Referential Context Research Articles

Word learning in the absence of a speaker

Past studies show that a referential context is important for successful word learning. Still in question, however, is the success of word learning in the absence of a referential context. In this study 2-year-olds were presented with novel words in the absence of a speaker and therefore in the absence of a referential context. Findings revealed that word learning was successful across the experimental trials at rates greater than chance and at rates greater than in the control trial. Findings demonstrated that the absence of a speaker and the referential context provided by a speaker did not result in unsuccessful word learning. It is concluded that a referential context is not necessary for successful word learning.

Activity in medial prefrontal cortex during cognitive evaluation of threatening stimuli as a function of personality style

Cognitive evaluation of emotional stimuli involves a network of brain regions including the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC). However, threatening stimuli may be perceived with differential salience in different individuals. The goal of our study was to evaluate how different personality styles are associated with differential modulation of brain activity during explicit recognition of fearful and angry facial expressions. Twenty-eight healthy subjects underwent fMRI. Based on a cognitivist model, subjects were categorized according to how they attribute salience to emotional stimuli and how they regulate their emotional activation. We compared 14 phobic prone (PP) subjects, whose identity is more centered on the inner experience (“inward”) and around control of environmental threat, and 14 eating disorders prone (EDP) subjects, whose identity is more centered on external referential contexts (“outward”) and much less around control of threatening stimuli. During fMRI subjects either matched the identity of one of two angry and fearful faces to that of a simultaneously presented target face or identified the expression of a target face by choosing one of two simultaneously presented linguistic labels. The fMRI results indicated that PP subjects had greater mPFC activation when compared with EDP subjects during cognitive labeling of threatening stimuli. Activity in the mPFC also correlated with personality style scores. These results demonstrate that PP subjects recruit greater neuronal resources in mPFC whose activity is associated with cognitive aspects that are closely intertwined with emotional processing. These findings are consistent with the contention that cognitive evaluation and salience of emotional stimuli are associated with different personality styles.

Ambiguity resolution in sentence processing: the role of lexical and contextual information

This study investigates how the parser employs thematic and contextual information in resolving temporary ambiguities during sentence processing. We report results from a sentence-completion task and from a self-paced reading experiment with native speakers of Greek examining two constructions under different referential context conditions: relative clauses (RCs) preceded by complex noun phrases with genitives, [NP1+NP2Gen], and RCs preceded by complex noun phrases containing prepositional phrases, [NP1+PP[P NP2]]. We found different attachment preferences for these two constructions, a high (NP1) preference for RCs with genitive antecedents and a low (NP2) preference for RCs with PP antecedents. Moreover, referential context information was found to modulate RC attachment differently in the two experimental tasks. We interpret these findings from the perspective of modular theories of sentence processing and argue that on-line ambiguity resolution relies primarily on grammatical and lexical-thematic information, and makes use of referential context information only as a secondary resource.

Acquiring an artificial lexicon: Segment type and order information in early lexical entries

The role of segment similarity in early (i.e., partially learned) lexical entries was assessed using artificial lexicons in a referential context. During a learning phase participants heard 40 nonsense words, each accompanied by an unfamiliar picture. In testing, participants heard the direction “Click on the [X]”, and chose which of four pictures was the target (X). Target lexical items (e.g., pibo ) appeared with foils that were similar: cohort items ( pib u), rhymes ( d ibo ), matched consonants ( p a b u) or matched vowels ( d i k o ). Two initial experiments demonstrated cohort and rhyme confusions, similar to lexical activation findings. Four further experiments explored the role of segment similarity in word confusions. Consonant-matched CVCV stimuli were more strongly confused with each other than were vowel-matched CVCV stimuli. Placing consonants in syllable-final position (VC[f]VC) weakened consonant effects and strengthened vowel effects. These results suggest that syllable-initial segments play a strong role in word similarity and constrain the organization of new lexical items.

Parsing with focus particles in context: Eye movements during the processing of relative clause ambiguities

Sedivy (2002) proposed that using only and prior referential context to specify contrastive focus can guide the parsing of relative clause ambiguities. We report two studies investigating this hypothesis, using sentences that either temporarily allowed or disallowed a transitive main clause interpretation. Sentence completions demonstrated that only and interrogative contexts jointly influenced the frequency of relative clause completions to ambiguous fragments. Eye-tracking demonstrated that conjoint effects of only and context influenced initial parsing decisions only when the active transitive analysis was unavailable. The results are consistent with previous observations that the influence of contrastive focus on sentence processing depends on which syntactic analyses are available to the parser ( Liversedge, Paterson, & Clayes, 2002; Paterson, Liversedge, & Underwood, 1999).

