Effects Of Syntactic Complexity Research Articles

The processing of gender agreement during reading comprehension in L2 French: The effects of syntactic complexity and working memory

A longstanding debate in L2 research focuses on how syntactic complexity needs to be operationalized to account for L2 performances. Whereas many studies investigated this issue in L2 production, very few studies focused on L2 sentence processing. The present study aimed at investigating the effect of syntactic complexity on gender agreement processing in L2 French, while controlling for the learners’ working memory capacity. We tested 37 Dutch learners of French by means of a self-paced reading technique. The results showed decreased sensitivity to gender agreement in embedded structures, but increased sensitivity to gender agreement in non-embedded structures. We concluded that the number of clauses in gender agreement constructions accounts for the effect of syntactic complexity on gender agreement processing in L2 French and that this measure is negatively correlated to sensitivity to gender agreement. We furthermore concluded that (non-verbal) working memory does not affect L2 gender agreement processing.

A corpus-based analysis of the effect of syntactic complexity on disfluency in consecutive interpreting

This study investigates the effect of input and output syntactic complexity on disfluency based on the corpus of press conference interpreting. In line with widespread practice in quantitative linguistics, mean dependency distance has been taken as the metric here for quantifying syntactic complexity. As the occurrence of disfluency is count data, this study uses the Poisson regression model to evaluate the effect of input and output syntactic complexity on disfluency occurrences, and on the variation of such occurrences with different types of reformulation methods. Our results show that occurrence of disfluency can be predicted by both the input and output syntactic complexity as quantified by the mean dependency distance, and that when the reformulation method of “divide” is used, the occurrence of disfluency does not increase significantly in the output even when the output sentence has a higher mean dependency distance. The findings reveal how input and output syntactic complexity predicts disfluency, and how reformulation methods interact with syntactic complexity to moderate cognitive load.

Assessment of verb and sentence processing deficits in stroke-induced aphasia: the Italian version of the Northwestern Assessment of Verbs and Sentences (NAVS-I)

ABSTRACT Background The Northwestern Assessment of Verbs and Sentences (NAVS) assesses verb and sentence production and comprehension in aphasia. Results from the original English version and from its adaptation to German have shown that the NAVS is able to capture effects of verb-argument structure (VAS) complexity (i.e., lower accuracy for two- and three-argument vs. one-argument verbs) and syntactic complexity (i.e., lower accuracy for non-canonical vs. canonical sentences) in both agrammatic participants and individuals with fluent forms of aphasia. The NAVS has been recently adapted to Italian (NAVS-I) and tested on a group of healthy participants, with results showing longer reaction times to complex vs. simple verbs and sentences. Aims The present study aimed to test the ability of NAVS-I to i) capture verb/sentence production and comprehension deficits in Italian-speaking individuals with agrammatism or with fluent aphasia, and ii) differentiate individuals with aphasia from healthy age-matched participants, with the overall goal to validate its use in clinical practice. Methods & Procedures Forty-four healthy participants and 28 individuals with aphasia (10 with agrammatic speech production) were administered the NAVS-I, which includes tasks assessing production and comprehension of verbs requiring one, two or three arguments, as well as production and comprehension of canonical and non-canonical sentences. Outcomes & Results On the Verb Naming Task (VNT), better production of one- (vs. two- and three-) argument verbs was found in the agrammatic group, whereas, verb production in the fluent group was solely predicted by word length and imageability. No effects of argument optionality (i.e., greater difficulty for optionally transitive verbs than for 1-argument verbs) were found. Sentence-level tasks found no differences between the agrammatic and the fluent group in production or comprehension of both canonical and non-canonical sentences; rather, sentence comprehension accuracy was predicted by demographic variables and by aphasia severity. At the individual level, performance on the NAVS-I was significantly different from that of healthy speakers in 26/28 patients. Conclusions Data show that the NAVS-I is able to capture effects of argument structure complexity in verb production, and effects of syntactic complexity in sentence production and comprehension. In addition, our results point to verb production as the task with greater capability to differentiate agrammatism from other (fluent) forms of aphasia. The study provides support for the use of the NAVS-I in the diagnosis of aphasia, as it is able to detect language deficits at the individual level, even in participants with mild (residual) forms of aphasia.

