Speakers occasionally produce verbs that agree with an element that is not the subject, a so-called 'attractor'; likewise, comprehenders occasionally fail to notice agreement errors when the verb ...agrees with the attractor. Cross-linguistic studies converge in showing that attraction is modulated by the hierarchical position of the attractor in the sentence structure. We report two experiments exploring the link between structural position and memory representations in attraction. The method used is innovative in two respects: we used jabberwocky materials to control for semantic influences and focus on structural agreement processing, and we used a Speed-Accuracy Trade-off (SAT) design combined with a memory probe recognition task, as classically used in list memorization tasks. SAT enabled the joint measurement of retrieval speed and retrieval accuracy of subjects and attractors in sentences that typically elicit attraction errors. Experiment 1 first established that attraction arises in jabberwocky sentences, to a similar extent and showing structure-dependency effects, as in natural sentences. Experiment 2 showed a close alignment between the attraction profiles found in Experiment 1 and memory parameters. Results support a content-addressable architecture of memory representations for sentences in which nouns' accessibility depends on their syntactic position, while subjects are kept in the focus of attention.
Solvent effects on molecular solar thermal energy storage systems have been investigated using density functional theory combined with solvent models describing the effects of viscosities and ...dielectric constants on chemical reaction rates. We have addressed the following issues concerning how solvents influence both the thermochemical properties and the thermal relaxation kinetics of the studied systems, how the friction of the solvent influences the recrossing of the reactions along with the dynamics and force constants of the transition state. We observe that the rate constants for the chemical reactions of the molecular solar thermal energy storage systems depend strongly on the dielectric solvent properties and the viscosities of the solvents.
Long-distance verb-argument dependencies generally require the integration of a fronted argument when the verb is encountered for sentence interpretation. Under a parsing model that handles ...long-distance dependencies through a cue-based retrieval mechanism, retrieval is hampered when retrieval cues also resonate with non-target elements (retrieval interference). However, similarity-based interference may also stem from interference arising during the encoding of elements in memory (encoding interference), an effect that is not directly accountable for by a cue-based retrieval mechanism. Although encoding and retrieval interference are clearly distinct at the theoretical level, it is difficult to disentangle the two on empirical grounds, since encoding interference may also manifest at the retrieval region. We report two self-paced reading experiments aimed at teasing apart the role of each component in gender and number subject-verb agreement in Italian and English object relative clauses. In Italian, the verb does not agree in gender with the subject, thus providing no cue for retrieval. In English, although present tense verbs agree in number with the subject, past tense verbs do not, allowing us to test the role of number as a retrieval cue within the same language. Results from both experiments converge, showing similarity-based interference at encoding, and some evidence for an effect at retrieval. After having pointed out the non-negligible role of encoding in sentence comprehension, and noting that Lewis and Vasishth's (2005) ACT-R model of sentence processing, the most fully developed cue-based retrieval approach to sentence processing does not predict encoding effects, we propose an augmentation of this model that predicts these effects. We then also propose a self-organizing sentence processing model (SOSP), which has the advantage of accounting for retrieval and encoding interference with a single mechanism.
Highlights • Children with ASD perform similarly to IQ-matched TD controls on complement sentences. • Children with ASD show impairment for FB measured verbally. • Correlations emerge between verbal ...FB and complements of verbs of communication and cognition verbs, but not perception. • Complement sentences that can describe a false event provide a privileged means for succeeding at verbal FB tasks.
We have investigated dynamic solvent effects on molecular solar–thermal energy storage systems using models describing the effects of frequency dependent viscosities and dielectric constants on ...chemical reaction rates. We have utilized the generalized Langevin model for understanding how the reactions are affected by the frequency dependent viscosities and dielectric constants. Our results show that the rate constants of the molecular solar–thermal energy storage systems depend strongly on the dielectric electric solvent properties and the frequency dependent viscosities of the solvents.
