Self-paced Reading Experiments Research Articles

Online evidence for pseudo-relative effects on Italian RC attachment resolution

ABSTRACT This study investigates the resolution of relative clause attachment ambiguities, focussing on the availability of Pseudo-Relative Small Clauses (PRs) in Italian. The PR-first hypothesis posits that, when controlling for other factors, PRs are preferred over relative clauses due to their structural simplicity, leading to an apparent preference for “high attachment” in PR-licensing languages. Through a self-paced reading experiment, this study examines how PR availability affects ambiguity resolution in Italian, and how it interacts with locality principles during online sentence processing. We find a significant slowdown in the LA condition with PR-licensing verbs, also tied to lower comprehension accuracy, and unclear evidence for an advantage of LA in non-PR contexts. Overall, our results add support to the PR-first hypothesis for Italian, while opening new questions about the interplay of structural ambiguity, locality, and language-specific properties.

What I Can Do with the Right Version of You: The Impact of Narrative Perspective on Reader Immersion, and How (in)Formal Address Pronouns Influence Immersion Reports

Previous research has shown that readers experience stronger immersion while reading first-person narratives than third-person narratives, but whether this difference in processing is time-sensitive remains unclear. We report on a self-paced reading experiment in which French participants read short stories in first and in third person. Additionally, participants were directly addressed with either formal or informal second-person pronouns in the final sentence of the narrative, as well as in a subsequent (off-line) questionnaire soliciting post-story immersion reports. The suitability of a particular pronoun of address depends on the social context, and misplaced use can impact the way in which people perceive and assess a particular situation. We did not find significant differences between reading times with first- or third-person pronouns, but participants reported higher immersion and emotional engagement after reading first-person stories than third-person stories. Moreover, the effect of story perspective on reported immersion only occurred when participants were addressed with formal second-person pronouns. We take these findings as evidence for an effect of first- versus third-person pronouns on immersion via perspective shifts. Moreover, we argue that the effect of being addressed with an unexpected (in this case, informal) pronoun can overrule such an effect, while being addressed with an expected (in this case, formal) pronoun can be conducive of it. This finding highlights the importance of research into the impact of pronouns of address.

Machine Translation for Open Scholarly Communication: Examining the Relationship between Translation Quality and Reading Effort

This study assesses the usability of machine-translated texts in scholarly communication, using self-paced reading experiments with texts from three scientific disciplines, translated from French into English and vice versa. Thirty-two participants, proficient in the target language, participated. This study uses three machine translation engines (DeepL, ModernMT, OpenNMT), which vary in translation quality. The experiments aim to determine the relationship between translation quality and readers’ reception effort, measured by reading times. The results show that for two disciplines, manual and automatic translation quality measures are significant predictors of reading time. For the most technical discipline, this study could not build models that outperformed the baseline models, which only included participant and text ID as random factors. This study acknowledges the need to include reader-specific features, such as prior knowledge, in future research.

Covariation in processing: grammar vs. context

In addition to referential uses, pronouns can have covarying interpretations, i.e., exhibit the behavior of a bound variable. The grammatical mechanism(s) behind such readings have been subject to longstanding debates: Some authors argue for a fairly flexible but unified semantic mechanism that is not tied closely to syntactic configurations. Others distinguish a core class of bona fidebinding with tight syntactic constraints from other mechanisms that give rise to ultimately parallel effects, but do so more indirectly. Psycholinguistic work has started to uncover the processing mechanisms involved in evaluating dependencies between covarying pronouns and (candidate) antecedents. Moulton and Han (2018) leverage the processing perspective to try to shed light on the theoretical question of what grammatical mechanism is at play for a given covarying pronoun. They argue that so-called Gender Mismatch Effects only arise for cases of bona fide binding, supporting the existence of distinct grammatical mechanisms. However, Kush and Eik (2019), looking at another construction involving the relevant other covariation mechanisms, do find Gender Mismatch Effects. These authors suggest that various contextual factors can make a covarying interpretation harder to obtain, and they propose adjustments to Moulton and Han’s stimuli that they think should lead to fast Gender Mismatch Effects even when no bona fide binding is involved. A series of self-paced reading experiments replicate the results from Moulton and Han, and then extend the paradigm to variations along the lines suggested by Kush and Eik. The adjustment of contextual factors indeed results in Gender Mismatch Effects for both environments. We discuss how the processing evidence informs the theoretical issues.  