Second language learners’ interpretation of reflexive anaphora in VP-ellipsis: A relevance theory perspective

Twenty-eight intermediate and 22 advanced L2 learners (the experimental groups) and 20 native speakers of English (the control group) participated in a study that investigated second language learners’ interpretation of reflexives in the VP-elliptical sentences. Seventeen experimental sentences in a null context, 17 experimental sentences followed by a referential context favoring the “strict” reading interpretation, 17 experimental sentences followed by a non-referential context not favoring the “strict” reading interpretation, and 51 filler items were presented to the participants using a judgment task in which each sentence is followed by two alternative interpretations [Frazier, L., & Clifton, C. (2000) On bound variables interpretations: The LF-only hypothesis. Journal of Psycholinguistic Research, 29, 125–139]. The results indicate that adult L2 learners’ interpretation of such construction in English was constrained by the minimal processing cost and contextual effects of Relevance Theory (RT). They interpreted the reflexive in a null context “sloppily”, indicating the constraints of the minimal processing cost of RT. The contextual effects of RT were shown in their “strict” reading of the reflexive in a referential context.

Relevance and L2 Learners’ Interpretation of Reflexive Anaphora in VP-Ellipsis: An Exploration of the Relationship between Relevance Theory and Typological Universals

Twenty-eight intermediate and twenty-two advanced L2 learners (the experimental groups) and twenty native speakers of English (the control group) participated in a study that investigated second language learners’ interpretation of reflexives in the VP-elliptical sentences. 17 experimental sentences in a null context, 17 experimental sentences followed by a referential context favoring the “strict” reading interpretation, 17 experimental sentences followed by a non-referential context not favoring the “strict” reading interpretation, and 51 filler items were presented to the participants using a judgment task in which each sentence is followed by two alternative interpretations (Frazier & Cliffton, 2000). The results indicate that adult L2 learners’ interpretation of such construction in English was constrained by the minimal processing cost and contextual effects of RT. They interpreted the reflexive in a null context “sloppily”, indicating the constraints of the minimal processing cost of RT. The contextual effects of RT were shown in their “strict” reading of the reflexive in a referential context. The relationship of relevance theory and typological universals in terms of context, constraints, economy and cognitive considerations is also discussed.

The On-Line Resolution of the Sentence Complement/Relative Clause Ambiguity: Evidence from Spanish

The On-Line Resolution of the Sentence Complement/Relative Clause Ambiguity: Evidence from Spanish

Two-C but not two-V: Segment similarity in learning an artificial lexicon

The role of segment similarity (C1—C2—or —V1—V2) in a word learning task was assessed using an artificial lexicon in a referential context. Learning consisted of 480 trials in which S’s heard one of 40 CVCV nonsense strings, accompanied by an unfamiliar picture. In testing, participants heard the direction ‘‘Click on the [nonsense word],’’ and chose one of four pictures that matched the test item. On some trials, target lexical items (pibo) appeared with foils that contained matched consonants (pabu) or matched vowels (diko). There were higher rates of confusion errors to the matched-consonant items than to non-matched items, but no significant elevation in errors to matched-vowel items. A second experiment examined the role of differences in informativeness between C’s and V’s by inverting the numbers of C and V types (first experiment: 10 C, 5 V; second experiment: 5 C, 10 V). This made the consonants less predictive of word identity (more words contained the same consonants), and made the vowels more predictive of word identity. The matched-consonant effect remained undiminished while no corresponding matched-vowel effect emerged, ruling out a segment-informativeness explanation. Other accounts based on the syllable positions and confusability patterns of consonants are being explored.

The Power of Implicit Motion: "It Goes Straight Through"

