Unrelated Sentences Research Articles

Is the Missing Letter Effect Due Primarily to the Test Word Containing the Target Letter or to the Surrounding Words?

Abstract A simple letter detection task, in which subjects mark instances of a target letter in prose passages, has elucidated numerous cognitive processes involved in reading by examining the “missing letter” effect, in which readers’ detection accuracy is especially low on frequent function words. Two experiments explore the fundamental but novel issue of whether the missing letter effect is due to the test word containing the target letter or to the words surrounding the test word. College students searched for a target letter (e in Experiment 1, o in Experiment 2) in a passage that included unrelated sentences, with each sentence containing a single instance of 1 of 2 test words (the or one in Experiment 1, of or on in Experiment 2). The sentences were intact (prose), or the words in each sentence were randomly rearranged (scrambled). The 2 test words in an experiment were surrounded by the exact same words. If the word containing the target letter is primarily responsible for the missing letter effect, the proportion of correct letter detection responses should depend on the test word, whereas if the surrounding words are primarily responsible, it should depend on the text type (prose, scrambled). In fact, in both experiments a huge effect of test word was found but no effect of text type. These results provide clear evidence for the influence of the test word but, surprisingly, no evidence for the influence of the surrounding words on the missing letter effect in the letter detection task.

The impact of prior topic awareness on listening effort during speech perception

Most standard speech perception tests use unrelated sentences where the topic changes for each stimulus. This unrealistic paradigm is expedient but might overlook an important aspect of speech processing and effort, which is how listeners use expectations and topic awareness to enable easier repair of misperceived words. We hypothesize that the effort of mentally repairing misperceived words will be reduced when individuals have advance topic awareness of upcoming sentences. In this study, individuals with normal hearing and hearing loss heard sentences with a masked target word that required retroactive mental repair using later context. Sentences were either preceded by the presence or absence of a related priming word presented visually to simulate advance topic knowledge. Listening effort for these sentences was measured by changes in pupil size that were linked with the exact timing of the word being repaired. When the target word is masked in a sentence, pupil dilation increases immediately after the missing word, and that dilation is modulated by the helpfulness of the prime before the sentence.

Neural oscillations reflect meaning identification for novel words in context.

During language processing, people make rapid use of contextual information to promote comprehension of upcoming words. When new words are learned implicitly, information contained in the surrounding context can provide constraints on their possible meaning. In the current study, EEG was recorded as participants listened to a series of three sentences, each containing an identical target pseudoword, with the aim of using contextual information in the surrounding language to identify a meaning representation for the novel word. In half of trials, sentences were semantically coherent so that participants could develop a single representation for the novel word that fit all contexts. Other trials contained unrelated sentence contexts so that meaning associations were not possible. We observed greater theta band enhancement over the left-hemisphere across central and posterior electrodes in response to pseudowords processed across semantically related compared to unrelated contexts. Additionally, relative alpha and beta band suppression was increased prior to pseudoword onset in trials where contextual information more readily promoted pseudoword-meaning associations. Under the hypothesis that theta enhancement indexes processing demands during lexical access, the current study provides evidence for selective online memory retrieval to novel words learned implicitly in a spoken context.

Word skipping in deaf and hearing bilinguals: Cognitive control over eye movements remains with increased perceptual span

AbstractDeaf readers may have larger perceptual spans than ability-matched hearing native English readers, allowing them to read more efficiently (Belanger & Rayner, 2015). To further test the hypothesis that deaf and hearing readers have different perceptual spans, the current study uses eye-movement data from two experiments in which deaf American Sign Language–English bilinguals, hearing native English speakers, and hearing Chinese–English bilinguals read semantically unrelated sentences and answered comprehension questions after a proportion of them. We analyzed skip rates, fixation times, and accuracy on comprehension questions. In addition, we analyzed how lexical properties of words affected skipping behavior and fixation durations. Deaf readers skipped words more often than native English speakers, who skipped words more often than Chinese–English bilinguals. Deaf readers had shorter first-pass fixation times than the other two groups. All groups’ skipping behaviors were affected by lexical frequency. Deaf readers’ comprehension did not differ from hearing Chinese–English bilinguals, despite greater skipping and shorter fixation times. Overall, the eye-tracking findings align with Belanger’s word processing efficiency hypothesis. Effects of lexical frequency on skipping behavior indicated further that eye movements during reading remain under cognitive control in deaf readers.

