Sentence Completion Task Research Articles

CFL learners' productions of relative clauses with demonstratives: From theory to empirical research

AbstractRelative clauses (RCs), with their typological universality and structural complexity, have always been central to inquiries in generative linguistics and language acquisition. Although recent years witness a growing interest in psycholinguistic and acquisition research in Chinese RCs, few studies have attempted to make connections between psycholinguistic theories and Chinese as a second language learning and teaching. This paper tries to bridge the gap and uses an interdisciplinary approach to address the comparative difficulty of Chinese subject and object RCs in their interaction with demonstratives. Chinese L1 and L2 participants completed a written sentence completion task. More productions in a certain type of RC, when observed in both participant groups, were interpreted as evidence of structural preference, and differences between L1 and L2 patterns were analyzed as competence issues. It was found that both groups prefer subject RCs when the structure begins with a demonstrative, and this result corresponds to corpus studies of Chinese RCs as well as findings in previous acquisition research. At the same time, there was no asymmetry between the subject and object RCs produced when the demonstrative follows the RC. A multi-constraint model in which a “perspective” factor (MacWhinney 1977, 1982, MacWhinney and Pleh 1988) and a word order factor simultaneously contribute to production cost can explain the data. Meanwhile, L2 participants' errors were often related to neglecting the obligatory gap within the RC. Pedagogical implications were put forward.

Time reference in Spanish and Catalan non-fluent aphasia

The vulnerability of time reference, either marked by means of verbal morphology or by adverbs, has been established in an extensive array of languages in agrammatic aphasia. Recent studies (Bastiaanse, 2008; Lee et al., 2008; Nanousi et al., 2006; Martínez-Ferreiro, 2010; Yarbay Duman and Bastiaanse, 2009; among others) have determined that far from being general, the observed deficit is sensitive to tense differences with a clear asymmetry between past and non-past forms.To account for these findings, Bastiaanse et al. (2011) formulated the PAst DIscourse LInking Hypothesis (PADILIH), in line with Avrutin's (2000) claim that discourse linking is impaired in Broca's aphasia. Past forms are impaired in opposition to non-past forms due to the fact that the former are discourse linked. However, this hypothesis entails further predictions: if the problem with tense is restricted to discourse linking, we expect present and future forms to be spared or, at least, damaged to the same extent.In this paper, we investigate time reference in Catalan and Spanish using a sentence completion task with pictures and a sentence-to-picture-matching task (adapted from the TART; Bastiaanse et al., 2008). The results confirm the predicted deficit: forms referring to the past are more impaired than forms referring to non-past, that is, tenses referring to the present and future were better preserved. However, in comprehension, asymmetries arise between present and future forms. Implications for the PADILIH are discussed.

An fMRI Study of Grammatical Morpheme Processing Associated with Nouns and Verbs in Chinese

This study examined whether the degree of complexity of a grammatical component in a language would impact on its representation in the brain through identifying the neural correlates of grammatical morpheme processing associated with nouns and verbs in Chinese. In particular, the processing of Chinese nominal classifiers and verbal aspect markers were investigated in a sentence completion task and a grammaticality judgment task to look for converging evidence. The Chinese language constitutes a special case because it has no inflectional morphology per se and a larger classifier than aspect marker inventory, contrary to the pattern of greater verbal than nominal paradigmatic complexity in most European languages. The functional imaging results showed BA47 and left supplementary motor area and superior medial frontal gyrus more strongly activated for classifier processing, and the left posterior middle temporal gyrus more responsive to aspect marker processing. We attributed the activation in the left prefrontal cortex to greater processing complexity during classifier selection, analogous to the accounts put forth for European languages, and the left posterior middle temporal gyrus to more demanding verb semantic processing. The overall findings significantly contribute to cross-linguistic observations of neural substrates underlying processing of grammatical morphemes from an analytic and a classifier language, and thereby deepen our understanding of neurobiology of human language.

