Both thematic role and next-mention biases affect pronoun use in Dutch

An important question is whether speakers consider listeners’ expectations when choosing whether to use a pronoun. It has been suggested that certain thematic roles are more expected to be mentioned again, and are therefore more likely to be pronominalized. In the present study, we aim to disentangle predictability effects on pronoun use from thematic-role effects. To this end, we conducted two web-based continuation experiments in Dutch, in which the next-mention biases associated with Source-Goal and Agent-Patient verbs were manipulated to create a shift in the bias. Experiment 1 confirmed that the manipulations changed the biases. Experiment 2 showed that while thematic role mainly influenced demonstrative and full pronoun use for non-subjects, next-mention biases played a role in the choice between reduced and full pronouns and between pronouns and full NPs, irrespective of thematic role or grammatical function. Thus, thematic role and predictability seem to affect pronoun use in different ways

Interpreting idioms in a second language:The role of context and transfer in interpreting English idioms by native Dutch speakers

How do people understand figurative speech in a foreign language? What strategies do they use? By means of an online questionnaire, this study investigated to what extent contextual information and transfer play a role in the interpretation of idioms in a second language, controlling for familiarity. Sixty-one native speakers of Dutch were asked to guess the correct interpretation of English idioms with and without a Dutch equivalent, presented with and without context, out of four answer options. The results showed that correctly interpreting an idiom depends on both the presence of context and the possibility of transfer. More correct interpretations were given when an idiom was presented in a context, but only for English idioms without an equivalent in the native language. English idioms with an equivalent in Dutch, often rated as familiar, were mostly understood correctly. We interpret this result as the involvement of transfer from the native language

The Index of Cognitive Activity as a Measure of Cognitive Processing Load in Dual Task Settings

Increases in pupil size have long been used as an indicator of cognitive load. Recently, the Index of Cognitive Activity (ICA), a novel pupillometric measure has received increased attention. The ICA measures the frequency of rapid pupil dilations, and is an interesting complementary measure to overall pupil size because it disentangles the pupil response to cognitive activity from effects of light input. As such, it has been evaluated as a useful measure of processing load in dual task settings coordinating language comprehension and driving. However, the cognitive underpinnings of pupillometry, and any differences between rapid small dilations as measured by the ICA and overall effects on pupil size are still poorly understood. Earlier work has observed that the ICA and overall pupil size may not always behave in the same way, reporting an increase in overall pupil size but decrease in ICA in a dual task setting. To further investigate this, we systematically tested two new dual-task combinations, combining both language comprehension and simulated driving with a memory task. Our findings confirm that more difficult linguistic processing is reflected in a larger ICA. More importantly, however, the dual task settings did not result in an increase in the ICA as compared to the single task, and, consistent with earlier findings, showed a significant decrease with a more difficult secondary task. This contrasts with our findings for pupil size, which showed an increase with greater secondary task difficulty in both tasks. Our results are compatible with the idea that although both pupillometry measures are indicators of cognitive load, they reflect different cognitive and neuronal processes in dual task situations

The Index of Cognitive Activity as a Measure of Cognitive Processing Load in Dual Task Settings

Increases in pupil size have long been used as an indicator of cognitive load. Recently, the Index of Cognitive Activity (ICA), a novel pupillometric measure has received increased attention. The ICA measures the frequency of rapid pupil dilations, and is an interesting complementary measure to overall pupil size because it disentangles the pupil response to cognitive activity from effects of light input. As such, it has been evaluated as a useful measure of processing load in dual task settings coordinating language comprehension and driving. However, the cognitive underpinnings of pupillometry, and any differences between rapid small dilations as measured by the ICA and overall effects on pupil size are still poorly understood. Earlier work has observed that the ICA and overall pupil size may not always behave in the same way, reporting an increase in overall pupil size but decrease in ICA in a dual task setting. To further investigate this, we systematically tested two new dual-task combinations, combining both language comprehension and simulated driving with a memory task. Our findings confirm that more difficult linguistic processing is reflected in a larger ICA. More importantly, however, the dual task settings did not result in an increase in the ICA as compared to the single task, and, consistent with earlier findings, showed a significant decrease with a more difficult secondary task. This contrasts with our findings for pupil size, which showed an increase with greater secondary task difficulty in both tasks. Our results are compatible with the idea that although both pupillometry measures are indicators of cognitive load, they reflect different cognitive and neuronal processes in dual task situations