THE COHERENCE AND UNITY IN STUDENTS’ WRITING DESCRIPTIVE TEXT (Descriptive Study at Private Junior High School in East Jakarta)

<p><strong>Abstract: </strong>This study was conducted to analyze the coherence and unity of the paragraphs written by students in their descriptive text. The method of the study was descriptive analysis by using content analysis. The result of the research stated that: (1) the students’ writings are coherent. It could be seen in pronoun, anaphora, cataphora, repetition key noun, transition signal, and logical order are well organized. (2) the texts are not unified. They were able to state a clear topic discussion in the first sentence but couldn’t maintain the topic in all of the supporting sentences. They were lack of related supporting details in discussing the topic of the paragraph. The common errors made by the students are from the inconsistent topic, not logical order sentences, redundant sentences, and unrelated sentences. It can be concluded that the students were success to make coherent paragraphs, but they were failed to make unified paragraphs.</p><p><strong>Keywords</strong>: coherence; unity; students’ writing Descriptive text.</p>

To catch a Snitch: Brain potentials reveal variability in the functional organization of (fictional) world knowledge during reading.

We harnessed the temporal sensitivity of event-related brain potentials (ERPs) alongside individual differences in Harry Potter (HP) knowledge to investigate the extent to which the availability and timing of information relevant for real-time written word processing are influenced by variation in domain knowledge. We manipulated meaningful (category, event) relationships between sentence fragments about HP stories and their sentence final words. During word-by-word reading, N400 amplitudes to (a) linguistically supported and (b) unsupported but meaningfully related, but not to (c) unsupported, unrelated sentence endings varied with HP domain knowledge. Single-trial analyses revealed that only the N400s to linguistically supported (but not to either type of unsupported) sentence-final words varied as a function of whether individuals knew (or could remember) the correct (supported) ending for each HP "fact." We conclude that the quick availability of information relevant for word understanding in sentences is a function of individuals' knowledge of both specific facts and the domain to which the facts belong. During written sentence processing, as domain knowledge increases, it is clearly evident that individuals can make use of the relevant knowledge systematically organized around themes, events, and categories in that domain, to the extent they have it.

LEXICAL COHESION IN NEWS ARTICLE ON THE JAKARTA POST ENTITLED “WHY FULL DAY SCHOOL WILL NOT WORK IN INDONESIA?”

The purpose of this study is to investigate what types and what is mostly found of lexical cohesion in the news article. Written texts are different from spoken interaction. To make the readers know what the writers mean, the writers should compose a well formed of the text. Cohesion is an aspect of a text, which entails that the letter forms a unified whole, rather than unrelated sentences. Cohesion plays a special role in the creation of text. There are two main types of cohesion there are grammatical cohesion and lexical cohesion. Grammatical cohesion consist of reference, ellipsis, substitution and conjunction, whereas lexical cohesion has two aspects, they are reiteration and collocation. Lexical cohesion refers to the way related words are chosen to link elements of a text. This study used qualitative research as the research method. Based on the result of this study, it can be concluded that there are six types of lexical cohesion and the types of lexical cohesion which is mostly used by the writer is repetition but this article is lack of antonym. And the use of lexical cohesion in writing a text can deliver the meaning of whole text itself for the readers easily and clearly.

The Effect of Simulated Interaural Frequency Mismatch on Speech Understanding and Spatial Release From Masking.

