Pub Date : 2025-05-05DOI: 10.1016/j.jml.2025.104642
Kevin D. Roon , D.H. Whalen
We tested the hypothesis that phonological planning takes longer when two possible utterances differ in incompatible, inherently mutually exclusive values of a single feature (e.g., voiced vs. unvoiced, a dental vs. alveolar tongue-tip constriction) compared to when two possible utterances differ in values for features that are not inherently mutually exclusive (e.g., a tongue-tip constriction vs. a labial constriction). Verbal acoustic latencies from a cue-response task were analyzed. When the mutually exclusive feature value was voicing in plosive-intial utterances, latencies were in fact shorter than when articulator was unknown, contra expectation. When the mutually exclusive feature value was voicing in fricative-intial utterances, there was no reliable difference in latencies. When the mutually exclusive feature value was tongue-tip constriction location, latency differences were as expected, albeit marginally. These results suggest that the notion of inherently mutually exclusive feature values requires further refinement, and may depend on specific aspects of phonological representation.
{"title":"Planning competing values of a single phonological feature vs. planning values for multiple features","authors":"Kevin D. Roon , D.H. Whalen","doi":"10.1016/j.jml.2025.104642","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jml.2025.104642","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>We tested the hypothesis that phonological planning takes longer when two possible utterances differ in incompatible, inherently mutually exclusive values of a single feature (e.g., voiced vs. unvoiced, a dental vs. alveolar tongue-tip constriction) compared to when two possible utterances differ in values for features that are not inherently mutually exclusive (e.g., a tongue-tip constriction vs. a labial constriction). Verbal acoustic latencies from a cue-response task were analyzed. When the mutually exclusive feature value was voicing in plosive-intial utterances, latencies were in fact shorter than when articulator was unknown, contra expectation. When the mutually exclusive feature value was voicing in fricative-intial utterances, there was no reliable difference in latencies. When the mutually exclusive feature value was tongue-tip constriction location, latency differences were as expected, albeit marginally. These results suggest that the notion of inherently mutually exclusive feature values requires further refinement, and may depend on specific aspects of phonological representation.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":16493,"journal":{"name":"Journal of memory and language","volume":"143 ","pages":"Article 104642"},"PeriodicalIF":2.9,"publicationDate":"2025-05-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143906278","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2025-05-05DOI: 10.1016/j.jml.2025.104646
Yasushi Hino , Debra Jared , Stephen J. Lupker
Recent research (e.g., Marelli & Amenta, 2018; Siegelman, Rueckl, Lo, Kearns, Morris & Compton, 2022) has demonstrated a significant orthographic-semantic (O-S) consistency effect on lexical decision performance. Specifically, lexical decision latencies were faster for words with a consistent O-S relationship than for words that do not have a consistent O-S relationship, with consistency being defined in terms of the semantics of those words’ “orthographic neighbors”. Interestingly, however, the words assumed to be orthographic neighbors were different across the studies and, therefore, different factors may have been at work in the two situations. In order to more closely examine the origin of O-S consistency effects in lexical decision tasks, we first attempted to replicate both of those results. Then, we examined O-S consistency effects based on addition (e.g., cats-CAT, pant-PAN), substitution (e.g., cot-CAT, pin-PAN) and deletion (seat-SAT, road-ROD) neighbors separately for mono-morphemic English words in both the datasets used in the previous studies and, based on the former two neighbor types, in a lexical decision experiment. Throughout our data analyses, we observed that addition neighbors play an important role in producing an O-S consistency effect in lexical decision performance. In contrast, we failed to observe a significant O-S consistency effect when consistencies were computed based only on the substitution (or deletion) neighbors. Because addition neighbors involve many morphologically-related neighbors, we further examined the roles that morphologically-related and unrelated neighbors play in producing the O-S consistency effect. Those analyses revealed that the O-S consistency effect for addition neighbors is largely produced by the combination of a processing advantage when a word has many morphologically-related neighbors and a processing disadvantage when a word has many morphologically-unrelated neighbors. More broadly, this research demonstrates that readers pick up on the statistical relationships between spelling and meaning.