Recognition of Sentences With Complex Syntax in Speech Babble by Adolescents With Normal Hearing or Cochlear Implants.

General language abilities of children with cochlear implants have been thoroughly investigated, especially at young ages, but far less is known about how well they process language in real-world settings, especially in higher grades. This study addressed this gap in knowledge by examining recognition of sentences with complex syntactic structures in backgrounds of speech babble by adolescents with cochlear implants, and peers with normal hearing. Two experiments were conducted. First, new materials were developed using young adults with normal hearing as the normative sample, creating a corpus of sentences with controlled, but complex syntactic structures presented in three kinds of babble that varied in voice gender and number of talkers. Second, recognition by adolescents with normal hearing or cochlear implants was examined for these new materials and for sentence materials used with these adolescents at younger ages. Analyses addressed three objectives: (1) to assess the stability of speech recognition across a multiyear age range, (2) to evaluate speech recognition of sentences with complex syntax in babble, and (3) to explore how bottom-up and top-down mechanisms account for performance under these conditions. Results showed: (1) Recognition was stable across the ages of 10-14 years for both groups. (2) Adolescents with normal hearing performed similarly to young adults with normal hearing, showing effects of syntactic complexity and background babble; adolescents with cochlear implants showed poorer recognition overall, and diminished effects of both factors. (3) Top-down language and working memory primarily explained recognition for adolescents with normal hearing, but the bottom-up process of perceptual organization primarily explained recognition for adolescents with cochlear implants. Comprehension of language in real-world settings relies on different mechanisms for adolescents with cochlear implants than for adolescents with normal hearing. A novel finding was that perceptual organization is a critical factor. https://doi.org/10.23641/asha.21965228.

Phonological Mean Length of Utterance in 48-60-Month-old Persian-Speaking Children With Isfahani Accent: Comparison of Story Generation and Conversation Samples

Objective Phonological Mean Length of Utterance (PMLU), a quantitative measure for assessing phonological skills, is a diagnostic and clinical criterion in phonological development. Moreover, it is an indicator showing the efficacy of the intervention. The PMLU is a word level measure that can be calculated on the child’s transcribed speech sample (transcription). To calculate PMLU, all consonants and vowels of the child’s produced words, and target words (standard production of words in native adults) are individually scored. The proportion of Whole-Word Proximity (PWP), another phonological quantitative measure, includes the ratio of the produced PMLU to the targeted word PMLU. PWP indirectly reflects the intelligibility of speech. Since languages are distinctive in syllabic and phonological structures, PMLU should be studied as a language-specific measure. PMLU has specifically been designed to assess phonological skills in spontaneous speech. Spontaneous speech sampling methods are advantageous since they consider the effect of morphological and syntactic skills, length, and complexity of words, and they could show the normal development of word complexity. This study was conducted to determine PMLU and PWP in 48 to 60 months old Persian-speaking children with Isfahani accents and to compare them in story generation and conversation sampling methods. The potential sensitivity of PMLU to growth was also examined. Materials & Methods This is an observational and cross-sectional study that was conducted for one year in 2016 in Isfahan City, Iran. A total of 100 children (51 boys and 49 girls) aged 48-60 months participated in story generation sampling, and 67 children (32 boys and 35 girls) participated in conversation sampling. The participants were selected from 261 kindergartens under the supervision of the Welfare Organization of Isfahan Province using the convenience sampling method. After completing the consent form and considering the inclusion criteria, conversation and story-generation samples were collected. Audio samplings were done in the same room using the same software (Clear Record Litev. 2.1). Raters transcribed the first 50 words of the recorded speech samples. Finally, we used the formula to calculate the target PMLU and child PMLU based on the normal production of an adult who speaks Persian with an Isfahani accent and the child’s production, respectively. To evaluate inter-rater reliability, raters randomly transcribed 20% of all samples to recalculate values. Participants’ story generation and conversation scores were entered into SPSS16 separately. The Kolmogorov-Smirnov test was used to examine the data distribution. Based on the data distribution, paired t-test and Wilcoxon test were used to compare measurements, and the Pearson and Spearman tests were used to investigate the associations. Results Child PMLU, target PMLU, and PWP measures of the story generation method were 8.794, 8.811, 0.998, and those of the conversation method were 9.068, 9.093, and 0.998, respectively. Correlation test results showed significant relationship between age and PWP in story generation (r=0.308) and conversation (r=0.313). Comparing child PMLU in story generation and conversation showed a significant relationship between child PMLU in both sampling methods (P=0.000). The result of the target PMLU comparison in two methods of story generation and conversation (P=0.000) was significant. PWP did not significantly differ between the two sampling methods (P=0.973). The inter-rater reliability was calculated at 0.70. Conclusion This study can be used as a basis for quantitative studies in the field of children’s phonological assessment using Persian whole words. However, longitudinal studies in different age groups with a high level of evidence in this field can convince therapists to use whole-word measures in clinics.

