Adapt retrieval rules and inhibit already-existing world knowledge: adjustment of world knowledge’s activation level in auditory sentence comprehension

Abstract

We tested whether the proportion of typical sentences in a series of auditory sentences would lead people to adjust the strength of activation of world knowledge (i.e., retrieval rules adaptation) during comprehension. This issue is important because it could help clarify how people efficiently integrate different memory information in cognitive processes. In two experiments, all task materials were presented to participants as a whole package, in which proportions of typical sentences, with typical final locations, varied under different conditions. In Experiment 1, the proportion of typical sentences was equal to the atypical ones (i.e., 50% typical vs. 50% atypical), whereas in Experiment 2, the proportion of typical sentences was not equal to the atypical ones (i.e., 75% typical vs. 25% atypical, and 25% typical vs. 75% atypical). Visual fixation on the critical area in a visual display before/while hearing the critical words was compared across conditions, and across-condition differences were used as an index of the adaptation of the retrieval rule in the activation of world knowledge. The findings indicated that the adaptation of retrieval rules occurs throughout the whole test package of sentence comprehension, and the strength of activation of world knowledge in sentence comprehension can be adjusted.

Strategic Processing of Gender Stereotypes in Sentence Comprehension: An ERP Study

“…The results of the present study, together with those of a previous study that examined how a strategic control affects the use of world knowledge related to typical or atypical locations for a given object or event [ 22 ], provide evidence that the use of world knowledge can be under strategic control during sentence processing. Note that although the present study has examined how processing strategies and sentence contexts interact and, thus, influence the access and use of social knowledge such as gender stereotypes for role nouns, the sentence context information was provided by a kinship term, a very particular word.…”

“…The proportion paradigm has been shown to be a particularly useful tool for directly investigating strategic control processes during language comprehension (e.g., [ 18 , 19 , 20 , 21 , 22 , 23 , 24 , 25 , 26 , 27 ]). For example, in a self-paced reading experiment, Brothers et al [ 18 ] manipulated not only the predictability of the critical word (CW) (predictable vs. unpredictable), such as “spider” in (1a) and (1b), but also the global validity of lexical prediction, that is, the proportion of sentences in which the CWs were predictable (87.5%, 50%, or 12.5%).…”

“…In the present study, we investigated whether and to what extent the use of social knowledge, such as gender stereotypes, is sensitive to top–down strategies during sentence comprehension, an issue that has not been well addressed (see [ 22 ] for an influence of strategic control on the use of world knowledge related to typical or atypical locations for a given object or event). We therefore used a consistency proportion paradigm.…”