Discourse Comprehension Research Articles

Narrative event segmentation in the cortical reservoir.

Recent research has revealed that during continuous perception of movies or stories, humans display cortical activity patterns that reveal hierarchical segmentation of event structure. Thus, sensory areas like auditory cortex display high frequency segmentation related to the stimulus, while semantic areas like posterior middle cortex display a lower frequency segmentation related to transitions between events. These hierarchical levels of segmentation are associated with different time constants for processing. Likewise, when two groups of participants heard the same sentence in a narrative, preceded by different contexts, neural responses for the groups were initially different and then gradually aligned. The time constant for alignment followed the segmentation hierarchy: sensory cortices aligned most quickly, followed by mid-level regions, while some higher-order cortical regions took more than 10 seconds to align. These hierarchical segmentation phenomena can be considered in the context of processing related to comprehension. In a recently described model of discourse comprehension word meanings are modeled by a language model pre-trained on a billion word corpus. During discourse comprehension, word meanings are continuously integrated in a recurrent cortical network. The model demonstrates novel discourse and inference processing, in part because of two fundamental characteristics: real-world event semantics are represented in the word embeddings, and these are integrated in a reservoir network which has an inherent gradient of functional time constants due to the recurrent connections. Here we demonstrate how this model displays hierarchical narrative event segmentation properties beyond the embeddings alone, or their linear integration. The reservoir produces activation patterns that are segmented by a hidden Markov model (HMM) in a manner that is comparable to that of humans. Context construction displays a continuum of time constants across reservoir neuron subsets, while context forgetting has a fixed time constant across these subsets. Importantly, virtual areas formed by subgroups of reservoir neurons with faster time constants segmented with shorter events, while those with longer time constants preferred longer events. This neurocomputational recurrent neural network simulates narrative event processing as revealed by the fMRI event segmentation algorithm provides a novel explanation of the asymmetry in narrative forgetting and construction. The model extends the characterization of online integration processes in discourse to more extended narrative, and demonstrates how reservoir computing provides a useful model of cortical processing of narrative structure.

Higher-Order Language Dysfunctions in Individuals with Alcohol Use Disorder.

Patients with alcohol use disorders (AUD) have difficulties with certain aspects of higher-order language functions (HOLF) but there is no data on a wide range of these functions in this group. Therefore, the aim of this study was to compare different aspects of HOLF in patients with AUD and healthy controls (HC). A total of 31 patients with AUD and 44 HC took part in the study. We assessed HOLF with the Right Hemisphere Language Battery (RHLB) and measured control variables: depression using the Patient Health Questionnaire (PHQ) as well as the speed of processing and executive functions with the Color Trails Test (CTT). Patients with AUD had lower results on nine RHLB tests. Moreover, AUD patients had higher scores on PHQ and longer reaction times on CTT. The differences in most RHLB results remained significant after co-varying the control variables. Patients with AUD have difficulties with making inferences from the text, understanding the meaning of individual words, metaphorical content, and prosody, which may impede the comprehension and production of discourse in which linguistic elements must be integrated with non-verbal cues and contextual information. These disturbances may impact various spheres of everyday life and negatively influence social, private, and professional functioning.

Recognizing emotions in speech makes you more credulous

ABSTRACT The individual differences determining the ability to detect lies are poorly understood. This study investigated the predictive power of self-monitoring, lexical access, lexico-semantic processes, emotional prosody perception, discourse comprehension, mental imagery and attention on the ability to discriminate lies from truth and on response tendencies in a lie detection task. One hundred and four participants (50% female) were asked to listen to audio-recordings of people describing a relative (50% deceptive) and to judge whether each of them was lying or telling the truth. Participants were also asked to perform several auditory tasks assessing above-mentioned processes and also completed the Self-Monitoring Scale. Multiple regression analyses showed that emotional prosody perception predicted truth bias and that performance in the mental imagery task tended to predict the ability to distinguish truth from lies. These results suggest that competence in emotion recognition leads to label statements as being truthful.