{"title":"Orthographic-Semantic consistency effects in lexical decision: What types of neighbors are responsible for the Effects?","authors":"Yasushi Hino , Debra Jared , Stephen J. Lupker","doi":"10.1016/j.jml.2025.104646","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jml.2025.104646","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Recent research (e.g., Marelli & Amenta, 2018; Siegelman, Rueckl, Lo, Kearns, Morris & Compton, 2022) has demonstrated a significant orthographic-semantic (O-S) consistency effect on lexical decision performance. Specifically, lexical decision latencies were faster for words with a consistent O-S relationship than for words that do not have a consistent O-S relationship, with consistency being defined in terms of the semantics of those words’ “orthographic neighbors”. Interestingly, however, the words assumed to be orthographic neighbors were different across the studies and, therefore, different factors may have been at work in the two situations. In order to more closely examine the origin of O-S consistency effects in lexical decision tasks, we first attempted to replicate both of those results. Then, we examined O-S consistency effects based on addition (e.g., cats-CAT, pant-PAN), substitution (e.g., cot-CAT, pin-PAN) and deletion (seat-SAT, road-ROD) neighbors separately for mono-morphemic English words in both the datasets used in the previous studies and, based on the former two neighbor types, in a lexical decision experiment. Throughout our data analyses, we observed that addition neighbors play an important role in producing an O-S consistency effect in lexical decision performance. In contrast, we failed to observe a significant O-S consistency effect when consistencies were computed based only on the substitution (or deletion) neighbors. Because addition neighbors involve many morphologically-related neighbors, we further examined the roles that morphologically-related and unrelated neighbors play in producing the O-S consistency effect. Those analyses revealed that the O-S consistency effect for addition neighbors is largely produced by the combination of a processing advantage when a word has many morphologically-related neighbors and a processing disadvantage when a word has many morphologically-unrelated neighbors. More broadly, this research demonstrates that readers pick up on the statistical relationships between spelling and meaning.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":16493,"journal":{"name":"Journal of memory and language","volume":"143 ","pages":"Article 104646"},"PeriodicalIF":2.9,"publicationDate":"2025-05-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143906279","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2025-05-02DOI: 10.1016/j.jml.2025.104647
Lauren K. Salig , Jorge R. Valdés Kroff , L. Robert Slevc , Jared M. Novick
In conversation with each other, bilinguals sometimes code-switch between their shared languages. While psycholinguistic research often highlights the challenges of processing code-switches compared to single-language utterances, bilinguals seem to navigate code-switching with ease. Alongside empirical evidence that code-switching does not always disrupt comprehension in natural contexts, this raises intriguing questions about the potential benefits of code-switching. We propose that code-switching enhances bilingual listeners’ attention to the speech signal, improving the encoding and memory of linguistic messages near the switch. In Experiment 1, Spanish-English bilinguals listened to code-switched and single-language stories, occasionally reported their attention levels, and later answered comprehension questions. They reported greater attention to and demonstrated increased memory for code-switched content. Experiment 2 tested whether this attentional effect was simply due to the saliency of language changes by having English-speaking monolinguals complete the same task. Although monolinguals showed better memory when reporting higher attention, they did not show increased attention following code-switches. These findings suggest that bilinguals’ experience with the communicative contexts in which code-switches typically occur enables them to focus their attention on speech content during a code-switch, aiding in their collection and retention of that content over time.
