CiteULike: briordan's lexical-processing

Mismatching Meanings in Brain and Behavior

Liina Pylkkanen — 2008-06-24T11:09:37-00:00

Language and Linguistics Compass, Vol. 0, No. 0. (0), pp. ???-???.

Abstract Natural language interpretation is generally thought to be compositional, that is, the meanings of expressions are a function of the meanings of their parts and of the way the parts are syntactically combined. Theories of the syntax-semantics interface aim to articulate the details of this function. This article discusses a new research program in which psycholinguistic and neurolinguistic experiments on so-called syntax-semantics mismatches are used to elucidate the mechanisms that mediate between structure and meaning.

The Neurocognition of Referential Ambiguity in Language Comprehension

Mante Nieuwland — 2008-06-24T11:08:34-00:00

Language and Linguistics Compass, Vol. 0, No. 0. (0), pp. ???-???.

Abstract Referential ambiguity arises whenever readers or listeners are unable to select a unique referent for a linguistic expression out of multiple candidates. In the current article, we review a series of neurocognitive experiments from our laboratory that examine the neural correlates of referential ambiguity, and that employ the brain signature of referential ambiguity to derive functional properties of the language comprehension system. The results of our experiments converge to show that referential ambiguity resolution involves making an inference to evaluate the referential candidates. These inferences only take place when both referential candidates are, at least initially, equally plausible antecedents. Whether comprehenders make these anaphoric inferences is strongly context dependent and co-determined by characteristics of the reader. In addition, readers appear to disregard referential ambiguity when the competing candidates are each semantically incoherent, suggesting that, under certain circumstances, semantic analysis can proceed even when referential analysis has not yielded a unique antecedent. Finally, results from a functional neuroimaging study suggest that whereas the neural systems that deal with referential ambiguity partially overlap with those that deal with referential failure, they show an inverse coupling with the neural systems associated with semantic processing, possibly reflecting the relative contributions of semantic and episodic processing to re-establish semantic and referential coherence, respectively.

The Right Hemisphere's Contribution to the Processing of Semantic Relationships between Words

Karima Kahlaoui — 2008-06-20T17:07:53-00:00

Language and Linguistics Compass, Vol. 0, No. 0. (0), pp. ???-???.

Abstract For more than a century, language has been assumed to be entirely dependent on left-hemisphere-based processing. However, since the early 1960s, evidence for the right hemisphere's involvement in language processing, in particular in the semantic processing of words, has emerged. At least three complementary approaches have provided evidence of this: behavioral data from neurologically intact participants, the study of brain-damaged patients and the use of neuroimaging methods. The goal of this article is to review the major evidence from these three sources concerning the nature of the right hemisphere's contribution to the semantic processing of words. Overall, the data from these studies suggest that both the right hemisphere and the left hemisphere are crucial for semantic processing, with both hemispheres being involved in different ways in the processing of semantic knowledge.

Large-Scale Modeling of Wordform Learning and Representation

Daragh Sibley — 2008-06-07T20:06:03-00:00

Cognitive Science: A Multidisciplinary Journal, Vol. 32, No. 4. (2008), pp. 741-754.

The forms of words as they appear in text and speech are central to theories and models of lexical processing. Nonetheless, current methods for simulating their learning and representation fail to approach the scale and heterogeneity of real wordform lexicons. A connectionist architecture termed the <i>sequence encoder</i> is used to learn nearly 75,000 wordform representations through exposure to strings of stress-marked phonemes or letters. First, the mechanisms and efficacy of the sequence encoder are demonstrated and shown to overcome problems with traditional slot-based codes. Then, two large-scale simulations are reported that learned to represent lexicons of either phonological or orthographic wordforms. In doing so, the models learned the statistics of their lexicons as shown by better processing of well-formed pseudowords as opposed to ill-formed (scrambled) pseudowords, and by accounting for variance in well-formedness ratings. It is discussed how the sequence encoder may be integrated into broader models of lexical processing.

Language and simulation in conceptual processing

Lawrence Barsalou — 2008-04-03T15:06:56-00:00

(in press)

Activating Basic Category Exemplars in Sentence Contexts: A Dynamical Account

Joanna Rączaszek-Leonardi — 2008-02-18T14:12:33-00:00

Journal of Psycholinguistic Research, Vol. 37, No. 2. (29 March 2008), pp. 87-113.

Abstract This paper examines the influence of context on the processing of category names embedded in sentences. The investigation focuses on the nature of information available immediately after such a word is heard as well as on the dynamics of adaptation to context. An on-line method (Cross Modal Lexical Priming) was used to trace how this process unfolds in time. We found that the information available immediately after a category word is presented is not altered by the sentence context in which the word is immersed. Rather, the structure of availability of particular exemplars of the category resembles the typicality structure of a conceptual representation. The adaptation to context occurs later (between 300 and 450 ms after the category word) and takes the form of a rapid reorganization of the structure rather than a gradual activation of a contextually relevant exemplar. We claim that such data is best accounted for in a dynamical framework, where a coherent global structure emerges through locally guided self-organization.

The rank hypothesis and lexical decision: A reply to Adelman and Brown

Wayne Murray — 2008-02-16T02:54:51-00:00

Psychological Review, Vol. 115, No. 1. (January 2008), pp. 240-251.

Modeling lexical decision: The form of frequency and diversity effects

James Adelman — 2008-02-16T02:51:14-00:00

Psychological Review, Vol. 115, No. 1. (January 2008), pp. 214-227.

Expectation-based syntactic comprehension

Roger Levy — 2008-02-12T16:52:00-00:00

Cognition, Vol. 106, No. 3. (March 2008), pp. 1126-1177.