Louis Rose. The Survival of Images: Art Historians, Psychoanalysts, and the Ancients. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2001. 209 pp. $34.95. This communication aims to show how a working alliance of psychoanalysis and art can be mutually fruitful. Movement is of central importance to both art and psyche. Drawing on this realization enables me, in my capacity as a psychoanalytic aesthetician, to propose a theory of (1) how aesthetic responsiveness takes place, and (2) sometimes has therapeutic efficacy. In The Survival of Images (2001), Louis Rose examines a small circle of art historians and psychoanalysts in the first half of the twentieth century who explored images of movement. This group of cultural scientists consisted, on the one hand, of Aby Warburg and his successors Fritz Saxl and E. H. Gombrich and, on the other, of Freud and his disciple Ernst Kris, himself trained as an art historian and the student of Emanuel Loewy. Freud never referred to Warburg, and the latter opposed Freud's sexual theory. Yet, Rose argues, whether the link in question was between ancient culture and modern life or between the infant and the adult, "the object of cultural study common to the psychoanalyst and art historian [was] the image of movement" (22). And though the repository of images for art historians was the public archives, while for psychoanalysts it was the private stock of any individual's dreams, both "placed image-making at the center of their researches, exploring how visual pictures and scenes gained qualities of immediacy and living movement. According to both, those qualities of pictures and performances resulted from dramatic fragments of the past coming into renewed contact with the present" (26). I would like to utilize Rose's research as a springboard to reflect on the temporary therapeutic miracles that music and art can sometimes accomplish with victims of neurological devastation. For example, listening to music, performing it, or just imagining it can restore motor ability, emotional range, and psychological identity for a period extending from moments to hours. This may be accompanied by a revival of normal EEG patterns. [End Page 116] In one case known to me, a woman in a late stage of vascular dementia had become withdrawn and indifferent to music and the presence of intimates (whom she may or may not have still recognized). She rarely spoke and never completed a sentence. When she did utter a word or two, it was without any obvious referential context. This woman had been an avid painter and had twice run her own art gallery. Painters had been among her closest friends. Accordingly, one day she was shown colored illustrations of Monet and the abstract paintings of Jimmy Ernst, an old friend. She looked at them all intently for many minutes and with unswerving attention. Asked what she thought, she replied immediately and with the intensity that had once been so characteristic: "This is really beautiful!" Then, more astonishing still: "It goes straight through!" What "goes straight through"? I suggest that the implicit motion of aesthetic form evokes implicit motion at the heart of affect. Implicit motion comprises both the tension and release of virtual motion inherent in visual art and music, and the tension and release of actual bodily responsiveness to the arts in the form of affect. How does it go straight through? To borrow a metaphor from physics: art and music shape fields of perceptual forces of tension and release to create a virtual "moving" magnet that stimulates the spectator's or listener's imagination to generate currents of flowing affect, just as an actually moving magnet generates electric current inside a coil of wire. Optimally, the therapeutic effect of art and music is manifested in a return to the normal range of motion and emotion, as well as in a resurgence of the sense of identity; they respond together. The basic ingredient of music is not sound but movement (Sessions 1950). As Louis Rose documents, the importance of movement...

Pragmatic versus form-based accounts of referential contrast: evidence for effects of informativity expectations.

Characterizing the relationship between form-based linguistic knowledge and representation of context has long been of importance in the study of on-line language processing. Recent experimental research has shown evidence of very rapid effects of referential context in resolving local indeterminacies on-line. However, there has been no consensus regarding the nature of these context effects. The current paper summarizes recent work covering a range of phenomena for which referential contrast has been shown to influence on-line processing, including prenominal and post-nominal modification, focus operators, and intonational focus. The results of the body of work suggest that referential context effects are not limited to situations in which the linguistic form of the utterance directly specifies the point of contact with context. Rather, context effects of a pragmatic, Gricean nature appear to be possible, suggesting the relationship between linguistic form and context in rapid on-line processing can be of a very indirect nature.

Using prosody to avoid ambiguity: Effects of speaker awareness and referential context

In three experiments, a referential communication task was used to determine the conditions under which speakers produce and listeners use prosodic cues to distinguish alternative meanings of a syntactically ambiguous phrase. Analyses of the actions and utterances from Experiments 1 and 2 indicated that Speakers chose to produce effective prosodic cues to disambiguation only when the referential scene provided support for both interpretations of the phrase. In Experiment 3, on-line measures of parsing commitments were obtained by recording the Listener’s eye movements to objects as the Speaker gave the instructions. Results supported the previous experiments but also showed that the Speaker’s prosody affected the Listener’s interpretation prior to the onset of the ambiguous phrase, thus demonstrating that prosodic cues not only influence initial parsing but can also be used to predict material which has yet to be spoken. The findings suggest that informative prosodic cues depend upon speakers’ knowledge of the situation: speakers provide prosodic cues when needed; listeners use these prosodic cues when present.