Investigating the role of case markers in honorific agreement processing in Korean

This study explores the influence of case markers on the attraction effect in subject-verb honorific agreement in Korean. Using a self-paced reading experiment on PCIbex Farm, we manipulated case markers (possessive vs. nominative) and the presence of the honorific marker -si on verbs to assess their impact on the attraction effect, where syntactically illicit NPs are erroneously retrieved due to partial feature matching. While Avetisyan et al. (2020) reported that in Armenian, case information is used as a retrieval cue during subject-verb number agreement, our preliminary findings reveal no significant attraction effect related to case marker similarity, indicating that the case features (nominative case) do not crucially trigger the attraction effect in honorific agreement. The discrepancy with previous studies highlights the role of noun animacy and the specific construction of Korean sentence structure. Our results contribute to understanding the nuanced factors influencing honorific agreement processing in Korean and suggest that case marking, while integral to sentence structure, does not significantly affect the attraction effect in honorific agreement processing.

The spontaneous activities of the multiple demand network are related to individual differences in indirect replies comprehension

This study aims to investigate the brain networks engaged in the comprehension of indirect language, as well as the individual difference in this capacity. Specially, we aim to determine whether the difference is solely influenced by the difference in individuals’ default network (DN)/language network or whether it also relies on the networks associated with processing of complex cognitive tasks, particularly the multiple demand network (MDN). Conversational indirectness scale (CIS) scores in the interpretation dimension were used as a behavioral indicator of the indirect comprehension tendency. Reading time difference between indirect replies and direct replies collected through a self-paced reading experiment was deemed as a behavioral indicator of comprehension speed of indirect replies comprehension. The two behavioral indicators were combined with resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging (rs-fMRI). The behaviour-rfMRI analysis showed that ALFF value of right SPL and the functional connectivity (FC) between the right SPL and right IPL/SMA/ITG/Precuneus/bilateral IFG were positively correlated with the interpretation dimension of CIS scores. In addition, the ALFF value of right fusiform gyrus, the FC between the right fusiform gyrus and right precuneus, and the FCs between right SPL and right IPL/Precuneus/IFG were negatively correlated with indirect replies comprehension speed. Overlapping of these regions with large-scale brain network revealed that the right SPL was mainly located in the MDN, and the right fusiform gyrus was mainly located in the language network. Additionally, the areas showing functional connectivity with these regions were primarily located in the MDN, with a smaller subset located in the DN. Our findings suggest that the ability of individuals to actively and rapidly acquire indirect meaning relies not only on the support of the DN and the language network, but also requires collective support from the MDN.

Agreement attraction in grammatical sentences and the role of the task

This study evaluates two broad classes of language processing accounts that make predictions for sentences like “The admirer of the singer(s) apparently thinks...”. Feature distortion accounts predict increased processing difficulty at the verb in sentences with a plural distractor noun (singers) while similarity-based interference accounts predict the opposite: increased difficulty in sentences with a singular distractor noun (singer). Neither of these effects was reliably observed in earlier research, and the Bayesian meta-analysis of 31 published studies reported here is almost perfectly inconclusive. An explanation may be that both effects occur simultaneously and therefore mask each other. To test this idea, we conducted three single-trial self-paced reading experiments (N1=4,296, N2=3,920, N3=3,559) which orthogonally manipulated agreement attraction and inhibitory interference. Surprisingly, all three experiments produced evidence for agreement attraction but none for inhibitory interference, which supports feature distortion but not similarity-based interference accounts. Experiment 4 (N4=3,535) tested the role of the expected task by preparing participants for a comprehension question (vs. acceptability judgment in Experiments 1–3). It showed neither agreement attraction nor inhibitory interference effects. Our findings demonstrate that agreement attraction effects can arise in grammatical sentences – contra earlier research – but also that these effects crucially depend on the task. This explains inconsistent results in prior research and supports feature distortion as the driving force behind attraction effects in grammatical sentences.

The processing of Russian Idioms in Heritage Russian Speakers and L2 Russian Learners

The use of idioms differentiates native speakers (NSs) from second language (L2) learners, whereas the use of idioms by heritage speakers (HSs) might resemble both groups at the same time. This study examines the processing of idioms in heritage Russian speakers (N = 16) and L2 Russian learners (N = 16), comparing them to Russian native speakers as a control group (N = 23). Heritage speakers acquire Russian similarly to the first language acquisition in their family. This enables them to have a more natural approach to language than L2 learners. However, heritage speakers are also similar to L2 learners since their Russian language competence is still not native-like due to insufficient language input. To test whether idiom processing in HSs resembles that of L2 learners or rather in NSs, we conducted a self-paced reading experiment. The idioms were divided into three categories based on the cross-language influence factor: having full English equivalents, semi-equivalents, or no-equivalents. Our findings show no significant difference in idiom processing in HSs and L2 learners, whereas their processing significantly differed from that by NSs of Russian. Also, we found different processing for full and semi-equivalent idioms (in the HS and L2 groups). Full and no-equivalent idioms were also processed differently in all the three groups.

