In the present study we use ERPs to explore the time course of identification and resolution of v... more In the present study we use ERPs to explore the time course of identification and resolution of verb gaps. ERPs were recorded while participants read sentences that contained a verb gap like Ron took/sanded the planks, and Bill the hammer …. Plausibility of the critical words (hammer) that followed the verb gap was manipulated. Relative to the plausible control (preceded by took), ERPs to the critical word in the implausible condition (preceded by sanded) showed an N400, followed by a positivity (P600). ERPs to determiners following gapped verbs showed a negativity between 100 and 300 ms, and a positivity between 300 and 500 ms compared to determiners in non-gapping constructions. These results suggest that the processor recognizes a verb gap and reconstructs the verb information at the earliest possible occasion, and that this reconstruction process is different from the reconstruction of antecedents in other gapping constructions that require movement (e.g., WH gaps).
Event-related potentials (ERPs) were used to address a much debated issue in sentence processing ... more Event-related potentials (ERPs) were used to address a much debated issue in sentence processing research, namely whether one or multiple interpretations are pursued in case of syntactic ambiguities. For example in the syntactically ambiguous fragment ''The man is painting the house and the garage . . . '', 'and' either connects 'the house' and 'the garage', or conjoins two clauses (e.g., ''The man is painting the house and the garage is already finished''). According to serial models, only one syntactic interpretation (the simplest) is pursued first (the first interpretation in the example). If this interpretation is incompatible with subsequently incoming words, the syntactic analysis of the preceding sentence fragment is revised. In contrast, parallel models propose that multiple interpretations of the ambiguity are pursued simultaneously. The two models were tested by comparing ERPs to words that were either ungrammatical, or grammatical but non-preferred continuations of the preceding sentence fragment. In a serial model, these two are not distinguished until after initial revision; in a parallel model, a distinction can be made at an early stage. The results supported a serial model: both with an acceptability judgment and a passive reading task a left lateralized negativity was found for ungrammatical and non-preferred continuations relative to unambiguous grammatical continuations, which indicates that ungrammatical and non-preferred continuations were initially processed in the same way. However, in later time intervals, the ERPs to the ungrammatical continuation showed a posterior positivity (P600), whereas the ERPs to the non-preferred continuation had a more anterior focus, which indicates that they were processed differently. (E. Kaan).
& One of the core aspects of human sentence processing is the ability to detect errors and to rec... more & One of the core aspects of human sentence processing is the ability to detect errors and to recover from erroneous analysis through revision of ambiguous sentences and repair of ungrammatical sentences. In the present study, we used eventrelated potentials (ERPs) to help identify the nature of these processes by directly comparing ERPs to complex ambiguous sentence structures with and without grammatical violations, and to simpler unambiguous sentence structures with and without grammatical violations. In ambiguous sentences, preference of syntactic analysis was manipulated such that in one condition, the structures agreed with the preferred analysis, and in another condition, a nonpreferred but syntactically correct analysis (garden path) was imposed. Nonpreferred ambiguous structures require revision, whereas ungrammatical structures require repair. We found that distinct ERPs reflected different characteristics of syntactic processing. Specifically, our results are consistent with the idea that a positivity with a posterior distribution across the scalp (posterior P600) is an index of syntactic processing difficulty, including repair and revision, and that a frontally distributed positivity (frontal P600) is related to ambiguity resolution and/ or to an increase in discourse level complexity. & D
Reading or hearing a sentence such as 'The little old man knocked out the giant wrestler' demonst... more Reading or hearing a sentence such as 'The little old man knocked out the giant wrestler' demonstrates the crucial role of syntax in normal language understanding. Identifying who did what to whom enables humans to understand the unlikely scenario that is described here. Thus, syntactic information helps us combine the words we hear or read in a particular way such that we can extract the meaning of sentences (see Box 1). Many regard syntax as a cognitive module that is separable from other more general cognitive processes such as memory and attention [1] and whose properties can be distinguished from semantic-conceptual information ('meaning') . In this tradition, some theories of sentence processing propose a separate syntactic processing mechanism that is insensitive to nonsyntactic information . However, alternative views exist . Given these competing views of syntax, one can ask whether there is neurological evidence in favor of a syntactic processing module [1]; that is, is there a specific area in the brain that is specialized for syntax alone?