Circumscribing Referential Domains during Real-Time Language Comprehension

A head-mounted eye-tracking methodology was used to investigate how linguistic and nonlinguistic information sources are combined to constrain referential interpretation. In two experiments, participants responded to instructions to manipulate physical objects in a visual workspace. Instructions on critical trials contained definite noun phrases preceded by spatial prepositions (e.g., “Put the cube inside the can”). Experiment 1 established that the lexical-semantic constraints of the preposition inside immediately limited attention to objects compatible with those constraints (i.e., containers), suggesting that the referential context is dynamically restructured as sentence comprehension proceeds. Experiment 2 evaluated the additional influence of nonlinguistic constraints by varying the number of container objects that were large enough to hold the object being moved. The results indicated that attention was initially restricted to only those containers large enough to accommodate the object. This outcome suggests that referential candidates are continuously evaluated in terms of their relevance for the action denoted by the unfolding utterance. Overall, the findings are consistent with an expectation-driven interpretive system that rapidly integrates linguistic information with situation-specific constraints and knowledge of possible actions.

Singular or plural? Children's knowledge of the factors that determine the appropriate form of count nouns.

Two experiments investigated the factors that govern children's use of singular and plural forms of count nouns. Experiment 1 used an elicited production task to investigate whether children use referential and/or syntactic information to determine the form of the count nouns when the two sources of information conflict (e.g. each x, one of the xs), as well as when the linguistic context does not provide any constraint on the form of the noun, but the referential context does (e.g. the dog(s)). 48 children, aged 1;9 to 5;6, participated in Experiment 1. The results suggest that even the youngest children can use referential information when relevant, and can ignore referential information when necessary. Children did, however, show a tendency to make errors with the quantifier each in non-partitive contexts, and a developmental trend was found in the use and avoidance of each in non-partitive contexts. Experiment 2, an act out task, provided a second test of the role of referential information in children's use of singular and plural forms. Experiment 2 also investigated children's appreciation of the semantic distinction between each and all. 48 children, aged 1;8 to 5;6, participated in Experiment 2. A weak sensitivity to the semantic distinction between the two quantifiers as well as the syntactic context in which they were used was found. The results of the two experiments suggest that, from the beginning, children approach the task of learning when to use singular and plural forms of count nouns on the basis of morphosyntactic, semantic, and referential properties of utterances, rather than initially using only one of these types of information.

The influence of referential discourse context on modifier attachment in Dutch

In an eye-tracking experiment we investigated the influence of referential context on the attachment of a relative clause to two possible hosts (as in "Someone shot the servant of the actress who was on the balcony"). The attachment of the relative clause was disambiguated grammatically at the first word after the onset of the ambiguity in order to investigate immediate effects of discourse. The contexts had been verified in a sentence completion study to make sure that they induced a strong bias toward early or late closure. The results of the reading experiment, however, revealed no significant interaction of referential context with the attachment preference of the relative clause. The only robust and consistent effect we found was a preference for early closure, independent of the preceding context. These data favor accounts positing that referential context does not influence the initial attachment decision, but does play a role in later phases of sentence processing.

Money and Meaning in India and Great Britain

This article compares and contrasts the discourses of money and property in India and Great Britain. Whereas the Indian concept of money reflects a polymorphic philosophy, the British approach is dualistic in nature. A comparison of Indian and British texts brings out the extraverted nature of the British versus the introverted nature of the Indians. Whereas the British use an external referential context to define money, the Indians use an internal frame of reference, and while the British dialogue focuses on the good or evil nature of money, the Indian approach concentrates on money as experiential, from the vantage of the user. Although both British and Indian thought focus on the importance of saving money, they differ from one another in the greater British emphasis on accumulation. Both Indian and British approaches to money reflect a positive attitude toward giving.

Caf�s and Food: Allusions to the Great War inThe Sun Also Rises

JL Xemingway was disappointed throughout his life because The Sun Also Rises was the novel most often misread, Linda W. Wagner says; was the 'naturalistic' Hemingway, or at any rate, the 'realistic' novel.2 By now, many readers see The Sun Also Rises preeminently as a novel of implication. One of its referential contexts is, of course, the mid-1920s (the story takes place in a fictional year that resembles 1924-25); and much critical attention has focused on decoding the story's subtle allusions to this period. But memories of the pre-story past have been noted, too. Almost always, they concern Jake's war wounding. For instance, Pamplona during fiesta time has been seen as a kind of war zone, and Jake's wounding is in a sense re-enacted when Cohn knocks him unconscious. More often, though, it is Jake's unmanning (as his war wounding was unmanning) emotional woundings by Brett Ashley throughout the story that have been seen in these terms.

