Lanthorn, vol. 44, no. 06, September 14, 2009

Lanthorn is Grand Valley State\u27s student newspaper, published from 1968 to the present. The Lanthorn, Vol. 44 No. 5 is missing

Garden Path Sentence Processing as a Measure of Belief Updating

Handedness is a marker for individual differences in brain organization. Garden path sentences (GPS), those that require a mid-sentence change in understanding to capture sentence meaning require the updating of beliefs via the right hemisphere. Inconsistent-handers (ICH) have increased access to right hemisphere processes, which has previously been shown to result in increased belief updating. It was hypothesized that ICH would be more accurate and more rapid in their processing of GPS relative to consistent right handers (CRH) due to increased access to the neural structures involved. Additionally, men and women differ in their brain organization, and in their cortical representation of language. It was therefore hypothesized that differences in GPS processing may occur as a function of gender. Results revealed decreased speed of processing of GPS in ICH versus CRH, and processing of typical and non-sentences faster in ICH relative to CRH, with the effect holding especially true for men. Results tentatively support individual differences in sentence processing as a function of handedness, which may be mediated by gender. Increased, rather than decreased, reaction time in ICH for GPS may reflect increased atypical representation of language functions in ICH. Future work should replicate this study with a larger sample of men

Petticoat Government: Poems and Essays

Petticoat Government is a collection of poems and essays that draw upon the varied lexicons of science, mythology, sports, literature, travel, art, fashion, and popular culture in an attempt to understand what deliminates womanhood. Using a mix of traditional and contemporary forms, these texts seek to complicate the myriad—and often conflicting—models of femaleness and the female body