On the use of verb-based implicit causality in sentence comprehension: Evidence from self-paced reading and eye tracking

In two experiments, we examined the recent claim (Stewart, Pickering, & Sanford, 2000) that verb-based implicit causality information is used during sentence–final clausal integration only. We did so by looking for mid-sentence reading delays caused by pronouns that are inconsistent with the bias of a preceding implicit causality verb (e.g., “David praised Linda because he…”). In a self-paced reading task, such pronouns immediately slowed down reading, at the two words immediately following the pronoun. In eye tracking, bias-inconsistent pronouns also immediately perturbed the reading process, as indexed by significant delays in various first pass measures at and shortly after the critical pronoun. Hence, readers can recruit verb-based implicit causality information in the service of comprehension rapidly enough to impact on the interpretation of a pronoun early in the subordinate clause. We take our results to suggest that implicit causality is used proactively, allowing readers to focus on, and perhaps even predict, who or what will be talked about next

Semantic Involvement of Initial and Final Lexical Embeddings during Sense-Making: The Advantage of Starting Late

During spoken language interpretation, listeners rapidly relate the meaning of each individual word to what has been said before. However, spoken words often contain spurious other words, like day in daisy, or dean in sardine. Do listeners also relate the meaning of such unintended, spurious words to the prior context? We used ERPs to look for transient meaning-based N400 effects in sentences that were completely plausible at the level of words intended by the speaker, but contained an embedded word whose meaning clashed with the context. Although carrier words with an initial embedding (day in daisy) did not elicit an embedding-related N400 effect relative to matched control words without embedding, carrier words with a final embedding (dean in sardine) did elicit such an effect. Together with prior work from our lab and the results of a Shortlist B simulation, our findings suggest that listeners do semantically interpret embedded words, albeit not under all conditions. We explain the latter by assuming that the sense-making system adjusts its hypothesis for how to interpret the external input at every new syllable, in line with recent ideas of active sampling in perception

Establishing reference in language comprehension: An electrophysiological perspective

The electrophysiology of language comprehension has long been dominated by research on syntactic and semantic integration. However, to understand expressions like "he did it" or "the little girl", combining word meanings in accordance with semantic and syntactic constraints is not enough--readers and listeners also need to work out what or who is being referred to. We review our event-related brain potential research on the processes involved in establishing reference, and present a new experiment in which we examine when and how the implicit causality associated with specific interpersonal verbs affects the interpretation of a referentially ambiguous pronoun. The evidence suggests that upon encountering a singular noun or pronoun, readers and listeners immediately inspect their situation model for a suitable discourse entity, such that they can discriminate between having too many, too few, or exactly the right number of referents within at most half a second. Furthermore, our implicit causality findings indicate that a fragment like "David praised Linda because..." can immediately foreground a particular referent, to the extent that a subsequent "he" is at least initially construed as a syntactic error. In all, our brain potential findings suggest that referential processing is highly incremental, and not necessarily contingent upon the syntax. In addition, they demonstrate that we can use ERPs to relatively selectively keep track of how readers and listeners establish reference

Dairy farming and dairy industry in Iran

Iran is a country with a long dairy tradition. Dairy production has increased to a level of about 9bn kg of milk per year. The ambition in the sector is to further increase production and to improve the quality of the milk to be able to export. Based on the analysis of available data and on a field trip to Iran, 4 key areas have been identified by the participating partners in the project where a Dutch Iranian cooperation could strengthen the Iranian dairy chain. 1. Milk quality assurance, quality standards and milk-payment systems There is a lack of trust within the Iranian dairy chain. A further improvement of the milk quality is needed if Iran wants to export. Dutch experience and technology about how to organise (governance) and implement (e.g in milk-payment systems) with all relevant stakeholders to achieve a higher quality of consumer products can help solve this issue. 2. Feed availability and quality The lack of trust also applies to the feed part of the dairy chain. Chain efficiency can be improved considerably if trust is improved. Dutch experience and technology about how to organise and implement independent assessment of feed quality and building trust in the chain can help to make the Iranian chain more transparent and efficient. 3. Water efficiency and feed production Iran has to be more efficient in its feed production, especially in relation to water use. Dutch international experience in crop production and water efficiency on farm level and knowledge on policy development on regional and national level can be used to contribute to this issue. 4. Education: both on operational level and on economics All Iranian farmers mentioned the need for operational trainings of their employees. Several had done training in the Netherlands in the past. The changing circumstances in Iran require more skills and insights related to strategic and economic decisions. The main recommendation is to develop a joint programme with Iranian and Dutch partners to work on these four areas. Possible partners for such a programme have been identified on both sides