Semantic macro-structures and macro-rules in visual discourse processing

Semantic macrostructures, although strangely ignored or ruled outside most formal linguistics and even some methods of discourse analysis, define the general, overall meanings of discourse, informally called ‘topic,’ ‘theme,’ ‘gist,’ or ‘upshot’ and on the basis of the higher levels of the mental models of the social actors. Macro-structural (topical, crucial) information, according to Teun van Dijk, plays a fundamental role in discourse comprehension and recall― although other factors (such as remarkableness, vividness, etc.) may also affect attention, prominent representation, and hence recall. One can summarise a sequence of pictures by a title, like a summary of a movie. Similarly, a trailer serves to summarise the movie and to indicate what makes it different from other movies on the cinema circuit. But can we summarise a sequence of images by another (‘macro’) image or image-topic? This article discusses semantic macro-structures and processes of multimodal discourse comprehension, formulating the mapping rules underlying the global interpretation of political cartoons. The rules for multimodal discourse processing (involving group-specific knowledge) formulated in this study apply to Arabic-speaking audiences, which should be of interest for scholars in intercultural communication and cognition.

Language and Manipulation: A Critical Discourse Analysis of All Progressive Congress (APC) and People’s Democratic Party’s (PDP) War of Words

This paper examines the crucial role language plays in manipulating the act of discourse comprehension as a means of constructing mental models meant to effect mind control against the people’s best interests. To achieve this, the study utilises the rich resources of critical discourse analysis (CDA) precisely, the socio-cognitive framework, to analyse media political discourse within the Nigerian context. A number of discourses that hinge on the APC and PDP’s war of words over the issue of corruption extracted from the online editions of Nigerian newspapers constitute the data used for the study. The result of the data analysis indicates that Nigerian politicians consciously indulge in positive self-presentation and negative-other presentation by making use of the ideological square in the portrayal of self for the sole purpose of imposing their ideological designs on the entire populace in order to gain political dominance. Through the ideological square, each of the political parties aims at emphasizing the positive sides of its actions and the negative aspects of the other party while de-emphasizing its negative activities and the positive sides of the other through the use of manipulative language. Such manipulative use of language disables the people’s critical thinking for the manipulators’ benefit.

Natural language processing as a technique for conducting text‐based research

AbstractResearch in discourse processing has provided us with a strong foundation for understanding the characteristics of text and discourse, as well as their influence on our processing and representation of texts. However, recent advances in computational techniques have allowed researchers to examine discourse processes in new ways. The purpose of the current paper is to build on prior work in this domain and describe how new methodologies that consider the multi‐dimensional nature of texts can serve as a complement to the existing literature. We focus on natural language processing (NLP) methodologies, in which computers calculate information about the linguistic and semantic properties of language data. We first provide a context for the origins of computational discourse analysis through the integration of research across computer science and psychology. We then provide an overview of different NLP methodologies and describe prior work that has leveraged these techniques to advance theoretical perspectives of discourse comprehension and production. Finally, we propose new areas of research that integrate these advances with traditional research methodologies in the field.

Shostakovich’s Topics

The study of musical signification constitutes an important key for the comprehension of Shostakovich’s music. This becomes particularly evident when one observes that social and political background plays an important role in his compositional process through the configuration of specific musical topics on structural positions of his music. These specific topics have arisen after cultural and social events during the establishment of the Soviet Union and became typical elements of the Soviet Music. This paper aims to show the function of these elements as compositional roots in the creative concept of Shostakovich’s music. The rising of the concept of musical topic after Leonard Ratner (1980) has opened new paths for a consistent comprehension of the musical discourse, identifying social and cultural signs that may articulate ideas which go beyond the music itself: ideology, criticism and politics became elements of musical expression, composing a new soundscape of music in Revolutionary Russia.

Effects of Emotions, Topic Beliefs, and Task Instructions on the Processing and Memory for a Dual-Position Text

ABSTRACT We examined whether positive emotions interacted with task instructions and topic beliefs to influence processing and memory of a dual-position text. Participants provided emotion and belief ratings, were instructed to focus on one position in a dual-position text while reading silently (Experiment 1) or thinking-aloud (Experiment 2), and then orally remembered the text. Independently of beliefs, higher positive emotion was associated with assimilative processes (backward inferences and elaborations). However, participants with higher positive emotion used more inferential processes for belief-consistent text, but spent more time reading and rehearsing belief-inconsistent text. Participants with lower positive emotion used more inferential processes for belief-inconsistent text, but spent more time reading and rehearsing belief-consistent text. Finally, participants in all groups provided supportive evaluations for belief-consistent text and refutational evaluations for belief-inconsistent text. The results are discussed in the context of theories of emotion and discourse comprehension.

