Cognitive Overload and Orthographic Errors: When Cognitive Overload Enhances Subject–Verb Agreement Errors. A Study in French Written Language

Abstract

Three experiments were carried out to test the hypothesis that cognitive overload enhances the occurrence of subject-verb agreement errors in French. Highly educated adults were presented orally with sentences they were required to write down. The sentences were of the types “N1 de N2 V” (Noun 1 of Noun 2 Verb: Le chien des voisins arrive/The neighbours’ dog is arriving) versus “Prl Pr2 V” (Pronoun 1 Pronoun 2 Verb: Il les aime/He likes them). In these sentences, N1 (Pr1) and N2 (Pr2) matched or mismatched in number. In the three experiments, the sentences had to be recalled either in an isolated condition (i.e. every presented sentence had to be immediately recalled) or with a concurrent task: click counting (Experiment 2) or serial recall of series of five words presented immediately after the sentences (Experiments 1 and 3). Participants showed errors when performing two concurrent tasks and almost no error when recalling isolated sentences. As expected, errors occurred when N1 (Pr1) and N1 (Pr2) mismatched in number. The results are consistent with our hypothesis and with a functional approach of written composition.

When Sex and Syntax Go Hand in Hand: Gender Agreement in Language Production

“…(9) *Siamo una squadra che giochiamo We are a team-S that play-P (10) *C'est ce genre de texte qui sont très subtils It's this-S kind-S of text-S that are-P very subtle A number of experiments have investigated agreement phenomena in language production by looking at errors in the agreement of number between the sentential subject and the verb, as in examples (9) and (10) (Bock & Miller, 1991;Bock & Cutting, 1992;Bock & Eberhard, 1993;Fayol, Largy, & Lemaire, 1994;Eberhard, 1997;Vigliocco, Butterworth, & Semenza, 1995;Vigliocco, Butterworth, & Garrett, 1996a;Vigliocco, Hartsuiker, Jarema, & Kolk, 1996b). Errors were induced by presenting speakers with sentential fragments such as "The king of the colonies.…”

Efeitos de distância linear e marcação no processamento da concordância verbal variável no PB / Linear distance and markedness effects in variable subject-verb agreement processing in BP

“…É importante salientar que, enquanto as pesquisas sobre processamento da concordância a partir da análise de lapsos é bastante rica, incluindo estudos que investigam a produção escrita MILLER, 1991;CUTTING, 1992;EBERHARD, 1993;FAYOL et al, 1994;NICOL, 1998;FRANCK et al, 2002;no PB, RODRIGUES, 2005a, 2005b, 2006, COSTA, 2013ALMEIDA, 2016;lapsos na escrita, FAYOL et al, 1994; dentre outros), 3 trabalhos envolvendo o processamento da concordância variável ainda são escassos e muito recentes (sobre o PB, MARCILESE et al, 2015;HENRIQUE, 2016;AZALIM, 2016;AZALIM et al, submetido;no inglês: SQUIRES, 2014). 3 No caso de pesquisas em processamento conduzidas com falantes de PB, cumpre destacar, no que tange ao diálogo entre Psicolinguística e Estudos de Variação Linguística, os trabalhos de Costa (2014) e Almeida (2016), os quais, embora não tomem a concordância variável como tópico de investigação, trazem algum nível de discussão sobre possível efeito de variação linguística no processamento da concordância.…”

One or More Labels on the Bottles? Notional Concord in Dutch and French

“…That is, the presence of a local noun, mismatching in number with the subject head noun, and in the immediate pre-verbal environm ent, as in (4), increased subject-verb agreem ent error rates in comparison to the number control condition, exem pli ed in (5), where the head and the local noun had the same number features Bock & Eberhard, 1993;Bock & Miller, 1991;Fayol et al, 1994;Vigliocco et al, 1995, in press). …”

“…These two forms of derailm ent have been studied in series of experim ents designed to induce agreement errors Bock & Eberhard, 1993;Bock & Miller, 1991;Fayol, Largy, & Lemaire, 1994;Vigliocco, Butterworth, & Semenza, 1995;Vigliocco, Butterworth, & Garrett, in press). In most of these experimental investigation s, subject-verb agreem ent errors were induced by presenting the participants with preambles consisting of a subject head noun and a local noun embedded in a phrase or clause that modi ed the subject noun phrase, as shown in (4) and (5).…”