During reading or listening, language comprehenders construct a mental representation of the obje... more During reading or listening, language comprehenders construct a mental representation of the objects and events mentioned. This model is augmented and modified incrementally as the discourse unfolds. In this paper we focus on the interpretation of bare quantifiers, that is, expressions such as 'two', to investigate the processes underlying the construction and modification of the discourse model. Bare quantifiers are temporarily ambiguous when sentences are processed incrementally. For instance, in 'Three ships were in the port. Two…', 'two' can either refer to a subset of the set just mentioned (e.g.,'two of the three ships'), a different set of the entities mentioned (e.g., 'two other ships'), or a set of different entities (e.g., 'two people'). Data from previous studies, and a current completion study, suggest that the subset interpretation is preferred over the establishment of a different set. The current study aimed to investigate ERP correlates of quantifier interpretation and their timing. Quantifiers that unambiguously signaled the establishment of a new referent elicited a late positive component (900-1500 ms), which we interpret as a Late Positive Complex, related to the difficulty involved in context updating. An additional 500-700ms positivity was elicited only in a subset of readers, suggesting that there are individual differences in quantifier interpretation and the timing thereof.
Event-related potentials were recorded to investigate the effects of direction on number word com... more Event-related potentials were recorded to investigate the effects of direction on number word comparison. Participants saw a sequence of two number words, and next indicated whether the second number word denoted a quantity smaller or larger than the first number word, ...
This study examined the effects of musical experience and training on pitch contour perception am... more This study examined the effects of musical experience and training on pitch contour perception among speakers of a non-tonal language. Fifteen musicians and fifteen non-musicians from various non-tonal language backgrounds were administered pitch contour categorial discrimination baseline task before and after a two-day pitch contour identification training. Although musicians were relatively more accurate than non-musicians in pitch contour identification, their pitch contour abstraction and categorization ability was comparable to that of non-musicians. Pitch contour identification training improved both pitch contour identification and pitch contour abstraction and categorization abilities to the same degree in musicians and non-musicians. In addition, the advantage of the rising pitch contour over the falling pitch contour was observed in both tasks and among both groups of participants. Together, these results suggest that musical experience sharpened the perception of pitch among musicians, but that the auditory systems of both groups are experience-dependent and comparably malleable.
Background: Tone languages such as Thai and Mandarin Chinese use differences in fundamental frequ... more Background: Tone languages such as Thai and Mandarin Chinese use differences in fundamental frequency (F 0 , pitch) to distinguish lexical meaning. Previous behavioral studies have shown that native speakers of a non-tone language have difficulty discriminating among tone contrasts and are sensitive to different F 0 dimensions than speakers of a tone language. The aim of the present ERP study was to investigate the effect of language background and training on the non-attentive processing of lexical tones. EEG was recorded from 12 adult native speakers of Mandarin Chinese, 12 native speakers of American English, and 11 Thai speakers while they were watching a movie and were presented with multiple tokens of low-falling, mid-level and high-rising Thai lexical tones. High-rising or low-falling tokens were presented as deviants among mid-level standard tokens, and vice versa. EEG data and data from a behavioral discrimination task were collected before and after a two-day perceptual categorization training task.
Tone languages such as Thai use pitch differences to distinguish lexical meaning. Previous behavi... more Tone languages such as Thai use pitch differences to distinguish lexical meaning. Previous behavioral studies have reported that naïve listeners can discriminate among lexical tones, but that native language background affects performance. The present study uses ERPs to determine whether native speakers of a tone language (Mandarin Chinese) and of a non-tone language (English) differ in their pre-attentive discrimination among Thai lexical tones, and whether training has a different effect in these two language groups. EEGs were obtained from 10 native Mandarin Chinese speakers, 10 English and 10 Thai speakers in an oddball paradigm: The Thai syllable [k(h)a:] pronounced with a high rising or low falling tone, was presented as an infrequent deviant amidst a standard mid level tone [k(h)a:] syllable, while participants watched a silent movie. Next, the Chinese and English participants completed a 2-day perceptual identification training on the mid level and low falling tones, and returned for a post training EEG. The low falling tone deviant elicited a Mismatch Negativity (MMN) in all participant groups before and after training; the high rising deviant elicited no, or a smaller, MMN, which became larger after training only in the English group. The high rising deviant also elicited a later negativity (350-650 ms) versus the mid level standard, which decreased after training in the Chinese group. These results suggest that non-Thai speakers can pre-attentively discriminate among Thai tones, but are sensitive to different physical properties of the tones, depending on their native language. English speakers are more sensitive to early pitch differences, whereas native speakers of Mandarin Chinese are more sensitive to the (later) pitch contour.
