Using visual world eye-tracking, we examined whether adults (N = 58) and children (N = 37; 3;1–6;3) use linguistic focussing devices to help resolve ambiguous pronouns. Participants listened to English dialogues about potential referents of an ambiguous pronoun he. Four conditions provided prosodic focus marking to the grammatical subject or to the object, which were either additionally it-clefted or not. A reference condition focussed neither the subject nor object. Adult online data revealed that linguistic focussing via prosodic marking enhanced subject preference, and overrode it in the case of object focus, regardless of the presence of clefts. Children’s processing was also influenced by prosodic marking; however, their performance across conditions showed some differences from adults, as well as a complex interaction with both their memory and language skills. Offline interpretations showed no effects of focus in either group, suggesting that while multiple cues are processed, subjecthood and first mention dominate the final interpretation in cases of conflict.
In recent years, evidence has emerged that readers may have access to the meaning of complex words even in the early stages of processing, suggesting that phenomena previously attributed to morphological decomposition may actually emerge from an interplay between formal and semantic effects. The present study adds to this line of work by deploying a forward masked priming experiment with both L1 (Experiment 1) and L2 (Experiment 2) speakers of English. Following recent research trends, we view morphological processing as a gradient process emerging over time. In order to model this, we used a large within-item stimulus design combined with advanced statistical methods such as generalised mixed models (GAMM) and quantile regression (QGAM). L1 GAMM analyses only showed priming for true morpho-semantic relations (the identity ‘bull’, inflected ‘bulls’ and derived conditions ‘bullish’), with no priming observed in the case of other relations (the pseudo-complex ‘bully’ or the stem-embedded ‘bullet’ conditions). Furthermore, with respect to the time-course of effects, we found significant differences between conditions were present from very early on as revealed by the QGAM analyses. In contrast, L2 speakers showed significant facilitation across all five conditions compared to the baseline condition, including the stem-embedded condition, suggesting early L2 processing is only dependant on the form.
During real-time language processing, people rely on linguistic and non-linguistic biases to anticipate upcoming linguistic input. One of these linguistic biases is known as the implicit causality bias, wherein language users anticipate that certain entities will be rementioned in the discourse based on the entity's particular role in an expressed causal event. For example, when language users encounter a sentence like “Elizabeth congratulated Tina…” during real-time language processing, they seemingly anticipate that the discourse will continue about Tina, the object referent, rather than Elizabeth, the subject referent. However, it is often unclear how these reference biases are acquired and how exactly they get used during real-time language processing. In order to investigate these questions, we developed a reference learning model within the PRIMs cognitive architecture that simulated the process of predicting upcoming discourse referents and their linguistic forms. Crucially, across the linguistic input the model was presented with, there were asymmetries with respect to how the discourse continued. By utilizing the learning mechanisms of the PRIMs architecture, the model was able to optimize its predictions, ultimately leading to biased model behavior. More specifically, following subject-biased implicit causality verbs the model was more likely to predict that the discourse would continue about the subject referent, whereas following object-biased implicit causality verbs the model was more likely to predict that the discourse would continue about the object referent. In a similar fashion, the model was more likely to predict that subject referent continuations would be in the form of a pronoun, whereas object referent continuations would be in the form of a proper name. These learned biases were also shown to generalize to novel contexts in which either the verb or the subject and object referents were new. The results of the present study demonstrate that seemingly complex linguistic behavior can be explained by cognitively plausible domain-general learning mechanisms. This study has implications for psycholinguistic accounts of predictive language processing and language learning, as well as for theories of implicit causality and reference processing.
Heart Rate variability (HRV) is the beat‐to‐beat time interval of a heart rate, also known as a R‐R interval. HRV can be used to suggest health related problems. Too high of a HRV could suggest an arrhythmia or another sort of neurological issue, while too low of a HRV could suggest chronic stress, pathology, or regression due to age to name a few. Prior research has suggested healthy males have a higher HRV when compared to healthy females. However, no study to date has investigated the day‐to‐day gender differences of heart rate variability in college age students.The purpose of this study is to examine the day‐to‐day differences in HRV for both male and female college age students. College age males and females (n=30) were recruited to participate in this study. Students who were not currently under doctor's care were included. Each subject underwent two electrocardiograms (ECG) administered on two different days within 48 hours. Subjects were positioned in a supine position for both resting single lead ECG's. Two minutes of cardiac cycles were used to evaluate cardiac rhythms. HRV was measured utilizing Power Lab/ECG Analysis Add‐On for LabChart 8 (ADInstruments). Statistical analysis included an ANOVA to compare subgroups for day one and day two, and a Wilcoxon matched pairs test to compare day one to day two as a whole. Statistical significance was set at P < 0.05. Based on the current results, we conclude there is no difference for day‐to‐day HRV in college‐aged students as a whole. Additionally, there is also no significant difference in HRV between gender subgroups.Support or Funding InformationNo grants were obtained
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