Prediction in the processing of repair disfluencies: Evidence from the visual-world paradigm.

Abstract

Two visual-world eye-tracking experiments investigated the role of prediction in the processing of repair disfluencies (e.g., The chef reached for some salt uh I mean some ketchup…). Experiment 1 showed that listeners were more likely to fixate a critical distractor item (e.g., pepper) during the processing of repair disfluencies compared to the processing of coordination structures (e.g., …some salt and also some ketchup…). Experiment 2 replicated the findings of Experiment 1 for disfluency versus coordination constructions and also showed that the pattern of fixations to the critical distractor for disfluency constructions was similar to the fixation patterns for sentences employing contrastive focus (e.g., …not some salt but rather some ketchup…). The results suggest that similar mechanisms underlie the processing of repair disfluencies and contrastive focus, with listeners generating sets of entities that stand in semantic contrast to the reparandum in the case of disfluencies or the negated entity in the case of contrastive focus.

Linguistic expectation management in online discourse processing: An investigation of Dutch inderdaad 'indeed' and eigenlijk 'actually'

“…However, this early commitment to a referential interpretation of eigenlijk did not result in faster dialogue completions: participants experienced sustained visual competition from alternative dialogue interpretations, and were slower to complete dialogues with the referent that contrasted with the contextually most likely interpretation. This finding is consistent with studies reporting lingering predictions or interpretations, as measured by sustained visual attention to initial interpretations that need to be revised as the linguistic input unfolds (e.g., Corley, 2010;Lowder & Ferreira, 2016). Moreover, it provides further support for the view that delays in processing of implicatures reflect additional processing costs associated with integrating the interpretation of a pragmatic inference with relevant information in the context, rather than the costs associated with computing a pragmatic inference itself (Grodner et al, 2010;Kurumada et al, 2014).…”

“…Linguistic elements that typically occur in conversational interaction and that have been studied experimentally are fillers, such as disfluencies (e.g., uh, uhm), repairs (e.g., oh, I mean) and backchannels (e.g., mhm, uhuh, really, oh). A range of psycholinguistic studies has shown that fillers can modulate listeners' expectations about, and/or facilitate processing of, upcoming input (e.g., Arnold, Hudson Kam, & Tanenhaus, 2007;Bosker, Quené, Sanders, & de Jong, 2014;Corley, MacGregor, & Donaldson, 2007;Corley, 2010;Fox Tree, 2001;Fox Tree & Schrock, 1999;Lowder & Ferreira, 2016). Various scholars argue that fillers also have a conversation-managing function.…”

Anticipating predictability: an ERP investigation of expectation-managing discourse markers in dialogue comprehension

“…To the extent that initial predictions were not discarded, this is consistent with previous studies reporting lingering predictions or interpretations (e.g. Christianson, Hollingworth, Halliwell, & Ferreira, 2001;Corley, 2010;Lowder & Ferreira, 2016;Rommers & Federmeier, 2018b). Another possible explanation for the observed lack of modulation of the N400 by discourse markers is that the unpredictable words were selected from completions of dialogues containing eigenlijk.…”

Effects of speech rate, preview time of visual context, and participant instructions reveal strong limits on prediction in language processing

“…visual world eye-tracking, e.g. Altmann and Kamide, 1999;Arai and Keller, 2013;Kaiser and Trueswell, 2004;Kamide et al, 2003;Kukona et al, 2011;Lowder and Ferreira, 2016). Note that people do not necessarily predict individual words but pre-activate information at various levels of representations (e.g.…”