What if they're just not that into you (or your experiment)? On motivation and psycholinguistics

Christianson, Kiel; Dempsey, Jack; Tsiola, Anna; Goldshtein, Maria

doi:10.1016/bs.plm.2022.03.002

Cited by 15 publications

(13 citation statements)

References 94 publications

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“…In other words, domain knowledge can influence not only how readers access meaning but also how they use this meaning in the moment. These findings are in line with recent discussions of how variables like motivational states, goals, and task demands, among others, can shape different "modes" of language comprehension, including the extent to which individuals engage in relatively active compared to more passive comprehension (Christianson et al, 2022;Federmeier, 2021;Huettig & Ferreira, 2022).…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 89%

Nuances of knowing: Brain potentials reveal implicit effects of domain knowledge on word processing in the absence of sentence‐level knowledge

Troyer,

Kutas,

Batterink

et al. 2023

Psychophysiology

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In previous work investigating the relationship between domain knowledge (of the fictional world of Harry Potter) and sentence comprehension, domain knowledge had a greater impact on electrical brain potentials to words which completed sentences about fictional “facts” participants reported they did not know compared to facts they did. This suggests that individuals use domain knowledge continuously to activate relevant/related concepts as they process sentences, even with only partial knowledge. As that study relied on subjective reports, it may have resulted in response bias related to an individual's overall domain knowledge. In the present study, we therefore asked participants with varying degrees of domain knowledge to complete sentences describing fictional “facts” as an objective measure of sentence‐level knowledge. We then recorded EEG as the same individuals (re‐)read the same sentences, including their appropriate final words, and sorted these according to their objective knowledge scores. Replicating and extending Troyer et al., domain knowledge immediately facilitated access to meaning for unknown words; greater domain knowledge was associated with reduced N400 amplitudes for unknown words. These findings constitute novel evidence for graded preactivation of conceptual knowledge (e.g., at the level of semantic features and/or relations) in the absence of lexical prediction. Knowledge also influenced post‐N400 memory/integration processes for these same unknown words; greater domain knowledge was associated with enhanced late positive components (LPCs), suggesting that deeper encoding during language processing may be engendered when knowledgeable individuals encounter an apparent gap in their knowledge.

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 89%

Nuances of knowing: Brain potentials reveal implicit effects of domain knowledge on word processing in the absence of sentence‐level knowledge

Troyer,

Kutas,

Batterink

et al. 2023

Psychophysiology

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show abstract

“…Although some studies have shown adaptation over longer periods of time and experimental sessions (e.g., Wells et al, 2009), more work is needed to determine when the tracking of local structural statistics is actually implemented in real-time reading. In addition, motivational factors may influence how quickly readers update their real-time expectations with local priors (Chaves & Malone, 2022; Christianson et al, 2022). Motivational factors could also explain why the inverse frequency effect does not seem to hold for sentence completion data between Experiments 2 and 3, since readers may be demotivated by the greater difficulty of reduced relative structures compared with sentential complement structures.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…A combination of measures is important since recent work has cast doubt on self-paced reading’s ability to capture these differences (Prasad & Linzen, 2019; Yan & Jaeger, 2020; cf. Christianson et al, 2022). Experiment 1 nevertheless uses self-paced reading and question answering to first replicate syntactic adaptation towards “and” coordination garden path structures, as well as syntactic adaptation away from their alternative in a second block.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Syntactic adaptation leads to updated knowledge for local structural frequencies

Dempsey

Liu

Christianson

2023

Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology

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Syntactic adaptation has been shown to occur for various temporarily ambiguous structures wherein an initially unexpected resolution becomes easier to process after repeated exposure. More controversial and less replicated is the claim that this adaptation toward a locally frequent structure occurs due to a strategic shifting of expectations to match short-term statistical regularities such that readers adapt away from the a priori more frequent structure. Experiment 1 replicates the initial adaptation toward a coordination garden path structure and away from a compound NP structure using self-paced reading; however, this paradigm has been criticized for its low reliability for detecting such small effects. To this end, Experiments 2 and 3 use a combination of self-paced reading and sentence completion tasks to replicate initial adaptation toward both coordination and reduced relative garden path structures and show evidence for a preference for these structures over their a priori more frequent alternatives. Together, these data reveal that participants may be tracking local structural statistics in real-time; however, they may not be able to rapidly use that information to update processing behaviors.

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“…However, a possible reason for the absence of selective rereading in Paape and Vasishth's study is that the garden-path effects in the German sentences they used may be milder in comparison to the NP/Z ambiguity studied by Frazier and Rayner (1982). 3 If 1 Whether the comprehender actually engages in such deliberate reprocessing may also depend on their motivational state, as noted by Christianson et al (2022). If the reader is not fully attentive or has otherwise mentally disengaged from the text, it is unlikely that they will make a deliberate effort to reanalyze the structure.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 91%

Conscious rereading is confirmatory: Evidence from bidirectional self-paced reading

Paape¹,

Vasishth²

2022

Glossa Psycholinguistics

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Rereading during sentence processing can be confirmatory, in which case it serves to increase readers' certainty in their current interpretation, or it can be revisionary, in which case it serves to correct a misinterpretation (Christianson, Luke, Hussey, & Wochna, 2017). The distinction is particularly relevant in garden-path sentences, which have been argued to trigger revisionary rereading (Frazier & Rayner, 1982). In two web-based experiments that compare garden-path sentences with other linguistic constructions, we investigate deliberate rereading in the recently-proposed bidirectional self-paced reading (BSPR) paradigm (Paape & Vasishth, 2022). Our results show evidence for selective rereading only in very difficult garden-path sentences. Additionally, our results suggest that conscious, selective rereading is confirmatory: Readers find garden-path sentences less rather than more acceptable after selective rereading, suggesting that they reread either to confirm their initial analysis or to confirm the perceived ungrammaticality of the sentence. We discuss the role of conscious awareness in dealing with different types of linguistic inconsistency.

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What if they're just not that into you (or your experiment)? On motivation and psycholinguistics

Cited by 15 publications

References 94 publications

Nuances of knowing: Brain potentials reveal implicit effects of domain knowledge on word processing in the absence of sentence‐level knowledge

Nuances of knowing: Brain potentials reveal implicit effects of domain knowledge on word processing in the absence of sentence‐level knowledge

Syntactic adaptation leads to updated knowledge for local structural frequencies

Conscious rereading is confirmatory: Evidence from bidirectional self-paced reading

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