형태초점접근법의 명시성의 정도가 중학교 영어 학습자의 관계대명사 구문 습득에 미치는 영향

This study aimed to examine the effects of three different focus-on-form (FonF) techniques (garden path, dictogloss, and visual input enhancement) on the acquisition of the English relative clauses by Korean middle school students. The three FonF techniques were chosen because they have been widely discussed in the literature as having different degrees of explicitness. It was expected that the degrees of explicitness involved with each of the three teaching techniques would have differential effects on learning. Four intact classes (n = 89) from a middle school located in Jeonbuk Province participated in this study. Each of them was randomly assigned to one of the three teaching conditions and the comparison group and underwent three sessions of treatment. The learning outcomes of the students were measured through various tasks, including a grammaticality judgment task, a sentence completion task, and a correction task. The results showed that the garden path group performed best and the dictogloss group outperformed the visual input enhancement group. Notwithstanding the short treatment sessions, the findings of this study would suggest that more explicit types of FonF techniques would be more effective in the learning of complex constructions like English relative clauses.

Concurrent and prospective associations of habitual overgeneral memory and prospection with symptoms of depression, general anxiety, obsessive compulsiveness, and post-traumatic stress

Reduced memory specificity is associated with depression, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and some other forms of psychopathology. Reduced memory specificity is also associated with reduced specificity of envisioned future events. Research in this area has mostly relied on cue-word methods that include explicit instructions to develop specific memories of future events. These methods are limited in their ability to assess how participants habitually remember the past and imagine the future when the specificity constraints inherent in the cue-word task are removed. Sentence completions tasks have been developed that can be used to assess habitual patterns of memory and prospection. Little is known about the association of habitual memory and prospection with concurrently and prospectively assessed psychopathology. In the current study 142 participants completed sentence completion tasks tapping habitual memory and prospection at baseline and completed measures tapping psychological symptoms at baseline and 1 year later. Among other things, it was found that reduced memory specificity (but not reduced future specificity) was associated with concurrent and later depression, as well as with symptom levels of PTSD tapped 1 year beyond baseline.

On the optionality in L2 pronominal production and interpretation

This paper aims to contribute to the discussion pertaining to the source of optionality in second language (L2) pronominal interpretation. We examined pronominal use not only in L2 English adverbial – adjunct CP clauses (‘The student was upset because he had failed the test’), but also in English VP-coordination structures (‘Jane had studied hard and (she) passed the exam’), an area which has never been investigated before. While English adjunct CP clauses represent a context in which overt pronominal subjects are obligatory, in VP-coordination pronouns can be apparently dropped. These structures were tested by means of two English production tasks: a Sentence Completion task and a Cloze Test. Our results showed that compared to the English controls the Greek learners used (a) significantly more ungrammatical null subjects in adjunct CP clauses and, crucially, (b) significantly more overt pronominal subjects in VP-coordination structures. After examining two possible accounts for the observed optionality, namely, the Interface Hypothesis and the Interpretability Hypothesis, we argue that a language internal syntax explanation best addresses our data both in the adjunct CP clauses and in the VP-coordination structures.

The acquisition of prosodic constraints on derivational morphology in typically developing children and children with SLI

Aim of this study was to investigate at what age German children master prosodic and morphological constraints in the acquisition of the word formation paradigm -heit/-keit, which is comparable to English -ness, and whether children with Specific Language Impairment (SLI) have difficulties identifying the prosodic cues from the input. Derived words with -heit contain simple bases with final stress and those with -keit have complex bases with a weak final syllable.Three groups of typically developing children (four, six and eight years old) and 18 children with SLI (from 8 to 10 years) had to produce either -heit or -keit derivations in a sentence completion task. The results show that typically developing children mastered these derivations by the age of six only when both prosodic and morphological cues were present, while eight-year-old children performed almost adult-like. In contrast, most children with SLI did not produce systematic responses that follow prosodic and/or morphological constraints. The findings support the assumption that children with SLI are less sensitive to prosodic properties of grammatical forms than typically developing peers.

