Pub Date : 2024-09-18DOI: 10.1017/s0142716424000195
Takumi Uchihara, Michael Karas, Ron I. Thomson
This meta-analysis of 31 studies aimed to determine the effectiveness of perception-based high variability phonetic training (HVPT) for second language (L2) production learning and to identify learner-related and methodological variables that influence production gains. Based on independent effect sizes for 43 within-participant and 17 between-participant designs, small-to-medium effects of post-training improvement were found. The average production gains for trained items and untrained items were 10.50% and 4.50%, respectively. Neither strong support for long-term retention of production learning nor generalization to untrained stimuli was observed, however. Moderator analyses showed that post-training production gains were influenced by a number of factors related to learner profiles (age and learning context), training features (provision of phonetic information, training duration, and training time per session), and features of production tests (elicitation tasks, prompt modality, and outcome measures). The relationship between perception and production gains was negligible at the participant level, but was significant and moderate at the level of individual studies for post-training and retention data. These findings provide partial support for a perception-production link. This study makes several recommendations for future studies investigating the effects of HVPT on L2 speech production learning.
{"title":"Does perceptual high variability phonetic training improve L2 speech production? A meta-analysis of perception-production connection","authors":"Takumi Uchihara, Michael Karas, Ron I. Thomson","doi":"10.1017/s0142716424000195","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/s0142716424000195","url":null,"abstract":"This meta-analysis of 31 studies aimed to determine the effectiveness of perception-based high variability phonetic training (HVPT) for second language (L2) production learning and to identify learner-related and methodological variables that influence production gains. Based on independent effect sizes for 43 within-participant and 17 between-participant designs, small-to-medium effects of post-training improvement were found. The average production gains for trained items and untrained items were 10.50% and 4.50%, respectively. Neither strong support for long-term retention of production learning nor generalization to untrained stimuli was observed, however. Moderator analyses showed that post-training production gains were influenced by a number of factors related to learner profiles (age and learning context), training features (provision of phonetic information, training duration, and training time per session), and features of production tests (elicitation tasks, prompt modality, and outcome measures). The relationship between perception and production gains was negligible at the participant level, but was significant and moderate at the level of individual studies for post-training and retention data. These findings provide partial support for a perception-production link. This study makes several recommendations for future studies investigating the effects of HVPT on L2 speech production learning.","PeriodicalId":48065,"journal":{"name":"Applied Psycholinguistics","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.1,"publicationDate":"2024-09-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142262556","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-08-27DOI: 10.1017/s0142716424000146
Emma Corbeau, Gabriel Thiberge
We present experimental results from a web-based study on the speech act of giving advice in French. 86 L1 speakers of French had to continue short and written fictitious interactions we created, in which we manipulated the adviser’s level of experience (explicitly experienced, explicitly inexperienced, or no precision) and the hierarchical relationship between adviser and advisee (top-down, bottom-up, and equals). Participants had to choose between four types of continuations, from indirect strategies to direct prototypical imperative strategies, with variations of the face-threatening value in some continuations, as per Brown and Levinson’s politeness theory. Main results from Bayesian regression analyses indicate an overall preference for indirect strategies in French, but also suggest influences from the level of experience and hierarchical relationship. These results will allow for a better understanding of advice as a speech act and contribute to a growing body of work in experimental pragmatics.