{"title":"Hearing a code-switch increases bilinguals’ attention to and memory for information","authors":"Lauren K. Salig , Jorge R. Valdés Kroff , L. Robert Slevc , Jared M. Novick","doi":"10.1016/j.jml.2025.104647","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jml.2025.104647","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>In conversation with each other, bilinguals sometimes code-switch between their shared languages. While psycholinguistic research often highlights the challenges of processing code-switches compared to single-language utterances, bilinguals seem to navigate code-switching with ease. Alongside empirical evidence that code-switching does not always disrupt comprehension in natural contexts, this raises intriguing questions about the potential benefits of code-switching. We propose that code-switching enhances bilingual listeners’ attention to the speech signal, improving the encoding and memory of linguistic messages near the switch. In Experiment 1, Spanish-English bilinguals listened to code-switched and single-language stories, occasionally reported their attention levels, and later answered comprehension questions. They reported greater attention to and demonstrated increased memory for code-switched content. Experiment 2 tested whether this attentional effect was simply due to the saliency of language changes by having English-speaking monolinguals complete the same task. Although monolinguals showed better memory when reporting higher attention, they did not show increased attention following code-switches. These findings suggest that bilinguals’ experience with the communicative contexts in which code-switches typically occur enables them to focus their attention on speech content during a code-switch, aiding in their collection and retention of that content over time.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":16493,"journal":{"name":"Journal of memory and language","volume":"143 ","pages":"Article 104647"},"PeriodicalIF":2.9,"publicationDate":"2025-05-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143898622","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2025-04-30DOI: 10.1016/j.jml.2025.104649
Brett R. Myers , Cassandra L. Jacobs , Andrés Buxó-Lugo , Duane G. Watson
Speakers often lengthen the duration of a word when it shares initial phonological segments with a previously uttered word (e.g., candy and candle). One explanation for this is that words with initial similarity affect phonological encoding during sequence planning, yet it is unclear whether this similarity is phonetic or phonological. We manipulated phonetic differences by using a dialect variant: the pin-pen merger in American English. Participants completed an event description task in three experiments. We manipulated whether the participant’s target vowel ([ɪ] or [ɛ]) either phonetically matched or mismatched the vowel of the prime speaker, depending on the participant’s dialect. In the second experiment, we introduced a control vowel in the prime word ([æ] vs. [ɛ]). Participants in both dialect groups lengthened target words when they shared an initial phoneme, even when the vowel of the overlapping prime word was not shared across dialects. In the third experiment, we replicated this finding in a larger cohort of non-merger participants. All three experiments showed word lengthening despite the phonetic realization of phonemes, suggesting this effect is driven by phonological representations rather than surface-level pronunciations.
{"title":"Tomato-tomahto: Phonological representations vs. surface-level features in speech planning","authors":"Brett R. Myers , Cassandra L. Jacobs , Andrés Buxó-Lugo , Duane G. Watson","doi":"10.1016/j.jml.2025.104649","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jml.2025.104649","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Speakers often lengthen the duration of a word when it shares initial phonological segments with a previously uttered word (e.g.,<!--> <em>candy</em> and <em>candle</em>). One explanation for this is that words with initial similarity affect phonological encoding during sequence planning, yet it is unclear whether this similarity is phonetic or phonological. We manipulated phonetic differences by using a dialect variant: the <em>pin-pen</em> merger in American English. Participants completed an event description task in three experiments. We manipulated whether the participant’s target vowel ([ɪ] or [ɛ]) either phonetically matched or mismatched the vowel of the prime speaker, depending on the participant’s dialect. In the second experiment, we introduced a control vowel in the prime word ([æ] vs. [ɛ]). Participants in both dialect groups lengthened target words when they shared an initial phoneme, even when the vowel of the overlapping prime word was not shared across dialects. In the third experiment, we replicated this finding in a larger cohort of non-merger participants. All three experiments showed word lengthening despite the phonetic realization of phonemes, suggesting this effect is driven by phonological representations rather than surface-level pronunciations.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":16493,"journal":{"name":"Journal of memory and language","volume":"143 ","pages":"Article 104649"},"PeriodicalIF":2.9,"publicationDate":"2025-04-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143888141","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2025-04-24DOI: 10.1016/j.jml.2025.104637
Tijn Schmitz, Rick Nouwen, Jakub Dotlačil
Syntactically inaccessible distractors can cause an illusion of grammaticality during the resolution of syntactic dependencies. At the discourse level, there is also a notion of accessibility. To what extent is this notion relevant to the processing of dependencies that go beyond the syntactic level? In three eye-tracking experiments, we studied illusion effects during presupposition resolution in short discourses. A sentence in the discourse triggered a presupposition, and a preceding sentence provided two candidate propositions for resolution: a target proposition that was accessible for presupposition resolution, and a distractor proposition that was inaccessible for the presupposition. Orthogonal to the accessibility manipulation, the two propositions could match or mismatch the semantic content of the presupposition. Experiment 1, focusing on the retrieval of gender features, showed an illusion effect by matching, but inaccessible, distractors, comparable to illusion effects in syntactic dependency resolution. In Experiment 2, which required the retrieval of compositional semantic information rather than a single feature, we replicate the finding that discourse-inaccessible information still influences memory retrieval in dependency resolution. In Experiment 3 we compared proactive and retroactive interference and demonstrated that the illusion effect is diminished or possibly even entirely disappears when the distractor is further away from the presupposition. We argue that our findings provide evidence that memory models deployed for syntactic retrieval should be extended to account for retrieval in discourses. This is challenging for most models of retrieval, more so for models that tie memory failures directly to (morpho-)syntactic structure building. We also indicate how a more general model of memory, the cue-based retrieval model, would have to be extended to capture our findings.
