The source ambiguity problem: Distinguishing the effects of grammar and processing on acceptability judgments

Judgments of linguistic unacceptability may theoretically arise from either grammatical deviance or significant processing difficulty. Acceptability data are thus naturally ambiguous in theories that explicitly distinguish formal and functional constraints. Here, we consider this source ambiguity problem in the context of Superiority effects: the dispreference for ordering a wh-phrase in front of a syntactically “superior” wh-phrase in multiple wh-questions, e.g., What did who buy? More specifically, we consider the acceptability contrast between such examples and so-called D-linked examples, e.g., Which toys did which parents buy? Evidence from acceptability and self-paced reading experiments demonstrates that (i) judgments and processing times for Superiority violations vary in parallel, as determined by the kind of wh-phrases they contain, (ii) judgments increase with exposure, while processing times decrease, (iii) reading times are highly predictive of acceptability judgments for the same items, and (iv) the effects of the complexity of the wh-phrases combine in both acceptability judgments and reading times. This evidence supports the conclusion that D-linking effects are likely reducible to independently motivated cognitive mechanisms whose effects emerge in a wide range of sentence contexts. This in turn suggests that Superiority effects, in general, may owe their character to differential processing difficulty

Contribution of discourse and morphosyntax skills to reading comprehension in Chinese dyslexic and typically developing children

This study aimed at identifying important skills for reading comprehension in Chinese dyslexic children and their typically developing counterparts matched on age (CA controls) or reading level (RL controls). The children were assessed on Chinese reading comprehension, cognitive, and reading-related skills. Results showed that the dyslexic children performed significantly less well than the CA controls but similarly to RL controls in most measures. Results of multiple regression analyses showed that word-level reading-related skills like oral vocabulary and word semantics were found to be strong predictors of reading comprehension among typically developing junior graders and dyslexic readers of senior grades, whereas morphosyntax, a text-level skill, was most predictive for typically developing senior graders. It was concluded that discourse and morphosyntax skills are particularly important for reading comprehension in the non-inflectional and topic-prominent Chinese system

An eye-tracking investigation into readers’ sensitivity to actual versus expected utility in the comprehension of conditionals

The successful comprehension of a utility conditional (i.e., an ‘if p, then q’ statement where p and/or q is valued by one or more agents) requires the construction of a mental representation of the situation described by that conditional, and integration of this representation with prior context. In an eye-tracking experiment, we examined the time course of integrating conditional utility information into the broader discourse model. Specifically, the experiment determined whether readers were sensitive, during rapid heuristic processing, to the congruency between the utility of the consequent clause of a conditional (positive or negative) and a reader’s subjective expectations based on prior context. On a number of eye-tracking measures we found that readers were sensitive to conditional utility; conditionals for which the consequent utility mismatched that which would be anticipated on the basis of prior context resulted in processing disruption. Crucially, this sensitivity emerged on measures which are accepted to indicate early processing within the language comprehension system, and suggests that the evaluation of a conditional’s utility informs the early stages of conditional processing

Eye movements reveal rapid concurrent access to factual and counterfactual interpretations of the world

Imagining a counterfactual world using conditionals (e.g., If Joanne had remembered her umbrella . . .) is common in everyday language. However, such utterances are likely to involve fairly complex reasoning processes to represent both the explicit hypothetical conjecture and its implied factual meaning. Online research into these mechanisms has so far been limited. The present paper describes two eye movement studies that investigated the time-course with which comprehenders can set up and access factual inferences based on a realistic counterfactual context. Adult participants were eye-tracked while they read short narratives, in which a context sentence set up a counterfactual world (If . . . then . . .), and a subsequent critical sentence described an event that was either consistent or inconsistent with the implied factual world. A factual consistent condition (Because . . . then . . .) was included as a baseline of normal contextual integration. Results showed that within a counterfactual scenario, readers quickly inferred the implied factual meaning of the discourse. However, initial processing of the critical word led to clear, but distinct, anomaly detection responses for both contextually inconsistent and consistent conditions. These results provide evidence that readers can rapidly make a factual inference from a preceding counterfactual context, despite maintaining access to both counterfactual and factual interpretations of events

Effects of different nutrient concentrations and reuse of substrate in tomato production

Reusing the substrate in subsequent crops has been proposed due to several advantages, especially economic and environmental ones. Furthermore, the electrical conductivity of the nutrient solution can directly influence the nutrient content present in the substrate, especially when it is reused, thus interfering with absorption by plants. In this way, the present study aimed to determine the feasibility of reusing the substrate and determine the optimal concentration of the nutrient solution in tomato cultivation. The experiment was conducted in a greenhouse at the Department of Vegetable Crops and Aromatic Medicinal Plants, belonging to FCAV-UNESP. The 'Paronset' hybrid was cultivated in pots containing coconut husk fiber as substrate. The nutrient solution was evaluated at five concentrations, namely 25, 50, 100 (original solution), 150 and 200% of recommended solution, and the substrate at two usage levels (new and reused). Fertigation was performed by dripping with nutrient solution as recommended. The characteristics evaluated were: production per plant, yield, number of fruits per plant, average fruit weight, soluble solids, and transverse and longitudinal fruit diameter. There was no interaction between the reuse of the substrate and nutrient solution concentration; moreover, there was no difference between the characteristics evaluated for all treatments. Under the conditions of this study, the reuse of the substrate is recommended, at least once, and the use of nutrient solution at a concentration of 25% of the original for the cultivation of 'Paronset' tomato hybrid.Univ Estadual Paulista, Fac Ciencias Agr & Vet, Dept Prod Vegetal, Jaboticabal, SP, BrazilUniv Estadual Paulista, Fac Ciencias Agr & Vet, Dept Solos & Adubos, Jaboticabal, SP, BrazilUniv Estadual Paulista, Fac Ciencias Agr & Vet, Dept Prod Vegetal, Jaboticabal, SP, BrazilUniv Estadual Paulista, Fac Ciencias Agr & Vet, Dept Solos & Adubos, Jaboticabal, SP, Brazi

Children's and adults' processing of anomaly and implausability during reading: evidence from eye movements

The eye movements of 24 children and 24 adults were monitored to compare how they read sentences containing plausible, implausible, and anomalous thematic relations. In the implausible condition the incongruity occurred due to the incompatibility of two objects involved in the event denoted by the main verb. In the anomalous condition the direct object of the verb was not a possible verb argument. Adults exhibited immediate disruption with the anomalous sentences as compared to the implausible sentences as indexed by longer gaze durations on the target word. Children exhibited the same pattern of effects as adults as far as the anomalous sentences were concerned, but exhibited delayed effects of implausibility. These data indicate that while children and adults are alike in their basic thematic assignment processes during reading, children may be delayed in the efficiency with which they are able to integrate pragmatic and real-world knowledge into their discourse representation