{"title":"You might want to tone down your advice: An experimental investigation of the speech act of advice in French","authors":"Emma Corbeau, Gabriel Thiberge","doi":"10.1017/s0142716424000146","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/s0142716424000146","url":null,"abstract":"We present experimental results from a web-based study on the speech act of giving advice in French. 86 L1 speakers of French had to continue short and written fictitious interactions we created, in which we manipulated the adviser’s level of experience (explicitly experienced, explicitly inexperienced, or no precision) and the hierarchical relationship between adviser and advisee (top-down, bottom-up, and equals). Participants had to choose between four types of continuations, from indirect strategies to direct prototypical imperative strategies, with variations of the face-threatening value in some continuations, as per Brown and Levinson’s politeness theory. Main results from Bayesian regression analyses indicate an overall preference for indirect strategies in French, but also suggest influences from the level of experience and hierarchical relationship. These results will allow for a better understanding of advice as a speech act and contribute to a growing body of work in experimental pragmatics.","PeriodicalId":48065,"journal":{"name":"Applied Psycholinguistics","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.1,"publicationDate":"2024-08-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142177004","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-05-16DOI: 10.1017/s0142716424000183
Gunnar Jacob, Moritz Jonas Schaeffer, Katharina Oster, Silvia Hansen-Schirra
The manuscript explores the psycholinguistic processes responsible for cross-linguistic influence in translation. In two experimental studies with professional translators-in-training, we investigate the psycholinguistic foundations of shining-through effects in translated texts, i.e., cases where the grammatical structure of a source sentence leaves traces in the translated sentence. Experiment 1 reports the results from a translation task investigating the influence of the grammatical structure of the source sentence on structural choices for its translation. The results showed a significant influence of source sentence structure, which gradually decreased with increasing translation competence scores. In Experiment 2, we investigated to what extent the effect of source structure influence found in Experiment 1 can be accounted for through cross-linguistic structural priming. In a cross-linguistic priming experiment in which the source sentences from Experiment 1 were used as primes, participants showed no evidence of structural priming. A cross-experiment comparison revealed significant source sentence influence in the translation task, but no such effect in the priming task, for matched sets of sentences. Our results cast doubt on the claim that shining-through effects in translation are caused by cross-linguistic structural priming. We suggest an alternative account which instead explains structural cross-linguistic influence in translation through serial lexical co-activation.
{"title":"The psycholinguistics of shining-through effects in translation: cross-linguistic structural priming or serial lexical co-activation?","authors":"Gunnar Jacob, Moritz Jonas Schaeffer, Katharina Oster, Silvia Hansen-Schirra","doi":"10.1017/s0142716424000183","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/s0142716424000183","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 The manuscript explores the psycholinguistic processes responsible for cross-linguistic influence in translation. In two experimental studies with professional translators-in-training, we investigate the psycholinguistic foundations of shining-through effects in translated texts, i.e., cases where the grammatical structure of a source sentence leaves traces in the translated sentence. Experiment 1 reports the results from a translation task investigating the influence of the grammatical structure of the source sentence on structural choices for its translation. The results showed a significant influence of source sentence structure, which gradually decreased with increasing translation competence scores. In Experiment 2, we investigated to what extent the effect of source structure influence found in Experiment 1 can be accounted for through cross-linguistic structural priming. In a cross-linguistic priming experiment in which the source sentences from Experiment 1 were used as primes, participants showed no evidence of structural priming. A cross-experiment comparison revealed significant source sentence influence in the translation task, but no such effect in the priming task, for matched sets of sentences. Our results cast doubt on the claim that shining-through effects in translation are caused by cross-linguistic structural priming. We suggest an alternative account which instead explains structural cross-linguistic influence in translation through serial lexical co-activation.","PeriodicalId":48065,"journal":{"name":"Applied Psycholinguistics","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.1,"publicationDate":"2024-05-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140971483","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-05-13DOI: 10.1017/s014271642400016x
Kotaro Takizawa
Second language (L2) fluency research has suggested that a range of linguistic knowledge and processing speed serve as cognitive fluency (CF) underlying L2 utterance fluency (UF). Building on prior CF-UF link studies, this study explored L2 collocational processing speed and accuracy as underlying CF measures. This study also explored the phrasal frequency effect on the relationship between collocational processing speed and UF to test whether the processing speed of higher-frequency collocations is more strongly related to UF. A total of 108 Japanese university students completed a phrasal acceptability judgment task with adjective–noun collocations pooled from the Academic Collocation List. Speech was elicited in an argumentative speech task, and UF measures were computed based on speed, breakdown, and repair fluency. The results revealed that the collocational processing speed was weakly tied to articulation rate and mid-clause and end-clause silent pause ratio (rho = |.271–.322|), while the collocational processing accuracy was weakly to moderately tied to most UF measures except filled pause ratio (rho = |.281–.368|). The collocation frequency moderated the relationship between the processing speed and UF, suggesting that high-frequency collocations served as a proxy for automaticity in speech production. Implications for CF-UF link research are discussed.