THE EFFECTS OF LINGUISTIC AND COGNITIVE FACTORS ON THE L2 PROCESSING OF ORAL INPUT: A SELF-PACED LISTENING EXPERIMENT

ABSTRACT Listening comprehension is a real-time process, yet very little is known about the variables affecting real-time second language (L2) listening. The present study aimed at investigating the effects of syntactic complexity and word frequency on L2 listening. Furthermore, the role of the listener’s working memory capacity in listening comprehension was investigated. Fifty-three Dutch learners of French were tested using a working memory task and self-paced listening technique. Working memory scores and reaction times were collected as a measure of processing efficiency. Contrast analyses were run on the reaction times per variable. Correlation tests were run between the working memory scores and reaction times. The results showed that syntactic complexity affects L2 listening comprehension. However, no effect of word frequency on L2 listening and no correlation between working memory capacity and L2 listening in any of the conditions was found. We conclude that linguistic factors shown to affect offline L2 listening are not always generalizable to online L2 listening. We also conclude that working memory considered as a cognitive system separate from other cognitive processes involved in language comprehension does not explain individual differences in real-time L2 listening. Further research needs to be done to better understand (real-time) L2 listening comprehension.

When Hearing Does Not Mean Understanding: On the Neural Processing of Syntactically Complex Sentences by Listeners With Hearing Loss.

Purpose Adults with mild-to-moderate age-related hearing loss typically exhibit issues with speech understanding, but their processing of syntactically complex sentences is not well understood. We test the hypothesis that listeners with hearing loss' difficulties with comprehension and processing of syntactically complex sentences are due to the processing of degraded input interfering with the successful processing of complex sentences. Method We performed a neuroimaging study with a sentence comprehension task, varying sentence complexity (through subject-object order and verb-arguments order) and cognitive demands (presence or absence of a secondary task) within subjects. Groups of older subjects with hearing loss (n = 20) and age-matched normal-hearing controls (n = 20) were tested. Results The comprehension data show effects of syntactic complexity and hearing ability, with normal-hearing controls outperforming listeners with hearing loss, seemingly more so on syntactically complex sentences. The secondary task did not influence off-line comprehension. The imaging data show effects of group, sentence complexity, and task, with listeners with hearing loss showing decreased activation in typical speech processing areas, such as the inferior frontal gyrus and superior temporal gyrus. No interactions between group, sentence complexity, and task were found in the neuroimaging data. Conclusions The results suggest that listeners with hearing loss process speech differently from their normal-hearing peers, possibly due to the increased demands of processing degraded auditory input. Increased cognitive demands by means of a secondary visual shape processing task influence neural sentence processing, but no evidence was found that it does so in a different way for listeners with hearing loss and normal-hearing listeners.

Effects of animacy and sentence type on silent reading comprehension in aphasia: An eye-tracking study.