Refugee children tend to show low emotional well-being and weak executive functions that may have consequences on language and therefore complicate a potential diagnosis of Developmental Language ...Disorder (DLD) in this population. We assessed the performance of 140 children living in Switzerland aged 5 to 8 (20 monolinguals, 86 non-refugee bilinguals, 34 refugee bilinguals) on LITMUS language tasks (nonword repetition, sentence repetition, parental questionnaire), standardized language tasks, memory and executive function tasks. Parents also filled in the Child Behavior Checklist providing a measure of their child’s emotional well-being. Results indicate that refugee children are more emotionally vulnerable and show weaker performance in memory and executive functions tasks compared to non-refugee children, in line with the existing literature. Moreover, when compared to non-refugee bilingual children with similar length of exposure to French, refugee children are disadvantaged on all language tasks. Whereas emotional well-being does not predict language performance, memory and executive functions show up as predictors of both LITMUS and standardized language tasks, although in an unsystematic way. It is concluded that refugee children are at risk across the board and that a better understanding of the complex interplay between well-being, executive functions, memory and language is needed in order to build more appropriate diagnostic tools for these children.
Les enfants réfugiés présentent certaines vulnérabilités en matière de bien-être émotionnel (BEE) ainsi que des faiblesses au niveau des fonctions exécutives (FE) et du langage, ce qui peut ...compliquer le diagnostic de troubles langagiers dans cette population. Nous avons évalué les performances de 140 enfants (5-8 ans) : 20 monolingues, 86 bilingues non réfugiés et 34 bilingues réfugiés. Les résultats montrent que les enfants réfugiés sont effectivement plus à risque que les non réfugiés pour ce qui est de leur BEE ; ils ont également des déficits pour toutes les FE évaluées ainsi que pour les mesures de langage. Ces résultats confirment la vulnérabilité des enfants réfugiés et soulignent la nécessité de construire des outils appropriés à l’évaluation du langage dans cette population.
Studies on agreement production consistently report an increase in production errors in the presence of an attractor mismatching the agreement feature of the target. In contrast, results from ...comprehension studies are mixed, ranging from lack of effect to facilitation. We report 2 forced-choice experiments and 2 self-paced reading experiments on number and gender object-verb agreement in French to systematically explore the effect of a mismatching subject in the production and comprehension of object relatives. Results show that the presence of a mismatching subject penalizes sentence production, in line with reports of attraction, but consistently improves sentence comprehension in off-line comprehension measures, in line with similarity-based interference effects. We discuss the limits of classical models of sentence production and comprehension (Marking and Morphing and ACT-R), and favor a self-organizing sentence processing approach (SOSP), which accounts for both production and comprehension results through a single similarity-based mechanism of structure building.
Research on subject-verb agreement production in SVO languages has shown that objects moved pre-verbally sometimes trigger attraction, i.e., erroneous agreement of the verb with the object rather ...than the subject. Moreover, objects c-commanding one of the agreement positions in the hierarchical structure were found to generate stronger attraction than those linearly preceding them. Evidence for the role of c-command comes from the observation that the accusative clitic in French triggers stronger attraction than the preverbal dative pronoun and the PP modifier (Franck et al. 2006; 2010). In this study, we report the results of an experiment in Persian (an SOV language) in which subject–verb agreement was elicited by presenting sentences in Rapid Serial Visual Presentation procedure (RSVP) followed by verb selection (Staub 2009; 2010). We compared attraction errors induced by pre-verbal accusatives versus datives in the canonical SOV word order as well as the OSV word order. Corroborating Franck et al. (2006; 2010), we found stronger attraction when the pre-verbal object occupies a c-commanding position in the hierarchical structure than when it simply precedes one of the agreement positions in the linear string. We also found stronger attraction in the OSV word order as compared to the canonical SOV word order. This finding is attributed to the real-time processes of erroneous structure building and/or erroneous controller selection during subject-verb agreement computation.
Subject and object relative clauses have been studied from the point of view of language acquisition and adult sentence processing. In the adult sentence processing literature, subject relative ...clauses (RCs) are read faster than object RCs (e.g., Frauenfelder et al. 1980 for French; King and Kutas 1995 for English; Schriefers et al. 1995 for Dutch). Similarly, children understand and produce subject RCs earlier and with greater accuracy than object RCs in a variety of languages with head-initial relative clauses, as English, Hebrew and Italian. These findings cannot be a coincidence but reflect the fact that what children acquire first is also easier to process by adults. In this article, we support this observation by investigating subject and object RCs in children and adults speaking French and Italian. These languages display subject and object relatives as in (1), but they also have a type of object relative in which the subject is postverbal. We replicate the observation that subject relatives are easier than object and show that object relatives as in (1b), with the embedded subject in preverbal position are easier than those with the embedded subject in postverbal position, both for children and adults. We offer an account of these findings in terms of Fodor and Inoue’s (2000) diagnosis model in light of the fact that acquisition involves processing.
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