Neural Correlates of Syntactic Ambiguity in Sentence Comprehension for Low and High Span Readers

Fiebach, Christian J.; Vos, Sandra; Friederici, Angela D.

doi:10.1162/0898929042568479

Cited by 82 publications

(80 citation statements)

References 66 publications

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“…Interestingly, the sentence complexity and taskdemand conditions did not interact (i.e., the task effect was equally robust for SR and OR sentences). We note that this finding of no different localization of subject and object relative constructions in terms of L-IFC activation is in line with the current work of Fiebach et al (2004) and Wartenburger et al (2004) who investigated canonical and non canonical forms.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 92%

A Functional Neuroimaging Investigation of the Roles of Structural Complexity and Task-Demand During Auditory Sentence Processing

Love

Haist

Nicol³

et al. 2006

Cortex

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Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), this study directly examined an issue that bridges the potential language processing and multi-modal views of the role of Broca's area: the effects of task-demands in language comprehension studies. We presented syntactically simple and complex sentences for auditory comprehension under three different (differentially complex) taskdemand conditions: passive listening, probe verification, and theme judgment. Contrary to many language imaging findings, we found that both simple and complex syntactic structures activated left inferior frontal cortex (L-IFC). Critically, we found activation in these frontal regions increased together with increased task-demands. Specifically, tasks that required greater manipulation and comparison of linguistic material recruited L-IFC more strongly; independent of syntactic structure complexity. We argue that much of the presumed syntactic effects previously found in sentence imaging studies of L-IFC may, among other things, reflect the tasks employed in these studies and that L-IFC is a region underlying mnemonic and other integrative functions, on which much language processing may rely.

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 92%

A Functional Neuroimaging Investigation of the Roles of Structural Complexity and Task-Demand During Auditory Sentence Processing

Love

Haist

Nicol³

et al. 2006

Cortex

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show abstract

“…This may be related to the working memory component needed to maintain elements of the narrative in an active state during its production. Evidence consistent with a role for working memory during narrative production comes from superior performance (Singer & Ritchot, 1994) and greater frontal activation (Fiebach, Vos, & Friederici, 2004;Virtue, Haberman, Clancy, Parrish, & Jung Beeman, 2006) in subjects with higher working memory spans. Working memory in the service of complex sentence processing also is associated with dorsal inferior frontal activation (Cooke et al, 2006).…”

Section: Left Inferior Frontal Support For Working Memorymentioning

confidence: 89%

Narrative speech production: An fMRI study using continuous arterial spin labeling

et al. 2008

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Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) with continuous arterial spin labeling (CASL) was employed to monitor brain activation during narrative production of a semi-structured speech sample in healthy young adults. Subjects were asked to describe a wordless children's picture story. Significant activations were found in bilateral prefrontal and left temporal-parietal regions during narrative production relative to description of a single picture and relative to viewing the wordless picture story while producing a nonsense word. We conclude that an inferior frontal cortex serves as a top-down organizational resource for narrative comprehension and demonstrate the feasibility of collecting extended speech samples using CASL perfusion fMRI.

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“…Our results tie in with those from a study by Chan and colleagues (2004), who used a word-generation paradigm, and reported that isolated, lexically ambiguous words (compared to unambiguous words) elicited relative activation decreases in the LIFG, but relative increases in medial frontal cortex. In contrast, both syntactic and lexical ambiguity have been reported to enhance activity in LIFG regions when examined with sentence comprehension paradigms (e.g., Fiebach et al, 2004;Mason et al, 2003;Rodd et al, 2005). However, lexical ambiguity may also invoke semantic implausibility depending on the meaning that is pursued (e.g., "there was thyme/time and sage…", Rodd et al, 2005), and syntactically ambiguous sentences often contain unusual constructions (e.g., "The experienced soldiers warned about the dangers before the midnight raid.…”

Section: Referential Ambiguity and Medial Prefrontal Regionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

On sense and reference: Examining the functional neuroanatomy of referential processing

2007

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In an event-related fMRI study, we examined the cortical networks involved in establishing reference during language comprehension. We compared BOLD responses to sentences containing referentially ambiguous pronouns (e.g., "Ronald told Frank that he…"), referentially failing pronouns (e.g., "Rose told Emily that he…") or coherent pronouns. Referential ambiguity selectively recruited medial prefrontal regions, suggesting that readers engaged in problemsolving to select a unique referent from the discourse model. Referential failure elicited activation increases in brain regions associated with morpho-syntactic processing, and, for those readers who took failing pronouns to refer to unmentioned entities, additional regions associated with elaborative inferencing were observed. The networks activated by these two referential problems did not overlap with the network activated by a standard semantic anomaly. Instead, we observed a double dissociation, in that the systems activated by semantic anomaly are deactivated by referential ambiguity, and vice versa. This inverse coupling may reflect the dynamic recruitment of semantic and episodic processing to resolve semantically or referentially problematic situations. More generally, our findings suggest that neurocognitive accounts of language comprehension need to address not just how we parse a sentence and combine individual word meanings, but also how we determine who's who and what's what during language comprehension.

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Neural Correlates of Syntactic Ambiguity in Sentence Comprehension for Low and High Span Readers

Cited by 82 publications

References 66 publications

A Functional Neuroimaging Investigation of the Roles of Structural Complexity and Task-Demand During Auditory Sentence Processing

A Functional Neuroimaging Investigation of the Roles of Structural Complexity and Task-Demand During Auditory Sentence Processing

Narrative speech production: An fMRI study using continuous arterial spin labeling

On sense and reference: Examining the functional neuroanatomy of referential processing

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