{"title":"What contributes to fluent L2 speech? Examining cognitive and utterance fluency link with underlying L2 collocational processing speed and accuracy","authors":"Kotaro Takizawa","doi":"10.1017/s014271642400016x","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/s014271642400016x","url":null,"abstract":"Second language (L2) fluency research has suggested that a range of linguistic knowledge and processing speed serve as cognitive fluency (CF) underlying L2 utterance fluency (UF). Building on prior CF-UF link studies, this study explored L2 collocational processing speed and accuracy as underlying CF measures. This study also explored the phrasal frequency effect on the relationship between collocational processing speed and UF to test whether the processing speed of higher-frequency collocations is more strongly related to UF. A total of 108 Japanese university students completed a phrasal acceptability judgment task with adjective–noun collocations pooled from the Academic Collocation List. Speech was elicited in an argumentative speech task, and UF measures were computed based on speed, breakdown, and repair fluency. The results revealed that the collocational processing speed was weakly tied to articulation rate and mid-clause and end-clause silent pause ratio (<jats:italic>rho</jats:italic> = |.271–.322|), while the collocational processing accuracy was weakly to moderately tied to most UF measures except filled pause ratio (<jats:italic>rho</jats:italic> = |.281–.368|). The collocation frequency moderated the relationship between the processing speed and UF, suggesting that high-frequency collocations served as a proxy for automaticity in speech production. Implications for CF-UF link research are discussed.","PeriodicalId":48065,"journal":{"name":"Applied Psycholinguistics","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.1,"publicationDate":"2024-05-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140927278","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-05-13DOI: 10.1017/s0142716424000158
Elly Koutamanis, Gerrit Jan Kootstra, Ton Dijkstra, Sharon Unsworth
The cognate facilitation effect, a classic example of cross-language interaction in the bilingual lexicon, has mostly been studied in adults. We examined the extent to which such effects occurred in simultaneous bilingual children’s word processing, to what extent these were modulated by language dominance, and to what extent this differed between comprehension and production tasks. Simultaneous bilingual Dutch-Greek children, ranging from Dutch-dominant to Greek-dominant, performed auditory lexical decision and picture-naming tasks in an online experiment. Cognate facilitation effects emerged in both tasks but manifested themselves differently. In lexical decision, there was an interaction effect with language dominance in accuracy, while in picture naming there was a main effect in reaction times. These findings suggest that, similar to what has been found for adults, simultaneous bilingual children have an integrated lexicon, in which both languages are interactively connected. Effects may differ as a combined result of factors such as comprehension versus production and individual differences in language dominance. Importantly, despite such differences, our results show that cognate effects emerge across tasks and across a range of individual children’s language dominance, indicating that shared representations within the bilingual lexicon are accessed during both word comprehension and production.
{"title":"Shared representations in cognate comprehension and production: An online picture naming and lexical decision study with bilingual children","authors":"Elly Koutamanis, Gerrit Jan Kootstra, Ton Dijkstra, Sharon Unsworth","doi":"10.1017/s0142716424000158","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/s0142716424000158","url":null,"abstract":"The cognate facilitation effect, a classic example of cross-language interaction in the bilingual lexicon, has mostly been studied in adults. We examined the extent to which such effects occurred in simultaneous bilingual children’s word processing, to what extent these were modulated by language dominance, and to what extent this differed between comprehension and production tasks. Simultaneous bilingual Dutch-Greek children, ranging from Dutch-dominant to Greek-dominant, performed auditory lexical decision and picture-naming tasks in an online experiment. Cognate facilitation effects emerged in both tasks but manifested themselves differently. In lexical decision, there was an interaction effect with language dominance in accuracy, while in picture naming there was a main effect in reaction times. These findings suggest that, similar to what has been found for adults, simultaneous bilingual children have an integrated lexicon, in which both languages are interactively connected. Effects may differ as a combined result of factors such as comprehension versus production and individual differences in language dominance. Importantly, despite such differences, our results show that cognate effects emerge across tasks and across a range of individual children’s language dominance, indicating that shared representations within the bilingual lexicon are accessed during both word comprehension and production.","PeriodicalId":48065,"journal":{"name":"Applied Psycholinguistics","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.1,"publicationDate":"2024-05-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140927547","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-05-13DOI: 10.1017/s0142716424000171
Richard L. Sparks, Abdullah Alamer
Second language (L2) anxiety has been proposed to play a causal role in L2 achievement. However, most studies have failed to acknowledge confounding variables that may be relevant to the study of anxiety and L2 achievement or to investigate the causal effect of L2 anxiety using longitudinal data. For these reasons, we investigated the effect of L1 reading achievement, L2 aptitude, and L2 anxiety as covariates on the growth of L2 reading achievement across three time points. We used the latent growth curve model (LGCM) to estimate the growth trajectory of US secondary school students’ L2 reading growth in Spanish (N = 307) over three school years. The findings showed that students’ L1 reading achievement and L2 aptitude strongly and significantly predicted L2 reading achievement growth. However, L2 anxiety did not predict L2 reading achievement growth. Findings suggest that growth in L2 reading achievement depends on the language-related skills used for L1 reading and the language skills that comprise L2 aptitude, but not on anxiety. Similar to past cross-sectional studies, L2 anxiety related only to initial levels of L2 reading achievement, suggesting that anxiety reflects students’ initial experience of L2 reading but not their L2 achievement.