This paper investigates the role of resource allocation as a source of processing difficulty in human sentence comprehension. The paper proposes a simple information-theoretic characterization of processing difficulty as the work incurred by resource reallocation during parallel, incremental, probabilistic disambiguation in sentence comprehension, and demonstrates its equivalence to the theory of Hale [Hale, J. (2001). A probabilistic Earley parser as a psycholinguistic model. In Proceedings of NAACL (Vol. 2, pp. 159-166)], in which the difficulty of a word is proportional to its surprisal (its negative log-probability) in the context within which it appears. This proposal subsumes and clarifies findings that high-constraint contexts can facilitate lexical processing, and connects these findings to well-known models of parallel constraint-based comprehension. In addition, the theory leads to a number of specific predictions about the role of expectation in syntactic comprehension, including the reversal of locality-based difficulty patterns in syntactically constrained contexts, and conditions under which increased ambiguity facilitates processing. The paper examines a range of established results bearing on these predictions, and shows that they are largely consistent with the surprisal theory.

Neuroanatomical distinctions within the semantic system during sentence comprehension: Evidence from functional magnetic resonance imaging

Gina Kuperberg — 2008-02-10T01:18:42-00:00

NeuroImage, Vol. 40, No. 1. (1 March 2008), pp. 367-388.

To make sense of a sentence, we must compute morphosyntactic and semantic-thematic relationships between its verbs and arguments and evaluate the resulting propositional meaning against any preceding context and our real-world knowledge. Recent electrophysiological studies suggest that, in comparison with non-violated verbs (e.g. "...at breakfast the boys would eat..."), animacy semantic-thematically violated verbs (e.g. "...at breakfast the eggs would eat...") and morphosyntactically violated verbs (e.g. "...at breakfast the boys would eats...") evoke a similar neural response. This response is distinct from that evoked by verbs that only violate real-world knowledge (e.g. "...at breakfast the boys would plant..."). Here we used fMRI to examine the neuroanatomical regions engaged in response to these three violations. Real-world violations, relative to other sentence types, led to increased activity within the left anterior inferior frontal cortex, reflecting participants' increased and prolonged efforts to retrieve semantic knowledge about the likelihood of events occurring in the real world. In contrast, animacy semantic-thematic violations of the actions depicted by the central verbs engaged a frontal/inferior parietal/basal ganglia network known to mediate the execution and comprehension of goal-directed action. We suggest that the recruitment of this network reflected a semantic-thematic combinatorial process that involved an attempt to determine whether the actions described by the verbs could be executed by their NP Agents. Intriguingly, this network was also activated to morphosyntactic violations between the verbs and their subject NP arguments. Our findings support the pattern of electrophysiological findings in suggesting (a) that a clear division within the semantic system plays out during sentence comprehension, and (b) that semantic-thematic and syntactic violations of verbs within simple active sentences are treated similarly by the brain.

The convergence of lexicalist perspectives in psycholinguistics and computational linguistics

J Kim — 2008-01-28T02:27:09-00:00

(2002)

Translation norms for English and Spanish: The role of lexical variables, word class, and L2 proficiency in negotiating translation ambiguity

Prior — 2007-11-20T00:29:06-00:00

Behavior Research Methods, Vol. 39, No. 4. (November 2007), pp. 1029-1038.

Self-monitoring and feedback: A new attempt to find the main cause of lexical bias in phonological speech errors

Sieb Nooteboom — 2007-12-26T14:34:13-00:00

Journal of Memory and Language, Vol. In Press, Corrected Proof

This paper reports two experiments designed to investigate whether lexical bias in phonological speech errors is caused by immediate feedback of activation, by self-monitoring of inner speech, or by both. The experiments test a number of predictions derived from a model of self-monitoring of inner speech. This model assumes that, after an error in inner speech, (1) an early interruption of speech may be made when speech was initiated too hastily, (2) the error may be covertly repaired, leading to the correct target, (3) the error may be covertly replaced by another speech error, or (4) an error may go undetected, leading to a completed spoonerism. This model of self-monitoring was supported by the speech errors observed in two SLIP experiments. The pattern of results supports the idea that lexical bias has two sources, immediate feedback of activation and self-monitoring of inner speech.

Semantic facilitation in category and action naming: Testing the message-congruency account

Jan-Rouke Kuipers — 2007-12-19T01:44:58-00:00

Journal of Memory and Language, Vol. 58, No. 1. (January 2008), pp. 123-139.

Basic-level picture naming is hampered by the presence of a semantically related context word (compared to an unrelated word), whereas picture categorization is facilitated by a semantically related context word. This reversal of the semantic context effect has been explained by assuming that in categorization tasks, basic-level distractor words (e.g., "dog") do not compete with the selection of the correct category label (e.g., "animal"). In this article, we test an alternative account in terms of a congruency effect ("message-congruency"), which arises at the conceptual level when target (e.g., the picture of a cat) and context (e.g., the word "dog") converge on the same to-be-verbalized concept (e.g., "animal"). In four experiments we observed a substantial message-congruency effect in categorization and action naming. Implications for models of spoken-word production are discussed.

Integration of Word Meaning and World Knowledge in Language Comprehension

Peter Hagoort — 2007-05-17T16:54:01-00:00

Science, Vol. 304, No. 5669. (16 April 2004), pp. 438-441.

Although the sentences that we hear or read have meaning, this does not necessarily mean that they are also true. Relatively little is known about the critical brain structures for, and the relative time course of, establishing the meaning and truth of linguistic expressions. We present electroencephalogram data that show the rapid parallel integration of both semantic and world knowledge during the interpretation of a sentence. Data from functional magnetic resonance imaging revealed that the left inferior prefrontal cortex is involved in the integration of both meaning and world knowledge. Finally, oscillatory brain responses indicate that the brain keeps a record of what makes a sentence hard to interpret. 10.1126/science.1095455