Coresident Grandchildren: Perceptions and Attitudes Toward Old and Aging

This study was an inquiry into perceptions and attitudes of 7 to 11 year-old school-age children toward older persons and aging. These children were raised by their grandparents and lived in the same household for more than a year with their current family members. Changing demographic patterns and circumstances leading this living situation has led the researcher to investigate the views of such children who lived with older generation(s). Phenomenological and qualitative methods were employed to study the perceptions and attitudes of children toward older persons and aging. Methods employed were making of 2 drawings, narrations about the drawings, sentence completion activity, and an informal conversation. Results showed that children raised by their grandparents had positive perceptions of old age and aged persons. Different themes that emerged based on their drawings, sentence-completion task, and informal conversations included personal qualities (nice, generous, kind, wise), aging (more birthdays, grown up), societal consciousness (could use help, take care of them), social life/style (have fun, free time), animals/pets (aging among pets, raising baby animals), non-human/objects (old objects, storage). Coming years see a potential increase number of older adults in societal structure, which calls for an early preparation of younger generations to understand, handle and manage the situation. Educators, researchers, policy makers, and government officials will need to look at the impending state of affairs related to elderly adults and perceptions of aging among rest of the community, especially the young children. Further studies can underscore possible methods of introducing positive values and views among children from early years through various techniques; the current study was preliminary attempt in this regard.

Multimodality Word-Finding Distinctions in Cortical Stimulation Mapping

Cortical stimulation mapping (CSM) commonly uses visual naming to determine resection margins in the dominant hemisphere of patients with epilepsy. Visual naming alone may not identify all language sites in resection-prone areas, prompting additional tasks for comprehensive language mapping. To demonstrate word-finding distinctions between visual, auditory, and reading modalities during CSM and the percentage of modality-specific language sites within dominant hemisphere subregions. Twenty-eight patients with epilepsy underwent CSM by the use of visual, auditory, and sentence-completion tasks. Hierarchical logistic regression analyzed errors to identify language sites and provide modality-specific percentages within subregions. The percentage of sites classified as language sites based on auditory naming was twice as high in anterior temporal regions compared with visual naming, marginally higher in posterior temporal areas, and comparable in parietal regions. Sentence completion was comparable to visual and auditory naming in parietal regions and lower in most temporal areas. Of 470 sites tested with both visual and auditory naming, 95 sites were distinctly auditory, whereas 48 sites were distinctly visual. The remaining sites overlapped. Distinct cortical areas were found for distinct input modalities, with language sites in anterior tip regions found most often by using auditory naming. The vulnerability of anterior temporal tip regions to resection in this population and distinct sites for each modality suggest that a multimodality approach may be needed to spare crucial language sites, if sparing those sites can be shown to significantly reduce the rate of postoperative language deficits without sacrificing seizure control.

Brain areas associated with sentence processing: A functional MRI study and a lesion study

Abstract The aim of this study was to identify the location associated with primitive sentence processing. Processing related to generation and comprehension of sentences (“sentence processing”) is postulated to be largely divided into syntactic processing (processing related to the formation of sentences and to verb reflection and particles) and verb information (argument structure and thematic role). Numerous lesion studies and functional brain imaging studies on unimpaired individuals have suggested that the left inferior frontal gyrus (IFG) is involved in syntactic processing. In addition, some studies have reported that the area from the left parietal lobe to the posterior superior temporal gyrus is involved in processing information such as argument structure and thematic role. However, studies on sentence processing using functional brain imaging have used complex sentences as tasks, raising the possibility that the results show the demands on not only language processing, but also on working memory. To clarify the brain areas involved in basic sentence processing in human language, there is a need to examine tasks involved in sentence processing that assume more primitive processing with minimal demands on working memory. The present study used sentence-completion tasks in the Japanese language that include basic sentence processing. The results showed activation in the left IFG and left parietal lobe, suggesting that these areas are involved in sentence processing. We then investigated the proportion of patients showing impaired sentence processing from among patients with aphasia and a lesion in the left IFG or from the parietal lobe to the posterior superior temporal gyrus. Four of 5 patients (80%) with lesions mostly in the left IFG showed impaired sentence processing, suggesting that this site plays a critical role in sentence processing. Of the 4 patients with lesions mostly in the area from the left parietal lobe to the posterior superior temporal gyrus, 1 patient (25%) showed impaired sentence processing. Unlike the other 3 subjects, this subject exhibited impaired recalling of verbs. This area is mainly involved in lexical-semantics and the present results suggest that verb information within that field became impaired, in turn causing impaired sentence processing.

