Causality, subjectivity and mental spaces: Insights from on-line discourse processing

Abstract

Research has shown that it requires less time to process information that is part of an objective causal relation describing states of affairs in the world (She was out of breath because she was running), than information that is part of a subjective relation (She must have been in a hurry because she was running) expressing a claim or conclusion and a supporting argument. Representing subjectivity seems to require extra cognitive operations.In Mental Spaces Theory (MST; Fauconnier, Gilles. 1994. Mental spaces: Aspects of meaning construction in natural language. Cambridge: MIT Press) the difference between these two relation types can be described in terms of an extra mental space in the discourse representation of subjective relations: representing the Subject of Consciousness (SoC). In processing terms, this might imply that the processing difference is not present if this SoC has already been established in the discourse. We tested this prediction in two eye tracking experiments. The results of Experiment 1 showed that signaling the subjectivity of the relation by introducing a subject of consciousness beforehand did not diminish the processing asymmetry compared to a neutral context. However, the relative complexity of subjective relations was diminished in the context of Free Indirect Speech (No! He was absolutely sure. There was no doubt about it. She was running so she was in hurry; Experiment 2).In terms of MST and the representation of subjectivity in general, this implies that not only creating a representation of a thinking subject, but also assigning a claim to this thinking subject requires extra processing effort.

Gaze behavior in single-page monomodal and cross-modal switches as affected by Event construal

“…Additionally, fictionality revealed in [6,27] is not found as potent in the attested stimuli. Perspective construal appears highly predictive in cross-modal switches in Text AOIs (here displayed in Author / Speaker), which correlates with the results reported in Kleijn et al [21]. Importantly, R 2 with FFD and AFD in Text AOIs is higher in cross-modal switches, which means that several event construal operations in Text AOIs in bimodal systems produce steadier gaze effects.…”

“…For instance, EMF was tested in eye tracking research in [10] where it allowed to determine the effects of space construal and agentivity in textual descriptions presented together with the images. In [21], the eye tracking procedure was applied to explore the effects of subjectivity in event construal as a component of EMF. It is noticeable that referent construal and event frame construal (event characteristics such as its dynamicity) effects are most tested in eye tracking psychological studies which are not attributed to EMF.…”

“…Perspective annotations were proposed by A. Verhagen [36] who considers Perspective Coordination, Multiple Perspective Construal, Perspective Subjectivation, Perspective Shifts, and by O. Iriskhanova [15] who identifies the operations of Subjectivation and Objectivation, Vantage Point, Camera Angle, Scale, Coordinate System Configuration, Mental Scanning Path. Oculographic research of Perspective shifts is still uncommon; the work of Kleijn et al [21] may serve a rare example of exploring the types of subjectivity in event construal.…”

Implicit Causality and Pronoun Resolution in Intersubjective Discourse Relations

“…Previous studies have shown that processing subjective causal relations like She worked hard, because she passed the oral English test is more difficult than processing objective relations like She passed the oral English test, because she worked hard ( Traxler et al, 1997 ; Canestrelli et al, 2013 ; Kleijn et al, 2021 ), since the former involves a subjective (but implicit) speaker who expresses opinions, arguments, or attitudes but the latter is describing real-world cause-consequence facts. The present study extends the literature by suggesting a perspective alignment between the comprehender and the speaker during the online processing of (inter)subjective discourse relations.…”

“…On the other hand, what is described in (2b) concerns the speaker’s reasoning such that the observation that she passed the oral English test (p) is an argument for the claim that she worked hard (q) . Relations like (2a) are considered as an objective relation and those like (2b) subjective, respectively ( Sanders and Spooren, 2015 ; Kleijn et al, 2021 ; see also “content domain” and “epistemic domain”, respectively, by Sweetser, 1990 ).…”