The representation of agreement features in memory is updated during sentence processing: Evidence from verb-reflexive interactions

The formation of linguistic dependencies is subject to memory interference. In this study, we ask whether memory representations are fixed, or whether they can be distorted and updated after their initial encoding. Models of Cue-Based Retrieval assume that memory representations are fixed. However, representational interference and rational inference models assume that memory contents can be edited. To examine this, we test how reflexive attraction is affected by preceding verbal agreement in Hebrew. Cue-Based Retrieval suggests that agreement on the verb can exaggerate the reflexive’s sensitivity to the distractor. In contrast, we propose that if memory representations can be edited, verbal agreement can alter the representation of the subject. This process would reduce vulnerability to distortions originating from the distractor. In two self-paced reading experiments and one forced-choice completion we find (i) decreased reflexive attraction when (grammatical or ungrammatical) agreement cues were available on the preceding verb; and (ii) a preference for reflexive forms matching the verb over forms matching the subject when the sentence included ungrammatical verbal agreement. These results suggest that comprehenders use featural information from the verb to recover properties of the subject. The findings are therefore consistent with a memory model where representations can be distorted and updated, as well as with rational inference about memory disruption.

Vulnerability in processing definiteness: The case of heritage Turkish.

Definiteness has been argued to be difficult for language learners to acquire because the correct usage of definiteness requires the integration of external interfaces that involve linguistic and non-linguistic information. Previous offline studies with heritage speakers have constantly reported difficulties in the use of pragmatically appropriate definite forms. The current study aims to investigate the processing of definiteness in Turkish heritage speakers via a self-paced reading experiment and to compare heritage speakers' reading times and end-of-sentence acceptance percentage to monolingually-raised Turkish speakers. The results of the experiment indicate significant differences between the heritage and monolingually-raised Turkish speakers only in the end-of-sentence acceptance percentage data but not in the reading time data. This difference between the two groups suggests that Turkish heritage speakers perform differently from the monolingually-raised Turkish speakers only in indefinite-specific sentences when they have to use their metalinguistic knowledge. These results show that heritage speakers experience vulnerability/difficulty when they have to integrate external interfaces in indefinite-specific sentences but not in definite-specific sentences.

Transitivity and non-uniform subjecthood in agreement attraction.

Research on human language converges on a view in which a grammatical "subject" is the most saliently encoded entity in mental representation. However, subjecthood is not a syntactically uniform phenomenon. Notably, many languages encode morphological distinctions between subjects of transitive verbs (i.e., verbs that require an object) and subjects of intransitive verbs. We ask how this typological pattern manifests in a language like English (which does not morphologically signal it) by examining the "distinctiveness" of transitive versus intransitive subjects in memory during online sentence processing. We conducted a self-paced reading experiment that tested for "attraction" effects (Dillon et al., Journal of Memory and Language, 69(2), 85-103, 2013; Wagers et al., Journal of Memory and Language, 61, 206-237, 2009) in the processing of subject-verb number agreement. We find that transitive subjects trigger attraction effects, but that these effects are mitigated for intransitive subject attractors (independently of the number of other noun phrases present in the intervening clause). We interpret this as indicating that transitive subjects are less distinctive and therefore less representationally salient than intransitive subjects: This is because a transitive subject must compete with another clause-mate core argument (i.e., a direct object), which draws on resources from the same pool of memory resources. On the other hand, an intransitive subject minimally only competes with a non-core argument (i.e., an oblique noun phrase); this consumes fewer memory resources, leaving the subject to enjoy greater spoils.

Pre-verb reactivation of arguments in sentence processing

Major models of sentence comprehension assume that a verb triggers retrieval of preceding thematic arguments from memory to establish argument-verb dependencies. If so, longer argument-verb distance should lead to higher processing load at the verb (a locality effect),since the representation of the argument should suffer from decay and/or interference.However, verb-final languages have often failed to show the expected argument-verb locality effect. A possible account of the lack of the effect is that arguments and adjuncts before the verb reactivate each other, counteracting memory degradation. In a pair of self-paced reading experiments in Japanese, a verb-final language, we found evidence of such pre-verb reactivation.Specifically, there was a locality effect and a similarity-based interference effect at the head of the adverbial that follows the subject, both of which suggest the retrieval of the subject at that point. The results are difficult to accommodate with other accounts of the lack of locality effect, such as a confounding effect of expectation and the inherent locality-insensitivity of verb-final languages. It is further argued that the constructivist analysis of verbal argument structure, which has been developed in generative syntax, provides an explanation for why such pre-verb reactivation takes place. 