Assessing the specificity of autobiographical memory in individuals at a trait-based vulnerability to bipolar disorder using a sentence completion task

Overgeneral autobiographical memory recall has been associated with the diagnosis of bipolar disorder, but the role of overgenerality in the vulnerability to bipolar disorder remains under-researched. While a previous study suggested that high-risk individuals for bipolar disorder recall emotionally negative memories in specific detail, this is in contrast to memory recall patterns noted in bipolar samples. The Autobiographical Memory Test (AMT) used in previous non-clinical studies has also been criticised for not being sensitive to overgenerality due to its repetition of specificity instructions and practice trials. The traditional AMT format may allow some individuals to override their trait-based tendencies to be overgeneral. The current study used a sentence completion task to assess memory specificity in groups of students at a low and high trait-based vulnerability for bipolar disorder. In contrast to previous research, high-risk individuals recalled fewer specific positive memories and greater numbers of overgeneral negative memories than low-risk individuals. These results support the notion that the vulnerability for bipolar disorder might be associated with similar recall biases as demonstrated in bipolar samples, and that the AMT might not be sufficiently sensitive to detect overgenerality in non-clinical groups. The implications of these findings and directions for future research are discussed.

The acquisition of grammatical gender in L2 German by learners with Afrikaans, English or Italian as their L1

In recent years there has been an increase in research on the acquisition of morphological aspects of a second language (L2). Specifically, a number of studies have been conducted on the acquisition of grammatical gender in the L2. The study reported in this paper investigated the adult L2 acquisition of grammatical gender in German by first language (L1) speakers of Afrikaans, English and Italian, respectively. The aim of the study was to determine how similarities and differences between the L1 and L2 in terms of grammatical gender affect the acquisition of this aspect of the target L2. Two experimental tasks – a picture naming task and a sentence completion task – were designed to determine to what extent the grammatical gender of nouns is accurately reflected on determiners and adjectives. Throughout, the L1 Italian group outperformed the other two groups. Since Italian (like German) expresses grammatical gender on determiners and nouns, while neither English nor Afrikaans does, the results indicate that the acquisition of grammatical gender in an L2 is easier for learners whose L1 also expresses grammatical gender. Specifically, the results provide evidence for so-called "deep transfer" (transfer of abstract grammatical properties) from the L1 to the L2 in this area of L2 acquisition: since the grammatical gender systems of Italian and German are not congruent, the Italian speakers' advantage over the other two L1 groups cannot be the result of simple "surface transfer" (transferring knowledge of the grammatical gender of specific nouns in the L1 to the L2) and must be attributed to deep transfer.

The application of nonlinear Dynamic Causal Modelling for fMRI in subjects at high genetic risk of schizophrenia

Nonlinear Dynamic Causal Modelling (DCM) for fMRI provides computational modelling of gating mechanisms at the neuronal population level. It allows for estimations of connection strengths with nonlinear modulation within task-dependent networks. This paper presents an application of nonlinear DCM in subjects at high familial risk of schizophrenia performing the Hayling Sentence Completion Task (HSCT). We analysed scans of 19 healthy controls and 46 subjects at high familial risk of schizophrenia, which included 26 high risk subjects without psychotic symptoms and 20 subjects with psychotic symptoms. The activity-dependent network consists of the intra parietal cortex (IPS), inferior frontal gyrus (IFG), middle temporal gyrus (MTG), anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) and the mediodorsal (MD) thalamus. The connections between the MD thalamus and the IFG were gated by the MD thalamus. We used DCM to investigate altered connection strength of these connections. Bayesian Model Selection (BMS) at the group and family level was used to compare the optimal bilinear and nonlinear models. Bayesian Model Averaging (BMA) was used to assess the connection strengths with the gating from the MD thalamus and the IFG. The nonlinear models provided the better explanation of the data. Furthermore, the BMA analysis showed significantly lower connection strength of the thalamocortical connection with nonlinear modulation from the MD thalamus in high risk subjects with psychotic symptoms and those who subsequently developed schizophrenia. These findings demonstrate that nonlinear DCM provides a method to investigate altered connectivity at the level of neural circuits. The reduced connection strength with thalamic gating may be a neurobiomarker implicated in the development of psychotic symptoms. This study suggests that nonlinear DCM could lead to new insights into functional and effective dysconnection at the network level in subjects at high familial risk.