The binaural-hearing system interaurally compares inputs, which underlies the ability to localize sound sources and to better understand speech in complex acoustic environments. Cochlear implants (CIs) are provided in both ears to increase binaural-hearing benefits; however, bilateral CI users continue to struggle with understanding speech in the presence of interfering sounds and do not achieve the same level of spatial release from masking (SRM) as normal-hearing listeners. One reason for diminished SRM in CI users could be that the electrode arrays are inserted at different depths in each ear, which would cause an interaural frequency mismatch. Because interaural frequency mismatch diminishes the salience of interaural differences for relatively simple stimuli, it may also diminish binaural benefits for spectral-temporally complex stimuli like speech. This study evaluated the effect of simulated frequency-to-place mismatch on speech understanding and SRM. Eleven normal-hearing listeners were tested on a speech understanding task. There was a female target talker who spoke five-word sentences from a closed set of words. There were two interfering male talkers who spoke unrelated sentences. Nonindividualized head-related transfer functions were used to simulate a virtual auditory space. The target was presented from the front (0°), and the interfering speech was either presented from the front (colocated) or from 90° to the right (spatially separated). Stimuli were then processed by an eight-channel vocoder with tonal carriers to simulate aspects of listening through a CI. Frequency-to-place mismatch ("shift") was introduced by increasing the center frequency of the synthesis filters compared with the corresponding analysis filters. Speech understanding was measured for different shifts (0, 3, 4.5, and 6 mm) and target-to-masker ratios (TMRs: +10 to -10 dB). SRM was calculated as the difference in the percentage of correct words for the colocated and separated conditions. Two types of shifts were tested: (1) bilateral shifts that had the same frequency-to-place mismatch in both ears, but no interaural frequency mismatch, and (2) unilateral shifts that produced an interaural frequency mismatch. For the bilateral shift conditions, speech understanding decreased with increasing shift and with decreasing TMR, for both colocated and separate conditions. There was, however, no interaction between shift and spatial configuration; in other words, SRM was not affected by shift. For the unilateral shift conditions, speech understanding decreased with increasing interaural mismatch and with decreasing TMR for both the colocated and spatially separated conditions. Critically, there was a significant interaction between the amount of shift and spatial configuration; in other words, SRM decreased for increasing interaural mismatch. A frequency-to-place mismatch in one or both ears resulted in decreased speech understanding. SRM, however, was only affected in conditions with unilateral shifts and interaural frequency mismatch. Therefore, matching frequency information between the ears provides listeners with larger binaural-hearing benefits, for example, improved speech understanding in the presence of interfering talkers. A clinical procedure to reduce interaural frequency mismatch when programming bilateral CIs may improve benefits in speech segregation that are due to binaural-hearing abilities.

An Event-related Potentials on the Euphemism Construal Mechanism in Literary Expression

The purpose of this paper is to clarify whether there is any electrophysiological evidence that supports reality. Here we introduce ERP technology to verify the “connotation and denotation correlation heritage model” for Chinese semantic rhetoric construal mechanism from the perspectives of Chinese antiphase, metonymy, euphemism, pun, and exaggeration, etc. It is proved with the results that there is a psychological reality for the probability feature extraction in the process of these Chinese rhetoric construal. In the average literal sense, the response to the probe word spends significant shorter time than that to unrelated sentence. While for probe words in the euphemistic text, there is no significant difference in the grand average response time conditions.

