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Error-Driven Retrieval in Agreement Attraction Rarely Leads to Misinterpretation.

ABSTRACT: Previous work on agreement computation in sentence comprehension motivates a model in which the parser predicts the verb's number and engages in retrieval of the agreement controller only when it detects a mismatch between the prediction and the bottom-up input. It is the error-driven second stage of this process that is prone to similarity-based interference and can result in the illusory licensing of a subject-verb number agreement violation in the presence of a structurally irrelevant noun matching the number marking on the verb ('The bed by the lamps were…'), giving rise to an effect known as 'agreement attraction'. Here we ask to what extent the error-driven retrieval process underlying the illusory licensing alters the structural and thematic representation of the sentence. We use a novel dual-task paradigm that combines self-paced reading with a speeded forced choice task to investigate whether agreement attraction leads comprehenders to erroneously interpret the attractor as the thematic subject, which would indicate structural reanalysis. Participants read sentence fragments ('The bed by the lamp/lamps was/were undoubtedly quite') and completed the sentences by choosing between two adjectives ('comfortable'/'bright') which were either compatible with the subject's head noun or with the attractor. We found the expected agreement attraction profile in the self-paced reading data but the interpretive error occurs on only a small subset of attraction trials, suggesting that in agreement attraction agreement checking rarely matches the thematic relation. We propose that illusory licensing of an agreement violation often reflects a low-level rechecking process that is only concerned with number and does not have an impact on the structural representation of the sentence. Interestingly, this suggests that error-driven repair processes can result in a globally inconsistent final sentence representation with a persistent mismatch between the subject and the verb.

SUBMITTER: Schlueter Z

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6524724 | biostudies-literature | 2019

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Error-Driven Retrieval in Agreement Attraction Rarely Leads to Misinterpretation.

Schlueter Zoe Z Parker Dan D Lau Ellen E

Frontiers in psychology 20190507

Previous work on agreement computation in sentence comprehension motivates a model in which the parser predicts the verb's number and engages in retrieval of the agreement controller only when it detects a mismatch between the prediction and the bottom-up input. It is the error-driven second stage of this process that is prone to similarity-based interference and can result in the illusory licensing of a subject-verb number agreement violation in the presence of a structurally irrelevant noun ma ...[more]

PMID: 31133936

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Project description:This work explores gender agreement attraction in comprehension. Attraction occurs when an agreement error (such as, "the key to the cabinets are rusty") goes unnoticed, leading to the illusion of grammaticality due to a mismatch between the value of the head and the value of a local intervening phase (attractor). According to retrieval accounts, these errors occur during cue retrieval from memory and predict illusions of grammaticality. Alternatively, representational accounts predict that the errors occur due to the faulty representation of certain features, thus, illusions of ungrammaticality are also expected. In four experiments we explore: (a) whether gender agreement attraction occurs in Greek and the strategy/-ies employed, (b) the role of the agreement target, (c) the timing of gender agreement attraction, (d) the role of phonological matching between the nominal inflectional morphemes of the attractor and the agreement target, and (e) participants' sensitivity to agreement when there is no conflict from the attractor. In all four experiments, the grammaticality of the sentence and the attractor value (match or mismatch with the head) and also the phonological matching between the attractor and the agreement target in ungrammatical sentences were manipulated. The agreement target was either an adjectival predicate or an object-clitic and the gender value of the head was feminine or neuter. Attraction was found in all measures during the time-course of adjectival predicates (Experiment 1) and object-clitics (Experiment 2), and in timed (Experiment 3), and untimed (Experiment 4) judgments. Even more, both gender values showed attraction and the results mainly suggest that participants experience illusions of grammaticality, confirming retrieval accounts. Phonological matching did not modulate attraction in any of the experiments, suggesting that the similarity in the morphophonological realization between the agreement target and the attractor does not increase attraction. Furthermore, participants were sensitive to gender agreement violations in the absence of gender mismatch between the head and the attractor, suggesting that they respect agreement rules and have both neuter and feminine available in their feature content repertoire, although with some tendency in favor of neuter in feminine agreement contexts. The impact of these findings is discussed within the concept of attraction and sensitivity to agreement violations.