{"title":"Memory retrieval in discourse: Illusions of coherence during presupposition resolution","authors":"Tijn Schmitz, Rick Nouwen, Jakub Dotlačil","doi":"10.1016/j.jml.2025.104637","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jml.2025.104637","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Syntactically inaccessible distractors can cause an illusion of grammaticality during the resolution of syntactic dependencies. At the discourse level, there is also a notion of accessibility. To what extent is this notion relevant to the processing of dependencies that go beyond the syntactic level? In three eye-tracking experiments, we studied illusion effects during presupposition resolution in short discourses. A sentence in the discourse triggered a presupposition, and a preceding sentence provided two candidate propositions for resolution: a target proposition that was accessible for presupposition resolution, and a distractor proposition that was inaccessible for the presupposition. Orthogonal to the accessibility manipulation, the two propositions could match or mismatch the semantic content of the presupposition. Experiment 1, focusing on the retrieval of gender features, showed an illusion effect by matching, but inaccessible, distractors, comparable to illusion effects in syntactic dependency resolution. In Experiment 2, which required the retrieval of compositional semantic information rather than a single feature, we replicate the finding that discourse-inaccessible information still influences memory retrieval in dependency resolution. In Experiment 3 we compared proactive and retroactive interference and demonstrated that the illusion effect is diminished or possibly even entirely disappears when the distractor is further away from the presupposition. We argue that our findings provide evidence that memory models deployed for syntactic retrieval should be extended to account for retrieval in discourses. This is challenging for most models of retrieval, more so for models that tie memory failures directly to (morpho-)syntactic structure building. We also indicate how a more general model of memory, the cue-based retrieval model, would have to be extended to capture our findings.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":16493,"journal":{"name":"Journal of memory and language","volume":"143 ","pages":"Article 104637"},"PeriodicalIF":2.9,"publicationDate":"2025-04-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143868797","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2025-04-21DOI: 10.1016/j.jml.2025.104641
Laoura Ziaka , Dzan Zelihic , Bob McMurray , Keith Baxelbaum , Kristin Simonsen , Athanassios Protopapas
We report two experiments demonstrating that visual word recognition is impeded by the presence of nearby stimuli, especially adjacent words. Reading research has converged on a consensus that skilled readers control their attention to make use of information from adjacent (primarily upcoming) words, increasing reading efficiency. Other lines of research seem to point to potential interference from nearby items, yet this has not been investigated at the critical lexical level. To specifically target lexical activation, here we employ a novel variant of the visual world paradigm with masked (75 ms) flanked visual word targets, contrasting five flanker conditions across two experiments, namely none, repeated symbols, unknown font strings, pseudowords, and words. Analysis of multiple observed variables from 60 and 58 adult Norwegian speakers showed strong interference—compared to no flankers—for all flanker conditions except the repeated symbols. Interference increased with additional levels of possible flanker processing, and was greatest for higher-frequency word targets, consistent with rapid dynamic modulation of attentional breadth. Our findings demonstrate that nearby words interfere with lexical activation of the fixated word and call for a more nuanced approach to the role of preview in fluent reading. We conclude that skilled reading involves a constant complex interplay between the drive toward efficiency, which requires a broad attentional field, and the need to shield processing from interference, which limits attentional breadth.