The effect of verbal working memory load in speech/gesture integration processing

The effect of verbal working memory load in speech/gesture integration processing

An Empirical Analysis of NMT-Derived Interlingual Embeddings and Their Use in Parallel Sentence Identification

End-to-end neural machine translation has overtaken statistical machine translation in terms of translation quality for some language pairs, specially those with large amounts of parallel data. Besides this palpable improvement, neural networks provide several new properties. A single system can be trained to translate between many languages at almost no additional cost other than training time. Furthermore, internal representations learned by the network serve as a new semantic representation of words -or sentences- which, unlike standard word embeddings, are learned in an essentially bilingual or even multilingual context. In view of these properties, the contribution of the present work is two-fold. First, we systematically study the NMT context vectors, i.e. output of the encoder, and their power as an interlingua representation of a sentence. We assess their quality and effectiveness by measuring similarities across translations, as well as semantically related and semantically unrelated sentence pairs. Second, as extrinsic evaluation of the first point, we identify parallel sentences in comparable corpora, obtaining an F1=98.2% on data from a shared task when using only NMT context vectors. Using context vectors jointly with similarity measures F1 reaches 98.9%.

Examining misses in reading aloud repeated words.

This study examined a novel task in which participants read aloud passages shown two words per line on a computer screen. There were four different passages, all of which included unrelated sentences, with each sentence containing one test word. The passages differed only in the text type (prose, scrambled) and in the identity of the test word (the, one). The word the is a common function word, whereas one is a less common content word. The test word was repeated in half of the sentences at the end of one line and at the start of the following line. Many more misses in reading aloud occurred on the than on one, especially for prose passages; almost all misses involved repeated words. These results were interpreted in terms of hypotheses and models that have been proposed for the letter-detection task. Specifically, it is concluded that reading aloud is influenced by structural processes that differentiate between function and content words.

Print exposure modulates the effects of repetition priming during sentence reading.

Individual readers vary greatly in the quality of their lexical representations, and consequently in how quickly and efficiently they can access orthographic and lexical knowledge. This variability may be explained, at least in part, by individual differences in exposure to printed language, because practice at reading promotes the development of stronger reading skills. In the present eyetracking experiment, we tested the hypothesis that the efficiency of word recognition during reading improves with increases in print exposure, by determining whether the magnitude of the repetition-priming effect is modulated by individual differences in scores on the author recognition test (ART). Lexical repetition of target words was manipulated across pairs of unrelated sentences that were presented on consecutive trials. The magnitude of the repetition effect was modulated by print exposure in early measures of processing, such that the magnitude of the effect was inversely related to scores on the ART. The results showed that low levels of print exposure, and thus lower-quality lexical representations, are associated with high levels of difficulty recognizing words, and thus with the greatest room to benefit from repetition. Furthermore, the interaction between scores on the ART and repetition suggests that print exposure is not simply an index of general reading speed, but rather that higher levels of print exposure are associated with an enhanced ability to access lexical knowledge and recognize words during reading.

An fMRI study investigating effects of conceptually related sentences on the perception of degraded speech

Prior research has shown that the perception of degraded speech is influenced by within sentence meaning and recruits one or more components of a frontal–temporal–parietal network. The goal of the current study is to examine whether the overall conceptual meaning of a sentence, made up of one set of words, influences the perception of a second acoustically degraded sentence, made up of a different set of words. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), we presented an acoustically clear sentence followed by an acoustically degraded sentence and manipulated the semantic relationship between them: Related in meaning (but consisting of different content words), Unrelated in meaning, or Same. Results showed that listeners' word recognition accuracy for the acoustically degraded sentences was significantly higher when the target sentence was preceded by a conceptually related compared to a conceptually unrelated sentence. Sensitivity to conceptual relationships was associated with enhanced activity in middle and inferior frontal, temporal, and parietal areas. In addition, the left middle frontal gyrus (LMFG), left inferior frontal gyrus (LIFG), and left middle temporal gyrus (LMTG) showed activity that correlated with individual performance on the Related condition. The superior temporal gyrus (STG) showed increased activation in the Same condition suggesting that it is sensitive to perceptual similarity rather than the integration of meaning between the sentence pairs. A fronto-temporo-parietal network appears to consolidate information sources across multiple levels of language (acoustic, lexical, syntactic, semantic) to build, and ultimately integrate conceptual information across sentences and facilitate the perception of a degraded speech signal. However, the nature of the sources of information that are available differentially recruit specific regions and modulate their activity within this network. Implications of these findings for the functional architecture of the network are considered.