Does the processing advantage of formulaic language persist in its nonadjacent forms? Evidence from Chinese collocation processing in children

Recent studies have accumulated to suggest that children, akin to adults, exhibit a processing advantage for formulaic language (e.g. save energy) over novel language (e.g. sell energy), as well as sensitivity to phrase frequencies. The majority of these studies are based on formulaic sequences in their canonical form. In natural language use, however, many formulaic sequences, collocations in particular, can be modified with words intervening in between the individual constituents (e.g. save energy → save all forms of energy). For some collocations, their nonadjacent forms are equally, and even more frequently used than their adjacent form. Despite this, it remains almost unknown whether the processing advantage and sensitivity to phrase frequencies persist in nonadjacent collocations in children. Based on reading times in a self-paced reading experiment, the current study found that two age groups – third and sixth graders – exhibited a processing advantage for Chinese collocations and sensitivity to phrase frequencies, with two and even four Chinese characters inserted in the middle. The persistence of processing advantage and sensitivity was affected by insertion length as well as age. These results are in line with a usage-based theoretical approach to language learning, processing and use.

Discourse coherence modulates use of predictive processing during sentence comprehension

Context has been shown to be vitally important for comprehension. Lexical processing is facilitated when words are highly predictable given their local sentence context, suggesting that people pre-activate likely upcoming words to aid comprehension. However, this facilitation is affected by knowledge about the global context in which comprehension takes place: people predict less when in an environment where expectations are frequently violated. The current study investigated whether discourse coherence is an additional cue that comprehenders use to modulate lexical prediction. In a series of online, self-paced reading experiments, participants read target sentences preceded by short contextual preambles. Local facilitation effects were manipulated through the cloze probability of a critical word within the target sentence and discourse coherence was manipulated by varying the degree to which the target sentence was consistent with the information presented in the preamble. In the first two experiments, target sentences were read more slowly when they occurred in less coherent discourses, but no local facilitation effects were observed. In the third experiment, we strengthened the predictability manipulation by using semantically anomalous critical words. In this experiment, predictable words were processed more quickly and anomalous words more slowly when they occurred in highly coherent discourse. Our results suggest that comprehenders are sensitive to shifts in the topic of discourse and that they downregulate predictive processing when they encounter incoherence in the discourse. This is consistent with recent theoretical accounts suggesting that comprehenders flexibly engage in predictive processing, pre-activating semantic and lexical information less when their expectations are less likely to be reliable.

Non-gendered pronoun processing: an investigation of the gender non-specific third person singular pronoun ‘TA’ in Chinese

ABSTRACT This study investigated the processing of the Chinese nongendered third-person singular pronoun, “TA,” in a series of self-paced reading experiments. We begin by investigating the perceived appropriateness of TA using a novel implementation of the modified maze task. We then contrasted reading latencies for TA and male- and female-gender pronouns in reference to antecedents with varying stereotypical gender (e.g., occupation terms) and definitional gender (e.g., kinship terms). In our analysis, we assessed several means of operationalizing stereotypical gender information. Optimal model performance was achieved with a continuous measure that accounted for individual differences in gender perception, suggesting the involvement of a probabilistic component. Results for reading latencies and perceived appropriateness of TA support previous findings from discourse analysis that TA is not entirely gender-neutral but rather has nuanced contexts of use in modern Chinese written discourse.

Functional priority of syntax over semantics in Chinese ‘ba’ construction: evidence from eye-tracking during natural reading

AbstractStudies on sentence processing in inflectional languages support that syntactic structure building functionally precedes semantic processing. Conversely, most EEG studies of Chinese sentence processing do not support the priority of syntax. One possible explanation is that the Chinese language lacks morphological inflections. Another explanation may be that the presentation of separate sentence components on individual screens in EEG studies disrupts syntactic framework construction during sentence reading. The present study investigated this explanation using a self-paced reading experiment mimicking rapid serial visual presentation in EEG studies and an eye-tracking experiment reflecting natural reading. In both experiments, Chinese ‘ba’ sentences were presented to Chinese young adults in four conditions that differed across the dimensions of syntactic and semantic congruency. Evidence supporting the functional priority of syntax over semantics was limited to only the natural reading context, in which syntactic violations blocked the processing of semantics. Additionally, we observed a later stage of integrating plausible semantics with a failed syntax. Together, our findings extend the functional priority of syntax to the Chinese language and highlight the importance of adopting more ecologically valid methods when investigating sentence reading.