{"title":"Visual word recognition is impeded by adjacent words","authors":"Laoura Ziaka , Dzan Zelihic , Bob McMurray , Keith Baxelbaum , Kristin Simonsen , Athanassios Protopapas","doi":"10.1016/j.jml.2025.104641","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jml.2025.104641","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>We report two experiments demonstrating that visual word recognition is impeded by the presence of nearby stimuli, especially adjacent words. Reading research has converged on a consensus that skilled readers control their attention to make use of information from adjacent (primarily upcoming) words, increasing reading efficiency. Other lines of research seem to point to potential interference from nearby items, yet this has not been investigated at the critical lexical level. To specifically target lexical activation, here we employ a novel variant of the visual world paradigm with masked (75 ms) flanked visual word targets, contrasting five flanker conditions across two experiments, namely none, repeated symbols, unknown font strings, pseudowords, and words. Analysis of multiple observed variables from 60 and 58 adult Norwegian speakers showed strong interference—compared to no flankers—for all flanker conditions except the repeated symbols. Interference increased with additional levels of possible flanker processing, and was greatest for higher-frequency word targets, consistent with rapid dynamic modulation of attentional breadth. Our findings demonstrate that nearby words interfere with lexical activation of the fixated word and call for a more nuanced approach to the role of preview in fluent reading. We conclude that skilled reading involves a constant complex interplay between the drive toward efficiency, which requires a broad attentional field, and the need to shield processing from interference, which limits attentional breadth.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":16493,"journal":{"name":"Journal of memory and language","volume":"143 ","pages":"Article 104641"},"PeriodicalIF":2.9,"publicationDate":"2025-04-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143852275","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2025-04-19DOI: 10.1016/j.jml.2025.104644
Julio Santiago , Alessia Beracci , Andrea Flumini , Eva Sanjuan , Marc Ouellet , Pablo Solana
The mental representation of time recruits spatial representations, but is space an essential, inescapable feature of mental time? Supporting a positive answer to this question, recent research has reported that lateral (left–right) space is automatically activated in lexical decision tasks in which the temporal reference of the words is irrelevant for the goals of the task (implicit tasks). Here, using always the same set of Spanish verbs and pseudoverbs marked for past or future tense, we assess the space–time congruency effect in reaction time and mouse trajectories, both in an explicit time judgement task and an implicit lexical decision task. Moreover, we report the first confirmatory (preregistered) study in this field of research using long lateral movements in lexical decision. The congruency effect was always significant in time judgement, but non-significant in lexical decision. Moreover, in reaction time this effect was significantly smaller than a Smallest Effect Size Of Interest (SESOI) of 10 ms, and even smaller than a recently reported 9 ms effect. Therefore, it was considered negligible. We conclude that there is no convincing evidence for an automatic activation of the lateral mental timeline in lexical decision.
{"title":"Can the lateral mental timeline be automatically activated in language comprehension?","authors":"Julio Santiago , Alessia Beracci , Andrea Flumini , Eva Sanjuan , Marc Ouellet , Pablo Solana","doi":"10.1016/j.jml.2025.104644","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jml.2025.104644","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>The mental representation of time recruits spatial representations, but is space an essential, inescapable feature of mental time? Supporting a positive answer to this question, recent research has reported that lateral (left–right) space is automatically activated in lexical decision tasks in which the temporal reference of the words is irrelevant for the goals of the task (implicit tasks). Here, using always the same set of Spanish verbs and pseudoverbs marked for past or future tense, we assess the space–time congruency effect in reaction time and mouse trajectories, both in an explicit time judgement task and an implicit lexical decision task. Moreover, we report the first confirmatory (preregistered) study in this field of research using long lateral movements in lexical decision. The congruency effect was always significant in time judgement, but non-significant in lexical decision. Moreover, in reaction time this effect was significantly smaller than a Smallest Effect Size Of Interest (SESOI) of 10 ms, and even smaller than a recently reported 9 ms effect. Therefore, it was considered negligible. We conclude that there is no convincing evidence for an automatic activation of the lateral mental timeline in lexical decision.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":16493,"journal":{"name":"Journal of memory and language","volume":"143 ","pages":"Article 104644"},"PeriodicalIF":2.9,"publicationDate":"2025-04-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143847351","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2025-04-15DOI: 10.1016/j.jml.2025.104640
Jennifer Hu , Felix Sosa , Tomer Ullman
Some things are impossible, but some things may be even more impossible than impossible. Levitating a feather using one’s mind is impossible in our world, but fits into our intuitive theories of possible worlds, whereas levitating a feather using the number five cannot be conceived in any possible world (“inconceivable”). While prior work has examined the distinction between improbable and impossible events, there has been little empirical research on inconceivability. Here, we investigate whether people maintain a distinction between impossibility and inconceivability, and how such distinctions might be made. We find that people can readily distinguish the impossible from the inconceivable, using categorization studies similar to those used to investigate the differences between impossible and improbable (Experiment 1). However, this distinction is not explained by people’s subjective ratings of event likelihood, which are near zero and indistinguishable between impossible and inconceivable event descriptions (Experiment 2). Finally, we ask whether the probabilities assigned to event descriptions by statistical language models (LMs) can be used to separate modal categories, and whether these probabilities align with people’s ratings (Experiment 3). We find high-level similarities between people and LMs: both distinguish among impossible and inconceivable event descriptions, and LM-derived string probabilities predict people’s ratings of event likelihood across modal categories. Our findings suggest that fine-grained knowledge about exceedingly rare events (i.e., the impossible and inconceivable) may be learned via statistical learning over linguistic forms, yet leave open the question of whether people represent the distinction between impossible and inconceivable as a difference not of degree, but of kind.