Language recovery in aphasia following implicit structural priming

Language recovery in aphasia following implicit structural priming

Practice makes perfect: Training the interpretation of emotional ambiguity

The interpretation of emotionally ambiguous words, sentences, or scenarios can be altered through training procedures that are collectively called cognitive bias modification for interpretation (CBM-I). In three experiments, we systematically manipulated the nature of the training in order to discriminate between emotional priming and ambiguity resolution accounts of training effects. In Experiment 1 participants completed word fragments that were consistently related to either a negative or benign interpretation of an ambiguous sentence. In a subsequent semantic priming task they demonstrated an interpretation bias, in that they were faster to identify relatedness of targets that were associated with the training-congruent meaning of an emotionally ambiguous homograph. We then manipulated the training sentences to show that interpretation bias was eliminated when participants simply completed valenced word fragments following unrelated sentences (Experiment 2), or completed fragments that were related to emotional but unambiguous sentences (Experiment 3). Only when participants were required to actively resolve emotionally ambiguous sentences during training did changes in interpretation emerge at test. Findings suggest that CBM-I achieves its effects by altering a production rule that aids the selection of meaning from emotionally ambiguous alternatives, in line with an ambiguity resolution account.

Le Tram 83 par Fiston Mwanza Mujila

Reviews 203 owns a bar called “Le Retour d’Ulysse”; Tim runs a souvenir shop; Mary works in the grocery store; and so forth. Their lives intersect frequently in this small town, often in the bar in the evening, and that is mostly where we hear their stories, thanks to the narrator. He is a curious bird, remaining anonymous throughout the novel. He is exceptional in other ways, too, for we know very little about his past, merely that he is French and that he has come up the coast from Long Beach, through Portland. “Ça débute comme un road story, quand on y pense”(15), he remarks; and it is not the only one, because all of the characters have been involved in their own road stories, before each of those stories crested and broke upon Cannon Beach. Other narratives circulate liberally in this fictional world. The narrator reads and rereads Lewis and Clark’s Journals, for instance, in a two-volume edition belonging to Perry. One night in the bar, the talk turns to the Odyssey—yet another road story, come to think of it—and Harry Dean knows enough of it to assure the others that it is a tale that ends in blood. That is just one effect among many others suggesting that this story will likewise end in blood. Catastrophe looms from the beginning of the novel. Pressure builds and will seek release, in an eruption as inevitable (and perhaps just as telluric) as that of Mount St. Helens, which the folks in Cannon Beach remember all too well. Reflecting on the events of the recent past in his motel room, gazing out at the sea day after day, the narrator comes to understand that he is involved in a story, though the question of what role he may play therein—witness or actor, victim or hero—is well beyond his ken. He tells his tale in an engaging, complaisant, dilatory manner, one that seems unconcerned until we realize that he is deferring an event which is far more painful to tell.“Dans mon idée, tout ça, c’est de la faute de l’océan”(86), he says. In a sense, maybe he’s right, because the ocean (like narrative itself) involves forces that are irresistible, in which even the strongest of swimmers may founder; and once you submerge yourself in it (again like narrative) you are necessarily a part of it, whatever else you may wish to be. University of Colorado Warren Motte Mujila, Fiston Mwanza. Le Tram 83. Paris: Métailié, 2014. ISBN 9-782864-249597 . Pp. 200. 16 a. The form and content of this work create a contemporary Africa that is fragmented and chaotic. “La Ville-Pays” and the “Arrière-Pays” are all that is left of the country (unnamed) after cycles of colonization, exploitation of its mineral riches, revolution and civil war.The novel opens with the following statement:“Au commencement était la pierre” (9). The vast deposits of precious stones underlying the city are the first cause of this turbulent world of possession and dispossession. The story begins at the railway station, undertaken then abandoned under the colonial regime, now a mass of twisted metal. This image returns as a leitmotiv. The epicenter of the Ville-Pays is a bar-cabaret, the Tram 83. There is no concrete description of this place, rather a texture of blurred, constant motion, composed of unfinished images and intersecting lines of unrelated sentences. The plotline, summary biographies and intercalated récits are constantly punctuated by the solicitation of the prostitutes, “Vous avez l’heure?” and brief advertisements of their specialties. The epigraph links prostitution to “la pierre” and the Fall: “tu gagneras ta vie à la sueur de tes seins.” The voice of an ironic omniscient narrator colors all, including the multiple biblical quotes, sustaining the sense that we are entering a counter-world, dehumanized and dehumanizing. Mujila invents bizarre, jolting or poetic juxtapositions of terms; the voices without bodies, or body parts (especially breasts) without persons proliferate. The fauna in the Tram are repeatedly enumerated, like a litany of anti-saints: les affreux, the miners and the students perpetually...

