Sentence Reading Times Research Articles

Individual differences in children’s comprehension of temporal relations: Dissociable contributions of working memory capacity and working memory updating

In two experiments, we examined 9- to 12-year-old children’s comprehension and processing of two-clause sentences with a temporal connective (before or after) in the sentence-medial or sentence-initial position. We obtained measures of individual differences in working memory (WM) capacity and WM updating to test their contributions to comprehension. We measured the accuracy of children’s responses to the questions “What happened first?” (Experiment 1; N = 74) and “What happened last?” (Experiment 2; N = 50) as well as their sentence reading times. Together, these experiments show continued development of comprehension of temporal relations in children in upper elementary school and suggest that children’s comprehension difficulties (i.e., more comprehension errors and longer reading times) were influenced by clause salience and recency effects rather than sentence chronology or the familiarity of the connective. Our findings are consistent with a memory resource-limited account and suggest that individual differences in WM updating and WM capacity make dissociable contributions to processing and comprehension of sentences with temporal order information.

Refutation texts enhance spontaneous transfer of knowledge

In this study, we investigated whether refutation texts (i.e., texts that explicitly state and refute a misconception) facilitate spontaneous transfer of revised knowledge to new situations. In Experiments 1 and 2, students read refutation, transfer, and non-refutation texts. Transfer texts were either preceded by refutation (Experiment 1) or non-refutation texts (Experiment 2). In both experiments, comprehension of the transfer texts required activation and use of the correct belief. Each text contained a target sentence that was consistent with the correct belief. In both experiments, reading times of the target sentences were collected and compared to provide an implicit measure of transfer. Additionally, a transfer problem test was also administered after reading the texts to assess transfer in a more explicit way. The results revealed that refutation texts are more effective in facilitating revision and spontaneous transfer of revised knowledge than non-refutation texts. These results add to the growing body of evidence for the applicability of using refutation texts in revising misconceptions.

Knowledge revision through the lenses of the three-pronged approach.

In the present study, we employed the three-pronged approach to determine the actual cognitive processes theorized in knowledge revision. First, the Knowledge Revision Components (KReC) framework was identified as the guiding theory. Second, think-aloud analysis highlighted at which points in refutation texts readers detected discrepancies between their incorrect, commonsense beliefs and the correct beliefs, and the exact processes with which they dealt with these discrepancies-successfully or unsuccessfully, as indicated by posttest scores. Third, corroborating reading-time data and posttest data demonstrated that the structure of the refutation texts facilitated the coactivation and integration of the explanation with the commonsense belief, resulting in knowledge revision. Finally, an analysis directly connected the processes identified during think-aloud to sentence reading times. These findings systematically identify the cognitive processes theorized during knowledge revision and, in doing so, provide evidence for the conditions for revision outlined in the KReC framework.

Verbal short-term memory capacities and executive function in semantic and syntactic interference resolution during sentence comprehension: Evidence from aphasia

This study examined the role of verbal short-term memory (STM) and executive function (EF) underlying semantic and syntactic interference resolution during sentence comprehension for persons with aphasia (PWA) with varying degrees of STM and EF deficits. Semantic interference was manipulated by varying the semantic plausibility of the intervening NP as subject of the verb and syntactic interference was manipulated by varying whether the NP was another subject or an object. Nine PWA were assessed on sentence reading times and on comprehension question performance. PWA showed exaggerated semantic and syntactic interference effects relative to healthy age-matched control subjects. Importantly, correlational analyses showed that while answering comprehension questions, PWA’ semantic STM capacity related to their ability to resolve semantic but not syntactic interference. In contrast, PWA’ EF abilities related to their ability to resolve syntactic but not semantic interference. Phonological STM deficits were not related to the ability to resolve either type of interference. The results for semantic interference are consistent with prior findings indicating a role for semantic but not phonological STM in sentence comprehension, specifically with regard to maintaining semantic information prior to integration. The results for syntactic interference are consistent with the recent findings suggesting that EF is critical for syntactic processing.

