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STAGES OF COMPREHENSION

STAGES OF COMPREHENSION. discourse modelling. semantic analysis. syntactic “parsing”. lexical access. phonemic analysis. sensory processing. THE IMMEDIACY PRINCIPLE OF LANGUAGE COMPREHENSION. comprehension involves building a “model” of meaning, based on word type, meaning and order

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STAGES OF COMPREHENSION

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  1. STAGES OF COMPREHENSION discourse modelling semantic analysis syntactic “parsing” lexical access phonemic analysis sensory processing

  2. THE IMMEDIACY PRINCIPLEOF LANGUAGE COMPREHENSION • comprehension involves building a “model” of meaning, based on • word type, meaning and order • prior context and prior knowledge • to minimize load, build as much of this structure as possible “on line” • resolve ambiguities as they’re encountered: • lexical: PLANE? • syntactic:visiting relatives can be difficult • this can result in “garden path” errors • the conductor stood before the audience left the hall. • after visiting his parents left.

  3. Headline Ambiguities • Man charged with battery • Czech leader meets with opposition • Teenage prostitution problem is mounting • Lawyers let fly in court • Police: Fighting robber is foolish • The police officer saw that the lightning bolt hit the child and dialed 911.. • Bill banning nude dancing on governor’s desk • American man sentenced to 10 years in Scotland

  4. CONTEXT AND WORD RECOGNITION SPEEDFischler & Bloom, 1979 Task: read sentence context frames, “As soon as they entered the room, they turned on the . . “ then make word-nonword decision to: TYPE OFspeed of COMPLETION examplelexical decision expected LIGHT 600 msec unexpected SWITCH 650 msec incongruous SNAKE 800 msec nonword SNOBE 910 msec

  5. CONTEXT EFFECTS AND THE“N400” (Kutas & Hillyard, 1981) task: read sentences while EEG is recorded and later averaged: • semantically unexpected completions elicit a negative “wave” peaking at 400 msec after word onset (N400) • differences can be seen as early as 250 msec after onset

  6. or or or 200 msec 700 msec SPY ANT PEN WID DOES CONTEXT AFFECT “LEXICAL ACCESS?”Swinney, 1979 task: listen to spoken sentences, watch for word/nonword strings “. . the electronic detector found a bug in the . . . “ at 200 msec, both SPY and ANT faster than PEN (so: access of both meanings of homophone) at 700 msec, only SPY is faster than PEN (so: rapid selection of appropriate meaning)

  7. SYNTACTIC STRUCTURE ANDSENTENCE PROCESSING • perceived location of “click” drifts toward clause boundaries: • “ . . the man who cheated lost the hand.” actual reported • perception of rapidly shown sentences better if words are grouped in syntactic constituent “chunks”: • The man Thewho cheated vs man whoin class cheated inlost class lost

  8. SYNTAX, EFFORT, AND EEG(King & Kutas, 1995) subject-relative: “The secretary who gladly married the senator typed the letter” object-relative: “The secretary who the senator gladly married typed the letter”

  9. as in (A): VP PP NP V NP The spy saw the cop with the binoculars.. but not in (B): VP NP NP V NP PP The spy saw the cop with the revolver . . (B) takes longer to read (Rayner & Frazier, ‘83) - though (A) is ambiguous A “MINIMAL ATTACHMENT STRATEGY” FOR BUILDING SYNTAX (Frazier, 1979) attach each new phrase to the current “node” if possible (“late closure”)

  10. SYNTACTIC STRUCTURE ANDSEMANTIC PROCESSING • Meaning can constrain parsing: The bird saw the cop with the binoculars Read as quickly as (A) above (C) The cop [that was] arrested by the detective was guilty of taking bribes (D) The crook [that was] arrested by the detective was guilty of taking bribes (C) Is read more slowly; (D) no more difficult than the “unreduced” version – why? [McRae et al, 1998]

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