for default plurals increased with increasing age. Although the reasons for this increase remain to be clarified, we suggest lifelong experience with the computation of these forms as a possible mechanism.

The Processing of Lexical Ambiguity: Evidence from Child and Adult Greek

The aim of the study is to examine the effect of sentential context on lexical ambiguity resolution in Greek adults and typically developing children. Context and word frequency are factors that can affect lexical processing, however, the role of them has not been thoroughly examined in Greek. To this aim, we assessed sentence context effects in homonym meaning activation in monolingual speakers of Greek, children and adults, using a cross-modal priming paradigm. Additionally, all participants conducted a verbal working memory task and an inhibition task so as to examine whether the use of sentential context for lexical ambiguity resolution relates to age and/or cognitive processing capacity. The data analysis showed (a) major processing differences between adults and children due to ambiguity and sentential context, (b) children’s processing times affected by cognitive skills while adults’ processing unaffected, and (c) visual word recognition intact for all participants.

Disentangling cues of different domains in transfer and development in L3 acquisition: An investigation of L2/L3 Mandarin yes-no questions

Abstract This empirical study aims to shed light on L3 initial-stage transfer and later development by investigating Q-operations in L1 English–L2 Cantonese and L1 Cantonese–L2 English bilinguals’ L3 Mandarin and L1 English speakers’ L2 Mandarin at low and high proficiency levels. Data from an online cross-modal priming task and an offline acceptability judgement task found that structural similarity determines transfer source selection. Adopting a de-compositional approach to cues of different domains, we have found both facilitative and detrimental transfer effects from Cantonese, with the latter triggered by orthographic and phonological cues. Our data also suggest that detrimental transfer effects can persist at an advanced stage and that L3 development and acquisition results can be affected by various factors such as word frequency and the nature of learning situations.

Access to meaning from visual input: Object and word frequency effects in categorization behavior.

Object and word recognition are both cognitive processes that transform visual input into meaning. When reading words, the frequency of their occurrence ("word frequency," WF) strongly modulates access to their meaning, as seen in recognition performance. Does the frequency of objects in our world also affect access to their meaning? With object labels available in real-world image datasets, one can now estimate the frequency of occurrence of objects in scenes ("object frequency," OF). We explored frequency effects in word and object recognition behavior by employing a natural versus man-made categorization task (Experiment 1) and a matching-mismatching priming task (Experiments 2-3). In Experiment 1, we found a WF effect for both words and objects but no OF effect. In Experiment 2, we replicated the WF effect for both stimulus types during cross-modal priming but not uni-modal priming. Moreover, in cross-modal priming, we found an OF effect for both objects and words, but with faster responses when objects occur less frequently in image datasets. We replicated this counterintuitive OF effect in Experiment 3 and suggest that better recognition of rare objects might interact with the structure of object categories: while access to the meaning of objects and words is faster when their meaning often occurs in our language, the homogeneity of object categories seems to also impact recognition, mainly when semantic processing happens in the context of previously presented information. These findings have major implications for studies attempting to include frequency measures in investigations of access to meaning from visual inputs. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

As easy as cake or a piece of pie? Processing idiom variation and the contribution of individual cognitive differences.

Language users routinely use canonical, familiar idioms in everyday communication without difficulty. However, creativity in idiom use is more widespread than sometimes assumed, and little is known about how we process creative uses of idioms, and how individual differences in cognitive skills contribute to this. We used eye-tracking while reading and cross-modal priming to investigate the processing of idioms (e.g., play with fire) compared with creative variants (play with acid) and literal controls (play with toys), amongst a group of 47 university-level native speakers of English. We also conducted a series of tests to measure cognitive abilities (working memory capacity, inhibitory control, and processing speed). Eye-tracking results showed that in early reading behaviour, variants were read no differently to literal phrases or idioms but showed significantly longer overall reading times, with more rereading required compared with other conditions. Idiom variables (familiarity, decomposability, literal plausibility) and individual cognitive variables had limited effects throughout, although more decomposable phrases of all kinds required less overall reading time. Cross-modal priming-which has often shown a robust idiom advantage in past studies-demonstrated no difference between conditions, but decomposability again led to faster processing. Overall, results suggest that variants were treated more like literal phrases than novel metaphors, with subsequent effort required to make sense of these in the way that was consistent with the context provided.