{"title":"Shades of zero: Distinguishing impossibility from inconceivability","authors":"Jennifer Hu , Felix Sosa , Tomer Ullman","doi":"10.1016/j.jml.2025.104640","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jml.2025.104640","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Some things are impossible, but some things may be even more impossible than impossible. Levitating a feather using one’s mind is impossible in our world, but fits into our intuitive theories of possible worlds, whereas levitating a feather using the number five cannot be conceived in any possible world (“inconceivable”). While prior work has examined the distinction between improbable and impossible events, there has been little empirical research on inconceivability. Here, we investigate whether people maintain a distinction between impossibility and inconceivability, and how such distinctions might be made. We find that people can readily distinguish the impossible from the inconceivable, using categorization studies similar to those used to investigate the differences between impossible and improbable (Experiment 1). However, this distinction is not explained by people’s subjective ratings of event likelihood, which are near zero and indistinguishable between impossible and inconceivable event descriptions (Experiment 2). Finally, we ask whether the probabilities assigned to event descriptions by statistical language models (LMs) can be used to separate modal categories, and whether these probabilities align with people’s ratings (Experiment 3). We find high-level similarities between people and LMs: both distinguish among impossible and inconceivable event descriptions, and LM-derived string probabilities predict people’s ratings of event likelihood across modal categories. Our findings suggest that fine-grained knowledge about exceedingly rare events (i.e., the impossible and inconceivable) may be learned via statistical learning over linguistic forms, yet leave open the question of whether people represent the distinction between impossible and inconceivable as a difference not of <em>degree</em>, but of <em>kind</em>.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":16493,"journal":{"name":"Journal of memory and language","volume":"143 ","pages":"Article 104640"},"PeriodicalIF":2.9,"publicationDate":"2025-04-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143833858","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2025-04-09DOI: 10.1016/j.jml.2025.104639
Delphine Dahan
How do speakers coordinate meaning with their addresses such as choosing a referring expression that maximizes the probability that their addressee identifies its referent? Language offers a community a system of conventions for recurrent coordination problems. Furthermore, research on repeated reference involving novel and hard-to-name shapes has claimed that an initial reference sets up a precedent, a partner-specific perspective that can be used subsequently. In a referential communication task involving photos of everyday objects, the present study hypothesized that precedents are temporary solutions developed by conversational partners when community-wide conventions on how to refer to the entity are not readily available. Degree of accessibility to conventions for each object (i.e., the object’s name uncertainty) was quantified based on the distribution of words used by all participants to talk about the object for the first time. Results from two studies showed that for objects with low name uncertainty, the expressions used by a dyad on two consecutives mentions were no more similar to each other than to expressions used by other dyads, suggesting reliance to community-wide conventions. For objects with greater name uncertainty, however, a given dyad’s expressions produced on two successive mentions resembled each other more than they resembled other dyads’ expressions. Finally, the usage of bare nominals (vs. definite or indefinite noun phrases) to refer to an object on second mention decreased as the object’s name uncertainty increased, a finding that further supports the claim that conversational partners rely on precedents as temporary solutions to compensate for uncertain availability of community-wide conventions.