Agrammatic patterns in Alzheimer's disease: Evidence from tense, agreement, and aspect

Background: Little research has been conducted on functional categories in probable Alzheimer's disease (pAD). Furthermore, the findings are contradictory, since some studies report ceiling performance on tense and/or subject–verb agreement (Kaprinis & Stavrakaki, 2007; Kavé & Levy, 2003), whereas others report morphosyntactic deficits and agrammatic profiles (e.g., Altmann, Kempler, & Andersen, 2001). Aims: This study investigates the ability of Greek-speaking pAD individuals to produce and judge subject–verb agreement, tense, and aspect. Given pAD individuals have working memory limitations (e.g., Baddeley, 1996), and given the differential processing demands of agreement, tense and aspect (e.g., Fyndanis, Varlokosta, & Tsapkini, 2012a), pAD participants are expected to perform better on agreement than on tense/aspect. Based on the hypothesis that reference to the past is computationally more demanding than reference to the future/present (e.g., Bastiaanse et al., 2011), a within-tense dissociation is expected to emerge. Further, on the assumption that unmarked values of functional categories are less demanding than marked values (e.g., Lapointe, 1985), the imperfective (unmarked) aspect is expected to be better preserved than the perfective (marked) aspect. Methods & Procedures: Ten Greek-speaking mild pAD individuals and six healthy controls participated in a sentence completion task, a grammaticality judgement task, and a sentence–picture matching task. Non-parametric tests were used for analysis of results. Outcomes & Results: PAD participants were found to be significantly more impaired in aspect compared to tense and agreement, in both production and grammaticality judgement/comprehension. Agreement was found significantly better preserved than tense in production. Similar patterns of performance have been attested in agrammatism (e.g., Fyndanis et al., 2012a). Reference to the past and reference to the future did not dissociate, whereas the imperfective aspect was found to be significantly more impaired than the perfective aspect in production. Conclusions: PAD participants' better performance on producing agreement, compared to tense/aspect, is accounted for in terms of the differential demands these categories pose on the processing system. Agreement is computationally less demanding than tense/aspect, because the former involves processing of grammatical information only, whereas the latter involve processing and integration of grammatical and extralinguistic/conceptual information. The preponderance of tense over aspect is attributed to the subjectivity of the latter, which renders it either a category “difficult” to test, or a computationally more demanding condition. The results also show that reference to the past is as demanding as reference to the future. The hypothesis that unmarked values are easier than marked ones is not supported by our data.

Approaching the Direct Object Pronouns: How Much Grammatical Form Is Necessary in Instruction?

The main goal of this investigation was to determine if there is a more effective approach among focus on forms, focus on meaning, or focus on form for teaching the direct object pronouns to beginning students of Spanish. It will be beneficial to discover which of these three widely-used approaches can best help students to acquire correct pronoun use, and may aid instructors of Spanish in the teaching of these pronouns. In order to compare these approaches, three sections of a beginning Spanish course received instruction in one of the three approaches. The participants of this study were 51 beginning level students who had had 3 years of Spanish instruction at the high school level and were native speakers of English. The study follows a pretest/posttest design. Results find positive results for form-focused instruction over purely meaning-focused instruction for teaching the Spanish direct object pronouns with regards to sentence completion tasks. A main implication of this study is that focus on meaning instruction is not sufficient to help beginning learners improve their production of Spanish direct object pronouns. While results show a more positive impact for focus on form instruction over the more traditional focus on forms approach, additional research comparing these two methods is suggested. It is also important to note that beginning level learners show overall low levels of accuracy with direct object pronouns in Spanish.

Tense morphology in German agrammatism

This study investigates tense morphology in agrammatic aphasia and the predictions of two accounts on processing of regular and irregular verbs: the Dual Mechanism model, that is, for aphasic data, the Declarative/Procedural model, and the Single Mechanism approach. The production of regular, irregular and mixed verbs in the present, simple past and past participle (present perfect) was tested in German by means of a sentence completion task with a group of seven speakers with agrammatic aphasia. The results show a difference between regular verbs and irregular verbs. Mixed verbs were equally difficult as irregular verbs. A frequency effect was found for irregular verbs but not for regular and mixed verbs. A significant difference among the correctness scores for present tense and simple past forms was found. Simple past and past participle were significantly more difficult than present tense. Error types were characterized by pure infinitive responses and time reference errors. Neither of the above accounts is sufficient to explain these results. Correctness scores and error patterns for mixed verbs suggest that such minor lexical patterns can be useful in finding new evidence in the debate on morphological processing. The findings also highlight time reference as well as language specific characteristics need to be taken into consideration.

