Sentence Reading Task Research Articles

Aptitude, Anxiety, and Success in L2 Speech Development: A Longitudinal Study of Chinese EFL College-Level Learners.

This study examined the second language (L2) speech development of a group of Chinese English as a Foreign Language (EFL) college-level learners (N = 83) and the association between their aptitude, anxiety, and L2 speech development. The performance of the participants' L2 speech, including speech comprehensibility and accentedness, was evaluated using a sentence reading task and a pair of picture description tasks (pre- and post-test). In addition, students completed the LLAMA tests (language learning and aptitude measurement in adults) and the Second Language Speaking Anxiety Scale (SLSAS). The t-test revealed that after one semester of English speaking and pronunciation instruction, the EFL students in the study demonstrated significant gains in their L2 speech performance in terms of accentedness and comprehensibility in both controlled and impromptu tasks. Regression analyses revealed that phonemic coding ability positively predicted gains in comprehensibility but negatively predicted gains in accentedness during sentence reading. In addition, associative memory was positively associated with comprehensibility gains in the picture description task. Anxiety appeared to be a strong predictor of participants' gains in speech comprehensibility and accentedness during the picture description task.

Weathering words: a virtual reality study of environmental influence on reading dynamics.

Reading is a fundamental cognitive activity that is influenced by both textual and external environmental factors, although the latter has been less thoroughly explored. This study aims to examine the impact of environmental visual conditions on reading performance using Virtual Reality (VR) technology. We conducted two experiments to assess the effects of visual contrast and simulated weather conditions on reading dynamics. In Experiment 1, we measured single-word recognition speed using a lexical decision task under different visual contrasts and weather conditions. In Experiment 2, we assessed reading dynamics during a sentence reading task, analyzing how visual contrast and simulated sunny versus rainy weather conditions affected reading behavior, particularly focusing on reading speed and eye fixations. In Experiment 1, high visual contrast, particularly under sunny conditions, significantly enhanced single-word recognition speed, indicating a notable influence of environmental visual conditions. In Experiment 2, visual contrast had minimal effect on sentence reading; however, sunny weather facilitated faster reading times, while rainy scenarios increased the number of eye fixations. These findings suggest that environmental factors, such as weather conditions, can significantly affect reading behavior. The study contributes to the understanding of key environmental influences on reading in everyday life contexts and has implications for the ergonomic design of reading materials, especially for outdoor settings and VR environments. Additionally, the integration of controlled stimuli within VR increases the ecological validity of reading research, underscoring the potential of VR as a powerful tool for cognitive research.

The effects of prediction representations on implicit learning: evidence from sentence reading and perceptual identification

Predicting errors can facilitate implicit learning, but the long-term consequences of prediction errors are not yet fully understood. Especially when predictions are disconfirmed, it remains unclear whether initially correct prediction representations persist or are suppressed. In this study, participants first engaged in a sentence reading task and then performed a perceptual identification task after completing an N-back task or after a 24-hour delay. The perceptual identification task presented previously expected and unexpected words and previously predicted but not presented words to measure implicit memory for the critical items. This study aims to investigate the mechanisms underlying the persistence of prediction representations and the long-term effects of prediction errors on implicit learning. Our results indicate that prediction errors can promote implicit learning and can persist for more than 24 hours. Furthermore, originally correct but not seen in reality prediction representations persist to facilitate performance on the implicit memory task after 24 hours. This may reflect long-term changes in the internal representation probabilities of prediction representations.

Syntactic and emotional interplay in second language: emotional resonance but not proficiency modulates affective influences on L2 syntactic processing

ABSTRACT Previous research has demonstrated the influence of emotions during linguistic processing, indicating the interactivity of both processes in the brain. However, little is known regarding such interplay in a second language (L2). This study addressed this question by examining the reading effects of syntactic violations while processing L2 emotional and neutral statements. Forty-six Spanish-English bilinguals with various levels of L2 proficiency and emotional resonance (i.e. capability for emotional experience in L2) were presented with a self-paced sentence reading task. Sentences contained positive (16), neutral (16) and negative (16) verbs, half of them presented in agreement and half in disagreement with the preceding pronoun. Analysis of verb reading times using linear mixed effects modelling revealed a significant interaction between syntactic violation, verb valence and emotional resonance, suggesting that stronger emotional L2 experience results in a higher saliency of negative verbs, reducing the impact of syntactic violations.

