Depth of processing in language comprehension: not noticing the evidence

Sanford, Anthony J.; Sturt, Patrick

doi:10.1016/s1364-6613(02)01958-7

Cited by 324 publications

(259 citation statements)

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“…This phenomenon of variable specificity in the representation of word meaning is consistent with recent claims that representations are built at a level of detail that is "good enough" for the relevant task (see Ferreira, Bailey, & Ferraro, 2002;Sanford & Sturt, 2002).…”

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confidence: 87%

Linguistic focus and memory: An eye movement study

Ward

Sturt

2007

Memory & Cognition

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We report an eyetracking study investigating the effects of linguistic focus on eye movements and memory during two readings of a text. Across two presentations of the text, a critical word either changed to a semantically related word or remained unchanged. Focus on the critical word was manipulated using context. Eye movements were monitored during reading, and there was a secondary task of detecting the word change. Results indicated that when a word changed, participants were more successful at detecting it when it was in focus. In the second display, there were more fixations and longer viewing times on a changed than on an unchanged word, but only when the critical word was in focus; eye movement data for changed and unchanged words did not differ when the word was not in focus. We suggest that linguistic focus leads to more detailed lexical semantic representations but not more effortful initial encoding of information. Memory & Cognition 2007, 35 (1), 73-86 P. Ward, peter@psy.gla.ac.uk

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confidence: 87%

Linguistic focus and memory: An eye movement study

Ward

Sturt

2007

Memory & Cognition

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“…The research to date suggests that increased analyticity is commonly the trigger for restructuring in heritage grammar. It bears noting that we use the terms "representational economy" and "increased analyticity" without advancing any specific agenda on theories of sentence processing (for example, theories of "shallow" vs. "full" parsing; Ferreira et al 2002;Sanford & Sturt 2002;Clahson & Felser 2006). Our intent is merely to operationalize these notions in such a way as to deliver diverging predictions with respect to levels of feature articulation: a less-well-articulated feature space (i.e., fewer feature values and less structure) would evidence pressures from representational economy, while increased analyticity predicts fully-specified feature values and fully-articulated structure.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

In support of representational economy: Agreement in heritage Spanish

Scontras

Polinsky

Fuchs

2018

Glossa: A Journal of General Linguistics

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This paper investigates the morphosyntax of number and gender agreement in English-dominant heritage speakers of Spanish. Our study builds on the experimental paradigm of agreement attraction developed by Fuchs et al. (2015) and elicits responses to agreement failures to diagnose the potentially-independent contributions of number and gender features. By comparing the structuring of these agreement categories in native and heritage Spanish, we document a case of grammatical divergence: heritage speakers restructure their agreement categories, favoring fewer feature values and less structure. The principled nature of this restructuring demonstrates that the loss of agreement in heritage languages is not superficial or accidental, but rather follows from predictable structural changes.

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“…For instance, there are quite a few reports of incomplete semantic analysis or underspecification (e.g., [4,10]; for review, see [12,36]). Particularly striking are semantic illusions, which indicate that sometimes the full meaning of a word is not incorporated into the interpretation of a sentence, with people happily accepting an incorrect interpretation based on semantic heuristics instead.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…True or False?_, [5]), indicating that semantic illusions are partially dependent on the misdirection of focus. To account for these phenomena, Sanford and Sturt [36] have proposed that if a word fits the global situation very well or when it is out of focus, it will receive incomplete semantic analysis, to such an extent that the actual input can be misconstrued and a semantic anomaly can pass undetected.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Testing the limits of the semantic illusion phenomenon: ERPs reveal temporary semantic change deafness in discourse comprehension

Nieuwland

Berkum

2005

Cognitive Brain Research

121

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In general, language comprehension is surprisingly reliable. Listeners very rapidly extract meaning from the unfolding speech signal, on a word-by-word basis, and usually successfully. Research on Fsemantic illusions_ however suggests that under certain conditions, people fail to notice that the linguistic input simply doesn't make sense. In the current event-related brain potentials (ERP) study, we examined whether listeners would, under such conditions, spontaneously detect an anomaly in which a human character central to the story at hand (e.g., ''a tourist'') was suddenly replaced by an inanimate object (e.g., ''a suitcase''). Because this replacement introduced a very powerful coherence break, we expected listeners to immediately notice the anomaly and generate the standard ERP effect associated with incoherent language, the N400 effect. However, instead of the standard N400 effect, anomalous words elicited a positive ERP effect from about 500 -600 ms onwards. The absence of an N400 effect suggests that subjects did not immediately notice the anomaly, and that for a few hundred milliseconds the comprehension system has converged on an apparently coherent but factually incorrect interpretation. The presence of the later ERP effect indicates that subjects were processing for comprehension and did ultimately detect the anomaly. Therefore, we take the absence of a regular N400 effect as the online manifestation of a temporary semantic illusion. Our results also show that even attentive listeners sometimes fail to notice a radical change in the nature of a story character, and therefore suggest a case of short-lived Fsemantic change deafness_ in language comprehension. D 2005 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Theme: Neural basis of behavior Topic: Cognition

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Depth of processing in language comprehension: not noticing the evidence

Cited by 324 publications

References 29 publications

Linguistic focus and memory: An eye movement study

Linguistic focus and memory: An eye movement study

In support of representational economy: Agreement in heritage Spanish

Testing the limits of the semantic illusion phenomenon: ERPs reveal temporary semantic change deafness in discourse comprehension

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