Presentations

Abstract

Das wichtigste und zugleich komplexeste Organ im menschlichen Körper ist das Gehirn.
Es ist beteiligt an allem, was uns lieb und teuer ist. Ohne Gehirn kein Gedächtnis, kein Gefühl, keine Sprache oder Wahrnehmung, so Dr. Peter Hagoort, Professor am Donders Centre for Cognition an der Radboud Universität. Der Nimweger Wissenschaftler beschäftigt sich mit den revolutionären Entwicklungen auf dem Gebiet der Scanbildtechnologie.

Abstract

Human face-to-face communication is a multi-modal activity. Recent research has shown that, during comprehension, recipients integrate information from speech with that contained in co-speech gestures (e.g., Kelly et al., 2010). The current studies take this research one step further by investigating the influence of another modality, namely eye gaze, on speech and gesture comprehension, to advance our understanding of language processing in more situated contexts. In spite of the large body of literature on processing of eye gaze, very few studies have investigated its processing in the context of communication (but see, e.g., Staudte & Crocker, 2011 for an exception). In two studies we simulated a triadic communication context in which a speaker alternated their gaze between our participant and another (alleged) participant. Participants thus viewed speech-only or speech + gesture utterances either in the role of addressee (direct gaze) or in the role of unaddressed recipient (averted gaze). In Study 1, participants (N = 32) viewed video-clips of a speaker producing speech-only (e.g. “she trained the horse”) or speech+gesture utterances conveying complementary information (e.g. “she trained the horse”+WHIPPING gesture). Participants were asked to judge whether a word displayed on screen after each video-clip matched what the speaker said or not. In half of the cases, the word matched a previously uttered word, requiring a “yes” answer. In all other cases, the word matched the meaning of the gesture the actor had performed, thus requiring a ‘no’ answer.

Abstract

During reading, people not only retrieve meaning from individual words, they also combine words into multi-word meaning representation and derive inference from it. In single word studies, action verb meaning (kick) is understood through the activation of motor areas, typically interpreted as showing the necessity of these sensori motor regions as part of a semantic circuit for language comprehension (Pulvermüller & Fadiga, 2010). But it remains unclear how this association-based theory scales up to understanding sentence meaning and how the semantic circuit subserves inference
making at the sentence level.

Abstract

Words’ meanings vary with context. When do context effects arise? The answer to this is critical for deciding between theories assuming that meanings are accessed from a stable mental lexicon and theories that suggest meanings are constructed ad hoc. On the first view, a word form activates an invariant semantic representation, which is subsequently tailored to fit the context (e.g., Evans, 2009; Machery, 2010). On an alternative view, word forms are cues to construct meaning; the information that gets activated is always co-determined by the word and its context (Elman, 2004; 2009; Lai, Hagoort, & Casasanto, 2011).

Abstract

An important property of language is that it can be used exophorically, for instance in referring to entities in the extra-linguistic context of a conversation using demonstratives such as “this” and “that”. Despite large-scale cross-linguistic descriptions of demonstrative systems, the mechanisms underlying the comprehension of such referential acts are poorly understood. Therefore, we investigated the neural mechanisms underlying demonstrative comprehension in situated contexts. Twenty-three participants were presented on a computer screen with pictures containing a speaker and two similar objects. One of the objects was close to the speaker, whereas the other was either distal from the speaker but optically close to the participant (“sagittal orientation”), or distal from both (“lateral orientation”). The speaker pointed to one object, and participants heard sentences spoken by the speaker containing a proximal (“this”) or distal (“that”) demonstrative, and a correct or incorrect noun-label (i.e., a semantic violation). EEG was recorded continuously and time-locked to the onset of demonstratives and nouns. Semantic violations on the noun-label yielded a significant, wide-spread N400 effect, regardless of the objects’ orientation. Comparing the comprehension of proximal to distal demonstratives in the sagittal orientation yielded a similar N400 effect, both for the close and the far referent. Interestingly, no demonstrative effect was found when objects were oriented laterally. Our findings suggest a similar time-course for demonstrative and noun-label processing. However, the comprehension of demonstratives depends on the spatial orientation of potential referents, whereas noun-label comprehension does not. These findings reveal new insights about the mechanisms underlying everyday demonstrative comprehension.

Abstract

A series of results from event-related brain potential recordings and fMRI research will be presented, suggesting that language processing does not obey strict compositionality, and, moreover immediately recruits extralinguistic information. It will also be shown that pragmatic inferences require contributions from TOM networks. This implies that an embodied account of semantics fails (under the somewhat strange assumption that the brain is not part of the body). I will put forward an embrained perspective on language processing.