Processing the Outcomes of Characters’ Actions: The Impacts of Character Goals and Situational Context

ABSTRACTThis study was conducted to investigate two factors that affect the processing of the outcomes of intentional actions. Participants read three-sentence stories that varied the presence of an explicit goal and the semantic association between the outcome and its situational context (i.e., physical or virtual location). The ease of processing outcomes (as measured by sentence reading times) was facilitated by having an explicitly stated goal (e.g., “X wanted a beer”) that causally explained why an action (e.g., “X went to a bar”) took place and by a high degree of contextual constraint between the action (e.g., “X went to a bar” as opposed to “X went to a restaurant”) and the outcome (e.g., “X got a beer”). There was no evidence that the two factors interacted. These results suggest that readers monitor, in parallel, the associations of actions with the intentions of a character and the situational context in which those actions occur.

Sensitivity to salience: linguistic vs. visual cues affect sentence processing and pronoun resolution

ABSTRACTSentence comprehension is optimised by indicating entities as salient through linguistic (i.e., information-structural) or visual means. We compare how salience of a depicted referent due to a linguistic (i.e., topic status) or visual cue (i.e., a virtual person's gaze shift) modulates sentence comprehension in German. We investigated processing of sentences with varying word order and pronoun resolution by means of self-paced reading and an antecedent choice task, respectively. Our results show that linguistic as well as visual salience cues immediately speeded up reading times of sentences mentioning the salient referent first. In contrast, for pronoun resolution, linguistic and visual cues modulated antecedent choice preferences less congruently. In sum, our findings speak in favour of a significant impact of linguistic and visual salience cues on sentence comprehension, substantiating that salient information delivered via language as well as the visual environment is integrated in the current mental representation of the discourse.

When Structure Competes with Semantics: Reading Chinese Relative Clauses

An ongoing debate in Chinese psycholinguistics is whether subject-relative clauses or object-relative clauses are more difficult to process. The current study asks what happens when structure and plausibility are pitted against each other in Chinese relative clause processing. Chinese relative clause structures and semantic plausibility were manipulated to create both plausible and implausible versions of subject- and object-relative clauses. This method has been used in other languages (e.g., English) to elicit thematic role reversal comprehension errors. Importantly, these errors—as well as online processing difficulties—are especially frequent in implausible versions of dispreferred (noncanoncial) structures. If one relative clause structure in Chinese is highly dispreferred, the structural factor and plausibility factor should interact additively. If, however, the structures are relatively equally difficult to process, then there should be only a main effect of plausibility. Sentence reading times as well as analyses on lexical interest areas revealed that Chinese readers used plausibility information almost exclusively when reading the sentences. Relative clause structure had no online effect and small but consistent offline effects. Taken together, the results support a slight preference in offline comprehension for Chinese subject-relative clauses, as well as a central role for semantic plausibility, which appears to be the dominant factor in online processing and a strong determinant of offline comprehension.

Decision making processes based on social conventional rules in early adolescents with and without autism spectrum disorders.

Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is characterized by problems with reciprocal social interaction, repetitive behaviours/narrow interests, and impairments in the social cognition and emotional processing necessary for intention-based moral judgements. The aim of this study was to examine the information used by early adolescents with and without ASD when they judge story protagonists as good or bad. We predicted that adolescents with ASD would use protagonists’ behaviour, while typically developing (TD) adolescents would use protagonists’ characteristics when making the judgements. In Experiment 1, we measured sentence by sentence reading times and percentages for good or bad judgements. In Experiment 2, two story protagonists were presented and the participants determined which protagonist was better or worse. Experiment 1 results showed that the adolescents with ASD used protagonist behaviours and outcomes, whereas the TD adolescents used protagonist characteristics, behaviours, and outcomes. In Experiment 2, TD adolescents used characteristics information when making “bad” judgements. Taken together, in situations in which participants cannot go back and assess (Experiment 1), and in comparable situations in which all information is available (Experiment 2), adolescents with ASD do not rely on information about individual characteristics when making moral judgements.

Encouraging prediction during production facilitates subsequent comprehension: Evidence from interleaved object naming in sentence context and sentence reading.