Cross-language activation of idiom meanings: Evidence from French– Vietnamese– and Indonesian–English bilinguals

Abstract The aim of the present study was to determine whether bilinguals activate the figurative meaning of an idiom that is specific to one language when they are exposed to its translation in their other language. We used a cross-modal priming task in which participants heard L2 English sentences that ended with an idiom translated from their L1. They then saw a visually presented stimulus that was either related to the meaning of the L1 idiom, a matched control word, or a nonword, and made a lexical decision. Three experiments were run, each with a different group of bilinguals (French–English, Vietnamese–English, and Indonesian–English), and each with a monolingual English control group. In all three studies, the effect of relatedness for bilinguals and monolinguals differed, demonstrating cross-language activation of idiom meanings. Evidence was obtained that suggested that culture-specific information in idioms influenced processing.

Second language word processing in sentence contexts: pre-lexical prediction versus post-lexical integration

This study investigated the effects of sentence contexts on the second language (L2) word recognition process. It aims at finding whether second language (L2) learners of English perform similar to English native speakers in terms of using the sentence context to predict upcoming word in their L2. A group of L2 participants and a control group of native speakers (L1) participants performed a cross-modal priming task in which they were asked to make a lexical decision on a visually presented word while listening to a semantically related or non- related English sentence. The test was conducted to determine whether both groups of participants were able to predict an upcoming word based on the context of the preceding sentence that is auditorily presented. The study is conducted using PsychoPy software whereas the data was analyzed using linear-mixed effects modeling in RStudio software. The results showed that the L1 speakers were able to predict an upcoming word based on the context of the preceding sentence. That is, a significantly faster recognition of the related word was observed compared to the less related words. On other hand, the English second language participants were not as able to predict an upcoming word as quickly as the English native speaker participants were. However, the L2 participants showed post-access lexical processing or what is called an integrating process of the presented word to the previous sentence context. That is, an effect of the sentence context was observed with L2 participants, yet only after reading the presented word, they decide whether it is appropriate to the preceding sentence context or not. Acknowledgments The author is thankful to the Deanship of Scientific Research at Najran University for funding this work under the National Research Priorities funding program.

Lexical ambiguity resolution & bilingual language experience: Evidence from Albanian-Greek bilingual children of immigrant families

The present study aims at exploring lexical ambiguity resolution in bilingual children employing homonym meaning activation. Specifically, we are examining the processing of Greek homonyms in relation to the language input, verbal ability and cognitive capacity of 10–12 years old bilingual children raised in an immigrant context, in which Albanian is their heritage language and Greek is the majority language. We systematically assessed sentence context effects in homonym meaning activation using a cross-modal priming task. Primes were sentences biasing towards the dominant, subordinate, or neither meaning of a sentence-final homonym while visual targets were related to either meaning of the homonym. To measure the bilingual language experience and address variability issues in the dataset, we administered a background questionnaire that focused on acquisition history, bi-literacy practices and self-reported competence in each language along with a standardized test for verbal ability in Greek. The study's findings show that frequency and context are significant parameters in the examination of ambiguity resolution and underline the contribution of verbal working memory to lexical processing. Additionally, our results highlight the role of the bilingual language experience in the function of the mental lexicon and the potential benefits of bi-literacy development.

Cerebral asymmetries in the processing of opaque compounds in L1 Polish and L2 English

Abstract We report the results of a cross-modal priming study investigating the processing of opaque compound words, when followed by figuratively and literally related primes, in L1 (Polish) and L2 (English). Additionally, the half-divided visual field paradigm was used to verify which cerebral hemisphere is responsible for semantic decomposition, and whether the language status will lead to different activation patterns. The left hemisphere is generally believed to process the more salient or conventional meanings of figurative expressions, and the right hemisphere their less salient or unconventional meanings. However, this assumption has not so far been verified for compounds. The results suggest that both the figurative and the literal meanings of opaque compounds were processed significantly faster by the left hemisphere in the case of L1 Polish. No statistically significant differences were obtained for L2 English. At the same time, English compounds were overall processed significantly faster than Polish compounds.