{"title":"Language anxiety does not affect the growth of L2 reading achievement: The latent growth curve model approach","authors":"Richard L. Sparks, Abdullah Alamer","doi":"10.1017/s0142716424000171","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/s0142716424000171","url":null,"abstract":"Second language (L2) anxiety has been proposed to play a causal role in L2 achievement. However, most studies have failed to acknowledge confounding variables that may be relevant to the study of anxiety and L2 achievement or to investigate the causal effect of L2 anxiety using longitudinal data. For these reasons, we investigated the effect of <jats:italic>L1 reading achievement</jats:italic>, <jats:italic>L2 aptitude</jats:italic>, and <jats:italic>L2 anxiety</jats:italic> as covariates on the growth of L2 reading achievement across three time points. We used the latent growth curve model (LGCM) to estimate the growth trajectory of US secondary school students’ L2 reading growth in Spanish (<jats:italic>N</jats:italic> = 307) over three school years. The findings showed that students’ L1 reading achievement and L2 aptitude strongly and significantly predicted L2 reading achievement growth. However, L2 anxiety did not predict L2 reading achievement growth. Findings suggest that growth in L2 reading achievement depends on the language-related skills used for L1 reading and the language skills that comprise L2 aptitude, but not on anxiety. Similar to past cross-sectional studies, L2 anxiety related only to initial levels of L2 reading achievement, suggesting that anxiety reflects students’ initial experience of L2 reading but not their L2 achievement.","PeriodicalId":48065,"journal":{"name":"Applied Psycholinguistics","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.1,"publicationDate":"2024-05-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140927281","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-04-24DOI: 10.1017/s0142716424000122
A. Opitz, Denisa Bordag, Alberto Furgoni
We investigated the retention of surface linguistic information during reading using eye-tracking. Departing from a research tradition that examines differences between meaning retention and verbatim memory, we focused on how different linguistic factors affect the retention of surface linguistic information. We examined three grammatical alternations in German that differed in involvement of changes in morpho-syntax and/or information structure, while their propositional meaning is unaffected: voice (active vs. passive), adverb positioning, different realizations of conditional clauses. Single sentences were presented and repeated, either identical or modified according to the grammatical alternation (with controlled interval between them). Results for native (N = 60) and non-native (N = 58) German participants show longer fixation durations for modified versus unmodified sentences when information structural changes are involved (voice, adverb position). In contrast, mere surface grammatical changes without a functional component (conditional clauses) did not lead to different reading behavior. Sensitivity to the manipulation was not influenced by language (L1, L2) or repetition interval. The study provides novel evidence that linguistic factors affect verbatim retention and highlights the importance of eye-tracking as a sensitive measure of implicit memory.
