Sat, 05 Jul 2008 05:40:03 BST CiteULike: briordan's Snedeker http://www.citeulike.org/user/briordan/author/Snedeker CiteULike.org en-gb Copyright © 2004-2008 citeulike.org http://www.citeulike.org/user/briordan/article/2871182 <i>Cognition, Vol. 108, No. 1. (July 2008), pp. 51-68.</i><br /><br />Syntactic priming during language production is pervasive and well-studied. Hearing, reading, speaking or writing a sentence with a given structure increases the probability of subsequently producing the same structure, regardless of whether the prime and target share lexical content. In contrast, syntactic priming during comprehension has proven more elusive, fueling claims that comprehension is less dependent on general syntactic representations and more dependent on lexical knowledge. In three experiments we explored syntactic priming during spoken language comprehension. Participants acted out double-object (DO) or prepositional-object (PO) dative sentences while their eye movements were recorded. Prime sentences used different verbs and nouns than the target sentences. In target sentences, the onset of the direct-object noun was consistent with both an animate recipient and an inanimate theme, creating a temporary ambiguity in the argument structure of the verb (DO e.g., Show the horse the book; PO e.g., Show the horn to the dog). We measured the difference in looks to the potential recipient and the potential theme during the ambiguous interval. In all experiments, participants who heard DO primes showed a greater preference for the recipient over the theme than those who heard PO primes, demonstrating across-verb priming during online language comprehension. These results accord with priming found in production studies, indicating a role for abstract structural information during comprehension as well as production. Give and take: Syntactic priming during spoken language comprehension Malathi Thothathiri Jesse Snedeker doi:10.1016/j.cognition.2007.12.012 Cognition, Vol. 108, No. 1. (July 2008), pp. 51-68. 2008-06-07T12:05:46-00:00 2008 Cognition 108 1 51 68 syntactic-priming http://www.citeulike.org/user/briordan/article/2806185 <i>Child Development, Vol. 79, No. 3. (2008), pp. 594-608.</i><br /><br />Four experiments investigated 4-year-olds’ understanding of adjective-noun compositionality and their sensitivity to statistics when interpreting scalar adjectives. In Experiments 1 and 2, children selected tall and short items from 9 novel objects called pimwits (1-9 in. in height) or from this array plus 4 taller or shorter distractor objects of the same kind. Changing the height distributions of the sets shifted children’s tall and short judgments. However, when distractors differed in name and surface features from targets, in Experiment 3, judgments did not shift. In Experiment 4, dissimilar distractors did affect judgments when they received the same name as targets. It is concluded that 4-year-olds deploy a compositional semantics that is sensitive to statistics and mediated by linguistic labels. Compositionality and Statistics in Adjective Acquisition: 4-Year-Olds Interpret Tall and Short Based on the Size Distributions of Novel Noun Referents David Barner Jesse Snedeker doi:10.1111/j.1467-8624.2008.01145.x Child Development, Vol. 79, No. 3. (2008), pp. 594-608. 2008-05-17T00:13:45-00:00 2008 Child Development 79 3 594 608 bayesian semantic-organization word-learning http://www.citeulike.org/user/briordan/article/2137561 <i>Journal of Memory and Language, Vol. In Press, Corrected Proof</i><br /><br />We report two sets of experiments that demonstrate syntactic priming from comprehension to comprehension in young children. Children acted out double-object and prepositional-object dative sentences while we monitored their eye movements. We measured whether hearing one type of dative as a prime influenced children's online interpretation of subsequent dative utterances. In target sentences, the onset of the direct object noun was consistent with both an animate recipient and an inanimate theme, creating a temporary ambiguity in the argument structure of the verb (double-object e.g., Show the horse the book; prepositional-object e.g., Show the horn to the dog). The first set of experiments demonstrated priming in four-year-old children (M = 4.1), both when the same verb was used in prime and target sentences (Experiment 1a) and when different verbs were used (Experiment 1b). The second set found parallel priming in three-year-old children (M = 3.1). These results indicate that young children employ abstract structural representations during online sentence comprehension. Syntactic priming during language comprehension in three- and four-year-old children Malathi Thothathiri Jesse Snedeker doi:10.1016/j.jml.2007.06.012 Journal of Memory and Language, Vol. In Press, Corrected Proof 2007-12-17T16:58:25-00:00 Journal of Memory and Language In Press, Corrected Proof eye-movements syntactic-priming http://www.citeulike.org/user/briordan/article/2296228 <i></i> Distributional learning of syntactic categories Malathi Thothathiri Jesse Snedeker 2008-01-28T03:28:44-00:00 artificial-grammars cross-situational syntactic-acquisition http://www.citeulike.org/user/briordan/article/2295821 <i>Cognitive Psychology, Vol. 49, No. 3. (November 2004), pp. 238-299.</i><br /><br />Two striking contrasts currently exist in the sentence processing literature. First, whereas adult readers rely heavily on lexical information in the generation of syntactic alternatives, adult listeners in world-situated eye-gaze studies appear to allow referential evidence to override strong countervailing lexical biases (Tanenhaus, Spivey-Knowlton, Eberhard, & Sedivy, 1995). Second, in contrast to adults, children in similar listening studies fail to use this referential information and appear to rely exclusively on verb biases or perhaps syntactically based parsing principles ( Trueswell, Sekerina, Hill, & Logrip, 1999). We explore these contrasts by fully crossing verb bias and referential manipulations in a study using the eye-gaze listening technique with adults (Experiment 1) and five-year-olds (Experiment 2). Results indicate that adults combine lexical and referential information to determine syntactic choice. Children rely exclusively on verb bias in their ultimate interpretation. However, their eye movements reveal an emerging sensitivity to referential constraints. The observed changes in information use over ontogenetic time best support a constraint-based lexicalist account of parsing development, which posits that highly reliable cues to structure, like lexical biases, will emerge earlier during development and more robustly than less reliable cues. The developing constraints on parsing decisions: The role of lexical-biases and referential scenes in child and adult sentence processing Jesse Snedeker John Trueswell doi:10.1016/j.cogpsych.2004.03.001 Cognitive Psychology, Vol. 49, No. 3. (November 2004), pp. 238-299. 2008-01-28T02:38:12-00:00 2004 Cognitive Psychology 49 3 238 299 eye-movements grammatical-number visual-world-paradigm http://www.citeulike.org/user/briordan/article/2295816 <i></i> Cross-situational observation and the semantic bootstrapping hypothesis Jesse Snedeker 2008-01-28T02:35:27-00:00 Center for the Study of Language and Information cross-situational