Depth of lexical-semantic processing and sentential load

Sanford, Alison; Sanford, Anthony J.; Filik, Ruth; Molle, Jo

doi:10.1016/j.jml.2005.05.004

Cited by 23 publications

(21 citation statements)

References 36 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…Though the cognitive load account is plausible, there is no evidence that load has an effect on the level of detail of representations. In fact, previous research that examined whether cognitive load leads to less‐detailed representations found no such influence (Sanford, Sanford, Filik, & Molle, ).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 87%

The Unforeseen Consequences of Interacting With Non‐Native Speakers

Lev‐Ari

Keysar

2018

Topics in Cognitive Science

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Sociolinguistic research shows that listeners' expectations of speakers influence their interpretation of the speech, yet this is often ignored in cognitive models of language comprehension. Here, we focus on the case of interactions between native and non-native speakers. Previous literature shows that listeners process the language of non-native speakers in less detail, because they expect them to have lower linguistic competence. We show that processing the language of non-native speakers increases lexical competition and access in general, not only of the non-native speaker's speech, and that this leads to poorer memory of one's own speech during the interaction. We further find that the degree to which people adjust their processing to non-native speakers is related to the degree to which they adjust their speech to them. We discuss implications for cognitive models of language processing and sociolinguistic research on attitudes.

show abstract

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 87%

The Unforeseen Consequences of Interacting With Non‐Native Speakers

Lev‐Ari

Keysar

2018

Topics in Cognitive Science

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…The remaining 8 contained no changes across presentations. Previous work (see, e.g., A. J. S. Sanford et al, 2005) had demonstrated that this mixture of fillers-with and without changeseliminated the ability of participants to predict when a change might occur. The stimuli were assigned to six playlists; each contained only one of the six possible versions of each experimental stimuli.…”

Section: Enhancement and Suppression Effectsmentioning

confidence: 90%

“…It has been shown that detection is sensitive to clause status (A. J. Sanford, 2002), discourse focus (A. J. S. Sanford, Sanford, Molle, & Emmott, 2006;Sturt et al, 2004), syntactic and referential complexity (A. J. S. Sanford, Sanford, Filik, & Molle, 2005), and text-based devices of emphasis (Emmott, Sanford, & Dawydiak, 2007). Sturt et al (2004) used change detection to examine the effects of cleft constructions and of contextual manipulation of contrastive focus (comparable to Cutler & Fodor, 1979, who manipulated spoken stress).…”

Section: Experiments 2 Text-change Detection With Pseudocleft Construcmentioning

confidence: 99%

Enhancement and suppression effects resulting from information structuring in sentences

2009

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

880The relative importance of particular parts of a sentence is signaled through devices of information structuring and prosodic stress, which control the focus of information within sentences, as is made clear in an extensive linguistic literature (see, e.g., Gundel, 1999;Halliday, 1967;Jackendoff, 1972;Rooth, 1992). In the present article, our interest is in the cognitive effects of linguistic prominence, which can be manipulated through information structuring devices, such as the it-cleft construction. This construction is illustrated in (1), which shows how an it-cleft structure can signal prominence linguistically.(1) It was Harry who threw the snowball at Mary.This construction consists of a presupposed part-that someone threw a snowball at Mary (Delin, 1992;Prince, 1978)-and a new assertion, that Harry was the person who did the throwing (see, e.g., Hedberg, 2000;Prince, 1978). Use of the it-cleft structure clearly distinguishes the given from the new information and enables speakers to single out the clefted constituent in order to focus attention on it (Hedberg, 2000). Linguistic analyses suggest that the cleft-it copula clefted constituent-puts the clefted constituent into referential focus. Effectively, sentence (1) answers the question Who threw the snowball, putting emphasis on Harry as opposed to on any other individual; hence, the effect of clefting is referred to as contrastive focus (e.g., Rooth, 1992).It is already well established that linguistic focus leads to a privileged and deeper analysis of the focused term. For instance, the Moses illusion in form (2) is easily missed, whereas in (3) it is not (Bredart & Modolo, 1988):(2) Moses put two of each animal on the Ark, true or false? (3) It was Moses who put two of each animal on the Ark, true or false?The point of this illusion is that people do not usually notice that it was Noah, not Moses, who put the animals on the Ark. However, because the cleft construction in (3) causes a deeper analysis of the term Moses, detection of the anomaly is higher in this case. A variety of other studies have shown that focused elements are more easily processed at the discourse level. Cutler and Fodor (1979) manipulated contrastive focus through discourse context, presenting sentences such as (4) or (5) before the target sentence (6): (4) Which man was wearing the hat? (5) What hat was the man wearing? (6) The man on the corner was wearing the blue hat.Sentence (4) has the effect of putting The man on the corner into narrow focus, whereas (5) has the effect of putting the blue hat into narrow focus. Using a phoneme monitoring task, it was found that the phoneme detection latency was shorter for words in the scope of focus than for words outside of the scope of focus. Similar evidence of enhancement was found by Sturt, Sanford, Stewart, and University of Glasgow, Glasgow, ScotlandInformation structuring through the use of cleft sentences increases the processing efficiency of references to elements within the scope of focus. Furthermore, there is evidence t...

show abstract

“…To begin to answer this question, the first experiment employed the text-change paradigm (Christianson, 2008;Sanford, Sanford, Filik, & Molle, 2005;Sanford, Sanford, Molle, & Emmott, 2006). In this paradigm, also known as the change-detection paradigm, participants are given a text of some sort to read on a computer screen, and then they are presented with a second text that is either identical to the first text or changed very slightly in some way.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Practice Makes (Nearly) Perfect: Solving ‘Students‐and‐Professors’‐Type Algebra Word Problems

Christianson

Mestre

Luke

2012

Applied Cognitive Psychology

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Three experiments with university students (Ns = 40, 36, and 36) who were non-math majors explicitly examined whether repetition in performing 'students-and-professors'-type algebra word problems, which have been shown in the past to be vexingly difficult even for more advanced students, would spontaneously lead to higher rates of correct answers. Word order and situation model specificity were also examined to determine their effects on the rate of improvement. The strongest predictor of students producing correct equations (i.e., not producing the typical 'reversal error') was practice: In all experiments, participants spontaneously improved in equation accuracy almost to ceiling levels as they progressed, despite receiving no feedback. Tentative support is provided for the pedagogical value of repetition in solving problems, along with varying the wording of the problems.

show abstract

Depth of lexical-semantic processing and sentential load

Cited by 23 publications

References 36 publications

The Unforeseen Consequences of Interacting With Non‐Native Speakers

The Unforeseen Consequences of Interacting With Non‐Native Speakers

Enhancement and suppression effects resulting from information structuring in sentences

Practice Makes (Nearly) Perfect: Solving ‘Students‐and‐Professors’‐Type Algebra Word Problems

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About