Exploring Category Structure with Contextual Language Models and Lexical Semantic Networks

Recent work on predicting category structure with distributional models, using either static word embeddings (Heyman and Heyman, 2019) or contextualized language models (CLMs) (Misra et al., 2021), report low correlations with human ratings, thus calling into question their plausibility as models of human semantic memory. In this work, we revisit this question testing a wider array of methods for probing CLMs for predicting typicality scores. Our experiments, using BERT (Devlin et al., 2018), show the importance of using the right type of CLM probes, as our best BERT-based typicality prediction methods substantially improve over previous works. Second, our results highlight the importance of polysemy in this task: our best results are obtained when using a disambiguation mechanism. Finally, additional experiments reveal that Information Contentbased WordNet (Miller, 1995), also endowed with disambiguation, match the performance of the best BERT-based method, and in fact capture complementary information, which can be combined with BERT to achieve enhanced typicality predictions

Behavioral and electrophysiological evidence for the impact of regional variation on phoneme perception

International audienceThis event-related potential (ERP) study examined the impact of phonological variation resulting from a vowel merger on phoneme perception. The perception of the /e/–/ε/ contrast which does not exist in Southern French-speaking regions, and which is in the process of merging in Northern French-speaking regions, was compared to the /ø/–/y/ contrast, which is stable in all French-speaking regions. French-speaking participants from Switzerland for whom the /e/–/ε/ contrast is preserved, but who are exposed to different regional variants, had to perform a same-different task. They first heard four phonemically identical but acoustically different syllables (e.g., /be/–/be/–/be/–/be/), and then heard the test syllable which was either phonemically identical to (/be/) or phonemically different from (/bε/) the preceding context stimuli. The results showed that the unstable /e/–/ε/ contrast only induced a mismatch negativity (MMN), whereas the /ø/–/y/ contrast elicited both a MMN and electrophysiological differences on the P200. These findings were in line with the behavioral results in which responses were slower and more error-prone in the /e/–/ε/ deviant condition than in the /ø/–/y/ deviant condition. Together these findings suggest that the regional variability in the speech input to which listeners are exposed affects the perception of speech sounds in their own accent

Brain response to subject-verb agreement during grammatical priming

International audienceIn this study, we explored cerebral mechanisms during the computation of subject-verb agreement by measuring event-related potentials after French verb and pseudoverb targets preceded by various contexts. In auditory grammatical priming, the targets were either related to a congruent predictive pronoun prime (nous prêtons we lend) or an incongruent predictive pronoun prime (vous prêtons you lend) or a nonpredictive prime (zous prêtons zous lend). Whereas an early anterior negativity (LAN) and a parietal positivity were modulated by the preceding context for verb targets, only the early negativity was sensitive to the context for pseudoverb targets. Interestingly, for verbs, the LAN response was larger at left frontocentral sites around 100ms after the onset of the recognition point of verbal inflection in the incongruent predictive condition relative to two other conditions. This finding was in line with the behavioral results, suggesting that top-down processes of the computation of the subject-verb agreement occur. Moreover, at 160-210ms after the onset of the recognition point of verbal inflection, the parietal positivity was smaller in amplitude at left centroparietal sites for the incongruent predictive and nonpredictive conditions. This was interpreted as reflecting bottom-up processes of the computation of the subject-verb agreement. All findings thus suggest that top-down and bottom-up processes of the computation of the subject-verb agreement occur with distinctive temporal properties

The influence of sex information into spoken words: a mismatch negativity (MMN) study

International audienceWhen exposed to a spoken message, a listener takes into account several sources of linguistic and indexical information. Using the mismatch negativity (MMN) response, we examined whether the indexical information about the sex of the speaker influenced the processing of semantically gendered spoken words. Female participants listened two semantically gendered French words, one masculine and one feminine representing human beings, said either by five male or by five female speakers. The opposite sex voices produced an enhancement of MMN response. In line with interactive connections between indexical and linguistic information processing through activating lexical memory traces, the results showed more pronounced MMN response when the sex of the speaker matched with the gender of the word. Furthermore, there was a later detection of the incongruence between the sex information about the speaker and the gender of the word, shown by an enhancement of MMN response. Overall, these findings suggest that the listeners integrate the indexical information about the sex of the speakers both at the lexical selection level and at a higher-level processing such as the grammatical access

Y a-t-il un impact de l'imitation sur la reconnaissance des mots parlés dans un accent régional non-natif?