Many studies have shown that a supportive context facilitates language comprehension. A currently influential view is that language production may support prediction in language comprehension. Experimental evidence for this, however, is relatively sparse. Here we explored whether encouraging prediction in a language production task encourages the use of predictive contexts in an interleaved comprehension task. In Experiment 1a, participants listened to the first part of a sentence and provided the final word by naming aloud a picture. The picture name was predictable or not predictable from the sentence context. Pictures were named faster when they could be predicted than when this was not the case. In Experiment 1b the same sentences, augmented by a final spill-over region, were presented in a self-paced reading task. No difference in reading times for predictive versus non-predictive sentences was found. In Experiment 2, reading and naming trials were intermixed. In the naming task, the advantage for predictable picture names was replicated. More importantly, now reading times for the spill-over region were considerable faster for predictive than for non-predictive sentences. We conjecture that these findings fit best with the notion that prediction in the service of language production encourages the use of predictive contexts in comprehension. Further research is required to identify the exact mechanisms by which production exerts its influence on comprehension.

How literary can literariness be?

In literary theory, there are two common proposals about the nature of literature: that literariness is a distinctive characteristic of literary texts and that literariness is mostly characterized by highly foregrounded textual features. Our studies focused on the effects of genre expectations. In two experiments, we examined whether particular rhetorical figures (features, such as oxymora, synesthesia, and personification) are processed differently when readers think they are embedded in literary sentences. Participants were first induced to think that the sentences they were reading were taken either from literary texts (literary group) or from newspaper articles (news group). They then read sentences containing rhetorical figures and control sentences that did not contain figurative language. Results of Experiment 1 were consistent with prior research indicating that genre expectations influence how a text is processed (Zwaan, 1991, 1994). Moreover, specifically in the news group, genre expectations similarly affect reading times for sentences with rhetorical figures and sentences containing low frequency and long words, suggesting that foregrounding presents a lexical challenge elicited by micro-level linguistic and rhetorical “obstacles.” However, Experiment 2 did not replicate the findings of Experiment 1. These conflicting results prompt consideration of the limitations of an exclusive focus on foregrounding; in literary texts there is always an interchange between backgrounding and foregrounding elements.

Elaborations for the Validation of Causal Bridging Inferences in Text Comprehension.

The validation model of causal bridging inferences proposed by Singer and colleagues (e.g., Singer in Can J Exp Psychol, 47(2):340-359, 1993) claims that before a causal bridging inference is accepted, it must be validated by existing knowledge. For example, to understand "Dorothy took the aspirins. Her pain went away," one first computes a mediating idea RELIEVE [ASPIRIN, PAIN]. Then, the truth of it is validated on the basis of existing knowledge. The present study examined the hypothesis that a causal inference would be drawn and validated even when validating knowledge is not familiar or available because elaborations are made to retrieve or construct such knowledge. Experiment 1 showed that people tend to judge naturalness of a text based on causal relations and that causality was indeed recognized in those texts in which the antecedent sentence and the consequence sentence are not linked by familiar knowledge. Experiment 2, which measured sentence reading times, showed that while sentence processing times were longer for such texts than texts involving familiar knowledge, there was no difference between these texts in reading the subsequent sentence describing the validating idea. These results provided evidence supporting elaboration as well as validation of causal bridging inferences.

Reducing the Impact of Stereotypical Knowledge During Reading

Four experiments were designed to assess the presence and impact of stereotypical knowledge through an implicit measure of reading comprehension. In Experiments 1 and 3, participants read passages about protagonists in scenarios in which stereotypical knowledge was likely to become activated in memory. Following the descriptions, reading times for target sentences were slowed when they were inconsistent with stereotypical knowledge. In Experiments 2 and 4, a qualification sentence that served to explain why the protagonist would behave in a stereotypically inconsistent manner was added. With this additional information, the slowdown demonstrated in Experiments 1 and 3 for stereotypically inconsistent target sentences was eliminated. Prior research has shown it is very difficult to override activated stereotypical knowledge. The present results are important because this is the first demonstration that an appropriate qualification can at least eliminate any disruption in reading caused by stereotypical knowledge.

Action verbs are processed differently in metaphorical and literal sentences depending on the semantic match of visual primes.