Fean wetter buorkje II : Samenvattende rapportage praktijkproeven hoger zomerpeil Fries Veenweidegebied 2007-2008

De provincie Fryslân en Wetterskip Fryslân zoeken naar een vorm van peilbeheer die de bodemdaling in het Friese veenweidegebied vertraagt, maar een sterke landbouw niet in de weg staat. De oplossing wordt gezocht in hoger zomerpeil. Daarbij is ’s zomers, wanneer vanwege de lagere grondwaterstanden en de hogere temperaturen 90% van de bodemdaling plaatsvindt, de drooglegging 60-70 cm, terwijl die ‘s winters 90 cm blijft

Phonological facilitation of grammatical gender retrieval.

In Dutch, the gender of nouns is marked by the definite articles de (common gender) and het (neuter gender). Most models of language production assume that gender information is retrieved via the noun's syntactic representation (or lemma). The authors test Caramazza's (1997) alternative proposal, according to which gender information is retrieved via the noun's phonological word form (or lexeme). In three picture-word experiments, which differed in the tasks to be performed (noun production, article+noun production, article production, and gender decision), clear phonological effects were obtained in tasks involving the retrieval of the noun's gender information. It is argued that traditional models of language production have difficulty in accounting for the occurrence and/or the size of these effects whereas they follow quite naturally from Caramazza's (1997) Independent Network model. © 2004 Psychology Press Ltd

Tracking Affective Language Comprehension: Simulating and Evaluating Character Affect in Morally Loaded Narratives

Facial electromyography research shows that corrugator supercilii (“frowning muscle”) activity tracks the emotional valence of linguistic stimuli. Grounded or embodied accounts of language processing take such activity to reflect the simulation or “re-enactment” of emotion, as part of the retrieval of word meaning (e.g., of “furious”) and/or of building a situation model (e.g., for “Mark is furious”). However, the same muscle also expresses our primary emotional evaluation of things we encounter. Language-driven affective simulation can easily be at odds with the reader’s affective evaluation of what language describes (e.g., when we like Mark being furious). In a previous experiment (‘t Hart et al., 2018) we demonstrated that neither language-driven simulation nor affective evaluation alone seem sufficient to explain the corrugator patterns that emerge during online language comprehension in these complex cases. Those results showed support for a multiple-drivers account of corrugator activity, where both simulation and evaluation processes contribute to the activation patterns observed in the corrugator. The study at hand replicates and extends these findings. With more refined control over when precisely affective information became available in a narrative, we again find results that speak against an interpretation of corrugator activity in terms of simulation or evaluation alone, and as such support the multiple-drivers account. Additional evidence suggests that the simulation driver involved reflects simulation at the level of situation model construction, rather than at the level of retrieving concepts from long-term memory. In all, by giving insights into how language-driven simulation meshes with the reader’s evaluative responses during an unfolding narrative, this study contributes to the understanding of affective language comprehension

Nanocrystalline materials studied by powder diffraction line profile analysis

X-ray powder diffraction is a powerful tool for characterising the microstructure of crystalline materials in terms of size and strain. It is widely applied for nanocrystalline materials, especially since other methods, in particular electron microscopy is, on the one hand tedious and time consuming, on the other hand, due to the often metastable states of nanomaterials it might change their microstructures. It is attempted to overview the applications of microstructure characterization by powder diffraction on nanocrystalline metals, alloys, ceramics and carbon base materials. Whenever opportunity is given, the data provided by the X-ray method are compared and discussed together with results of electron microscopy. Since the topic is vast we do not try to cover the entire field

Si interstitial contribution of F+ implants in crystalline Si

The F effect in crystalline Si is quantified by monitoring defects and B diffusion in samples implanted with 25 keV F+ and/or 40 keV Si+. We estimate that about +0.4 Si interstitials are generated per implanted F+ ion, in agreement with the value resulting from the net separation of Frenkel pairs. For short annealings, B diffusion is lower when F+ is coimplanted with Si+ than when only Si+ is implanted, while for longer annealings, B diffusion is higher. This is consistent with a lower but longer-lasting Si interstitial supersaturation set by the additional defects generated by the F+ implant