Eye-movement recording as a tool for studying syntactic processing in a second language: a review of methodologies and experimental findings

International audienceThe complex trace of saccades, fixations and regressions that the eyes make while taking in a line of text is unquestionably one of the richest accounts available as concerns the process of reading. Recording these jumps, stops and re-takes provides a to-the-letter, millisecond-precise report of the readers' immediate syntactic processing as well as revisions thereof. In addition, the influence of innumerable factors -from low-level visual conditions to high-level pragmatic cues - on the reading process can be measured via this method, thereby rendering possible the testing of various psycholinguistic models of parsing and comprehension. For all of these reasons, eye-movement recording has become an invaluable tool in the study of how readers process text. Interestingly, however, only a handful of eye-movement studies have been published as concerns reading in the second language. The goal of the present article is to outline the findings of these second language studies and, hopefully, to encourage future work in the field using this tool

H-Space structures on spaces of metrics of positive scalar curvature

We construct and study an $H$-space multiplication on $\mathcal R^+(M)$ for manifolds $M$ which are nullcobordant in their own tangential $2$-type. This is applied to give a rigidity criterion for the action of the diffeomorphism group on $\mathcal R^+(M)$ via pullback. We also compare this to other known multiplicative structures on $\mathcal R^+(M)$.Comment: 15 pages, 21 figures; v2: revision according to referee report, accepted for publication in Trans. Amer. Math. So

Ambiguities and anomalies: What can eye-movements and event-related potentials reveal about second language sentence processing?

Second language sentence processing is examined here in light of several monolingual psycholinguistic models of parsing, as well as that of linguistic theories specifically adapted to account for second language acquisition in adult learners. We first examine studies that have primarily recorded eye-movements to trace syntactic processing. Syntactic-ambiguity resolution is used in these studies to address various current models of parsing, both in monolinguals and bilinguals. To illustrate how these models can be tested, we discuss a particular type of structural ambiguity: reduced relative clauses. Thereafter, we focus our attention on studies that have recorded event-related potentials during the processing of spoken and written sentences in bilinguals. In these studies, the accent is placed upon how semantic and syntactic anomalies, rather than ambiguities, are treated. We conclude with a quick comparison of these two approaches

Methods of Teaching Acting

The objective of this paper is to find the critical attribute required to teach acting to beginner-level students, whether it is a specific method of teaching, innovative acting drills used, or the type of classroom environment one must foster. The latter is strongly suspected, as the first two options above are somewhat empirical and possibly, if not readily, available and therefore easily taught to anyone desiring to learn to teach acting

The Gromov–Lawson–Chernysh surgery theorem

This is an expository article without any claim of originality. We give a complete and self-contained account of the Gromov–Lawson–Chernysh surgery theorem for positive scalar curvature metrics

Eye movement patterns of Down syndrome readers during sentence processing: An exploratory study

Eye movements were recorded in a group of Down syndrome (DS) readers as they processed sentences of differing lexical and syntactic complexity. The pattern of eye movements during reading was in line with comprehension scores and moreover revealed differences in processing that comprehension scores alone did not. Future research in DS readers with this methodology is both warranted and encouragedLors de cette étude, nous avons enregistré les mouvements oculaires de lecteurs atteints de trisomie 21 pendant qu'ils lisaient des phrases comportant différents niveaux de complexité lexicale et syntaxique. Nous avons remarqué en premier lieu que les patterns des mouvements oculaires pendant la lecture étaient corrélés avec les performances observées dans une tâche de compréhension mais, qui plus est, mettaient en évidence des différences de traitement que la tâche de compréhension seule ne révélait pas. Ces données préliminaires militent en faveur de plus amples développements parmi cette population grâce à l'utilisation de ce dispositif

Phonetic variability as a static/dynamic process in speech communication: a cross linguistic study

This study is a cross-linguistic investigation of qualitative and quantitative variations due to 1/ the structure of vocalic system, 2/ the amount of context within speech message. We hypothesize that phonetic distinctivity of vowels in a language is relative to 1/ the properties of the phonological system, 2/ the amount of informational context. Three languages (Spanish, French and English) were analyzed in three different types of speech (isolated vowels, within words and within texts). Results show 1/ centralization in the three vocalic systems relative to the amount of context, 2/ an increase of vowel dispersion also due to an increase of context information