Assessment of adults with low literacy skills: a review of methods

The paper reviews the methods for assessing different components of reading skills in adults with reading difficulties, along with functional reading skills. We are particularly interested in the assessment methods available to researchers and practitioners, developed predominantly in the research context, and not available solely in English. We discuss the large-scale international study, PIAAC, as an example of a framework for such assessments. Furthermore, we cover the following types of assessment tools: (1) self-assessment questionnaires, probing into comprehension difficulties and reading habits; (2) measures of print exposure, such as author recognition tests, correlating with other reading-related skills; (3) measures of word recognition and decoding, including reading aloud of words and pseudowords, as well as silent lexical decision tasks; (4) fill-in-the-blank tasks and sentence reading tasks, measuring predominantly local comprehension, entangled with decoding skills; (5) comprehension of longer reading passages and texts, focusing on functional texts. We discuss comprehension types measured by tests, text types, answer formats, and the dependence problem, i.e., reading comprehension tests that can be solved correctly without reading. Finally, we tap into the new ideas emerging from the AI systems evaluation, e.g., using questions generated from news articles or Wikipedia or asked directly by search engines users. In the concluding section, we comment on the significance of incorporating background information, motivation, and self-efficacy into the assessment of adult literacy skills.

Trial-Level and Contiguous Syntactic Adaptation: A Common Domain-General Mechanism at Play?

Garden-path sentences generate processing difficulty due to a more preferred parse conflicting with incoming parsing information. A domain-general cognitive control mechanism has been argued to help identify and resolve these parsing conflicts. This cognitive control mechanism has been argued to underlie adaptation to garden path processing at the trial level (conflict adaptation) and contiguously over the experiment (syntactic adaptation) in independent literature. The strongest evidence for its domain generality comes from garden-path processing being facilitated when preceded by a non-syntactic conflict (e.g., Stroop). This has been reliably observed in the visual world paradigm, which, like Stroop, requires irrelevant visual information to be suppressed. We tested the domain generality of conflict adaptation and its relationship to contiguous syntactic adaptation across four experiments (n = 562). To eliminate the visual object confound, the Stroop task was followed by a sentence-reading task. We observed Stroop and ambiguity effects, but no conflict adaptation in each experiment. Contiguous syntactic adaptation was replicated and most compatible with the parser changing its expectations and/or improving revision. While the data largely fail to support a domain-general cognitive control mechanism, a language-specific one could operate in both trial and contiguous syntactic adaptation and is worth future exploration.

Intensionality is more cognitively demanding than false belief in adults: evidence from a non-inferential sentence-reading task

Children are said to understand false belief if they can appreciate an agent’s wrong description of an object as a result of misinformation, and intensionality if they can appreciate and switch between alternative descriptions from different epistemic viewpoints. Most previous studies have investigated the developmental trajectories of these capacities in the age range from 3 to 10 years aiming to discern their conceptual nature. The present research examines whether intensionality incurs lower performance accuracies and longer response times than false belief in adults, using a task in which participants read sentences that explicitly state an agent’s beliefs. Experiment 1 showed that participants were less accurate in rejecting verbal probes that contradicted an agent’s alternative than false thoughts about objects. Experiments 2 and 3 replicated this finding using thoughts about object identities but not properties. These results suggest that compared to false belief, intensionality is cognitively demanding for adults to process because of the availability of more than one identity candidate under the agent’s perspective.

Explaining the Sentence Superiority Effect and N400s Elicited by Words and Short Sentences with OB1-Reader.

Research into reading has benefitted from the emergence of powerful computational models that account for reading behavior at different levels. Such models become more powerful when the underlying anatomy, architecture or 'physiology' can be linked to the behavior of interest. OB1-reader is a reading model that simulates the processes underlying reading in the human brain. Previous studies showed that OB1-reader can account for various phenomena in the word recognition and text reading literatures. Here we aim to extend OB1's scope, by simulating behavioral performance and evoked EEG activity for two experimental word-recognition tasks: a flanker task in which unrelated flankers generated less accurate responses combined with a larger N400, and a sentence reading task in which words were recognized more accurately at central positions and within intact sentences, than at peripheral positions and in scrambled sentences. OB1 simulated several behavioral findings in both paradigms, including the so-called sentence superiority effect. Moreover, virtual event-related potentials (ERPs) generated from node activity in OB1 were compared to human ERPs. More lexical activity in OB1 predicted the size of the N400 component of human readers in both experiments, but not the N250.

Does pain hurt more in Spanish? The neurobiology of pain among Spanish-English bilingual adults.