I would like to thank Werner Abraham for suggesting me to write this paper, and Marcel den Dikken... more I would like to thank Werner Abraham for suggesting me to write this paper, and Marcel den Dikken and Jan-Wouter Zwart for their comments on the draft However, it is not clear whether the PP is actually extracted from NP in constructions like (3c). See Kaan (1992) and references cited there UX4 0
In the present study we use ERPs to explore the time course of identification and resolution of v... more In the present study we use ERPs to explore the time course of identification and resolution of verb gaps. ERPs were recorded while participants read sentences that contained a verb gap like Ron took/sanded the planks, and Bill the hammer …. Plausibility of the critical words (hammer) that followed the verb gap was manipulated. Relative to the plausible control (preceded by took), ERPs to the critical word in the implausible condition (preceded by sanded) showed an N400, followed by a positivity (P600). ERPs to determiners following gapped verbs showed a negativity between 100 and 300 ms, and a positivity between 300 and 500 ms compared to determiners in non-gapping constructions. These results suggest that the processor recognizes a verb gap and reconstructs the verb information at the earliest possible occasion, and that this reconstruction process is different from the reconstruction of antecedents in other gapping constructions that require movement (e.g., WH gaps).
Event-related potentials (ERPs) were used to address a much debated issue in sentence processing ... more Event-related potentials (ERPs) were used to address a much debated issue in sentence processing research, namely whether one or multiple interpretations are pursued in case of syntactic ambiguities. For example in the syntactically ambiguous fragment ''The man is painting the house and the garage . . . '', 'and' either connects 'the house' and 'the garage', or conjoins two clauses (e.g., ''The man is painting the house and the garage is already finished''). According to serial models, only one syntactic interpretation (the simplest) is pursued first (the first interpretation in the example). If this interpretation is incompatible with subsequently incoming words, the syntactic analysis of the preceding sentence fragment is revised. In contrast, parallel models propose that multiple interpretations of the ambiguity are pursued simultaneously. The two models were tested by comparing ERPs to words that were either ungrammatical, or grammatical but non-preferred continuations of the preceding sentence fragment. In a serial model, these two are not distinguished until after initial revision; in a parallel model, a distinction can be made at an early stage. The results supported a serial model: both with an acceptability judgment and a passive reading task a left lateralized negativity was found for ungrammatical and non-preferred continuations relative to unambiguous grammatical continuations, which indicates that ungrammatical and non-preferred continuations were initially processed in the same way. However, in later time intervals, the ERPs to the ungrammatical continuation showed a posterior positivity (P600), whereas the ERPs to the non-preferred continuation had a more anterior focus, which indicates that they were processed differently. (E. Kaan).
& One of the core aspects of human sentence processing is the ability to detect errors and to rec... more & One of the core aspects of human sentence processing is the ability to detect errors and to recover from erroneous analysis through revision of ambiguous sentences and repair of ungrammatical sentences. In the present study, we used eventrelated potentials (ERPs) to help identify the nature of these processes by directly comparing ERPs to complex ambiguous sentence structures with and without grammatical violations, and to simpler unambiguous sentence structures with and without grammatical violations. In ambiguous sentences, preference of syntactic analysis was manipulated such that in one condition, the structures agreed with the preferred analysis, and in another condition, a nonpreferred but syntactically correct analysis (garden path) was imposed. Nonpreferred ambiguous structures require revision, whereas ungrammatical structures require repair. We found that distinct ERPs reflected different characteristics of syntactic processing. Specifically, our results are consistent with the idea that a positivity with a posterior distribution across the scalp (posterior P600) is an index of syntactic processing difficulty, including repair and revision, and that a frontally distributed positivity (frontal P600) is related to ambiguity resolution and/ or to an increase in discourse level complexity. & D
Reading or hearing a sentence such as 'The little old man knocked out the giant wrestler' demonst... more Reading or hearing a sentence such as 'The little old man knocked out the giant wrestler' demonstrates the crucial role of syntax in normal language understanding. Identifying who did what to whom enables humans to understand the unlikely scenario that is described here. Thus, syntactic information helps us combine the words we hear or read in a particular way such that we can extract the meaning of sentences (see Box 1). Many regard syntax as a cognitive module that is separable from other more general cognitive processes such as memory and attention [1] and whose properties can be distinguished from semantic-conceptual information ('meaning') . In this tradition, some theories of sentence processing propose a separate syntactic processing mechanism that is insensitive to nonsyntactic information . However, alternative views exist . Given these competing views of syntax, one can ask whether there is neurological evidence in favor of a syntactic processing module [1]; that is, is there a specific area in the brain that is specialized for syntax alone?