The present study examined how healthy aging and aphasia influence the capacity for readers to generate structural predictions during online reading, and how animacy cues influence this process. Non-brain-damaged younger (n =24) and older (n =12) adults (Experiment 1) and individuals with aphasia (IWA; n =11; Experiment 2) read subject relative and object relative sentences in an eye-tracking experiment. Half of the sentences included animate sentential subjects, and the other half included inanimate sentential subjects. All three groups used animacy information to mitigate effects of syntactic complexity. These effects were greater in older than younger adults. IWA were sensitive to structural frequency, with longer reading times for object relative than subject relative sentences. As in previous work, effects of structural complexity did not emerge on IWA's first pass through the sentence, but were observed when IWA reread critical segments of the sentences. Thus, IWA may adopt atypical reading strategies when they encounter low frequency or complex sentence structures, but they are able to use animacy information to reduce the processing disruptions associated with these structures.

Effects of semantic plausibility, syntactic complexity and n-gram frequency on children's sentence repetition.

Theories of language processing differ with respect to the role of abstract syntax and semantics vs surface-level lexical co-occurrence (n-gram) frequency. The contribution of each of these factors has been demonstrated in previous studies of children and adults, but none have investigated them jointly. This study evaluated the role of all three factors in a sentence repetition task performed by children aged 4-7 and 11-12 years. It was found that semantic plausibility benefitted performance in both age groups; syntactic complexity disadvantaged the younger group but benefitted the older group; while contrary to previous findings, n-gram frequency did not facilitate, and in a post-hoc analysis even hampered, performance. This new evidence suggests that n-gram frequency effects might be restricted to the highly constrained and frequent n-grams used in previous investigations, and that semantics and morphosyntax play a more powerful role than n-gram frequency, supporting the role of abstract linguistic knowledge in children's sentence processing.

Neural Mechanisms Underlying the Processing of Complex Sentences: An fMRI Study.

Previous research has shown effects of syntactic complexity on sentence processing. In linguistics, syntactic complexity (caused by different word orders) is traditionally explained by distinct linguistic operations. This study investigates whether different complex word orders indeed result in distinct patterns of neural activity, as would be expected when distinct linguistic operations are applied. Twenty-two older adults performed an auditory sentence processing paradigm in German with and without increased cognitive load. The results show that without increased cognitive load, complex sentences show distinct activation patterns compared with less complex, canonical sentences: complex object-initial sentences show increased activity in the left inferior frontal and temporal regions, whereas complex adjunct-initial sentences show increased activity in occipital and right superior frontal regions. Increased cognitive load seems to affect the processing of different sentence structures differently, increasing neural activity for canonical sentences, but leaving complex sentences relatively unaffected. We discuss these results in the context of the idea that linguistic operations required for processing sentence structures with higher levels of complexity involve distinct brain operations.

Ultimate attainment in heritage language speakers: Syntactic and morphological knowledge of Italian accusative clitics

AbstractThe acquisition of a heritage language, normally the weaker language of early bilinguals, has been oftentimes defined as incomplete, especially for morphosyntax. As a result, these early bilinguals resemble late bilinguals more than native language speakers, calling into question the role of age of exposure. The effects of syntactic complexity on knowledge of morphosyntactic structures, however, have not been sufficiently considered hitherto. This study investigates age of exposure and syntactic complexity by comparing heritage, second language, and native language speakers on knowledge of Italian accusative clitics in three structures. An oral structural priming task and a speeded grammaticality judgment task find a discrepancy in the level of ultimate attainment heritage speakers reach for syntax and morphology. While their abstract representation of clitic structures approximates that of native language speakers more closely, their morphological knowledge of clitics aligns with second language speakers, suggesting early exposure has tangible effects only on syntactic knowledge. In turn, syntactic complexity affects the representation of clitic structures in a predictable manner, but is inconsequential to explicit knowledge of morphological forms in monolingual and bilingual speakers. Lack of age of exposure effects in the morphological domain are attributed to interface vulnerability.

