Putting Broca’s region into context: fMRI evidence for a role in predictive language processing

Gravholt

Skakkebæk

2015

Cortex

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Competing theories attempt to explain the function of Broca's area in single word processing. Studies have found the region to be more active during processing of pseudo words than real words and during infrequent words relative to frequent words and during Stroop (incongruent) color words compared to Non-Stroop (congruent) words. Two related theories explain these findings as reflecting either "cognitive control" processing in the face of conflicting input or a linguistic prediction error signal, based on a predictive coding approach. The latter implies that processing cost refers to violations of expectations based on the statistical distributions of input. In this fMRI experiment we attempted to disentangle single word processing cost originating from cognitive conflict and that stemming from predictive expectation violation. Participants (N = 49) responded to whether the words "GREEN" or "RED" were displayed in green or red (incongruent vs congruent colors). One of the colors, however, was presented three times as often as the other, making it possible to study both congruency and frequency effects independently. Auditory stimuli saying "GREEN" or "RED" had the same distribution, making it possible to study frequency effects across modalities. We found significant behavioral effects of both incongruency and frequency. A significant effect (p < .05 FWE) of incongruency was found in Broca's region, but no effect of frequency was observed and no interaction. Conjoined effects of incongruency and frequency were found in parietal regions as well as in the Visual Word Form Area (VWFA). No interaction between perceptual modality and frequency was found in VWFA suggesting that the region is not strictly visual. These findings speak against a strong version of the prediction error processing hypothesis in Broca's region. They support the idea that prediction error processes in the intermediate timeframe are allocated to more posterior parts of the brain.

Section: Broca's Regionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Broca's region and Visual Word Form Area activation differ during a predictive Stroop task

Gravholt

Skakkebæk

2015

Cortex

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“…It is a general finding across research on attention that unexpected events attract attention (Fritz, Elhilali, David, & Shamma, 2007;Parmentier, Turner, & Perez, 2014). The same is arguably the case for non-prototypical linguistic utterances (Delong, Troyer, & Kutas, 2014;Kristensen & Wallentin, 2015;Kuperberg & Jaeger, 2015). In the absence of a context, however, the listener is forced to come up with an interpretation for the unusual division based on episodic memory or world-knowledge, which may be a cognitively demanding task.…”

mentioning

confidence: 98%

“…Danish is a V2 language (similar to German and Swedish), meaning that the finite verb occurs in the second position of the clause, while both subject and object can occur in the first position (Kristensen, 2013;Kristensen & Wallentin, 2015), and thus become a focus of attention (see Table 1 for examples).…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Grammatical category influences lateralized imagery for sentences

Stroustrup¹,

2017

Lang. cogn.

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a b st r a c t Natural language syntax has previously been thought to reflect abstract processing rules independent of meaning construction. However, grammatical categories may serve a functional role by allocating attention towards recurrent topics in discourse. Here, we show that listeners incorporate grammatical category into imagery when producing stick figure drawings from heard sentences, supporting the latter view. Participants listened to sentences with transitive verbs that independently varied whether a male or a female character (1) was mentioned first, (2) was the agent or recipient of an action, and (3) was the grammatical subject or object of the sentence. Replicating previous findings, we show that the first named character as well as the agent of the sentence tends to be drawn to the left in the image, probably reflecting left-to-right reading direction. But we also find that the grammatical subject of the sentence has a propensity to be drawn to the left of the object. We interpret this to suggest that grammatical category carries discursive meaning as an

“…It is a general finding across research on attention, that unexpected and prominent events attract attention (Fritz, Elhilali, David, & Shamma, 2007;Parmentier, Turner, & Perez, 2014). The same is arguably the case for non-prototypical linguistic utterances (Delong, Troyer, & Kutas, 2014;Kristensen & Wallentin, 2015;Kuperberg & Jaeger, 2015). In the absence of a discourse context, the listener is forced to come up with an interpretation based on episodic memory or world-knowledge for why structure deviates from the default.…”

Section: Linguistic Allocation Of Attentionmentioning

confidence: 96%

“…The experimental sentences were constructed using 11 Danish transitive verbs: "slår" [hits/smacks], "sparker" Verbs were chosen on the basis of being clearly imageable, having a simple agent-patient relationship with a default scenario unfolding in the horizontal plane. Sentences were created for each verb by combining it with case marked pronouns describing a male and a female character: Danish allows both subject-verb-object (SVO) and object-verb-subject (OVS) word order (Kristensen, 2013;Kristensen & Wallentin, 2015 2018, we decided that in order to prevent attentional fatigue, participants should not make more than eight drawings each. We therefore divided the sentences into 22 stimulus sets of 8 sentences.…”

Section: Stimuli and Materialsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Grammar, Gender and Demonstratives in Lateralized Imagery for Sentences

Rocca

Stroustrup

2019

J Psycholinguist Res

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We investigated biases in the organization of imagery by asking participants to make stick-figure drawings of sentences containing a man, a woman and a transitive action (e.g. She kisses that guy). Previous findings show that prominent features of meaning and sentence structure are placed to the left in drawings, according to reading direction (e.g. Stroustrup & Wallentin, 2018). Five hundred thirty participants listened to sentences in Danish and made 8 drawings each. We replicated three findings: 1) that the first mentioned element is placed to the left more often, 2) that the agent in the sentence is placed to the left, and 3) that the grammatical subject is placed to the left of the object. We further tested hypotheses related to deixis and gender stereotypes. By adding demonstratives (e.g. Danish equivalents of this and that), that have been found to indicate attentional prominence, we tested the hypothesis that this is also translated into a left-ward bias in the produced drawings. We were unable to find support for this hypothesis. Analyses of gender biases tested the presence of a gender identification and a gender stereotype effect. According to the identification hypothesis, participants should attribute prominence to their own gender and draw it to the left, and according to the stereotype effect participants should be more prone to draw the male character to the left, regardless of own gender. We were not able to find significant support for either of the two gender effects. The combination of replications and null-findings suggest that the left-ward bias in the drawing experiment might be narrowly tied to left-to-right distribution in written language and less to overall prominence. No effect of handedness was observed.