Language comprehension requires rapid and flexible access to information stored in long-term memory, likely influenced by activation of rich world knowledge and by brain systems that support the processing of sensorimotor content. We hypothesized that while literal language about biological motion might rely on neurocognitive representations of biological motion specific to the details of the actions described, metaphors rely on more generic representations of motion. In a priming and self-paced reading paradigm, participants saw video clips or images of (a) an intact point-light walker or (b) a scrambled control and read sentences containing literal or metaphoric uses of biological motion verbs either closely or distantly related to the depicted action (walking). We predicted that reading times for literal and metaphorical sentences would show differential sensitivity to the match between the verb and the visual prime. In Experiment 1, we observed interactions between the prime type (walker or scrambled video) and the verb type (close or distant match) for both literal and metaphorical sentences, but with strikingly different patterns. We found no difference in the verb region of literal sentences for Close-Match verbs after walker or scrambled motion primes, but Distant-Match verbs were read more quickly following walker primes. For metaphorical sentences, the results were roughly reversed, with Distant-Match verbs being read more slowly following a walker compared to scrambled motion. In Experiment 2, we observed a similar pattern following still image primes, though critical interactions emerged later in the sentence. We interpret these findings as evidence for shared recruitment of cognitive and neural mechanisms for processing visual and verbal biological motion information. Metaphoric language using biological motion verbs may recruit neurocognitive mechanisms similar to those used in processing literal language but be represented in a less-specific way.

Spatial distance effects on incremental semantic interpretation of abstract sentences: Evidence from eye tracking

A large body of evidence has shown that visual context information can rapidly modulate language comprehension for concrete sentences and when it is mediated by a referential or a lexical-semantic link. What has not yet been examined is whether visual context can also modulate comprehension of abstract sentences incrementally when it is neither referenced by, nor lexically associated with, the sentence. Three eye-tracking reading experiments examined the effects of spatial distance between words (Experiment 1) and objects (Experiment 2 and 3) on participants’ reading times for sentences that convey similarity or difference between two abstract nouns (e.g., ‘Peace and war are certainly different...’). Before reading the sentence, participants inspected a visual context with two playing cards that moved either far apart or close together. In Experiment 1, the cards turned and showed the first two nouns of the sentence (e.g., ‘peace’, ‘war’). In Experiments 2 and 3, they turned but remained blank. Participants’ reading times at the adjective (Experiment 1: first-pass reading time; Experiment 2: total times) and at the second noun phrase (Experiment 3: first-pass times) were faster for sentences that expressed similarity when the preceding words/objects were close together (vs. far apart) and for sentences that expressed dissimilarity when the preceding words/objects were far apart (vs. close together). Thus, spatial distance between words or entirely unrelated objects can rapidly and incrementally modulate the semantic interpretation of abstract sentences.

Detecting fast, online reasoning processes in clinical decision making.

In an experiment that used the inconsistency paradigm, experienced clinical psychologists and psychology students performed a reading task using clinical reports and a diagnostic judgment task. The clinical reports provided information about the symptoms of hypothetical clients who had been previously diagnosed with a specific mental disorder. Reading times of inconsistent target sentences were slower than those of control sentences, demonstrating an inconsistency effect. The results also showed that experienced clinicians gave different weights to different symptoms according to their relevance when fluently reading the clinical reports provided, despite the fact that all the symptoms were of equal diagnostic value according to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (4th ed., text rev.; American Psychiatric Association, 2000). The diagnostic judgment task yielded a similar pattern of results. In contrast to previous findings, the results of the reading task may be taken as direct evidence of the intervention of reasoning processes that occur very early, rapidly, and online. We suggest that these processes are based on the representation of mental disorders and that these representations are particularly suited to fast retrieval from memory and to making inferences. They may also be related to the clinicians' causal reasoning. The implications of these results for clinician training are also discussed.

The role of ventromedial prefrontal cortex in text comprehension inferences: Semantic coherence or socio-emotional perspective?