Abstract

In my presentation I will summarize the results of a number of ERP and fMRI studies on the processing and integration of co-occurring speech and gestures/pantomimes. The ERP results indicate that the time course of integrating language and action (i.e., gesture) is very similar to that of integrating linguistic meaning into a sentence or discourse representation. Moreover, in both cases the Left Inferior Frontal cortex plays a central role in orchestrating the multimodal unification of language and action. This orchestration is partly done by modulating temporal areas that store representations activated by the input. I will discuss the parameters of this modulation.

Abstract

For over 20 years, researchers have investigated syntactic priming of transitives by measuring the frequency of sentence choice. These studies have shown syntactic priming for passives but weaker or absent syntactic priming for actives (e.g. [1],[2]). Until recently very few studies have reported syntactic priming by measuring reaction times of language production and none of these studies included transitive sentences. We previously found syntactic priming of both active and passive Dutch transitives in speech onsets, and interestingly the effect appeared to be stronger for actives than passives [3][4]. In order to explain the discrepancy between our results and other results reported in the literature, we hypothesized that there is a ceiling effect in the frequency of using an active transitive (in general about 94% of produced transitives are actives) but not in the speed of producing one. To confirm this hypothesis we conducted a syntactic priming experiment with a picture description task measuring both reaction times and the frequency of occurrence on the same trials. This way we could exclude the alternative explanation that the discrepancy in results is caused by differences in design or stimuli. The results of this experiment show syntactic priming effects for passives and not for actives in the frequency of occurrence (in line with the literature). However, the reaction times of producing these sentences do show syntactic priming for actives and these effects appear to be even stronger than for passives (in line with our previous data). In conclusion, our results suggest that measuring the frequency of occurrence is not enough to get a complete picture of syntactic priming. Measuring reaction times in addition to the frequency of occurrence could provide us with a more complete picture. References [1] Bock, K., & Loebell, H. (1990). Framing sentences. Cognition, 35, 1-39. [2] Hartsuiker, R. J., & Kolk, H. H. J. (1998). Syntactic persistence in Dutch sentence production. Language and Speech, 41, 143-184. [3] Menenti, L., Segaert, K., & Hagoort, P. (2008). Repetition suppression for syntax and semantics: overt speech in fMRI. Society for Neuroscience, Washington DC. [4] Segaert, K., Menenti, L., & Hagoort, P. (2009) Scanning speech with fMRI: Short and long term priming of syntax and verbs, CUNY conference on human sentence processing, Davis, CA.

Abstract

Syntactic priming has been frequently used to study syntactic processes in language production in monolinguals [1][2] and bilinguals [3]. In a previous study in language comprehension [4] we showed that passive sentences in English (the participant’s L2) can be primed by passive sentences in German (L1) and English (L2). This was manifested in faster reading times for target sentences and repetition suppression effects in left inferior frontal, left precentral and left middle temporal regions of interest in an fMRI study. However, syntactic priming in comprehension is complicated by the influence of verb repetition between prime and target [5][6]. Therefore, we conducted a reading time and fMRI study looking at the influence of verb repetition on syntactic priming. In this study of monolingual comprehension in Dutch we primed passive sentences as well as sentences with crossed-dependency structures. The reading time results revealed a syntactic priming effect for passive sentences, while the effect for crossed-dependency structure sentences interacted with the factor verb repetition. The preliminary fMRI results suggest that the repetition of passive structures leads to reductions in neural activity. The repetition of crossed dependency structures causes repetition enhancement, an increase in the BOLD response, an effect that interacts with the factor verb repetition. In conclusion, the influence of verb repetition on syntactic priming in comprehension is complex and seems to depend on the type of syntactic structure investigated. References [1] Bock K. (1986). Syntactic persistence in language production. Cognitive Psychology, 18(3), 355-387. [2] Pickering M, & Branigan H. (1999). Syntactic priming in language production. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 3(4), 136-141. [3] Schoonbaert S, Hartsuiker RJ, & Pickering MJ. (2007). The representation of lexical and syntactic information in bilinguals: Evidence from syntactic priming. Journal of Memory and Language, 56(2), 153-171. [4] Weber K, & Indefrey P. (in press). Syntactic priming in German-English bilinguals during sentence comprehension. NeuroImage. [5] Arai M, van Gompel R, & Scheepers C. (2007). Priming ditransitive structures in comprehension. Cognitive Psychology, 54, 218-250. [6] Thothathiri M, & Snedeker J. (2008). Give and take: Syntactic priming during spoken language comprehension. Cognition, 108(1), 51-68.