Online revision process in clause-boundary garden-path sentences.

A long-standing question in sentence processing research concerns the online parsing process in clause-boundary garden-path sentences, such as After Mary dressed John bathed. In this sentence, "John" must be parsed as the matrix subject DP but can be locally analysed as the object of the embedded verb. There is considerable evidence that the parser misanalyses these garden-path sentences. However, the controversy lies in whether the parser revises them during the online parsing process. The present study investigated this revision process through two self-paced reading experiments utilising grammatical constraints on reflexives and subject or object relative clauses embedded within the locally ambiguous DP. The results provided evidence of revision when a subject relative clause was embedded but not when an object relative clause was embedded. These findings suggest that the parser assigns grammatical structures that correspond to input strings during the revision of clause-boundary ambiguities but that object relative clauses affect the online revision process.

Garden-path sentences and the diversity of their (mis)representations.

Previous studies have reliably shown that the initial misanalysis of garden-path sentences lingers even after the whole sentence is processed. However, other aspects of the resulting representation of these sentences are far from being clear. Some authors argue that comprehenders form a full analysis of the sentence which is faithful to the input and that the fact that the misanalysis lingers is due to an inhibition failure. Recently, it has been shown that comprehenders might not manage to create a coherent representation at all, at least in the case of more demanding garden-path structures. The aim of the current paper is to examine resulting representations of garden-path sentences in more detail. To do this, four self-paced reading experiments in Czech were conducted, which differed in the presentation mode (word-by-word and sentence-at-once) and comprehension question format (yes-no questions and open-ended questions). The experiments replicated effects typical for the lingering initial misanalysis, but provided mixed evidence for other aspects of resulting representations. In most cases, participants managed to build a coherent representation that was faithful to the input. However, both the quantitative and qualitative analysis of the results showed that comprehenders sometimes maintained multiple local interpretations at once or even failed to build a coherent representation of a garden-path sentence. Thus, we argue that resulting representations of garden-path sentences are in fact not uniform, but rather diverse, and they vary both in their faithfulness to the presented input and in their internal coherence.

Illusions of plausibility in adjuncts and co-ordination

ABSTRACT Illusions of grammaticality, where ungrammatical sentences are misperceived as grammatical (e.g. The key to the cabinets were rusty), have been widely studied during language comprehension. Such grammatical illusions have been influential in debate surrounding so-called representational and retrieval-based accounts of linguistic dependency resolution. Whether analogous illusions of plausibility occur at the level of semantic interpretation has only recently begun to be examined, and thus far, these illusions have been restricted to a narrow range of linguistic phenomena. In two eye-tracking during reading experiments (n = 48 in each) and two self-paced reading experiments (n = 192 in each) we examined the possibility of semantic illusions during the processing of adjuncts and co-ordination. Across experiments, our results suggest illusions of plausibility during dependency resolution, though interference effects were clearer in adjuncts than co-ordination. We argue that our findings are more compatible with retrieval-based rather than representational accounts of linguistic dependency resolution.

Metaphor processing: Referring and predicating

The general consensus emerging from decades of empirical investigation of metaphor processing is that, when appropriately contextualised, metaphorically used language is no more demanding of processing effort than literally used language. However, there is a small number of studies which contradict this position, notably Noveck, Bianco, and Castry (2001): they maintain that relevance-based pragmatic theory predicts increased cognitive costs incurred in deriving the extra effects that metaphors typically yield, and they provide experimental results that support this prediction. In our study, we first surveyed and assessed the tasks and stimulus materials of many experiments on metaphor processing from the 1970's to the present day. The most telling result was an apparent disparity between the processing of metaphorical language used predicatively versus referentially. We then ran two self-paced reading experiments to test our hypothesis that when used as a predicate, metaphorical language is no more costly than literal language, but when used referentially, it does incur extra costs, even given a preceding biasing context. In the first experiment, all metaphorical referring expressions were in subject position so occurred early in the sentence; in the second experiment, we controlled for any effect of sentence position by placing metaphorical referring expressions in object position, thus later in the sentence, similar to the predicate metaphors. In both cases, metaphorical referring incurred significantly greater costs relative to literal equivalents than did metaphorical predication, with no effect of sentence position. We end with a brief analysis of why the referential use of metaphor is special and effort-demanding.