Syntax across domains: overlap in global and local structure processing

The research that has been presented in the current dissertation aims to address the recent debate concerning the extent to which structural processing across content domains (language, music, math, and action) might be supported by domain-general resources (Slevc & Okada, 2015). Following the development of novel pitch sequences and an off-line structural processing measure, we found interference during the joint structural processing of sentences and pitch sequences, which suggests that structural processing in both domains is supported by a domain-general pool of (working memory and cognitive control) resources. On the basis of this finding, we investigated to what extent such interactions between the structural processing of linguistic and non-linguistic materials could be found when studying ecologically valid materials. In an EEG study, we found that the event-related potentials (P2, P3, LAN, and P600) which were observed for dispreferred sentential disambiguations could be influenced by structural expectations on the basis of previously disambiguated pitch sequences. In two subsequent structural priming studies, we found that the completion of syntactically (Scheepers et al., 2011) and thematically (Allen et al., 2010) structured sentence beginnings (Scheepers et al., 2011) could be primed by the attachment structure of preceding linguistic, mathematical and pitch sequence materials. Furthermore, we found that similar cross-domain priming effects could be observed on the perception of implicitly structured pitch sequences. These findings thus strongly argue for broad, domain-general interactions in structural processing even when studying more naturalistic processing of ecologically valid materials. We tentatively interpret the current findings as evidence in favour of a domain-general pool of cognitive processing resources supporting structural processing across domains (Kljajevic, 2010; Slevc & Okada, 2014). With regards to our cross domain priming findings, we suggest that our results align with an ‘incremental-procedural’ account of attachment priming (see Scheepers & Sturt, 2014) according to which encountering a complexity in the structural processing of materials might (through a process of error-based implicit learning, Chang et al., 2006) influence the resource allocation during the structural processing of subsequent materials. In this way, our cross domain priming findings can be aligned with the idea of structural complexities processing being supported by domain-general cognitive resources (Slevc & Okada, 2015). At this point, it is important to remark that the results reported in the dissertation should of course be further replicated, and might be generalized to include harmonic processing and action perception as domains of structural processing. Furthermore, the interpretations of the current findings are not fully conclusive, as our studies were mainly guided by the goal of investigating whether there was evidence for interaction in structural processing across domains (showing several primary findings), rather than directly comparing alternative accounts in the interpretation of such interactions. Nevertheless, the research reported in the current dissertation clearly shows that, in relationship to the ongoing discussion on domain-generality of structural processing across domains (Slevc & Okada, 2015), interactions in structural processing across domains can be found when controlling for limitations of previous research (Perruchet & Poulin-Charronnat, 2013), and that those interactions can also be observed in situations that more closely approximate the processing of information from several domains in ‘daily life’. These primary findings suggest that domain-general cognitive processing resources support structural processing across domains, which provides several perspectives for theoretical approaches in psycholinguistics as well as other domains of cognition involving structural processing, such as math, music, and action

Representation of others’ synchronous and asynchronous sentences interferes with sentence production

In dialogue, people represent each other's utterances in order to take turns and communicate successfully. In previous work Gambi, C., Van de Cavey, J., \& Pickering, M. J. (2015). Interference in joint picture naming. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 41(1), 1-21., speakers who were naming single pictures or picture pairs represented whether another speaker was engaged in the same task (versus a different or no task) concurrently, but did not represent in detail the content of the other speaker's utterance. Here, we investigate co-representation of whole sentences. In three experiments, pairs of speakers imagined each other producing active or passive descriptions of transitive events. Speakers took longer to begin speaking when they believed their partner was also preparing to speak, compared to when they did not. Interference occurred when speakers believed their partners were preparing to speak at the same time as them (synchronous production and co-representation; Experiment 1), and also when speakers believed that their partner would speak only after them (asynchronous production and co-representation; Experiments 2a and 2b). However, interference was generally no greater when speakers believed their partner was preparing a different compared to a similar utterance, providing no consistent evidence that speakers represented what their partners were preparing to say. Taken together, these findings indicate that speakers can represent another's intention to speak even as they are themselves preparing to speak, but that such representation tends to lack detail

Interference in Joint Picture Naming

In 4 experiments we showed that picture naming latencies are affected by beliefs about the task concurrently performed by another speaker. Participants took longer to name pictures when they believed that their partner concurrently named pictures than when they believed their partner was silent (Experiments 1 and 4) or concurrently categorized the pictures as being from the same or from different semantic categories (Experiment 2). However, picture naming latencies were not affected by beliefs about what one's partner said, as it did not matter whether participants believed their partner produced the same utterance, or an utterance that differed by ordering (Experiments 1 and 2) or lexical content (Experiments 3 and 4). These findings are consistent with the proposal that speakers represent whether another speaker is preparing to speak but not what they are preparing to say

Heterogeneous response of chemotherapy-related cognitive decline in patients with breast cancer : a prospective study

Objective: A significant proportion of adjuvant-treated breast cancer patients experience cognitive decline, challenging the person's ability to return to normal activities after treatment. However, not every patient experiences cognitive problems, and even in patients with impairments, determining clinically important cognitive decline remains challenging. Our objective was to explore differences in neuropsychological performance following adjuvant chemotherapy (CT) in patients with breast cancer. Method: We conducted a prospective observational study in an Oncology Breast Clinic and assessed neuropsychological performance before and after adjuvant CT and in non-CT-treated women with breast cancer and healthy controls (HCs). Standardised between-group differences and regression-based change scores were calculated. Results: CT-treated patients (n= 66) performed significantly different from non-CT-treated patients (n= 39) and HCs (n= 56). There was a significant effect on verbal fluency (p= .0013). CT performed significantly worse than non-CT and HC [effect size (ES) = .89,p< .001 and ES = .61,p <= .001, respectively] and from HCs with regard to proactive interference (ES = .62,p <= .001). Regression-based scores revealed more severe cognitive decline in the CT-treated group [24.24% (16/66)] than in the non-CT-treated group [15.20% (6/39)] and HC group [7.14% (4/56)]. Patients who underwent CT and showed cognitive decline were less educated and older, with significantly lower baseline scores. Conclusions: CT-treated patients showed more vulnerability on cognitive control and monitoring than non-CT-treated breast cancer patients and HCs. Older patients with less education and lower baseline cognitive performance represent a group at risk for cognitive decline following CT. Identification of patients at risk for decline could improve targeted support and rehabilitation