Project description:Agreement attraction errors (such as the number error in the example "The key to the cabinets are rusty") have been the object of many studies in the last 20 years. So far, almost all production experiments and all comprehension experiments looked at binary features (primarily at number in Germanic, Romance, and some other languages, in several cases at gender in Romance languages). Among other things, it was noted that both in production and in comprehension, attraction effects are much stronger for some feature combinations than for the others: they can be observed in the sentences with singular heads and plural dependent nouns (e.g.,"The key to the cabinets…"), but not in the sentences with plural heads and singular dependent nouns (e.g., "The keys to the cabinet…"). Almost all proposed explanations of this asymmetry appeal to feature markedness, but existing findings do not allow teasing different approaches to markedness apart. We report the results of four experiments (one on production and three on comprehension) studying subject-verb gender agreement in Russian, a language with three genders. Firstly, we found attraction effects both in production and in comprehension, but, unlike in the case of number agreement, they were not parallel (in production, feminine gender triggered strongest effects, while neuter triggered weakest effects, while in comprehension, masculine triggered weakest effects). Secondly, in the comprehension experiments attraction was observed for all dependent noun genders, but only for a subset of head noun genders. This goes against the traditional assumption that the features of the dependent noun are crucial for attraction, showing the features of the head are more important. We demonstrate that this approach can be extended to previous findings on attraction and that there exists other evidence for it. In total, these findings let us reconsider the question which properties of features are crucial for agreement attraction in production and in comprehension.

Project description:BackgroundFolate cutoffs for risk of deficiency compared with possible deficiency were originally derived differently (experimental compared with epidemiologic data), and their interpretations are different. The matching of cutoffs derived from one assay with population-based data derived from another assay requires caution.ObjectiveWe assessed the extent of folate-status misinterpretation with the use of inappropriate cutoffs.DesignIn the cross-sectional NHANES, serum and red blood cell (RBC) folate were first measured with the use of a radioprotein-binding assay (RPBA) (1988-2006) and, afterwards, with the use of a microbiologic assay (2007-2010). We compared prevalence estimates for assay-matched cutoffs (e.g., with the use of an RPBA cutoff with RPBA data) and assay-mismatched cutoffs (e.g., with the use of microbiologic assay cutoff with RPBA data) for risk of deficiency on the basis of megaloblastic anemia as a hematologic indicator in persons ≥4 y of age (e.g., serum folate concentration <7 nmol/L and RBC folate concentration <305 nmol/L derived with the use of a microbiologic assay), possible deficiency on the basis of rising homocysteine as a metabolic indicator in persons ≥4 y of age (e.g., serum folate concentration <10 nmol/L and RBC folate concentration <340 nmol/L derived with the use of an RPBA), and insufficiency on the basis of elevated risk of neural tube defects in women 12-49 y old (e.g., RBC folate concentration <906 nmol/L derived with the use of a microbiologic assay).ResultsPre-folic acid fortification (1988-1994), risks of deficiency for assay-matched compared with assay-mismatched cutoffs were 5.6% compared with 16% (serum folate), respectively, and 7.4% compared with 28% (RBC folate), respectively; risks declined postfortification (1999-2006) to <1% compared with <1% (serum folate), respectively, and to <1% compared with 2.5% (RBC folate), respectively. Prefortification (1988-1994), risks of possible deficiency for assay-matched compared with assay-mismatched cutoffs were 35% compared with 56% (serum folate), respectively, and 37% compared with 84% (RBC folate), respectively; risks declined postfortification (1999-2006) to 1.9% compared with 7.0% (serum folate), respectively, and to 4.8% compared with 53% (RBC folate), respectively. Postfortification (2007-2010), risks of insufficiency were 3% (assay matched) compared with 39% (assay mismatched), respectively.ConclusionsThe application of assay-mismatched cutoffs leads to a misinterpretation of folate status. This confusion likely applies to clinical assays because no comparability data are available, to our knowledge.