Effects of Syntactic Complexity and Sentence Repetition on Sentence Comprehension in Patients with Dementia of Alzheimer’s Type

ë°°ê²½ 및 ëª©ì  ì•Œì¸ í•˜ì´ë¨¸í˜• 치매(demntia of Alzheimer’ s type, DAT) 환자의 ì²­ê°ì  문장이해 ëŠ¥ë ¥ì„ 향상시키기 위한 다양한 ì „ëžµë“¤ì´ 개발되어 왔지만, ê·¸ 효과에 대한 ìž„ìƒì  검증은 부족하다. 본 연구는 DAT 환자와 ì¼ë°˜ë ¸ì¸ì„ 대상으로 êµ¬ë¬¸ì  복잡성과 문장 반복이 문장이해 ëŠ¥ë ¥ì— 미치는 영향을 알아보는 것을 ëª©ì ìœ¼ë¡œ 하였다. 방법 ì¼ë°˜ë ¸ì¸ 30ëª ê³¼ DAT환자 30ëª ì´ 연구에 참여하였다. ì—°êµ¬ê³¼ì œëŠ” í† í°í ŒìŠ¤íŠ¸ë¥¼ 사용하였으며, 단원별 문장을 Pratt program을 이용하여 한 번 혹은 두 번 ì œì‹œë˜ë„ë¡ 대상자들에게 ë“¤ë ¤ì£¼ì—ˆë‹¤. ê²°ê³¼ 첫째, 집단, êµ¬ë¬¸ì  복잡성과 문장 반복에 따른 문장이해 수행에 대한 주효과가 모두 ìœ ì˜í•œ 것으로 나타났다. 둘째, ì¼ë°˜ë ¸ì¸, DAT 환자 집단 모두 4–7ì–´ì ˆë¡œ 구성된 1–3단원 및 ì´ì ì—ì„œëŠ” 문장 반복효과가 나타났으나, 6–18ì–´ì ˆì— ì´ë¥´ê³ ì„œë¡œ 상이한 구문으로 구성된 4단원의 경우 문장 반복효과가 나타나지 않았다. 마지막으로, 상관분석 ê²°ê³¼ ì¼ë°˜ë ¸ì¸ì˜ 경우 í† í°í ŒìŠ¤íŠ¸ ì´ì ê³¼ 문장 반복 시의 문장이해 ëŠ¥ë ¥ 간 ìœ ì˜í•œ 상관은 4단원과 ì´ì ì—ì„œë§Œ 나타난 반면, DAT 환자 집단에서는 ëª¨ë“ ë‹¨ì›ê³¼ ì´ì ì—ì„œ í† í°í ŒìŠ¤íŠ¸ ì´ì ê³¼ 문장 반복 시의 문장이해 ëŠ¥ë ¥ 간의 ìœ ì˜í•œ 상관을 보였다. ë ¼ì˜ 및 ê²°ë¡ ë³¸ 연구의 결과는 DAT 환자의 문장 반복이 문장이해 ëŠ¥ë ¥ì— 미치는 영향은 êµ¬ë¬¸ì  복잡성에 따라 상이함을 시사한다. Keywords: êµ¬ë¬¸ì  복잡성, 문장 반복, 문장이해, ì•Œì¸ í•˜ì´ë¨¸í˜• 치매

Sentence comprehension in patients with dementia of the Alzheimer's type.

Sentence comprehension is diminished in patients with dementia of the Alzheimer’s type (DAT). However, the underlying reason for such deficits is still not entirely clear. The Syntactic Deficit Hypothesis attributes sentence comprehension deficits in DAT patients to the impairment in syntactic ability, whereas the Processing Resource Deficit Hypothesis proposes that sentence comprehension deficits are the result of working memory deficiency. This study investigated the deficits in sentence comprehension in Chinese-speaking DAT patients with different degrees of severity using sentence-picture matching tasks. The study revealed a significant effect of syntactic complexity in patients and healthy controls, but the effect was stronger in patients than in healthy controls. When working memory demand was minimized, the effect of syntactic complexity was only significant in patients with moderate DAT, but not in healthy controls or those with mild DAT. The findings suggest that in patients with mild DAT, working memory decline was the major source of sentence comprehension difficulty and in patients with moderate DAT, working memory decline and syntactic impairment jointly contributed to the impairments in sentence comprehension. The source of sentence comprehension deficits varied with degree of dementia severity.