Are syntactic representations similar in both reading and listening? Evidence from priming in first and second languages.

It is unclear to what extent natural differences between reading and listening result in differences in the syntactic representations formed in each modality. The present study investigated the occurrence of syntactic priming bidirectionally from reading to listening, and vice versa to examine whether reading and listening share the same syntactic representations in both first language (L1) and second language (L2). Participants performed a lexical decision task in which the experimental words were embedded in sentences with either an ambiguous or a familiar structure. These structures were alternated to produce a priming effect. The modality was manipulated whereby participants (a) first read part of the sentence list and then listened to the rest of the list (reading-listening group), or (b) listened and then read (listening-reading group). In addition, the study involved two within-modality lists in which participants either read or listened to the whole list. The L1 group showed within-modal priming in both listening and reading as well as a cross-modal priming effect. Although L2 speakers showed priming in reading, the effect was absent in listening and weak in the listening-reading condition. The absence of priming in L2 listening was attributed to difficulties in L2 listening rather than to an inability to produce abstract priming.

Effects of dialect familiarity on lexical processing dynamics

When listeners map acoustically ambiguous forms to abstract lexical representations such that there is a potential for greater lexical competition, there is observable variation in listeners' lexical processing dynamics. As compared to non-mobile listeners, geographically mobile listeners exhibit less inhibition given competing prime-target pairsas well as less facilitation from matching prime-target pairs. This difference is attributed to mobile listeners' exposure to cross-dialect ambiguities. The current study seeks to more closely examine the role of geographic mobility and dialect-specific familiarity, and further address lexical processing dynamics by manipulating inter-stimulus-intervals (ISI). A lexical decision task using cross-modal priming and cross-dialect phonological contrasts was used to assess effects of facilitation and inhibition. Analyses show an interaction between familiarity, vowel contrast, and ISI as predictors of response time. While facilitatory effects increase and inhibitory effects decrease when participants have higher familiarity with a contrast, high familiarity and longer ISI also increase the degree of individual variability. These results support predictions that processing differences are dependent upon familiarity with particular variants as opposed to a general strategic response, though it may be the case that a longer ISI allows for additional variability in processing and the adoption of general strategic responses to emerge.

Возрастная динамика кроссмодального прайминга

<p>The study is aimed at studying at determining the temporal dynamics of crossmodal priming in preschool children. The study involved 60 children aged 4 to 6 years (M = 5.6; SD = 1.2) and 20 adult subjects aged 17 to 23 years (M = 20.4; SD = 2.6). The priming paradigm was used as a research model. In this study, we determined the influence of a priori visual stimulation on the speed and accuracy of identification of test sounds, depending on the congruence of their combination with visual objects and the interval between the test and prime stimuli. In the course of the study, it was found that in 4-year-old children, a priori visual information leads to a decrease in the accuracy and speed of reaction to test sound stimuli - a negative priming effect. The magnitude of the negative priming effect decreases with an increase in the interval between prime and test stimuli. In 5-year-old children, the number of errors increases only when incongruent combinations of stimuli are presented - a negative priming effect. On the contrary, the reaction time decreases only in congruent trials with when the test stimulus is delayed relative to the prime by 150-500 ms — a positive priming effect. In 6-year-old children and adults, the accuracy of the reaction does not change, and the reaction rate significantly increases in congruent trials positive priming effect) and decreases in incongruent trials (negative priming effect). The observed dynamics of changes in the interaction of sound and visual stimulation testifies to the formation of mechanisms of attention and multisensory integration in preschool children.</p>

The Effect of Face-Voice Gender Consistency on Impression Evaluation.