Elastic shadow flow and its theoretical implications for inelastic solids

Microstructural considerations have led to a constitutive format for the modeling of inelastic solids which does not make use of a fixed material reference in the usual sense. A principal motivation for this Eulerian-type' theoretical structure stems from a belief that large deformation inelastic flow phenomena (such as that encountered in certain metal forming processes) will one day prove amenable to numerical techniques of the sort common to the field of fluid mechanics. Unfortunately, virtually all established theoretical results of a general nature have been developed in a Lagrangian or referential context, and are not readily adapted to this new format. Here, this difficulty is partially overcome through the introduction of an instantaneous local reference corresponding to a material element's so called 'shadow' (elastically unstretched) configuration. A related state variable transformation and the definition of a shadow frame time derivative (analogous to the corotational time derivative) are then shown to facilitate a far more tractable theoretical reformulation. Throughout, three equivalent variants of this general theory are presented, one expressed in terms of a gradient type 'cell placement tensor', a second involving symmetric elastic stretch and orthogonal cell orientation tensors, and a third in which the aforementioned elastic stretch is replaced by the elastic (natural) log-strain tensor. In each case, the theoretical simplifications appropriate for various types of materials are enumerated. It is noteworthy that the latter two forms are instantly specialized for the most common class of structurally isotropic materials by merely dropping dependence on the cell orientation tensor. In all forms, basic thermodynamic considerations (second law) result in general expressions for true stress response in terms of energy derivatives, the rate of mechanical dissipation, and to necessary conditions (in the form of constitutive inequalities) for Il'iushin stability. Finally, the specific circumstances under which these inequalities reduce to the familiar Drucker-like' forms are identified.

One frog, two frog, red frog, blue frog: factors affecting children's syntactic choices in production and comprehension.

Two experiments are reported which examine children's ability to use referential context when making syntactic choices in language production and comprehension. In a recent on-line study of auditory comprehension, Trueswell, Sekerina, Hill, and Logrip (1999) examined children's and adults' abilities to resolve temporary syntactic ambiguities involving prepositional phrases (e.g., "Put the frog on the napkin into..."). Although adults and older children used the referential context to guide their initial analysis (pursuing a destination interpretation in a one-frog context and a modifier interpretation in a two-frog context), 4 to 5-year olds' initial and ultimate analysis was one of destination, regardless of context. The present studies examined whether these differences were attributable to the comprehension process itself or to other sources, such as possible differences in how children perceive the scene and referential situation. In both experiments, children were given a language generation task designed to elicit and test children's ability to refer to a member of a set through restrictive modification. This task was immediately followed by the "put" comprehension task. The findings showed that, in response to a question about a member of a set (e.g., "Which frog went to Mrs. Squid's house?"), 4- to 5-year-olds frequently produced a definite NP with a restrictive prepositional modifier (e.g., "The one on the napkin"). These same children, however, continued to misanalyze put instructions, showing a strong avoidance of restrictive modification during comprehension. Experiment 2 showed that an increase in the salience of the platforms that distinguished the two referents increased overall performance, but still showed the strong asymmetry between production and comprehension. Eye movements were also recorded in Experiment 2, revealing on-line parsing patterns similar to Trueswell et al.: an initial preference for a destination analysis and a failure to revise early referential commitments. These experiments indicate that child-adult differences in parsing preferences arise, in part, from developmental changes in the comprehension process itself and not from a general insensitivity to referential properties of the scene. The findings are consistent with a probabilistic model for uncovering the structure of the input during comprehension, in which more reliable linguistic and discourse-related cues are learned first, followed by a gradually developing ability to take into account other more uncertain (or more difficult to learn) cues to structure.

The use of referential context and grammatical gender in parsing: A reply to Brysbaert and Mitchell

Based on the results of an event-related brain potentials (ERP) experiment (van Berkum, Brown, & Hagoort. 1999a, b), we have recently argued that discourse-level referential context can be taken into account extremely rapidly by the parser. Moreover, our ERP results indicated that local grammatical gender information, although available within a few hundred milliseconds from word onset, is not always used quickly enough to prevent the parser from considering a discourse-supported, but agreement-violating, syntactic analysis. In a comment on our work, Brysbaert and Mitchell (2000) have raised concerns about the methodology of our ERP experiment and have challenged our interpretation of the results. In this reply, we argue that these concerns are unwarranted and, that, in contrast to our own interpretation, the alternative explanations provided by Brysbaert and Mitchell do not account for the full pattern of ERP results.