구문적 복잡성과 말속도가 노년층의 문장이해 능력에 미치는 영향

구문적 복잡성과 말속도가 노년층의 문장이해 능력에 미치는 영향

“That Looks Hard!”: Effects of Objective and Perceived Textual Complexity on Factual and Structural Political Knowledge

Communication of political information is vital for a well-functioning democratic system, and texts are one of the main mediums of politics. Most studies dealing with political text consider how such texts communicate content, rather than the structural characteristics of texts themselves. The current study focuses on complexity as one of the focal structural characteristics of political text. Previous research showed that different types of textual complexity affect learning processes. Such prior studies are, however, limited both conceptually and empirically. This study addresses these gaps by employing a large-scale experimental design (N= 822), investigating how different dimensions of textual complexity affect factual and structural political knowledge, and whether such relationships are mediated through perceived complexity. Results indicate that different levels (high vs. low) and different dimensions of textual complexity (semantic vs. syntactic) influence reader’s perception of text, as well as their factual and structural knowledge. Only semantic complexity has an effect on one’s perceived complexity, which in turn negatively affects factual and structural knowledge. Syntactic complexity directly lowered one’s factual knowledge acquisition, while there was no direct effect of syntactic complexity on structural knowledge. The results suggest that text complexity indeed plays an important role in political information acquisition, and our findings also highlight the importance of perception in mediating the structural effects of the text.

Verb and sentence processing patterns in healthy Italian participants: Insight from the Northwestern Assessment of Verbs and Sentences (NAVS)

We developed an Italian version of the Northwestern Assessment of Verbs and Sentences (NAVS, Thompson, 2011), a test assessing verb and sentence deficits typically found in aphasia, by focusing on verb-argument structure and syntactic complexity effects, rarely captured by standard language tests.Twenty-one young healthy individuals underwent a computerized experimental version of the NAVS, including three subtests assessing production/comprehension of verbs with different number (one, two, three) and type (obligatory or optional) of arguments, and two investigating production/comprehension of sentences with canonical/non-canonical word order.The number of verb arguments affected participants’ reaction times (RTs) in verb naming and comprehension. Furthermore, verbs with optional arguments were processed faster than verbs with only obligatory arguments. Comprehension accuracy was lower for object-cleft vs. subject-cleft sentences. Object clefts and object relatives also elicited longer RTs than subject clefts and subject relatives, respectively.The study shows that the NAVS is sensitive to linguistic aspects of verb/sentence processing in Italian as in the English language. The study also highlights some differences between languages in the verb/sentence processing patterns of healthy individuals. Finally, the study contributes to the understanding of how information about verb-argument structure is represented and processed in healthy individuals, with reference to current models of verb processing.

The Effects of Syntactic Complexity and Sentence Length on the Speech Motor Control of School-Age Children Who Stutter.

Early childhood stuttering is associated with atypical speech motor development. Compared with children who do not stutter (CWNS), the speech motor systems of school-age children who stutter (CWS) may also be particularly susceptible to breakdown under increased processing demands. The effects of increased syntactic complexity and sentence length on articulatory coordination were investigated. Kinematic, temporal, and behavioral indices of articulatory coordination were quantified for school-age CWS (n = 19) and CWNS (n = 18). Participants produced 4 sentences varying in syntactic complexity (simple declarative/complex declarative with a relative clause) and sentence length (short/long). Lip aperture variability (LAVar) served as a kinematic measure of interarticulatory consistency over repeated productions. Articulation rate (syllables per second) was also calculated as a related temporal measure. Finally, we computed accuracy and stuttering frequency percentages for each sentence to assess task performance. Increased sentence length, but not syntactic complexity, increased LAVar in both groups. This effect was disproportionately greater for CWS compared with CWNS. No group differences were observed for articulation rate. CWS were also less accurate in their sentence productions than fluent peers and exhibited more instances of stuttering when processing demands associated with length and syntactic complexity increases. The speech motor systems of school-age CWS appear to be particularly vulnerable to processing demands associated with increased sentence length, as evidenced by increased LAVar. Increasing the length and complexity of the sentence stimuli also resulted in reduced production accuracy and increased stuttering frequency. We discuss these findings within a motor control framework of speech production.