Selective Attention in L1 Korean and L2 English Sentence Listening as Reflected by Word Recall

In this study, we investigated second language learners’ attentional patterns in native (L1) and nonnative (L2) language processing as reflected in the grammatical and positional properties of words that they recalled after listening to a group of sentences. Ninety Korean high school students at three different L2 English proficiency levels listened to a list of unrelated sentences and then wrote down all the words that they could recall. It was found that the participants recalled nouns most frequently in both L1 and L2 sentences. The tendency was much greater in L2 listening than in L1 listening. Most notably, advanced learners were better able to recall verbs than lower-level groups while differences in the other categories were not very significant. Moreover, advanced learners tended to substitute semantically related ones for the target words, but less proficient learners more often supplied phonetically similar variants. These results provide support for the idea that L2 learners’ attentional patterns considerably vary as a function of proficiency, and so awareness raising and focused practice can facilitate their adaptation of attention required for the development of L2 listening ability.

Facilitating perception of speech in babble through conceptual relationships

Speech perception is influenced by many different sources of information. Here we examine whether auditorily presented conceptual/semantic information facilitates the perception of degraded speech. To this end, acoustically clear sentences preceded sentences presented in speech babble. These sentence pairs were either conceptually related, conceptually unrelated, or the same. The conceptually related and unrelated sentence pairs did not share any content words. Behavioral results show the highest accuracy for the same condition, followed by the conceptually related condition. The worst performance was in the unrelated condition. We then examined the neural substrates of this effect using fMRI. Preliminary results show that a direct contrast between related and unrelated sentences recruits a semantic/conceptual network including fronto-parietal and subcortical areas. The same sentence pair condition showed relatively greater activation in the superior temporal gyrus compared to the other two conditions. These findings suggest that the type of congruency (acoustic-phonetic vs. conceptual) enhances the activation of different functional networks. They also suggest that conceptually related sentences override a reliance on temporal lobe structures typically activated in resolving the perception of degraded speech.

Third Person Anaphoric Reference by Turkish Speakers of French

Rather than being a random sequence of unrelated sentences and clauses, a text must have solid sense relations between its units to be logically and semantically consistent for the reader-hearer. This logical and semantic consistency relating to the construction and configuration of sense in a text is called coherence by text linguists. Coherence is vital for a complete meaning and understanding of a text. As a cohesive device, reference, especially anaphoric reference, has been examined in many studies in recent years. This study aims to investigate anaphoric expressions by Turkish speakers of French in their spontaneous speech. 29 undergraduate students (23 females and 6 males) with 22-25 age range studying at a French language department in Turkey as well as five native speakers of French (three females and two males) with 35-55 age range participated in the study. French dubbed version of an animated cartoon, A Christmas Carol (Mickey et la Magie de Noël), was used as material in this study. The participants were asked to watch and then comment on various themes in the cartoon. Results revealed an overuse of third person pronouns, almost cumulative, in students. Possible reasons of this aggregate usage were then discussed in light of other studies in literature.