International audienceThe plasticity of the representations for words in the mental lexicon under exposure to another speaker's voice has often been explored by observing imitative behaviours. In the study, we investigated if phonological convergence across speakers may facilitate spoken word recognition in non-native regional accent. Eighteen Northern French-speakers were exposed to CVC words recorded by a native speaker of Southern French. These speakers first realized either a shadowing task or a semantic categorization task that entailed no overt speech production and then all did a lexical decision task. The imitation of the non-native regional accent was found in shadowing but did not appear to facilitate later recognition of words.Dans cette étude, nous avons examiné si le fait d'imiter un accent non-natif facilite la reconnaissance des mots dans cet accent

Electrophysiological evidence for benefits of imitation during the processing of spoken words embedded in sentential contexts.

International audienceThis event-related potential study examined the impact of imitating an unfamiliar accent on the processing of spoken words embedded in sentential contexts produced in that accent. The cloze probability effect in two groups of southern French speakers after they had to either listen to or imitate sentences spoken by a Belgian French speaker was tested. Speakers who did not imitate the unfamiliar accent showed a cloze probability effect on the phonological N200 wave, while those who did imitate the accent showed no effect on this component. Over a later time window, both groups showed a cloze probability effect on the N400, which is associated with lexical and semantic processing. Taken together, these results give clear evidence for processing benefits from the imitation of speech patterns, particularly at an acoustic/phonological level of processing

Mismatch negativity: a tool for studying morphosyntactic processing?

International audienceOBJECTIVE: Mismatch negativity (MMN) was originally shown in a passive auditory oddball paradigm to be generated by any acoustical change. More recently, it has been applied to the study of higher order linguistic levels including the morphosyntactic level in spoken language comprehension. In this study, we present two MMN experiments to determine whether morphosyntactic features are involved in the representations underlying the morphosyntactic processing. METHODS: We reported two MMN experiments in passive auditory oddball paradigm with pairs of French words, a pronoun and a verb, differing in agreement grammaticality. These two experiments differed in the number of morphosyntactic features producing agreement violations, i.e. either of person and number features or of person feature. RESULTS: We observed no effect of grammaticality on the MMN response for these two experiments. CONCLUSIONS: Our studies highlight the difficulties encountered in studying morphosyntactic level with the passive auditory oddball paradigm. SIGNIFICANCE: The reasons for our inability to replicate previous studies are presented, and methodological changes in the passive auditory oddball paradigm are proposed to better tap into the morphosyntactic level

A modified procedure for naming 332 pictures and collecting norms: Using tangram pictures in psycholinguistic studies

International audienceTangram pictures are abstract pictures which may be used as stimuli in various fields ofexperimental psychology and are often used in the field of dialogue psychology. The present study provides the first norms for a set of 332 tangram pictures. These pictures were standardized on a set of variables classically used in the literature on cognitive processes, such as visual perception, language and memory: name agreement, image agreement, familiarity, visual complexity, image variability and age of acquisition. Furthermore, norms for concreteness were also provided owing to the influence of this variable on the processes involved in lexical production. Correlational analyses on all variables were performed on the data collected from French native speakers. This new set of standardized pictures constitutes a reliable database for researchers when they select tangram pictures. Given the abstract nature of tangram pictures, this paper also discusses the similarities and differences with the literature on line drawings, and highlights their value for dialogue psychology studies, for psycholinguistics studies and for cognitive psychology in general

ERP correlates of lexical analysis: N280 reflects processing complexity rather than category or frequency effects

International audienceIn the context of language processing, the N280 is an anterior negative event-related potential profile associated with the lexical categorization of grammatical function words versus content words. Subsequent studies suggested that this effect was related to word statistics including length and frequency in the lexicon. The current research tests the hypothesis that the N280 effect is related to an index of grammatical complexity. We recorded event-related potentials during a sentence reading task. Comparing content versus function words revealed the classic N280. Within function words, we compared the relative pronouns 'qui' and 'que' (which are identical for length and frequency) that in French indicate a subsequent simple (subject-subject) and complex (subject-object) relative clause, respectively. A left anterior N280 effect was observed only for 'que', supporting our hypothesis that the N280 reflects grammatical complexity that can be confounded with lexical category and statistical properties