Theory of mind, mental state talk, and discourse comprehension: Theory of mind process is more important for narrative comprehension than for informational text comprehension

We investigated the relations among theory of mind (ToM), mental state talk, and discourse comprehension. Specifically, we examined the frequency of mental state talk in children’s oral recall of narrative texts and informational texts as well as relations among ToM, mental state talk (inclusion of mental state words in the recall of narrative and informational texts), and narrative and informational text comprehension. Results from children in Grade 4 (N = 132; Mage = 10.39 years) revealed that a greater number of mental state talk instances appeared in children’s recall of narrative texts than in their recall of informational texts, but the mean number also differed across texts within a genre. ToM skill predicted the extent of mental state talk in narrative texts and informational texts, and the relation was stronger for narrative texts than for informational texts, after accounting for vocabulary, grammatical knowledge, working memory, and attentional control. Mental state talk in narrative texts was extremely strongly related to narrative comprehension, whereas mental state talk in informational texts was weakly related to informational text comprehension. Results suggest that ToM skill relates to mental state talk in the recall of texts, and both ToM and mental state talk play greater roles in comprehension of narrative texts than in comprehension of informational texts.

Problems in Perception Content-based Learning Materials for Chinese EFL Learners

This article explores the problems that EFL learners may encounter when they perceive content-based learning materials. The main questions include: (A) Will inferior reading skills or improper use of learning strategies affect these problems? (B) What are the characteristics of the specific linguistic of reading comprehension that initiate academic problems? (C) How does the learner's learning strategy cause or initiate problems? The data used in this research are learners' midterm exam scores and the frequency of learning strategies employed by students. Including qualitative data in the form of student statements obtained from unstructured participatory interviews, in a descriptive and qualitative way based on content-based reading skills theory and learning strategies, this article will conduct a comprehensive analysis of these materials. As a result of data analysis, there is a situation in which the problems encountered by English readers in understanding content-based learning materials are initiated by inferior reading ability and improper application of learning strategies. The linguistic features of reading comprehension that initiate this problem are the lack of understanding of grammatical features, the low level of vocabulary acquisition, the lack of awareness of sensory construction, and the problems of discourse comprehension. The problems encountered when dealing with learning strategies are improper use of learning strategies, unclear learning goals and poor learning habits.

Working toward a theoretical model for source comprehension in everyday discourse

ABSTRACT Comprehension substantially benefits from attending to, thinking about, and mentally representing the sources of any presented information. Such processes require mental effort and unfortunately people do not always engage in such activities. The current article presents a nascent, evolving model of discourse comprehension that formalizes mechanisms to predict and explain people’s strategic use of source information. The discrepancy-induced source comprehension (D-ISC) model and its theoretical assumptions describe the moment-by-moment cognitive processes in which readers engage when they interact with potentially contradictory or controversial messages presented by different information sources. The utility of the model is supported by evidence from a growing research base examining single- and multiple-text comprehension experiences. The D-ISC model is also useful for suggesting future directions that could help build more-nuanced understandings of the ways that diverse readers engage in sourcing activities within everyday discourse contexts.

Event related spectral perturbations of gesture congruity: Visuospatial resources are recruited for multimodal discourse comprehension

Here we examine the role of visuospatial working memory (WM) during the comprehension of multimodal discourse with co-speech iconic gestures. EEG was recorded as healthy adults encoded either a sequence of one (low load) or four (high load) dot locations on a grid and rehearsed them until a free recall response was collected later in the trial. During the rehearsal period of the WM task, participants observed videos of a speaker describing objects in which half of the trials included semantically related co-speech gestures (congruent), and the other half included semantically unrelated gestures (incongruent). Discourse processing was indexed by oscillatory EEG activity in the alpha and beta bands during the videos. Across all participants, effects of speech and gesture incongruity were more evident in low load trials than in high load trials. Effects were also modulated by individual differences in visuospatial WM capacity. These data suggest visuospatial WM resources are recruited in the comprehension of multimodal discourse.

