Rapid Expectation Adaptation during Syntactic Comprehension

Abstract

When we read or listen to language, we are faced with the challenge of inferring intended messages from noisy input. This challenge is exacerbated by considerable variability between and within speakers. Focusing on syntactic processing (parsing), we test the hypothesis that language comprehenders rapidly adapt to the syntactic statistics of novel linguistic environments (e.g., speakers or genres). Two self-paced reading experiments investigate changes in readers’ syntactic expectations based on repeated exposure to sentences with temporary syntactic ambiguities (so-called “garden path sentences”). These sentences typically lead to a clear expectation violation signature when the temporary ambiguity is resolved to an a priori less expected structure (e.g., based on the statistics of the lexical context). We find that comprehenders rapidly adapt their syntactic expectations to converge towards the local statistics of novel environments. Specifically, repeated exposure to a priori unexpected structures can reduce, and even completely undo, their processing disadvantage (Experiment 1). The opposite is also observed: a priori expected structures become less expected (even eliciting garden paths) in environments where they are hardly ever observed (Experiment 2). Our findings suggest that, when changes in syntactic statistics are to be expected (e.g., when entering a novel environment), comprehenders can rapidly adapt their expectations, thereby overcoming the processing disadvantage that mistaken expectations would otherwise cause. Our findings take a step towards unifying insights from research in expectation-based models of language processing, syntactic priming, and statistical learning.

Functional differences between statistical learning with and without explicit training

“…For example, repeated exposure to sentences with temporary syntactic ambiguities (often referred to as "garden path sentences") can reduce or even reverse the processing disadvantage associated with these unexpected structures (Fine et al 2013). These effects are thought to occur as language users rapidly compute and converge toward the statistical contingencies of the current linguistic environment, allowing them to anticipate linguistic events according to their probability and minimizing surprises.…”

Perception in a Variable but Structured World: The Case of Speech Perception

“…C. MacDonald et al, 1994;Staub & Clifton, 2006;Trueswell & Tanenhaus, 1994). Similarly, word-by-word processing times in reading have been found to increase with decreasing contextual predictability of the word (specifically, its contextual surprisal, Demberg & Keller, 2008;Hale, 2001; S. L. Frank & Bod, 2011) As is the case for phonetic categories, these statistics vary across situations (see Fine, Jaeger, et al, 2013, for references). Thus, the same argument that we have made here for phonetic categorization-that effective comprehension relies on good estimates of the talker's generative model and deviations from expected statistics will lead to changes in comprehension-applies to syntactic processing, as well.…”

“…Thus, the same argument that we have made here for phonetic categorization-that effective comprehension relies on good estimates of the talker's generative model and deviations from expected statistics will lead to changes in comprehension-applies to syntactic processing, as well. Indeed, recent studies show that comprehenders do adapt to changes in the statistics of syntactic structures, with repeated exposure to a previously rare structure facilitating processing of that structure (Fine, Qian, Jaeger, & Jacobs, 2010;Fine, Jaeger, et al, 2013;Jaeger & Snider, 2013;Kaschak & Glenberg, 2004).…”

“…For example, the questions raised by the ideal adapter framework also speak to the debate between episodic, exemplarbased or more abstract phonetic representations (Johnson, 1997b;Goldinger, 1998;McClelland & Elman, 1986;Norris & McQueen, 2008;Pierrehumbert, 2003). They also relate to the acquisition of phonetic categories, which can be seen as another type of distributional learning problem (Maye, Werker, & Gerken, 2002;McMurray, Aslin, & Toscano, 2009;Vallabha et al, 2007), and to language processing at higher levels (e.g., Fine, Jaeger, Farmer, & Qian, 2013;Grodner & Sedivy, 2011;Kamide, 2012;Kurumada, Brown, & Tanenhaus, 2012;Kurumada, Brown, Bibyk, Pontillo, & Tanenhaus, 2014). We also discuss recent research that has found adaptive behavior in language processing above the level of speech perception.…”

Influence du contexte expérimental sur l’interprétation des anaphores pronominales en français

“…Si nos résultats ne permettent pas de décider quel contexte est le plus réaliste, ils nous renseignent en revanche sur le rôle des formes alternatives dans le traitement du langage. Ils montrent en effet à quel point les locuteurs peuvent rapidement adapter leur préférence d'interprétation à la présence de formes alternatives dans le contexte (voir aussi, Fine, Jaeger, Farmer & Qian, 2013). La cooccurrence dans le même contexte de formes alternatives (ici, une forme pronominale réduite et une forme accentuée) modifie leur instruction de traitement et on peut présumer que cet effet s'observe aussi bien dans un contexte expérimental qu'écologique.…”