PSY 369: Psycholinguistics

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PSY 369 Psycholinguistics

• Language Comprehension
• The role of memory

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Memory and comprehension

• The man that the woman that the child hugged
  kissed laughed.
• Most readers having trouble figuring out who did
  what to whom (called thematic role assignment).
• Easier to assign thematic roles in the two
  sentences that form it
• The man that the woman kissed laughed.
• The woman that the child hugged kissed the man.
• The trouble
• Insufficient working memory resources to retain
  the intermediate products of computation made
  building the complex syntactic structure
• The Capacity Theory of Comprehension (Just
  Carpenter, 1992)

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Measuring memory span

• Daneman and Carpenter (1980??) Technique
• This technique involves presenting sequences of 2
  to 6 sentences, each of 13 to 16 words.
• The subject has to read the sentences out loud,
  and attempt to remember the last word of each.
• He is then asked to recall as many last words as
  possible (in any order).
• Used to classify readers as high and low span

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Measuring memory span

• Insert example of span test

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Memory and comprehension

• Just and Carpenter (1992)
• Studied garden path sentences
• The animacy of the first noun may constrain the
  possible interpretation of the sentence

The defendant examined by the lawyer shocked the
jury. The defendant that was examined by the
lawyer shocked the jury. The evidence examined
by the lawyer shocked the jury. The evidence
that was examined by the lawyer shocked the jury.
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Memory and comprehension
Just the ambiguous sentences
The defendant examined by the lawyer shocked the
jury.
The evidence examined by the lawyer shocked the
jury.
High span readers can use the semantic
information to resolve the ambiguity
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Memory and comprehension

• King and Just (1991)
• Verbs which could provide strong pragmatic cues
  as to which of the two potential actors in the
  sentence was the agent

• The robber that the fireman rescued stole the
  jewelry.
• The robber that the fireman rescued watched the
  program.
• The robber that the fireman detested stole the
  jewelry.
• The robber that the fireman detested watched the
  program.

• Results
• High-capacity subjects did not improve
• Low-capacity subjects did

The opposite of the Just and Carpenter (1992)
results.
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Memory and comprehension

• Garnsey, Pearlmutter, Pirog (2003)
• The professor (who was) confronted by the student
  was
• not ready for an argument.
• The professor (had) confronted the student but
  was
• not ready for an argument.
• Question
• Do readers differ specifically in how quickly
  they can use disambiguating words to rule out
  incorrect alternatives?

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Memory and comprehension

• Garnsey, Pearlmutter, Pirog (2003)

Eye fixations were analyzed separately
- By whether preview of by while still fixating
on verb likely
The professor confronted by the student was not
ready to
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Memory and comprehension

• Readers who score high on the Reading Span test
• - Make better use of a peripherally visible
  disambiguating word
• - To quickly rule out a preferred but
  incorrect interpretation

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Memory and comprehension

• Read sentence, then decide if it makes sense Y/N

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Memory for sentences

• Fillenbaum (1966)
• Given
• The window is not closed
• Tested
• The window is closed
• The window is not open
• The window is open

lt-- surface similar, meaning different lt--
surface similar, meaning different lt-- surface
different, surface different
Meaning gets preserved, surface structure (and
syntax) forgotten
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Memory for sentences

• Sachs (1967, 1974)
• Heard (read)
• He sent a letter about it to Galileo, the great
  Italian scientist.
• Tested
• Same He sent a letter about it to Galileo, the
  great Italian scientist.
• Act/Pass A letter about it was sent to Galileo,
  the great Italian scientist.
• Formal He sent Galileo, the great Italian
  scientist, a letter about it.
• Meaning Galileo, the great Italian scientist,
  sent him a letter about it.
• Measured accuracy of detecting changes

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Memory for sentences
Meaning gets preserved, surface structure (and
syntax) forgotten
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Just good enough representations

• Ferreira and colleagues (Christianson et al 2001)
• Garden-path sentence
• While Anna dressed the baby played in the crib
• While Anna dressed, the baby played in the crib

• Did the baby play in the crib?
• Did Anna dress the baby?

100 correct
40 correct
Comprehenders dont always get all of the meaning
right, but get enough to get by
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Summing up

• summary