We previously found Spanish-English bilingual adults reported higher pain intensity when exposed to painful heat in the language of their stronger cultural orientation. Here, we elucidate brain systems involved in language-driven alterations in pain responses. During separate English- and Spanish-speaking fMRI scanning runs, 39 (21 female) bilingual adults rated painful heat intermixed between culturally evocative images and completed sentence reading tasks. Surveys of cultural identity and language use measured relative preference for US-American vs Hispanic culture (cultural orientation). Participants produced higher intensity ratings in Spanish compared to English. Group-level whole-brain differences in pain-evoked activity between languages emerged in somatosensory, cingulate, precuneus and cerebellar cortex. Regions of interest associated with semantic, attention and somatosensory processing showed higher average pain-evoked responses in participants' culturally preferred language, as did expression of a multivariate pain-predictive pattern. Follow-up moderated mediation analyses showed somatosensory activity mediated language effects on pain intensity, particularly for Hispanic oriented participants. These findings relate to distinct ('meddler', 'spotlight' and 'inducer') hypotheses about the nature of language effects on perception and cognition. Knowledge of language influences on pain could improve efficacy of culturally sensitive treatment approaches across the diversity of Hispanic adults to mitigate documented health disparities in this population.

The role of future L2 selves in L2 speech development: A longitudinal study in an instructional setting

The current study examined the role of English-speaking instruction and motivation in learners' development of L2 speech comprehensibility and accentedess, over the course of an academic semester. Eighty-three college students enrolled in English classes in China completed a sentence reading task and a picture description task twice (pre-test and post-test), as well as a questionnaire for measuring their future selves (Papi et al., 2019). The collected speech samples were coded for comprehensibility and accentedness. t-test results indicated that after one semester of English-speaking instruction, the learners made statistically significant gains in both L2 speech measures. Hierarchical multiple regression results showed that Ideal L2 Self/Own positively predicted speech comprehensibility, and Ideal L2 Self/Other negatively predicted L2 speech accentedness. The results suggest that learners’ future L2 selves influence how they take advantage of instructional opportunities to improve their L2 speech in qualitatively different manners. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.

A description of the acoustic properties of rhotics in Costa Rican Spanish

Studies into the rhotic variation in Costa Rican Spanish have previously utilized perceptive methodologies and focused primarily on phonetic/phonological descriptions of the phenomenon. More recent studies such as Dearstyne (2021) have utilized modern acoustic methodology and have found a system that includes trills, taps, assibilated fricatives and approximants. This study focuses on the latter, seeking to acoustically describe the variant rhotics in this dialect. The methodology is centered on audio-recordings of native speakers from Costa Rica performing a sentence-reading task. The sentences were created to contain rhotics in the contexts in which rhotic variation has been previously documented by Vásquez Carranza (2006). Dependent variables are predicated on the manner of articulation; formants are recorded for approximants while spectral peaks and the center of gravity is taken for assibilated fricatives. Preliminary results for three participants show acoustic values for both qualities that are consistent with the alveolar place of articulation, yet different to other languages and dialects (Quilis 1981, Edwards 1992). (Spectral peak [ř] = 1,408 Hz, center of gravity [ř] = 240 Hz, F2 [ɹ] = 1,755 Hz). It is expected that these data will contribute to a better understanding of the rhotic system in this dialect of Spanish.

Automatic phonological access among bilinguals with cross-script languages.

This study investigated the hypothesis of nonselective access to phonological representations in an integrated lexicon across logographic and alphabetic writing systems among Chinese L1 (first language)-English L2 (second language) bilinguals. We employed three experiments to test this hypothesis, including a lexical decision task (LDT) and a word naming task in Experiments 1 and 2 using the masked priming paradigm, and a self-paced sentence reading task in Experiment 3. Results from the LDT and the word naming task showed a significant homophone priming effect from L1 to L2, but not from L2 to L1. In the sentence reading task, we compared processing time between homophone error words and control words in the critical and spill-over regions. A slower processing effect in the homophone condition was observed in the spill-over region. Overall, these findings suggest that phonological priming occurs across a logographic and an alphabetic script in different tasks, whether reading isolated words or sentences. Bilingual reading involves an integrated bilingual lexicon that is independent of script similarity.

Food word processing in Chinese reading: A study of restrained eaters.