{"title":"The role of linguistic factors in the retention of verbatim information in reading: An eye-tracking study on L1 and L2 German","authors":"A. Opitz, Denisa Bordag, Alberto Furgoni","doi":"10.1017/s0142716424000122","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/s0142716424000122","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 We investigated the retention of surface linguistic information during reading using eye-tracking. Departing from a research tradition that examines differences between meaning retention and verbatim memory, we focused on how different linguistic factors affect the retention of surface linguistic information. We examined three grammatical alternations in German that differed in involvement of changes in morpho-syntax and/or information structure, while their propositional meaning is unaffected: voice (active vs. passive), adverb positioning, different realizations of conditional clauses. Single sentences were presented and repeated, either identical or modified according to the grammatical alternation (with controlled interval between them). Results for native (N = 60) and non-native (N = 58) German participants show longer fixation durations for modified versus unmodified sentences when information structural changes are involved (voice, adverb position). In contrast, mere surface grammatical changes without a functional component (conditional clauses) did not lead to different reading behavior. Sensitivity to the manipulation was not influenced by language (L1, L2) or repetition interval. The study provides novel evidence that linguistic factors affect verbatim retention and highlights the importance of eye-tracking as a sensitive measure of implicit memory.","PeriodicalId":48065,"journal":{"name":"Applied Psycholinguistics","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.1,"publicationDate":"2024-04-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140659717","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-04-22DOI: 10.1017/s0142716424000134
Christophe Cauchi, Jonathan Grainger, Bernard Lété
Prior research with adult participants reported a rightward bias in the reading version of the flankers task. Here, we investigated how this bias evolves as a function of reading expertise. We tested two groups of French primary school children from Cycle 2 (grades 1 and 2) and Cycle 3 (grades 4 and 5) and one group of adult participants. In the related flanker conditions, the central target word was flanked by the same word either on the left (park park ####), the right (#### park park), or on both sides (park park park). In the unrelated conditions, the repeated flanker words were replaced by a different unrelated word. In the analysis of standardized reaction times (RTs), there was a three-way interaction between the three groups of participants and the impact of flanker relatedness as a function of the position of the related flankers. This three-way interaction reflected the significantly greater increase in effects of flanker relatedness between Cycle 2 and Cycle 3 for the bilateral flanker and the right flanker conditions compared with the left flanker condition. This suggests that the rightward bias is driven by attentional asymmetries that develop during the process of learning to read.
先前对成人参与者进行的研究表明,在阅读版的侧翼任务中存在右倾偏差。在这里,我们研究了这种偏向是如何随着阅读专长的变化而变化的。我们测试了两组来自第二学段(一、二年级)和第三学段(四、五年级)的法国小学生以及一组成人参与者。在相关侧翼条件下,中心目标单词的左侧(park park ####)、右侧(#### park park)或两侧(park park park)都有相同的单词。在无关联条件下,重复出现的侧翼词由不同的无关联词代替。在对标准化反应时间(RTs)的分析中,三组被试之间存在三方交互作用,侧翼词相关性的影响是相关侧翼词位置的函数。这种三向交互作用反映出,在第二和第三周期之间,双侧侧翼和右侧侧翼条件对侧翼相关性的影响比左侧侧翼条件明显增加。这表明,右侧偏向是由学习阅读过程中形成的注意不对称驱动的。
{"title":"On the learning trajectory of directional biases in reading: Evidence from the flankers task","authors":"Christophe Cauchi, Jonathan Grainger, Bernard Lété","doi":"10.1017/s0142716424000134","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/s0142716424000134","url":null,"abstract":"Prior research with adult participants reported a rightward bias in the reading version of the flankers task. Here, we investigated how this bias evolves as a function of reading expertise. We tested two groups of French primary school children from Cycle 2 (grades 1 and 2) and Cycle 3 (grades 4 and 5) and one group of adult participants. In the related flanker conditions, the central target word was flanked by the same word either on the left (park park ####), the right (#### park park), or on both sides (park park park). In the unrelated conditions, the repeated flanker words were replaced by a different unrelated word. In the analysis of standardized reaction times (RTs), there was a three-way interaction between the three groups of participants and the impact of flanker relatedness as a function of the position of the related flankers. This three-way interaction reflected the significantly greater increase in effects of flanker relatedness between Cycle 2 and Cycle 3 for the bilateral flanker and the right flanker conditions compared with the left flanker condition. This suggests that the rightward bias is driven by attentional asymmetries that develop during the process of learning to read.","PeriodicalId":48065,"journal":{"name":"Applied Psycholinguistics","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.1,"publicationDate":"2024-04-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140636885","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-04-12DOI: 10.1017/s0142716424000092
John C. B. Gamboa, Leigh B. Fernandez, Shanley E. M. Allen
The Uniform Information Density (UID) hypothesis proposes that speakers communicate by transmitting information close to a constant rate. When choosing between two syntactic variants, it claims that speakers prefer the variant distributing information most evenly, avoiding signal peaks and troughs. If speakers prefer transmitting information uniformly, then comprehenders should also prefer a uniform signal, experiencing difficulty whenever confronted with informational peaks. However, the literature investigating this hypothesis has focused mostly on production, with only a few studies considering comprehension. In this study, we investigate comprehension in two eye-tracking experiments. Participants read sentences of two different lengths, reflecting different degrees of density, containing either a dense structure (a nominal compound, NC) or a structure that spreads the information through more words (a noun followed by a prepositional phrase, PP). Favoring the UID hypothesis, participants gazed longer at text segments following the critical structure when it was an NC than when it was a PP. They also regressed more in sentences containing longer structures. However, the pattern of results was not as clear as expected, potentially reflecting participants’ experience with the denser structure or task differences between production and comprehension. These aspects should be taken into account in future research investigating the UID hypothesis for comprehension.
