Pupil responses to grammatical complexity of sentences

Schluroff, Michael

doi:10.1016/0093-934x(82)90010-4

Cited by 48 publications

(35 citation statements)

References 22 publications

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“…Previous research has demonstrated that pupil diameter is sensitive to increases in processing demands as a consequence of, for example, higher memory load (e.g., Piquado et al, 2010), syntactic anomalies (Schluroff, 1982), sentence complexity (Just & Carpenter, 1993), syntactic ambiguity (e.g., Engelhardt et al, 2010) and lexical ambiguity (Ben-Nun, 1986). To our knowledge the present study is the first to test whether pupil diameter is also sensitive to pragmatic factors, specifically the processing of indirect requests versus direct statements.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Pupillometry reveals increased pupil size during indirect request comprehension

Tromp

Hagoort

Meyer

2016

Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology

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Fluctuations in pupil size have been shown to reflect variations in processing demands during lexical and syntactic processing in language comprehension. An issue that has not received attention is whether pupil size also varies due to pragmatic manipulations. In two pupillometry experiments, we investigated whether pupil diameter was sensitive to increased processing demands as a result of comprehending an indirect request versus a direct statement. Adult participants were presented with 120 picture-sentence combinations that could be interpreted either as an indirect request (a picture of a window with the sentence "it's very hot here") or as a statement (a picture of a window with the sentence "it's very nice here"). Based on the hypothesis that understanding indirect utterances requires additional inferences to be made on the part of the listener, we predicted a larger pupil diameter for indirect requests than statements. The results of both experiments are consistent with this expectation. We suggest that the increase in pupil size reflects additional processing demands for the comprehension of indirect requests as compared to statements. This research demonstrates the usefulness of pupillometry as a tool for experimental research in pragmatics.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Pupillometry reveals increased pupil size during indirect request comprehension

Tromp

Hagoort

Meyer

2016

Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology

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“…With few exceptions (e.g., Carver, 1971) it seems to be generally accepted that the amplitude of TEPRs indicates the intensity of information processing (Just & Carpenter, 1993) and thus reflects processing demands in memory, language processing, reasoning and perception tasks (Beatty, 1982). Furthermore, mean pupil dilation during listening comprehension tasks was shown to correlate more strongly with grammatical complexity than did subject ratings of comprehensibility (Schluroff, 1982). In order to understand TEPRs, it is important to consider some of the pupil's fundamental physiological characteristics beyond those already addressed.…”

Section: Task-evoked Pupillary Responsesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Cognitive load in simultaneous interpreting: Model meets data

Seeber

Kerzel

2011

International Journal of Bilingualism

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Seeber (2011) recently introduced a series of analytical cognitive load models, providing a detailed illustration of conjectured cognitive resource allocation during simultaneous interpreting. In this article, the authors set out to compare these models with data gathered in an experiment using task-evoked pupillary responses to measure online cognitive load during simultaneous interpreting when embedded in single-sentence context and discourse context. Verb-final and verb-initial constructions were analysed in terms of the load they cause to an inherently capacity-limited system when interpreted simultaneously into a verb-initial language like English. The results show larger pupil dilation with verb-final than with verb-initial constructions, suggesting higher cognitive load with asymmetrical structures. A tendency for reduced cognitive load in the discourse context compared to the sentence context was also found. These data support the models' prediction of an increase in cognitive load towards (and beyond) the end of verb-final constructions.

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“…That is, he reasoned that mental effort as indexed physiologically with pupillometry might be used to assess variations in task difficulty within and across modalities. The notion that greater cognitive or linguistic task difficulty leads to greater intensity of effort, and that greater intensity of effort can be captured through pupillometric indices, has been affirmed by results from a vast array of studies on memory load for words and digits (Cabestrero, Crespo, & Quirós, 2009; Granholm, Asarnow, Sarkin, & Dykes, 1996; Johnson, 1971; Kahneman & Beatty, 1966; Kahneman, Onuska, & Wolman, 1968; Papesh, Goldinger, & Hout, 2012; Peavler, 1974; Van Gerven, Paas, Van Merriënboer, & Schmidt, 2004; Võ et al, 2008), pitch discrimination (Kahneman & Beatty, 1967), visual perception (Hakerem & Sutton, 1966), mental arithmetic (Ahern & Beatty, 1979, 1981; Hess, 1965; Hess & Polt, 1964; Klingner, Tversky, & Hanrahan, 2011; Payne, Parry, & Harasymiw, 1968), letter discrimination (Beatty & Wagoner, 1978), sentence repetition (Ben-Nun, 1986; Koelewijn, Zekveld, Festen, & Kramer, 2012; Piquado, Isaacowitz, & Wingfield, 2010; Zekveld, Festen, & Kramer, 2013), sentence comprehension (Engelhardt, Ferreira, & Patsenko, 2010; Just & Carpenter, 1993; Schluroff, 1982; Schluroff et al, 1986; Wright & Kahneman, 1971), cross-linguistic interpretation (Hyönä, Tommola, & Alaja, 1995), and forced-choice tasks (Poock, 1973; van der Meer et al, 2010). In summary, there is ample evidence that TERPs are valid indicators of within- and between-task differences in cognitive effort.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

A Novel Pupillometric Method for Indexing Word Difficulty in Individuals With and Without Aphasia

Chapman

Hallowell

2015

J Speech Lang Hear Res

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Purpose Cognitive effort is a clinically important facet of linguistic processing that is often overlooked in the assessment and treatment of people with aphasia (PWA). Furthermore, there is a paucity of valid ways to index cognitive effort in PWA. The construct of cognitive effort has been indexed for decades via pupillometry (measurement of pupil dilation and constriction during a cognitive task), yet has not been implemented in studies including PWA. In the present study, we tested a novel method for indexing cognitive effort during linguistic processing in people with and without aphasia. Method Forty control participants and 39 PWA listened to semantically easy and difficult single nouns and looked at images while their pupillary responses were monitored. Mean pupil dilation in response to easy versus difficult nouns was calculated to index cognitive effort. Results Larger mean pupil dilation values were obtained for difficult compared to easy nouns for both groups. Conclusion Results provide preliminary evidence that pupillometry can be used to index cognitive effort during linguistic processing of single nouns in people with and without aphasia. Methods for indexing cognitive effort will be a valuable addition to existing assessment methods. Suggestions for further research are offered.

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Pupil responses to grammatical complexity of sentences

Cited by 48 publications

References 22 publications

Pupillometry reveals increased pupil size during indirect request comprehension

Pupillometry reveals increased pupil size during indirect request comprehension

Cognitive load in simultaneous interpreting: Model meets data

A Novel Pupillometric Method for Indexing Word Difficulty in Individuals With and Without Aphasia

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