Online Processing

Online Processing

37-924-01

Dr. Sharon Armon-Lotem

On-line experimental techniques tap into automatic unconscious processes involved in language comprehension and production and minimize participants‘ reliance on explicit or metalinguistic knowledge.

Presentation by: Vicky Chondrogianni & Theo Marinis

“There are two basic types of time-sensitive measures available to examine language processing: behavioral measures (e.g. comprehension response times and production latencies) and physiological measures (e.g. event-related brain potentials (ERPs) and eye-movements).”

(Clahsen 2008, p. 3)

Behavioral methods

Eye tracking Priming experiments measuring reaction

time (children are usually slower than adults) Cross modal priming Monitoring task (self paced reading/listening)

(Taxler 2005 from Clahsen 2008)

Eye tracking

Linguistic abilities are assessed by tracking and recording eye movements in response to predetermined verbal and visual stimuli

Eye-tracking in language processing studies allows researchers to track and record participants' eye movements when they: Read a sentence Look at the pictures on the computer screen as they listen to

sentences that describe these pictures

Experimental eye tracking data is obtained to investigate:

understanding of spoken languagecognitive processes related to spoken languageability to process and interpret metaphor and figurative languagebody language and lip readingturn taking in conversationsaudio-visual integrationreading behaviortracking-task performancescene exploration strategies

(http://www.tobii.com/eye-tracking-research/global/research/linguistics/)

Preferential looking, Head-turn method

Children (and adults) tend to look at pictures corresponding to a sentence they hear. This can be used to test word comprehension as well as sentence comprehension

She’s kissing the keys/ball

Garden-Path sentences

1. Since Jay always walks a mile seems like a short distance to him.

2. The horse raced past the barn fell

3. As the woman edited the magazine about fishing amused all the reporters

4. As the woman sailed the magazine about fishing amused all the reporters

…magazine about fishing amused all the reporters …noun post noun verb post verb

(Pickering & Traxler, 1998)

“A regression is any eye movement that begins at the right-most point the reader has fixated and leaves the currently fixated region to the left. This definition is therefore only concerned with disruption occurring during initial processing. First-pass time is the sum of the fixations occurring within a region before the first fixation outside the region. If the eye fixates a point beyond the end of a region before fixating the region for the first time, then the first-pass time for that region is zero. (This measure is equivalent to the gaze-duration measure [e.g., Rayner & Duffy, 1986], when the region is a single word.) Total time is the sum of all fixaions in a region.”

“The regressions and total-time data demonstrate that: readers misanalysed both types of ambiguous sentence sentences with implausible object analyses were harder to

process during the critical noun phrase sentences with plausible object analyses were harder to process

during the syntactically disambiguating verb phrase.

The regressions data demonstrate further that readers incrementally interpreted the sentences, because plausibility effects emerged before the point of syntactic disambiguation.

Readers must have initially treated the magazine about fishing as the object of the subordinate verb (with magazine as the head noun).”

Clackson, K. & H. Clahsen 2011. Online processing of cataphoric pronouns by children and adults: Evidence from eye-movements during listening. In: Danis, N., Mesh, K. & H. Sung (eds.), Proceedings of BUCLD 35. Vol.1, Cascadilla Press: Somerville, MA, pp. 119-1 MORIA 17/1

Word monitoring Tasks (Tyler & Marslen-Wilson, 1981)

Monitoring for the word hand in auditory stimulus.

a. John had to go back home. He had fallen out of the swing and had hurt his hand on the ground.

b. John had to sit on the shop. He had lived out of the kitchen and had enjoyed his hand in the mud

c. The on sit top to had John. He lived had and kitchen the out his of had enjoyed hand mud in the

Participants – 5, 7,10 and adults Reaction time was measured Findings – all showed the same gradation The gap was smaller for 5s – limited

processing

Priming tasks - Lexical decision task

Kazanina 2006,

University of Ottawa

“The cortical representations of the prime and target are interconnected or overlap in some way such that activating the representation of the prime automatically activates the representation of the target word.”

(Forster 1999, p. 6)

Cross-Modal Priming

Auditory prime, visual target

Kazanina 2006,


Phonological priming (Marslen-Wilson & Zwiserlood 1985)

Kazanina 2006,


Phonological priming (Marslen-Wilson & Zwiserlood 1985)

Kazanina 2006,


Coreference (McKee, Nicol & McDaniel, 1993(

Alive or not alive? The reindeer knows that the

alligator with the gigantic teeth is looking at himself in an old shiny mirror.

The reindeer knows that the alligator with the gigantic teeth is looking at him in an old shiny mirror.

Traces in relative clauses: antecedent reactivation (Roberts et al 2007 from Clahsen 2008) - The effect of memory span

John saw the peacock to which the small penguin gave the nice birthday present __ in the garden last weekend.

John saw the peacock to which the small penguin gave the nice birthday present __ in the garden last weekend.

(PEACOCK, CARROT)

High span children and adult’s mean reaction time

* *

High memory span – shorted RT to identical target (than unrelated) in the gap position (than control for the related only)

Low memory span – no antecedent reactivation, but no difference in comprehension

Monitoring task (self paced reading/listening)

Participants listen and press a button for the next word/phrase. RT is measured as well as comprehension/judgment at the end.