Two hypotheses about the role of the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC) in narrative comprehension inferences, global semantic coherence versus socio-emotional perspective, were tested. Seven patients with vmPFC lesions and seven demographically matched healthy comparison participants read short narratives. Using the consistency paradigm, narratives required participants to make either an emotional or visuo-spatial inference, in which a target sentence provided consistent or inconsistent information with a previous emotional state of a character or a visuo-spatial location of an object. Healthy comparison participants made the inferences both for spatial and emotional stories, as shown by longer reading times for inconsistent critical sentences. For patients with vmPFC lesions, inconsistent sentences were read slower in the spatial stories, but not in the emotional ones. This pattern of results is compatible with the hypothesis that vmPFC contributes to narrative comprehension by supporting inferences about socio-emotional aspects of verbally described situations.

Establishing coherence across sentence boundaries: an individual differences approach

The aim of this study was to investigate the cognitive abilities that underlie coherence building. A coherence judgement task was used for this purpose. The task was comprised of four conditions that resulted from crossing coherence and cohesion (the presence of a connective), a manipulation that elicited two-way interactions in both judgement accuracy and reading times. Hierarchical Linear Modelling was then used to assess the influence of individual difference variables (vocabulary, working memory, and decoding) on target sentence reading times across the four conditions. Two of these variables, working memory and vocabulary, shared cross-level interactions with the coherent-incohesive condition – the only condition in which coherence had to be established with an un-cued bridging inference. Vocabulary acted to decrease reading times associated with the condition whereas working memory acted to increase them. These effects are interpreted with reference to lexical quality and retrieval-based knowledge access.

Understanding Mechanisms in Transitive Inferences: An Eye-Tracking Study in Korean Reading

The current experiment examined the mechanism of relational information processing by assessing transitive inferences in different syntactic structures. More specifically, the current experiment focused on whether the demands of conscious inference processing interact with the difficulty of syntactic processing. This research used the eye-tracking method to investigate online processing mechanisms in complex sentences with transitive inference. Overall sentence reading times, accuracy rates of comprehension questions, and the two eye-movement measures of gaze duration and re-reading times were examined in 32 participants. The results showed that inference processing demands affected overall reading times and accuracy rates, while syntactic processing demands did not have an effect on overall reading times or accuracy rates. The results of the eye-tracking measures showed that syntactic processing demands affected gaze duration, while the inference processing demand affected re-reading times. Apparently, the difficulty of inference processing was not affected by the surface form of a sentence. The results of this study suggested that basic processes of sentence interpretation share resources with other cognitive processes such as inference.

Processing and Representation of Arguments in One-Sided Texts About Disputed Topics

We examine students' processing and representation of arguments and counterarguments in one-sided scientific texts. In Experiment 1, students read texts about evolution and TV violence. Sentence reading times indicated that subjects slowed down reading to the extent that arguments were both more consistent, and inconsistent, with the text position. We refer to this processing pattern as argument-focused processing. We also examined whether students hold their beliefs for evidence- or affect-based reasons (belief basis). For the evolution texts, belief basis moderated argument-focused processing. In Experiment 2, subjects read a one-sided text, then a neutral text, and then wrote a summary of the neutral text. Compared to affect-based subjects, evidence-based subjects wrote summaries that were more neutral. Beliefs predicted few differences in processing or representation. We conclude that subjects engage in argument-focused processing when reading one-sided scientific texts. We tentatively conclude that argument-focused processing is moderated by belief basis, but not subject beliefs.

Singular and Plural Pronominal Reference in Spanish

In two self-paced, sentence-by-sentence reading experiments, we examined the difference in the processing of Spanish discourses containing overt and null pronouns. In both experiments, antecedents appeared in a single phrase (John met Mary) or in a conjoined phrase (John and Mary met). In Experiment 1, we compared reading times of sentences containing singular overt and null pronouns referring to the first or to the second mentioned antecedent. Overt pronouns caused a processing delay relative to null pronouns when they referred to the first antecedent in single but not in conjoined phrases. In Experiment 2, we compared reading times of sentences containing overt and null pronouns referring to singular or plural entities. Plural null pronouns were read faster than their singular counterparts in conjoined conditions. Plural overt pronouns were read more slowly than their null counterparts both in single and conjoined conditions. We explain our findings in a framework based on the notion of balance between processing cost and discourse function in line with the Informational Load Hypothesis.