The Ulm School of Design Discourse: A Foundation for Sustainable Design

This article discusses the relevance of the HfG Ulm discourse to the notions of Sustainable Design. The Ulmer programme included values such as social equity, resource optimisation and respect for the planet and the environment, which are main pillars for Sustainable Design practices. Links between the HfG’s ideas of the ’60s and contemporary sustainable design values could be examined by comparing historical and recent discourses. The text presents topics that the compared discussions share such as environmental concern, social sustainability (social needs, distribution), systems perspective, resilience, diversity, planned obsolescence, behaviour and culture, and the perspective of design as a constructive activity. The HfG experience could be used today, given a proper translation from historical approaches applied to the state of current affairs. The comprehension of the Ulmer discourse can contribute to building the future design knowledge, possibly creating frameworks that will allow better sustainability practices.

Electrophysiology reflects the influence of discourse context on auditory semantic processing in bilinguals.

Most language experiences take place at the level of multiple sentences. However, previous studies of second language (L2) comprehension have typically focused on lexical- and sentence-level processing. Our study addresses this gap by examining auditory discourse comprehension in 32 English/French bilinguals. We tested the prediction of the noisy channel model (Futrell & Gibson, 2017) that bilinguals will rely more on top-down, discourse-level cues in L2 because these are common across languages, as opposed to the language-specific associations of an often weaker L2. We further hypothesized that these effects could be influenced by individual differences, such that participants with lower L2 proficiency or working memory would have more difficulty building and maintaining discourse context. Specifically, we measured the N400 response, an index of automatic semantic processing. Participants heard three-sentence stories with prime and target words in the final sentence whose lexical association was manipulated, as was the congruence of the target with the preceding discourse. Overall, our results support the noisy channel model of language comprehension in a sample of highly proficient bilinguals. We observed larger N400 effects of discourse congruence than lexical association, and the difference between these 2 conditions was greater in the L2 than in the L1. Additionally, the effects of lexical association were limited to the L1 and predicted by individual differences in language dominance but not working memory. These findings suggest that bilinguals do indeed make greater use of top-down, supralinguistic information in their L2 compared with their L1. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

The effect of congruent emotional context in emotional word processing during discourse comprehension

This event-related potential (ERP) study examined the effect of congruent emotional context on the processing of subsequent emotional words during discourse comprehension. We used two-sentence discourses as materials and constructed three types of discourse: one where both sentences conveyed a negative emotion (Negative-Negative), one where the first sentence conveyed a neutral emotion and the second a negative one (Neutral-Negative), and one where neither sentence conveyed a negative emotion (Neutral-Neutral). In all conditions, an identical target word was embedded in the second sentence that, combined with the local context, conveyed either a negative or a neutral emotion. Participants were asked to read for comprehension and rate the emotionality of each discourse. The ERP results showed that, when both sentences conveyed negative emotion, the target words induced a smaller N400 than when neither of the sentences conveyed a negative emotion. The target words also induced a larger late positivity when both sentences conveyed negative emotion than when either only the second sentence or neither sentence did. Our results indicate that congruent emotional context weakens semantic analysis and leads to more elaborated emotional evaluation in the later stage of discourse comprehension. These findings help clarify the effect of emotional context in language comprehension. • Focus on the pure effect of congruent emotional context on emotional words during discourse comprehension. • Semantic analysis was weakened incongruent emotional context. • Later emotional evaluation was increased in congruent emotional context. • Effect of emotional context may depend on the congruence between emotional context and subsequent emotional words.

Text type attribution modulates pre-stimulus alpha power in sentence reading

Prior knowledge and context-specific expectations influence the perception of sensory events, e.g., speech, as well as complex higher-order cognitive operations like text reading. Here, we focused on pre-stimulus neural activity during sentence reading to examine text type-dependent attentional bias in anticipation of written stimuli, capitalizing on the functional relevance of brain oscillations in the alpha (8–12 Hz) frequency range. Two sex- and age-matched groups of participants (n = 24 each) read identical sentences on a screen at a fixed per-constituent presentation rate while their electroencephalogram was recorded; the groups were differentially instructed to read “sentences” (genre-neutral condition) or “verses from poems” (poetry condition). Relative alpha power (pre-cue vs. post-cue) in pre-stimulus time windows was greater in the poetry condition than in the genre-neutral condition. This finding constitutes initial evidence for genre-specific cognitive adjustments that precede processing proper, and potentially links current theories of discourse comprehension to current theories of brain function.

Differences in Verbal Fluencies and Discourse Comprehension Abilities associated with Working Memory in Alzheimer’s Disease and Vascular Dementia

Differences in Verbal Fluencies and Discourse Comprehension Abilities associated with Working Memory in Alzheimer’s Disease and Vascular Dementia

A Model of Online Temporal-Spatial Integration for Immediacy and Overrule in Discourse Comprehension.

