PSY 369: Psycholinguistics

PSY 369: Psycholinguistics

Language Comprehension:From sentences to discourse

Comprehension roadmap Last week: Role of syntax

Important for getting on-line comprehension right Doesn’t stick around as long as meaning

This week: Meaning in comprehension

Propositions Embodied representations

Comprehension in Discourse

Propositions How do we represent sentence meaning?

Propositions Two or more concepts (arguments) with a relationship

between them Arguments – particular times, places, people,

objects, etc. (nouns) Relationships - May be used for any kind (e.g.,

actions, attributes, positions, class memberships) Smallest unit of knowledge that can be judged as true or

false Complex sentences consist of combinations of smaller

propositional units

Propositions

A mouse bit a catbit (mouse, cat)

How do we represent sentence meaning? Propositions

Two or more concepts with a relationship between them

Can represent this within a network framework

mouse

bit

cat

agent

patient

relation

Deriving Propositions More complex example:

Children who are slow eat bread that is cold Slow children Children eat bread Bread is cold

relation

subject

time

relationrelation subject

Slow Children

Past Eat

ColdBread

Evidence for propositions Bransford and Franks (1971, 1972) Ratcliff and McKoon (1978)

Evidence for propositions Bransford and Franks (1971, 1972)

Study-Recognition Test Task Read sets of sentences, answered a question about each, later

presented sentences and asked whether they were new (not previously presented) or old (previously presented)

The girl broke the window on the porch. Broke what?The hill was steep. What was?

The cat, running from the barking dog, jumped on the table. From what?The tree was tall. Was what?

The old car climbed the hill. Did what?The cat running from the dog jumped on the table. Where?

The girl who lives next door broke the window on the porch. Lives where?…


Study-Recognition Test Task

All of the sentence came from 4 complex sentences. The full complex sentences were not presented at study.

e.g., The girl who lives next door broke the large window on the porch

…The girl lives next door.

The girl broke the window.The window was on the porch.

The window was large.



Test:

Old - same sentences that were presented at studyNew - based on the propositions in the complex sentence, but not

presented at study (including the full complex sentences)Noncase - based on new propositions not based on the complex

sentences (mixing of propositions across the different situations)



Results:• False recognition of sentences

that they were not previously presented with

• Accurate rejections of noncases (different propositions)

• Unable to distinguish between the old and new cases that came from the same complex sentences

Rec

ogni

tion

conf

iden

ce

0

Yes 5

fours threes twos ones

noncases

# of propositions

Yes 4Yes 3

Yes 1Yes 2

No 2No 3No 4

No 1

No 5

★

newold



Conclusions:

• Participants remembered the basic meaning (propositions)

• Participants spontaneously combined the propositions into larger units

Rec

ogni

tion

conf

iden

ce

0

Yes 5

fours threes twos ones

noncases

# of propositions

Yes 4Yes 3

Yes 1Yes 2

No 2No 3No 4

No 1

No 5

★

newold

Evidence for propositions Ratcliff and McKoon (1978)

Tested 3 hypotheses:1. Sentences stored as single unit

2. Sentences stored as connected propositions

3. Sentences stored verbatim


Study-Recognition Test Task Read sets of 4 unrelated sentences, then presented words (one at a

time) and asked whether the words were in the preceding sentences Dependent Measure: Priming - manipulated the order of the words at

test

The mausoleum that enshrined the tsar overlooked the square.The clutch failed to engage.

The beggar forgave injustice but resented hunger.Satire hurt the incumbent.

hunger Y Saturn N square Y mausoleum Y beetle N


Involves two propositions: P1 [OVERLOOK, MAUSOLEUM, SQUARE] P2 [ENSHRINE, MAUSOLEUM, TSAR].


The beggar forgave injustice but resented hunger.Satire hurt the incumbent.


Predictions (if Hypothesis 2: propositions are the memory representation): If prime word from the same sentence, then should respond faster If prime word from the same proposition, then should respond faster

than if from a different proposition (within the same sentence)


squareclutch

Across sentences Between two propositions in the same sentence

squaretsar

squaremausoleumWithin a single

proposition




squareclutch

671 580 560


Within a single proposition

Results

**111 msec**91 msec

squaremausoleum

squaretsar




squareclutch

671 580 560


Within a single proposition

Results

**20 msec

squaremausoleum

squaretsar




Conclusions Support the hypothesis that propositions are used to organize our

memories of sentences

Inference in comprehension Not all propositions come from the bottom-up

Elaboration - integration of new information with information from long term memory

Memory for the new information improves as it is integrated

Inferences - a proposition (or other representation) drawn by the comprehender

From LTM, not directly from the input

We draw inferences in the course of understanding new events.

The inferences get encoded into our memory of the events.

e.g., drawing inferences of instruments

Bransford, and colleagues (1972, 73)

Inference in comprehension

Saw (or heard): John was trying to fix the birdhouse. He was looking for the nail when his father

came out to watch him and to help him do the work.

Bransford, and colleagues (1972, 73)

Tested: John was using the hammer to fix the birdhouse when his father came out to

watch him and to help him do the work.

Inference in comprehension

was not mentioned in the text, but was inferredResult:

Participants falsely believed that they had heard this sentenceSo memory is not only of propositions in the original sentence, but may also

include additional propositions that may have been inferred

Arguments against propositions Propositions are symbolic and amodal

Referential problem: Disconnected with outside world (symbols referring to

other symbols) Implementation problem:

Has been very difficult to develop a propositional parser Lack of scientific productivity:

More work on what you can do with propositions than is there evidence of the psychological reality of propositions

Lack of a biological foundation: How do biological (or neurological) data constrain

propositions

Embodiment in language Embodied Representations

Perceptual and motor systems play a central role in language production and comprehension

Theoretical proposals from many disciplines Linguistics: Lakoff, Langacker, Talmy Neuroscience: Damasio, Edelman Cognitive psychology: Barsalou, Gibbs, Glenberg,

MacWhinney, Zwaan Computer science: Steels, Feldman

Embodiment in language Embodied Representations

Perceptual and motor systems play a central role in language production and comprehension

Words and sentences are usually grounded to perceptual, motoric, and emotional experiences.

In absence of immediate sensory-motor referents, words and sentences refer to mental models or simulations of experience

Simulation hypothesis Simulation exploits some of the same neural structures

activated during performance, perception, imagining, memory…

Language gives us enough information to simulate

Embodiment in language Evidence for Embodied representations

Stanfied & Zwaan (2001) Presented participants with sentences

John put the pencil in the cup.

John put the pencil in the drawer

Reults: faster at saying horizontal pencil with drawer and vertical pencil with cup

See a picture and ask “does this describe what you read about?”

Embodiment in language Evidence for Embodied Representations

Zwaan et al (2004) Presented participants with a sentence

A: The pitcher hurled the softball at you.

B: You hurled the softball at the pitcher.

Reults: faster at saying ‘Yes’ when sentence matched the pictures (e.g., sentence A and pictures in A, if the ball is small and then gets big, it is coming towards you)

See two pictures and ask “are these pictures the same object”

A B

Summing up The results of sentence comprehension are

meaning representations Some debate over what these representations are Whatever they are, they get integrated with each

other and with existing knowledge from LTM

Discourse Psycholinguistics Traditional Psycholinguistics

Determining what happens when we understand sentences

Broader View How we resolve/understand sentences against the

current discourse representation Sentence comprehension is a process that anchors the

interpretation of the sentence to the representation of the prior text

Documents

PSY 369: Psycholinguistics