CiteULike: briordan's Trueswell

Does language guide event perception? Evidence from eye movements.

Anna Papafragou — 2008-04-18T18:44:24-00:00

Cognition (4 April 2008)

Languages differ in how they encode motion. When describing bounded motion, English speakers typically use verbs that convey information about manner (e.g., slide, skip, walk) rather than path (e.g., approach, ascend), whereas Greek speakers do the opposite. We investigated whether this strong cross-language difference influences how people allocate attention during motion perception. We compared eye movements from Greek and English speakers as they viewed motion events while (a) preparing verbal descriptions or (b) memorizing the events. During the verbal description task, speakers' eyes rapidly focused on the event components typically encoded in their native language, generating significant cross-language differences even during the first second of motion onset. However, when freely inspecting ongoing events, as in the memorization task, people allocated attention similarly regardless of the language they speak. Differences between language groups arose only after the motion stopped, such that participants spontaneously studied those aspects of the scene that their language does not routinely encode in verbs. These findings offer a novel perspective on the relation between language and perceptual/cognitive processes. They indicate that attention allocation during event perception is not affected by the perceiver's native language; effects of language arise only when linguistic forms are recruited to achieve the task, such as when committing facts to memory.

Approaches to Studying World-Situated Language Use: Bridging the Language-As-Action and Language-As-Product Traditions

2008-05-26T16:47:37-00:00

(2004)

Putting lexical constraints in context into the visual-world paradigm

Jared Novick — 2008-05-10T01:37:03-00:00

Cognition, Vol. 107, No. 3. (June 2008), pp. 850-903.

Prior eye-tracking studies of spoken sentence comprehension have found that the presence of two potential referents, e.g., two frogs, can guide listeners toward a Modifier interpretation of Put the frog on the napkin... despite strong lexical biases associated with Put that support a Goal interpretation of the temporary ambiguity (Tanenhaus, M. K., Spivey-Knowlton, M. J., Eberhard, K. M. & Sedivy, J. C. (1995). Integration of visual and linguistic information in spoken language comprehension. Science, 268, 1632-1634; Trueswell, J. C., Sekerina, I., Hill, N. M. & Logrip, M. L. (1999). The kindergarten-path effect: Studying on-line sentence processing in young children. Cognition, 73, 89-134). This pattern is not expected under constraint-based parsing theories: cue conflict between the lexical evidence (which supports the Goal analysis) and the visuo-contextual evidence (which supports the Modifier analysis) should result in uncertainty about the intended analysis and partial consideration of the Goal analysis. We reexamined these put studies (Experiment 1) by introducing a response time-constraint and a spatial contrast between competing referents (a frog on a napkin vs. a frog in a bowl). If listeners immediately interpret on the... as the start of a restrictive modifier, then their eye movements should rapidly converge on the intended referent (the frog on something). However, listeners showed this pattern only when the phrase was unambiguously a Modifier (Put the frog that's on the...). Syntactically ambiguous trials resulted in transient consideration of the Competitor animal (the frog in something). A reading study was also run on the same individuals (Experiment 2) and performance was compared between the two experiments. Those individuals who relied heavily on lexical biases to resolve a complement ambiguity in reading (The man heard/realized the story had been...) showed increased sensitivity to both lexical and contextual constraints in the put-task; i.e., increased consideration of the Goal analysis in 1-Referent Scenes, but also adeptness at using spatial constraints of prepositions (in vs. on) to restrict referential alternatives in 2-Referent Scenes. These findings cross-validate visual world and reading methods and support multiple-constraint theories of sentence processing in which individuals differ in their sensitivity to lexical contingencies.

The developing constraints on parsing decisions: The role of lexical-biases and referential scenes in child and adult sentence processing

Jesse Snedeker — 2008-01-28T02:38:12-00:00

Cognitive Psychology, Vol. 49, No. 3. (November 2004), pp. 238-299.

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 convergence of lexicalist perspectives in psycholinguistics and computational linguistics

J Kim — 2008-01-28T02:27:09-00:00

(2002)

On the give and take between event apprehension and utterance formulation

Lila Gleitman — 2007-10-06T00:13:22-00:00

Journal of Memory and Language, Vol. 57, No. 4. (November 2007), pp. 544-569.

Two experiments are reported which examine how manipulations of visual attention affect speakers' linguistic choices regarding word order, verb use and syntactic structure when describing simple pictured scenes. Experiment 1 presented participants with scenes designed to elicit the use of a perspective predicate (The man chases the dog/The dog flees from the man) or a conjoined noun phrase sentential Subject (A cat and a dog/A dog and a cat). Gaze was directed to a particular scene character by way of an attention-capture manipulation. Attention capture increased the likelihood that this character would be the sentential Subject and altered the choice of perspective verb or word order within conjoined NP Subjects accordingly. These effects occurred even though participants reported being unaware that their visual attention had been manipulated. Experiment 2 extended these results to word order choice within Active versus Passive structures (The girl is kicking the boy/The boy is being kicked by the girl) and symmetrical predicates (The girl is meeting the boy/The boy is meeting the girl). Experiment 2 also found that early endogenous shifts in attention influence word order choices. These findings indicate a reliable relationship between initial looking patterns and speaking patterns, reflecting considerable parallelism between the on-line apprehension of events and the on-line construction of descriptive utterances.