Food-related attentional bias refers that individuals typically prioritize rewarding food-related cues (e.g. food words and food images) compared with non-food stimuli; however, the findings are inconsistent for restrained eaters. Traditional paradigms used to test food-related attentional bias, such as visual probe tasks and visual search tasks, may not directly and accurately enough to reflect individuals' food-word processing at different cognitive stages. In this study, we introduced the boundary paradigm to investigate food-word attentional bias for both restrained and unrestrained eaters. Eye movements were recorded when they performed a naturalistic sentence-reading task. The results of later-stage analyses showed that food words were fixated on for less time than non-food words, which indicated a superiority of foveal food-word processing for both restrained and unrestrained eaters. The results of early-stage analyses showed that restrained eaters spent more time on pre-target regions in the food-word valid preview conditions, which indicated a parafoveal food-word processing superiority for restrained eaters (i.e. the parafoveal-on-foveal effect). The superiority of foveal food-word processing provides new insights into explaining food-related attentional bias in general groups. Additionally, the enhanced food-word attentional bias in parafoveal processing for restrained eaters illustrates the importance of individual characteristics in studying word recognition.

The acquisition of L2 voiced stops by English learners of Spanish and Spanish learners of English

Previous studies investigating the acquisition of L2 stops have found a positive effect of L2 experience, but few have focused on voiced stops, particularly on prevoicing. This study investigates the acquisition of /b/ and /g/ by two populations, English learners of Spanish and Spanish learners of English. Three groups varying in amount of L2 experience (mainly length of residence, but also L2 use and L2 instruction) were investigated for each L1 population. Participants completed a carrier sentence reading task in their L1 and L2. Results showed that amount of L2 experience had a positive effect on L2 stop production, as the least experienced groups were outperformed by the experienced ones. No clear effect of L2 experience was observed on the L1, as learners did not differ from monolingual controls, but some differences between learner groups emerged. Moreover, overall, L2 learners were able to produce L1 and L2 stops differently, which indicates that their L1 and L2 categories were not merged. Still, the L1-English L2-Spanish speakers produced L2 stops more accurately than the L1-Spanish L2-English groups, suggesting that learning to rely on an existing L1 cue may be easier than learning to use a cue associated with a different L1 category.

Acquisition of orthographic forms via spoken complex word training

This study used a novel word-training paradigm to examine the integration of spoken word knowledge when learning to read morphologically complex novel words. Australian primary school children including Grades 3–5 were taught the oral form of a set of novel morphologically complex words (e.g., (/vɪbɪŋ/, /vɪbd/, /vɪbz/), with a second set serving as untrained items. Following oral training, participants saw the printed form of the novel word stems for the first time (e.g., vib), embedded in sentences, while their eye movements were monitored. Half of the stems were spelled predictably and half were spelled unpredictably. Reading times were shorter for orally trained stems with predictable than unpredictable spellings and this difference was greater for trained than untrained items. These findings suggest that children were able to form robust orthographic expectations of the embedded morphemic stems during spoken word learning, which may have occurred automatically without any explicit control of the applied mappings, despite still being in the early stages of reading development. Following the sentence reading task, children completed a reading-aloud task where they were exposed to the novel orthographic forms for a second time. The findings are discussed in the context of theories of reading acquisition.

Relative Difficulty in the Acquisition of the Phonetic Parameters of Obstruent Coda Voicing: Evidence from Mandarin-Speaking Learners of French.

A recurring finding of research on the L2 acquisition of coda obstruent voicing is that, in terms of the phonetic parameters that serve to realize the voicing contrast, learners are overwhelmingly more accurate with duration than the voicing of the obstruent itself. The current work expands our understanding of this asymmetry in two ways. First, as previous studies have focused almost exclusively on learners of English, we investigate here whether L2 learners' superior production of duration is also found among learners of other target languages via a study of Mandarin-speaking learners' production of French stop and fricative codas. Results from 18 Mandarin-speaking learners of French, primarily of beginner and intermediate proficiency who completed a sentence reading task, parallel those of previous studies with greater accuracy observed for vowel duration than the laryngeal voicing of the obstruent. Second, we explore potential sources of this asymmetry, in particular, the roles of L1 experience as well as of universal factors, namely, the relative perceptual salience of duration versus voicing, and the articulatory difficulty of voicing obstruents.

How odd: Diverging effects of predictability and plausibility violations on sentence reading and word memory

AbstractHow do violations of predictability and plausibility affect online language processing? How does it affect longer-term memory and learning when predictions are disconfirmed by plausible or implausible words? We investigated these questions using a self-paced sentence reading and noun recognition task. Critical sentences violated predictability or plausibility or both, for example, “Since Anne is afraid of spiders, she doesn’t like going down into the … basement (predictable, plausible), garden (unpredictable, somewhat plausible), moon (unpredictable, deeply implausible).” Results from sentence reading showed earlier-emerging effects of predictability violations on the critical noun, but later-emerging effects of plausibility violations after the noun. Recognition memory was exclusively enhanced for deeply implausible nouns. The earlier-emerging predictability effect indicates that having word form predictions disconfirmed is registered very early in the processing stream, irrespective of semantics. The later-emerging plausibility effect supports models that argue for a staged architecture of reading comprehension, where plausibility only affects a post-lexical integration stage. Our memory results suggest that, in order to facilitate memory and learning, a certain magnitude of prediction error is required.