The Influence of Early Temperament on Language Development: The Moderating Role of Maternal Input.

Temperament is an individual aspect that strictly affects infants and children engagement with the environment and it is supposed to play a role in the acquiring of new competences. Several studies focused on the possible influence of temperament in the process of language acquisition in early childhood reporting not consistent findings. Since maternal input is a variable that has been widely associated with infant language development this longitudinal study aimed to explore the role of the quality of maternal input in the temperament-language association. We hypothesized that the longitudinal association between early infant temperament and language production is moderated by the quality of maternal input during the first year of life. Infant temperament at 3 months and maternal linguistic input (lexical diversity and syntactic complexity) during spontaneous mother–infant interactions at 6, 9, and 12 months were assessed. Language competences were evaluated at the end of the second year: language production at 18 months with the CDI and child syntactic complexity at 24 months during spontaneous speech. Results showed significant moderating effects of syntactic complexity and lexical variability of maternal input at 6 and 9 months on the association of duration of orienting abilities and later language production. Infants with greater attentional abilities and with mothers who spoke to them with a more complex and variable input showed the better language outcomes. The association between infant distress to limitations and child language was not moderated by maternal input. No effects were found when considering the temperamental scale smile and laugher. Attentional control temperamental characteristics could help the infant to be more focus on maternal input throughout the first year of life and could consequently facilitate language development. Our findings underlined the necessity to explore infant development considering the interaction between individual and contextual factors.

Effects of Working Memory Load and Age on the Comprehension of Passive Sentences

The ability of older adults to comprehend sentences may decline due to the cognitive changes in working memory. Therefore, an increase in working memory demands during sentence comprehension would result in poorer performance among older adults. To test this hypothesis, the present study explored sentence comprehension as a result of manipulations of age and working memory loads using a sentence-picture matching task. 35 older adults and 35 younger adults were required to match Mandarin passive sentences (high working memory load) and active sentences (low working memory load) with pictures. Passive sentences were found to be more difficult than active sentences for all participants. Older adults responded to passive sentences more slowly than younger adults. However, no significant age difference was found in accuracy of responses. Accuracy on passive sentence comprehension was marginally correlated with syntactic complexity effect among older adults. Compared with younger adults, older adults seem to be more disrupted by the increased WM load in passive sentence comprehension, but they can compensate for the decline in the accuracy of comprehension by spending extra time on sentences with high WM load.

Speech understanding in noise in elderly adults: the effect of inhibitory control and syntactic complexity.

Previous research has suggested that speech perception in elderly adults is influenced not only by age-related hearing loss or presbycusis but also by declines in cognitive abilities, by background noise and by the syntactic complexity of the message. To gain further insight into the influence of these cognitive as well as acoustic and linguistic factors on speech perception in elderly adults by investigating inhibitory control as a listener characteristic and background noise type and syntactic complexity as input characteristics. Phoneme identification was measured in different noise conditions and in different linguistic contexts (single words, sentences with varying syntactic complexity). Additionally, inhibitory control was measured using a visual stimulus-response matching task. Fifty-one adults participated in this study, including elderly adults with age-related hearing loss (n = 9) and with normal hearing (n = 17), and a control group of normal hearing younger adults (n = 25). The analysis revealed that elderly adults with normal hearing and with hearing loss were less likely to identify successfully phonemes in single words than younger normal hearing controls. In the context of sentences, only elderly adults with hearing loss had a lower odds of correct phoneme perception than the control group. Additionally, in elderly adults with hearing loss, phoneme-in-sentence perception was linked to age-related declines in inhibitory control. In all participants, phoneme identification in sentences was influenced by both noise type and syntactic complexity. Inhibitory control and syntactic complexity might play a significant role in speech perception, especially in elderly listeners. These factors might also influence the results of clinical assessments of speech perception. Testing procedures thus need to be selected and their results interpreted carefully with these influences in mind.