{"title":"Coordinating reference in conversation: The choice between linguistic conventions and linguistic precedents","authors":"Delphine Dahan","doi":"10.1016/j.jml.2025.104639","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jml.2025.104639","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>How do speakers coordinate meaning with their addresses such as choosing a referring expression that maximizes the probability that their addressee identifies its referent? Language offers a community a system of conventions for recurrent coordination problems. Furthermore, research on repeated reference involving novel and hard-to-name shapes has claimed that an initial reference sets up a precedent, a partner-specific perspective that can be used subsequently. In a referential communication task involving photos of everyday objects, the present study hypothesized that precedents are temporary solutions developed by conversational partners when community-wide conventions on how to refer to the entity are not readily available. Degree of accessibility to conventions for each object (i.e., the object’s name uncertainty) was quantified based on the distribution of words used by all participants to talk about the object for the first time. Results from two studies showed that for objects with low name uncertainty, the expressions used by a dyad on two consecutives mentions were no more similar to each other than to expressions used by other dyads, suggesting reliance to community-wide conventions. For objects with greater name uncertainty, however, a given dyad’s expressions produced on two successive mentions resembled each other more than they resembled other dyads’ expressions. Finally, the usage of bare nominals (vs. definite or indefinite noun phrases) to refer to an object on second mention decreased as the object’s name uncertainty increased, a finding that further supports the claim that conversational partners rely on precedents as temporary solutions to compensate for uncertain availability of community-wide conventions.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":16493,"journal":{"name":"Journal of memory and language","volume":"143 ","pages":"Article 104639"},"PeriodicalIF":2.9,"publicationDate":"2025-04-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143800690","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Sentence comprehension is known to be driven by both bottom-up integrative and top-down predictive processes. While integrative processes are known to be subject to working memory constraints, the impact of such constraints on top-down processing is less clear. Previous work has argued that verb-final languages provide rather weak and equivocal support for working memory constraints during bottom-up integrative processes. For these languages, top-down prediction has been shown to be more dominant. Here, we report a series of cloze completion and self-paced reading studies on a verb-final language, Hindi, to investigate if preverbal nouns with similar case marking lead to increased processing difficulty at the clause-final verb. Results show no effect of case similarity on reading times at the verb, implying that a solely bottom-up dependency completion process driven by memory constraints cannot explain these data. Another key finding is that verb prediction failures increase in configurations where preverbal nouns have similar case markings. Model evaluation suggests an explanation based on representation distortion – when the pre-verbal input is stored in memory, it probabilistically distorts to a non-veridical (or less accessible) memory representation, and this degraded representation of the context generates potentially faulty predictions of the upcoming verb. Together, the current work reveals two new insights: (i) Both top-down prediction and bottom-up integration assumptions are necessary to explain the reading data from verb-final languages, and (ii) top-down prediction is subject to working memory constraints due to representation distortion of prior sentence input stored in memory.
{"title":"The effect of similarity-based interference on bottom-up and top-down processing in verb-final languages: Evidence from Hindi","authors":"Samar Husain , Apurva , Ishita Arun , Himanshu Yadav","doi":"10.1016/j.jml.2025.104627","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jml.2025.104627","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Sentence comprehension is known to be driven by both bottom-up integrative and top-down predictive processes. While integrative processes are known to be subject to working memory constraints, the impact of such constraints on top-down processing is less clear. Previous work has argued that verb-final languages provide rather weak and equivocal support for working memory constraints during bottom-up integrative processes. For these languages, top-down prediction has been shown to be more dominant. Here, we report a series of cloze completion and self-paced reading studies on a verb-final language, Hindi, to investigate if preverbal nouns with similar case marking lead to increased processing difficulty at the clause-final verb. Results show no effect of case similarity on reading times at the verb, implying that a solely bottom-up dependency completion process driven by memory constraints cannot explain these data. Another key finding is that verb prediction failures increase in configurations where preverbal nouns have similar case markings. Model evaluation suggests an explanation based on representation distortion – when the pre-verbal input is stored in memory, it probabilistically distorts to a non-veridical (or less accessible) memory representation, and this degraded representation of the context generates potentially faulty predictions of the upcoming verb. Together, the current work reveals two new insights: (i) Both top-down prediction and bottom-up integration assumptions are necessary to explain the reading data from verb-final languages, and (ii) top-down prediction is subject to working memory constraints due to representation distortion of prior sentence input stored in memory.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":16493,"journal":{"name":"Journal of memory and language","volume":"143 ","pages":"Article 104627"},"PeriodicalIF":2.9,"publicationDate":"2025-03-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143696096","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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