Project description:Bilingual adaptations remain a subject of ongoing debate, with varying results reported across cognitive domains. A possible way to disentangle the apparent inconsistency of results is to focus on the domain of language processing, which is what the bilingual experience boils down to. This study delves into the role of the bilingual experience on the processing of agreement mismatches. Given the underrepresentation of minority bilingual speakers of non-standard varieties, we advance a unique comparative perspective that includes monolinguals, standard language bilinguals, and different groups of minority language bilinguals, taking advantage of the rich linguistic diversity of the Italian peninsula. This comparative approach can reveal the impact of various sociolinguistic aspects of the bilingual experience across different bilingual trajectories. We developed an auditory acceptability judgement task in Italian, featuring Subject-Verb agreement mismatches. Participants evaluated the stimuli on a 5-point Likert scale and reaction times were recorded. The results do not reveal significant differences between the speakers of standard languages: Italian monolinguals and Italian-Spanish bilinguals. Instead, significant differences are found between monolinguals and the two groups of minority language bidialectals, as well as between the bidialectal groups themselves: Italian-Pavese bidialectals were faster than both Italian-Agrigentino bidialectals and Italian monolinguals, while Italian-Agrigentino bidialectals were less accurate than both Italian-Pavese bidialectals and Italian monolinguals. This intricate picture is explained through variables associated with second language use and language switching. Our findings suggest that if bilingualism is viewed as a yes/no phenotype, it is unavoidable that the bilingual experience will remain a mystery linked to intensely debated results. If, however, one accepts that bilingual adaptations are shaped by the environmental ecology of each trajectory, variation across bilingual processing outcomes is unsurprising. Overall, we argue that specific sociolinguistic factors behind each bilingual experience can reveal where bilingual adaptations on language and cognition stem from.

Project description:This project focuses on structural and prosodic effects during reading, examining their influence on agreement processing and comprehension in native English (L1) and Spanish-English bilingual (L2) speakers. We consolidate research from several distinct areas of inquiry-cognitive processing, reading fluency, and L1/L2 processing-in order to support the integration of prosody with a cue-based retrieval mechanism for subject-verb agreement. To explore this proposal, the experimental design manipulated text presentation to influence implicit prosody, using sentences designed to induce subject-verb agreement attraction errors. Materials included simple and complex relative clauses with head nouns and verbs that were either matched or mismatched for number. Participants read items in one of three presentation formats (whole sentence, word-by-word, or phrase-by-phrase), rated each item for grammaticality, and responded to a comprehension probe. Results indicated that while overall, message comprehension was prioritized over subject-verb agreement computation, presentation format differentially affected both measures in the L1 and L2 groups. For the L1 participants, facilitating the projection of phrasal prosody onto text (phrase-by-phrase presentation) enhanced performance in agreement processing, while disrupting prosodic projection via word-by-word presentation decreased comprehension accuracy. For the L2 participants, however, phrase-by-phrase presentation was not significantly beneficial for agreement processing, and additionally resulted in lower comprehension accuracy. These differences point to a significant role of prosodic phrasing during agreement processing in both L1 and L2 speakers, additionally suggesting that it may contribute to a cue-based retrieval agreement model, either acting as a cue directly, or otherwise scaffolding the retrieval process. The discussion and results presented provide support both for a cue-based retrieval mechanism in agreement, and the function of prosody within such a mechanism, adding further insight into the interaction of retrieval processes, cognitive task load, and the role of implicit prosody.

Dataset Information

Error-Driven Retrieval in Agreement Attraction Rarely Leads to Misinterpretation.

Publications

Error-Driven Retrieval in Agreement Attraction Rarely Leads to Misinterpretation.

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