The involvement of inhibition in word and sentence reading.

Individual differences in reading performance between children appear from the onset of literacy acquisition. One possible explanation for this variability is the influence of inhibition in reading ability, a topic that has received very little research attention. Nevertheless, children often make guessing errors characterized by replacing a word with an orthographic neighbor, possibly linked to failing inhibition. The present study aims to evaluate the role of inhibition during word and sentence reading and compare its effects in spoken and motor tasks. Participants comprised 25 children in Grades 2 and 3 (Mage = 8; 2). The children performed five inhibition tasks in reading (words, sentences), spoken (words, sentences) and motor modalities. Within the two reading tasks, inhibition demands were assessed using pairs of orthographic neighbors for which the frequency was manipulated. Accuracy, types of errors, latency, and response times were measured. GLMM analyses demonstrated that children were sensitive to the inhibitory demands of both spoken tasks and of the sentence reading task regarding accuracy, latency, and response times. Indeed, children made more mistakes and were slower when inhibitory demands were augmented. They also made more guessing errors in the word reading task. No such inhibitory effect was found in the motor task. Moreover, correlational analyses revealed that children who showed better inhibitory skills were able to read words and texts more accurately. These findings suggest that children need to utilize inhibitory resources when processing words or sentences and that these inhibitory skills are involved in overall reading ability.

Relationship between rate-elicited changes in muscular-kinematic control strategies and acoustic performance in individuals with ALS–A multimodal investigation

IntroductionAs a key control variable, duration has been long suspected to mediate the organization of speech motor control strategies, which has management implications for neuromotor speech disorders. This study aimed to experimentally delineate the role of duration in organizing speech motor control in neurologically healthy and impaired speakers using a voluntary speaking rate manipulation paradigm. MethodsThirteen individuals with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) and 10 healthy controls performed a sentence reading task three times, first at their habitual rate, then at a slower rate. A multimodal approach combining surface electromyography, kinematic, and acoustic technologies was used to record jaw muscle activities, jaw kinematics, and speech acoustics. Six muscular-kinematic features were extracted and factor-analyzed to characterize the organization of the mandibular control hierarchy. Five acoustic features were extracted, measuring the spectrotemporal properties of the diphthong /ɑɪ/ and the plosives /t/ and /k/. ResultsThe muscular-kinematic features converged into two interpretable latent factors, reflecting the level and cohesiveness/flexibility of mandibular control, respectively. Voluntary rate reduction led to a trend toward (1) finer, less cohesive, and more flexible mandibular control, and (2) increased range and decreased transition slope of the diphthong formants, across neurologically healthy and impaired groups. Differential correlations were found between the rate-elicited changes in mandibular control and acoustic performance for neurologically healthy and impaired speakers. ConclusionsThe results provided empirical evidence for the long-suspected but previously unsubstantiated role of duration in (re)organizing speech motor control strategies. The rate-elicited reorganization of muscular-kinematic control contributed to the acoustic performance of healthy speakers, in ways consistent with theoretical predictions. Such contributions were less consistent in impaired speakers, implying the complex nature of speaking rate reduction in ALS, possibly reflecting an interplay of disease-related constraints and volitional duration control. This information may help to stratify and identify candidates for the rate manipulation therapy.

Bilingual Prefabs: No Switching Cost Was Found in Cantonese–English Habitual Code-Switching in Hong Kong

Previous studies on the comprehension of code-switched sentences often neglected the code-switching habit of the specific community, so that the processing difficulty might not have resulted from the change in language but from unnatural switching. This study explores the processing cost of habitual and nonhabitual code-switching. Thirty-one young adults participated in the sentence-reading task with their eye movement tracked. A two-by-two factorial design was used, with Habit (habitual/nonhabitual) and Language (unilingual/code-switched) as the factors. The main effect of Language was observed only in First Fixation Duration, suggesting that the language membership was already identified in an early processing stage. However, for habitual switches, no switching cost in overall processing effort was found, as reflected by Total Fixation Duration and Visit Counts. Our results indicate that the cognitive load was only larger when the switch occurred nonhabitually, regardless of the language membership. In light of this finding, we propose that habitual code-switching might promote the formation of bilingual collocations, or prefabs, which are then integrated into the mental lexicon of the dominant language. Despite a conscious language tag of a foreign origin, these bilingual prefabs are not processed as a language switch in the lexicon.