Are habitual overgeneral recollection and prospection maladaptive?

Background and objectivesIndividuals with depression exhibit difficulty retrieving specific memories and imagining specific future events when instructed to do so relative to non-clinical comparison groups. Instead of specific events, depressed individuals frequently retrieve or imagine “overgeneral” memories that span a long period of time or that denote a category of similar events. Recently, Raes, Hermans, Williams, and Eelen (2007) developed a sentence completion procedure (SCEPT) to assess the tendency to recall overgeneral autobiographical memories. They found that specificity on this measure was associated with depression and rumination. We aimed to replicate these findings and to examine the tendency to imagine overgeneral future events. MethodsWe had 170 subjects complete past (SCEPT) and future-oriented (SCEFT) sentence completion tasks and measures of depression severity, PTSD severity, hopelessness, and repetitive negative thought. ResultsAlthough specificities of past and future events were correlated, neither SCEPT nor SCEFT specificity was negatively associated with depression severity, posttraumatic stress symptoms, repetitive negative thought (RNT), or hopelessness. LimitationsOur data are cross-sectional, preventing any determination of causality and limiting our assessment of whether specificity is associated with psychological distress following a stressful life event. In addition, we observed poor internal consistency for both the SCEPT and SCEFT. ConclusionsThese findings fail to support the hypothesis that overgeneral memory and prospection on these tasks are associated with psychological distress.

Between L2 and SLI: inflections and prepositions in the Hebrew of bilingual children with TLD and monolingual children with SLI

Verb inflectional morphology and prepositions are loci of difficulty for bilingual children with typical language development (TLD) as well as children with Specific Language Impairment (SLI). This paper examines errors in these linguistic domains in these two populations. Bilingual English-Hebrew and Russian-Hebrew preschool children, aged five to seven, with TLD, and age-matched monolingual Hebrew-speaking children with SLI, were tested using sentence completion and sentence imitation tasks in their L2 Hebrew. Our findings show that, despite the similarity in the locus of errors, the two populations can be distinguished by both the quantity and the quality of errors. While bilingual children with TLD had substitution errors often motivated by the first language, most of the errors of monolingual children with SLI involved omission of the whole morpheme or feature reduction. This difference in the nature of the errors is discussed in terms of bilingual processing vs. impaired representation.

Advanced Cantonese ESL Learners' Use of a Monolingual Dictionary for Language Production

This article reports on the results of a research study which investigated the use of monolingual dictionaries by Hong Kong advanced Cantonese ESL learners in the production of target language sentences. Thirty-one English majors participated in a sentence completion task and a sentence construction task with and without the help of a monolingual dictionary. In the sentence completion task, a full Chinese context and a partial English context were given, whereas in the sentence construction task, only a few English prompts were given. Different self-reporting protocols, including introspective questionnaires, retrospective questionnaires and think-aloud recordings, and a post-task focus-group interview were conducted to tap into the participants' thinking processes during dictionary consultation. The results show that a monolingual dictionary is useful in helping learners produce target language sentences, yet learners encounter different kinds of consultation problems, some of which are related to their general use of dictionaries and others to the language in which their thinking processes are engaged. It is suggested that ESL learners use both monolingual and bilingualized dictionaries in their learning and that ESL teachers design dictionary skills training programs which take into account learners' linguistic competence and actual consultation problems.

Between anaphora and deixis … The resolution of the demonstrative noun phrase “that N”

Three experiments examined the hypothesis that the demonstrative noun phrase (NP) that N, as an anadeictic expression, preferentially refers to the less salient referent in a discourse representation when used anaphorically, whereas the anaphoric pronoun he or she preferentially refers to the highly-focused referent. The findings, from a sentence completion task and two reading time experiments that used gender to create ambiguous and unambiguous coreference, reveal that the demonstrative NP specifically orients processing toward a less salient referent when there is no gender cue discriminating between different possible referents. These findings show the importance of taking into account the discourse function of the anaphor itself and its influence on the process of searching for the referent.