During reading or listening, language comprehenders construct a mental representation of the obje... more During reading or listening, language comprehenders construct a mental representation of the objects and events mentioned. This model is augmented and modified incrementally as the discourse unfolds. In this paper we focus on the interpretation of bare quantifiers, that is, expressions such as 'two', to investigate the processes underlying the construction and modification of the discourse model. Bare quantifiers are temporarily ambiguous when sentences are processed incrementally. For instance, in 'Three ships were in the port. Two…', 'two' can either refer to a subset of the set just mentioned (e.g.,'two of the three ships'), a different set of the entities mentioned (e.g., 'two other ships'), or a set of different entities (e.g., 'two people'). Data from previous studies, and a current completion study, suggest that the subset interpretation is preferred over the establishment of a different set. The current study aimed to investigate ERP correlates of quantifier interpretation and their timing. Quantifiers that unambiguously signaled the establishment of a new referent elicited a late positive component (900-1500 ms), which we interpret as a Late Positive Complex, related to the difficulty involved in context updating. An additional 500-700ms positivity was elicited only in a subset of readers, suggesting that there are individual differences in quantifier interpretation and the timing thereof.
Event-related potentials were recorded to investigate the effects of direction on number word com... more Event-related potentials were recorded to investigate the effects of direction on number word comparison. Participants saw a sequence of two number words, and next indicated whether the second number word denoted a quantity smaller or larger than the first number word, ...
This study examined the effects of musical experience and training on pitch contour perception am... more This study examined the effects of musical experience and training on pitch contour perception among speakers of a non-tonal language. Fifteen musicians and fifteen non-musicians from various non-tonal language backgrounds were administered pitch contour categorial discrimination baseline task before and after a two-day pitch contour identification training. Although musicians were relatively more accurate than non-musicians in pitch contour identification, their pitch contour abstraction and categorization ability was comparable to that of non-musicians. Pitch contour identification training improved both pitch contour identification and pitch contour abstraction and categorization abilities to the same degree in musicians and non-musicians. In addition, the advantage of the rising pitch contour over the falling pitch contour was observed in both tasks and among both groups of participants. Together, these results suggest that musical experience sharpened the perception of pitch among musicians, but that the auditory systems of both groups are experience-dependent and comparably malleable.
Background: Tone languages such as Thai and Mandarin Chinese use differences in fundamental frequ... more Background: Tone languages such as Thai and Mandarin Chinese use differences in fundamental frequency (F 0 , pitch) to distinguish lexical meaning. Previous behavioral studies have shown that native speakers of a non-tone language have difficulty discriminating among tone contrasts and are sensitive to different F 0 dimensions than speakers of a tone language. The aim of the present ERP study was to investigate the effect of language background and training on the non-attentive processing of lexical tones. EEG was recorded from 12 adult native speakers of Mandarin Chinese, 12 native speakers of American English, and 11 Thai speakers while they were watching a movie and were presented with multiple tokens of low-falling, mid-level and high-rising Thai lexical tones. High-rising or low-falling tokens were presented as deviants among mid-level standard tokens, and vice versa. EEG data and data from a behavioral discrimination task were collected before and after a two-day perceptual categorization training task.
Tone languages such as Thai use pitch differences to distinguish lexical meaning. Previous behavi... more Tone languages such as Thai use pitch differences to distinguish lexical meaning. Previous behavioral studies have reported that naïve listeners can discriminate among lexical tones, but that native language background affects performance. The present study uses ERPs to determine whether native speakers of a tone language (Mandarin Chinese) and of a non-tone language (English) differ in their pre-attentive discrimination among Thai lexical tones, and whether training has a different effect in these two language groups. EEGs were obtained from 10 native Mandarin Chinese speakers, 10 English and 10 Thai speakers in an oddball paradigm: The Thai syllable [k(h)a:] pronounced with a high rising or low falling tone, was presented as an infrequent deviant amidst a standard mid level tone [k(h)a:] syllable, while participants watched a silent movie. Next, the Chinese and English participants completed a 2-day perceptual identification training on the mid level and low falling tones, and returned for a post training EEG. The low falling tone deviant elicited a Mismatch Negativity (MMN) in all participant groups before and after training; the high rising deviant elicited no, or a smaller, MMN, which became larger after training only in the English group. The high rising deviant also elicited a later negativity (350-650 ms) versus the mid level standard, which decreased after training in the Chinese group. These results suggest that non-Thai speakers can pre-attentively discriminate among Thai tones, but are sensitive to different physical properties of the tones, depending on their native language. English speakers are more sensitive to early pitch differences, whereas native speakers of Mandarin Chinese are more sensitive to the (later) pitch contour.
I would like to thank Werner Abraham for suggesting me to write this paper, and Marcel den Dikken... more I would like to thank Werner Abraham for suggesting me to write this paper, and Marcel den Dikken and Jan-Wouter Zwart for their comments on the draft However, it is not clear whether the PP is actually extracted from NP in constructions like (3c). See Kaan (1992) and references cited there UX4 0
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