Self-paced reading (Taxler 2005 from Clahsen 2008) When Sue tripped the girl fell over and the

vase was broken When Sue tripped the table fell over and

the vase was broken When Sue fell the policeman stopped and

helped her up



Presentations

Word monitoring: Montgomery, J. W., & Leonard, L. B. (1998). Real-Time Inflectional Processing by Children with Specific Language Impairment: Effects of Phonetic Substance. J of Speech Language and Hearing Research, 41(6), 1432-1443. HALA 24/1

Montgomery, J. W., & Leonard, L. B. (2006). Effects of Acoustic Manipulation on the Real-Time Inflectional Processing of Children With Specific Language Impairment. J of Speech Language and Hearing Research, 49(6), 1238-1256

Participants: 16 with TLD (Mean age 8;11) and 16 with SLI (Mean age = 9;0)

Word recognition RT Task with enhanced cues for low and high substance markers

Grammaticality Judgment Task for similar items (with and without enhancement)

Acoustic Enhancement

Grammaticality Judgment

CA>SLI Morpheme type

effect Acoustic

enhancement effect for both group with more impact on the low substance item

Specific morpheme effect only for SLI

Word recognition

SLI>CALow>HighINF<STEM (but not for SLI on low substance morphemes)No effect of enhancement

Enhancement help in the off-line task but not in the on-line task

The task demand (fast response) mask the enhancement

Cross modal picture priming: Marinis, T. and van der Lely, H. (2007) On-line processing of wh-questions in children with G-SLI and typically developing children. International Journal of Language & Communication Disorders, 42 (5). pp. 557-582 SANDY 24/1

Self Paced Listening: Vicky Chondrogianni, Theodoros Marinis, and Susan Edwards. 2010. On-line Processing of Articles and Clitic Pronouns by Greek Children with SLI. In Franich, K., Iserman, K, & Keil, L. (Eds.). Proceedings of the 34th Annual Boston University onference on Language Development, Volume 1, 78-89.

The study examines whether Greek children with SLI and a group of age-matched typically-developing (TD) children are sensitive to the omission of articles and clitic pronouns when they listen to sentences in real-time.

Following Tsimpli & Stavrakaki’s (1999) Interpretability Hypothesis a difference is expected between indefinite article vs. clitic pronouns and definite article

20 with TLD (Mean age 7;0) & 13 with SLI (mean age 6;9)

SPL with E-prime The grammatical version was recorded

and the clitic/article was spliced out to generate the ungrammatical ones

(5) Definite article – subject position

‘Yesterday a dolphin was playing in the sea with the other animals. Late / in the afternoon / (the) dolphin / chased / the fish.’

(6) Definite article – object position

‘Yesterday a kangaroo was playing with a green ball. The kangaroo / kicked / (the) ball / on the pitch / yesterday afternoon.’

(7) Indefinite article – object position

‘Yesterday a naughty fox chased some other animal. The fox / chased / (a) donkey / in the woods / yesterday at midday.’

(8) Accusative direct object clitic pronoun

‘The lion wanted to eat the deer. The deer / got very scared / when / the lion / (it) bit / in the jungle / on the rocks.’

Definite article in subject position

Both groups showed a main effect of Grammaticality (TD children: F1 (1, 26) = 58.074, p < .001; F2 (1,7) = 26.375, p = .001; children with SLI: F1 (1, 12) = 5.626, p < .05; F2 (1,7) = 5.397, p = .053).

Definite article in object position

TD children showed a main effect of Grammaticality in both analyses per subjects and per items (F1(1,26) = 247.376, p <.001; F2(1,7) = 21.804, p <. 01). Children with SLI showed a main effect of Grammaticality only in the analysis per participants (F1 (1,12) = 6.423, p <.05; F2 (1,7) = 2.292, p >.1).

Indefinite article in object position

Both groups showed a main effect of Grammaticality (TD group: F1 (1,26) = 105.969, p <.001; F2 (1,7) = 47.920, p<.001; SLI group: F1 (1,12) = 62.471, p<.001; F2(1,7) = 81.401, p<.001).

Clitic pronoun condition

TD children showed a significant main effect of Grammaticality (F1 (1,26) = 12.189, p <.01; F2 (1,9) = 8.627, p <.01). In contrast, children with SLI showed no main effect of Grammaticality for either the participant or item the analysis (F1 (1,12) = 1.402, p > .1; F2 (1,9) = 1.243, p > .1).

Four major findings

1. Children with TLD are sensitive to grammaticality

2. Children with SLI are sensitive to omission of indefinite article but not to clitic omission as predicted by the Interpretability Hypothesis as well as the Surface Hypothesis

3. Children with SLI are sensitive to definite article omission which is not predicted – why?

Frequency Form-function mapping (consistency) Therapy effect

Comparing across populations

SLI vs. L2 Children vs. adults

Picture matching: Marinis, T. and Chondrogianni, V. (2011) Comprehension of reflexives and pronouns in sequential bilingual children: do they pattern similarly to L1 children, L2 adults, or children with specific language impairment? Journal of Neurolinguistics, 24 (2). pp. 202-212 – IRENA 24/1

Chondrogianni, V & Marinis, T. (2012). Production and processing asymmetries in the acquisition of tense morphology by sequential bilingual children. Bilingualism: Language & Cognition, 15, 5-21

28 monolingual TLD and 39 L2ers with L1 Turkish (6-9)

TEGI – Production (“Here is a teacher. Tell me what she does”).

Word monitoring task for grammatical inflections (Mary really likes to bake. Every day she bake(s) cakes and sometimes cookies and muffins)

Comparison with SLI from Leonard & Montgomery

Accuracy in the production of tense morphemes

Main effect of group and morpheme

-S < -ed for L2 Moderate

correlation between LoE and –s

RT for tensed morphemes

Main effect for:group (L2>L1)morpheme type (non-tensed>tensed)grammaticality (ungrammatical>grammatical)

RT on non-tensed morphemes

No interaction > the two groups were equally good at detecting ungrammaticality

Two groups by scores on TEGI: below and above the criterion score.

For –s : sig dif for age and LoE

For –ed: sig dif for LoE No effect for group for

RT

Word recognition

INF<STEM (but not for SLI on low substance morphemes) – no grammaticality effect

Documents

Online Processing