Face and voice are important information cues of interpersonal interaction. Most previous studies have investigated the cross-modal perception of face and voice from the perspective of cognitive psychology, but few empirical studies have focused on the effect of gender consistency of face and voice on the impression evaluation of the target from the perspective of social cognition. Based on the two-stage model of stereotype activation and the stereotype content model, this research examined the effects of face-voice gender consistency on impression evaluation (gender categorization and warmth competence evaluation) by using a cross-modal priming paradigm (Study 1, 20 males and 23 females, Mage = 21.00, SDage = 2.59), a sequential presentation task (Study 2a, 57 males and 70 females, Mage = 18.54, SDage = 1.54; Study 2b, 52 males and 51 females, Mage = 18.54, SDage = 1.36), and a simultaneous presentation task (Study 3, 51 males and 55 females, Mage = 23.58, SDage = 3.20), respectively. The results showed that: (1) there was a face-voice gender consistency preference in gender categorization, and the response of face-voice consistent condition was faster than that of inconsistent condition; (2) compared with the face-voice gender-inconsistent individuals, the participants showed a higher and more stable evaluation of the warmth and competence of the gender-consistent individuals, indicating the effect of matching preference of the face-voice gender consistency on the impression evaluation; (3) people paid more attention to the gender information of faces in the impression evaluation, and the female face could improve people's evaluation on the target's warmth and competence; (4) males were more intolerant of face-voice gender inconsistency when presented sequentially; the "voice needs to match face" effect was stronger for females when presented simultaneously. These findings, on the one hand, enrich and expand previous theories and research on cross-modal processing of face and voice from the perspective of social cognitive impression evaluation; on the other hand, these findings have important practical implications for impression management and decision-making in social interaction.

Structural priming from production to comprehension in aphasia

ABSTRACT Background Many people with aphasia (PWA) show deficits in sentence production and comprehension, in part, due to an inefficient mapping between messages and syntactic structures. Structural priming—the tendency to repeat previously encountered sentence structures—has been shown to support implicit syntactic learning within and across production and comprehension modalities in healthy adults. Structural priming is also effective in facilitating sentence production and comprehension in PWA. However, less is known about whether priming in one modality changes PWA’s performance in the other modality, crucial evidence needed for applying structural priming as a cost-effective intervention strategy for PWA. Aims This study examined (a) whether production to comprehension cross-modality priming is effective in PWA, (b) whether priming-induced changes in syntactic comprehension lasted in the absence of an immediate prime, and (c) whether there is a significant correlation between individuals’ priming effects and the change in their comprehension following priming. Methods & Procedures Thirteen PWA and 13 age-matched control participants completed a pre-test, a production-to-comprehension priming block, and a post-test. In the pre- and post-tests, participants completed a sentence-picture matching task with sentences involving interpretations of an ambiguous prepositional phrase (e.g., The teacher is poking the monk with a bat). Participants were free to choose a picture corresponding to a high attachment (HA; e.g., the teacher is using the bat to poke the monk) or a low attachment (LA; e.g., the monk is holding the bat) interpretation. In the priming block, participants produced LA sentences as primes and then completed a sentence-picture matching task for comprehension targets, similar to the pre-test. Results Age-matched controls and PWA showed a significant priming effect when comparing the priming block to the pre-test. In both groups, the priming effect persisted when comparing picture selections in the pre- and post-tests. At the individual level, age-matched controls who showed larger priming effects also selected more LA pictures in the post-test compared to the pre-test, indicating that the priming effect accounted for the magnitude of change from the pre- to post-test. This correlation was also found in PWA. Conclusions These findings suggest that production-to-comprehension structural priming is effective and persistent in PWA and controls, in line with the view that structural priming is a form of implicit learning. Further, the findings suggest that syntactic representations are shared between modalities, and therefore, production influences future comprehension. Cross-modality structural priming may have clinical potential to improve sentence processing in PWA.

The role of verbal patterns in Arabic reading acquisition: insights from cross-modal priming

The role of verbal patterns in Arabic reading acquisition: insights from cross-modal priming

Investigating the locus of transposed-phoneme effects using cross-modal priming

In this study, we examined whether the facilitatory priming effect found when auditory primes and targets are related by a phoneme transposition (e.g., /ʀͻb/-/bͻʀ/: Dufour & Grainger, 2019, 2020) is also observed under cross-modal presentation. In two experiments using the same materials as in the previous studies, we found no evidence for a facilitatory priming effect when the targets were presented visually rather than auditorily. On the contrary, an inhibitory priming effect was found when both unrelated words (Experiment 1; e.g., /mas/-/bͻR/) and vowel overlap words (Experiment 2; e.g., /vͻl/-/bͻʀ/) were used as control conditions. In Experiment 2, this inhibitory effect was found to be equivalent in size whether the target words were of higher or lower frequency than the prime words (e.g. /ʀͻb/-/bͻʀ/ vs. /bͻʀ/-/ʀͻb/). We interpret this pattern of effects as reflecting the greater impact of word-level inhibition in cross-modal priming, and the parallel influence of prime-target relative frequency on bottom-up phoneme-to-word facilitation and word-level inhibition. Therefore, the facilitatory priming effect previously observed with auditory primes and targets would mainly reflect bottom-up activation of the target word representation during prime word processing.