During discourse comprehension, information from prior processing is integrated and appears to be immediately accessible. This was remarkably demonstrated by an N400 for "salted" and not "in love" in response to "The peanut was salted/in love." Discourse overrule was induced by prior discourse featuring the peanut as an animate agent. Immediate discourse overrule requires a model that integrates information at two timescales. One is over the lifetime and includes event knowledge and word semantics. The second is over the discourse in an event context. We propose a model where both are accounted for by temporal-to-spatial integration of experience into distributed spatial representations, providing immediate access to experience accumulated over different timescales. For lexical semantics, this is modeled by a word embedding system trained by sequential exposure to the entire Wikipedia corpus. For discourse, this is modeled by a recurrent reservoir network trained to generate a discourse vector for input sequences of words. The N400 is modeled as the difference between the instantaneous discourse vector and the target word. We predict this model can account for semantic immediacy and discourse overrule. The model simulates lexical priming and discourse overrule in the "Peanut in love" discourse, and it demonstrates that an unexpected word elicits reduced N400 if it is generally related to the event described in prior discourse, and that this effect disappears when the discourse context is removed. This neurocomputational model is the first to simulate immediacy and overrule in discourse-modulated N400, and contributes to characterization of online integration processes in discourse.

Knowledge Management in News Discourse: A Socio-and-Cognitive View

The article considers news discourse as one of the leading genres of the media sphere, of particular concern is the issue of ideologically biased news reports. It focuses on how ideology and knowledge are managed in news discourse production and comprehension. The theoretical perspective of the paper is the critical epistemic discourse analysis proposed by T.A. van Dijk. The paper considers mental representation of the event nominated in British and American mass media as "Russian spy poisoning". The author offers the issue that knowledge may be relative to the members and the criteria of different epistemic communities, and one of the strategies of persuasion is to define beliefs as knowledge of facts. The paper reveals the communicative function and pragmatic potential of epistemic modality and evidentiality in the ideological control of news discourse. It is argued that evidentials do not always come alone but may be part of complex evidential strategies. The author claims that the evidence-epistemic markers with the semantics of knowledge / possibility / probability / likelihood in mental representation of the event "Russian spy poisoning" aim at manipulating and misleading the addressee. The article is an initial step toward analyzing the role of knowledge and beliefs in the formation of mental event models in ideologically based news discourse.

Who is “oneself” in Chinese? ERP responses to the Chinese simple reflexive ziji in discourse comprehension

The Principle A of the Binding Theory (Chomsky, 1981, 1986) prescribes that a reflexive should refer to a local antecedent within the local syntactic domain containing the reflexive. However, the Chinese (simple) reflexive ziji (自己, standing for oneself) can refer not only to a local but also to a long-distance antecedent in sentences, leaving room for a long - distance/local anaphoric ambiguity in common Chinese “Antecedent 1 + Verb 1 + Antecedent 2 + Verb 2 + ziji ” structures, with the eligible reference of ziji being directly determined by discourse context. The present study explores how discourse context affects ziji anaphora processing by presenting such long-distance/local ambiguous ziji anaphoric structures in different (disambiguating) referential contexts or without a context, which found that relative to ziji in the non-contextual (ambiguous) condition, ziji s under both the long-distance and the local referential contexts elicited a frontally dominant and sustained negativity that emerges at about 350 ms after word-onset, i.e., an Nref effect. The current Nref effect may reflect the processes that language users make a discourse inference to resolve the (temporarily) referential ambiguity or difficulty caused by ziji having two candidate antecedents in the discourse. Theoretically, based on neurocognitive evidence obtained from the present and previous (e.g., Li & Zhou, 2010) studies on ziji anaphora processing, it was hypothesized that discourse- and sentence-level ziji anaphora may involve distinct neurocognitive processes that are governed by different mechanisms (factors), which to some extent accords with a comprehensive theory considering multiple factors on explaining ziji anaphora. • ERP study on Chinese ziji anaphora in discourse comprehension. • Presenting ambiguous ziji anaphoric structures in different referential contexts. • Under both long-distance and local referential contexts, ziji elicited an Nref. • The present Nref reflects processes of discourse referential inference. • Neurocognitive evidence supports a comprehensive theory on ziji anaphora.