{"title":"Investigating the Uniform Information Density hypothesis with complex nominal compounds","authors":"John C. B. Gamboa, Leigh B. Fernandez, Shanley E. M. Allen","doi":"10.1017/s0142716424000092","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/s0142716424000092","url":null,"abstract":"The Uniform Information Density (UID) hypothesis proposes that speakers communicate by transmitting information close to a constant rate. When choosing between two syntactic variants, it claims that speakers prefer the variant distributing information most evenly, avoiding signal peaks and troughs. If speakers prefer transmitting information uniformly, then comprehenders should also prefer a uniform signal, experiencing difficulty whenever confronted with informational peaks. However, the literature investigating this hypothesis has focused mostly on production, with only a few studies considering comprehension. In this study, we investigate comprehension in two eye-tracking experiments. Participants read sentences of two different lengths, reflecting different degrees of density, containing either a dense structure (a nominal compound, NC) or a structure that spreads the information through more words (a noun followed by a prepositional phrase, PP). Favoring the UID hypothesis, participants gazed longer at text segments following the critical structure when it was an NC than when it was a PP. They also regressed more in sentences containing longer structures. However, the pattern of results was not as clear as expected, potentially reflecting participants’ experience with the denser structure or task differences between production and comprehension. These aspects should be taken into account in future research investigating the UID hypothesis for comprehension.","PeriodicalId":48065,"journal":{"name":"Applied Psycholinguistics","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.1,"publicationDate":"2024-04-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140587685","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-04-12DOI: 10.1017/s0142716424000110
Keshu Xiang, Jianhui Wei, Yuanyan Chen
This study investigated the effects of entrenchment, preemption, verb semantics, and morphophonological constraints in Chinese EFL (English as a Foreign Language) learners’ retreat from the overgeneralization errors of English dative alternations. Two groups of Chinese EFL learners rated the acceptability of 66 dative verbs in their well and ill forms. The results demonstrated that Chinese EFL learners were simultaneously sensitive to the multiple cues from entrenchment, preemption, semantic, and morphophonological constraints, indicating that Chinese EFL learners restricted the generalization of the dative alternation by utilizing both the statistical verb-bias information and semantic properties of the dative verbs. Moreover, the sensitivity of Chinese EFL learners to these constraints increases with the improvement of their English proficiency. These results validated the usage-based approaches to second language acquisition and provided an answer to the “Baker’s Paradox.”
{"title":"Statistics versus semantics: retreating from the dative overgeneralization errors by Chinese EFL learners","authors":"Keshu Xiang, Jianhui Wei, Yuanyan Chen","doi":"10.1017/s0142716424000110","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/s0142716424000110","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 This study investigated the effects of entrenchment, preemption, verb semantics, and morphophonological constraints in Chinese EFL (English as a Foreign Language) learners’ retreat from the overgeneralization errors of English dative alternations. Two groups of Chinese EFL learners rated the acceptability of 66 dative verbs in their well and ill forms. The results demonstrated that Chinese EFL learners were simultaneously sensitive to the multiple cues from entrenchment, preemption, semantic, and morphophonological constraints, indicating that Chinese EFL learners restricted the generalization of the dative alternation by utilizing both the statistical verb-bias information and semantic properties of the dative verbs. Moreover, the sensitivity of Chinese EFL learners to these constraints increases with the improvement of their English proficiency. These results validated the usage-based approaches to second language acquisition and provided an answer to the “Baker’s Paradox.”","PeriodicalId":48065,"journal":{"name":"Applied Psycholinguistics","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.1,"publicationDate":"2024-04-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140709324","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}