On the flexibility of the sound-to-meaning mapping when listening to native and foreign-accented speech

Extracting linguistic information from the speech signal is critical to successfully communicate with others. We usually carry out this sound-to-meaning mapping easily, but this process may be hampered under adverse listening conditions. Thus, exploring whether foreign accents might affect the sound-to-meaning mapping is particularly relevant, as interactions with these speakers are increasingly common in the globalized world. In this study, we conducted a cross-modal priming task, in which participants (N = 24) were presented with auditory primes uttered by a native or by a French foreign-accented speaker of Spanish, and with visual targets that had different degrees of relatedness to the prime: repeated, semantically related, or unrelated words. Behavioral and EEG measures were analyzed, and we found a significant relatedness effect (i.e., a processing advantage for repeated compared to related words, and for the latter compared to unrelated words). However, speakers' accents had no effect on the results. To further explore the potential effect of speakers' accent on the sound-to-meaning mapping, we conducted a second study, in which participants (N = 22) were presented with the same task, although in this case primes were uttered by the same native speaker as in the previous experiment, and by a German foreign-accented speaker with a stronger accent. We replicated the results observed in the first study. Taken together, our results show moderate evidence that speakers' accent does not affect the sound-to-meaning mapping, suggesting that this is a robust and flexible process that is not compromised by auditory variables related to speakers' characteristics.

The online processing of the ambiguous null object in Mandarin among patients with Broca’s aphasia

ABSTRACT Background: Research on how patients with Broca’s aphasia and concomitant agrammatism process dependency structures online offers a window into the understanding of how language is organized in the mind. Previous studies have shown that patients evince differential performances on dependency structures generated at different levels of linguistic representation. The present study extends this line of research to investigate patients’ online processing of referential dependencies involving ambiguous pronominal interpretations. Aims: Mandarin, unlike English, allows the object to be missing (null) in some contexts, rendering these null pronominal forms as ambiguous between two interpretations (strict vs. sloppy), which are generated in different levels of linguistic representation. This study examined Mandarin-speaking healthy and agrammatic aphasic participants’ processing of the two interpretations of the null pronominal form such as Zhangsan qile ta de ma, Lisi ye qile e “literally: Zhangsan rode his horse and Lisi rode, too”, where Lisi rode either Zhangsan’s horse (strict) or Lisi’s horse (sloppy). Methods & Procedures: Two experiments, employing a Cross-Modal Picture Priming paradigm, manipulated three probe picture conditions (strict, sloppy, control) and two probe positions (at the verb phrase offset and 400 ms afterwards). Experiment 1 tested neurologically unimpaired controls in order to establish the time course of processing as a standard of comparison. Experiment 2 tested patients with agrammatic aphasia. Outcomes and Results: Immediately at the verb phrase offset where the null object is structurally licensed, unimpaired individuals primed both the strict and the sloppy interpretations, with no significant difference in reaction times between the two conditions. At the position 400 ms after the verb phrase offset; however, unimpaired participants did not show priming of either of the two interpretations. Patients showed the opposite pattern: at verb phrase offset, they did not show threshold-level priming of either of the two interpretations; 400 ms afterwards, they showed priming of both the strict and sloppy interpretations, with the strict interpretation eliciting significantly longer reaction times than the sloppy interpretation. Conclusions: Patients’ delay in priming both the strict and the sloppy interpretations shows that patients evince a temporal delay when processing dependency structures, which may arise from patients’ deficit with lexical integration. Additionally, patients spent significantly longer reaction times on the strict interpretation relative to the sloppy interpretation, which confirms the prediction that that the former, which is generated in the level of discourse, is computationally more costly than the latter, which is generated in the level of semantics.