Five degrees of (non)sense: Investigating the connection between bullshit receptivity and susceptibility to semantic illusions

Individual differences in people’s tendency to see bullshit statements such as Perceptual reality transcends subtle truth as meaningful and possibly profound have become an active topic of research in judgment and decision making in recent years. However, (psycho)linguistics has so far paid little attention to the topic, despite its obvious appeal for language processing research. I present an experiment that investigated possible shared traits contributing to individual bullshit receptivity and susceptibility to semantic illusions, which occur when compositionally incongruous sentences receive plausible but unlicensed interpretations (e.g., More people have been to Russia than I have). The results show relatively little indication of an individual-level tendency to both fall for bullshit and for linguistic illusions. Implications for future psycholinguistic research into bullshit processing are discussed

When Transformer models are more compositional than humans: The case of the depth charge illusion

State-of-the-art Transformer-based language models like GPT-3 are very good at generating syntactically well-formed and semantically plausible text. However, it is unclear to what extent these models encode the compositional rules of human language and to what extent their impressive performance is due to the use of relatively shallow heuristics, which have also been argued to be a factor in human language processing. One example is the so-called depth charge illusion, which occurs when a semantically complex, incongruous sentence like No head injury is too trivial to be ignored is assigned a plausible but not compositionally licensed meaning (Don't ignore head injuries, even if they appear to be trivial). I present an experiment that investigated how depth charge sentences are processed by Transformer models, which are free of many human performance bottlenecks. The results are mixed: Transformers do show evidence of non-compositionality in depth charge contexts, but also appear to be more compositional than humans in some respects

SEAM: An Integrated Activation-Coupled Model of Sentence Processing and Eye Movements in Reading

Models of eye-movement control during reading, developed largely within psychology, usually focus on visual, attentional, lexical, and motor processes but neglect post-lexical language processing; by contrast, models of sentence comprehension processes, developed largely within psycholinguistics, generally focus only on post-lexical language processes. We present a model that combines these two research threads, by integrating eye-movement control and sentence processing. Developing such an integrated model is extremely challenging and computationally demanding, but such an integration is an important step toward complete mathematical models of natural language comprehension in reading. We combine the SWIFT model of eye-movement control (Seelig et al., 2020, doi:10.1016/j.jmp.2019.102313) with key components of the Lewis and Vasishth sentence processing model (Lewis & Vasishth, 2005, doi:10.1207/s15516709cog0000_25). This integration becomes possible, for the first time, due in part to recent advances in successful parameter identification in dynamical models, which allows us to investigate profile log-likelihoods for individual model parameters. We present a fully implemented proof-of-concept model demonstrating how such an integrated model can be achieved; our approach includes Bayesian model inference with Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) sampling as a key computational tool. The integrated model, SEAM, can successfully reproduce eye movement patterns that arise due to similarity-based interference in reading. To our knowledge, this is the first-ever integration of a complete process model of eye-movement control with linguistic dependency completion processes in sentence comprehension. In future work, this proof of concept model will need to be evaluated using a comprehensive set of benchmark data

Conscious rereading is confirmatory: Evidence from bidirectional self-paced reading

Rereading during sentence processing can be confirmatory, in which case it serves to increase readers' certainty in their current interpretation, or it can be revisionary, in which case it serves to correct a misinterpretation (Christianson, Luke, Hussey, & Wochna, 2017). The distinction is particularly relevant in garden-path sentences, which have been argued to trigger revisionary rereading (Frazier & Rayner, 1982). In two web-based experiments that compare garden-path sentences with other linguistic constructions, we investigate deliberate rereading in the recently-proposed bidirectional self-paced reading (BSPR) paradigm (Paape & Vasishth, 2022). Our results show evidence for selective rereading only in very difficult garden-path sentences. Additionally, our results suggest that conscious, selective rereading is confirmatory: Readers find garden-path sentences less rather than more acceptable after selective rereading, suggesting that they reread either to confirm their initial analysis or to confirm the perceived ungrammaticality of the sentence. We discuss the role of conscious awareness in dealing with different types of linguistic inconsistency

Is reanalysis selective when regressions are consciously controlled?

The selective reanalysis hypothesis of Frazier and Rayner (1982) states that when faced with the need to reanalyze a syntactic ambiguity, readers direct their eyes towards the region in the sentence inducing the ambiguity (e.g., Since Jay always jogs a mile seems like a short distance to him). Given the mixed evidence for this proposal in the literature, we investigated the possibility that selective reanalysis is tied to conscious awareness of the garden-path effect. To this end, we adapted the well-known self-paced reading paradigm to allow for regressive as well as progressive key presses. Assuming that regressions in such a paradigm are consciously controlled, we found no evidence for selective reanalysis, but rather for occasional extensive, heterogeneous rereading of garden-path sentences. We discuss the implications of our findings for the selective reanalysis hypothesis, the role of awareness in sentence processing, as well as the usefulness of the bidirectional self-paced reading method for sentence processing research

Filling the silence: Reactivation, not reconstruction

In a self-paced reading experiment, we investigated the processing of sluicing constructions (`sluices') whose antecedent contained a known garden-path structure in German. Results showed decreased processing times for sluices with garden-path antecedents as well as a disadvantage for antecedents with non-canonical word order downstream from the ellipsis site. A post-hoc analysis showed the garden-path advantage also to be present in the region right before the ellipsis site. While no existing account of ellipsis processing explicitly predicted the results, we argue that they are best captured by combining a local antecedent mismatch effect with memory trace reactivation through reanalysis

Legislative Documents

Also, variously referred to as: House bills; House documents; House legislative documents; legislative documents; General Court documents

Processing of ellipsis with garden-path antecedents in French and German: Evidence from eye tracking

In a self-paced reading study on German sluicing, Paape (Paape, 2016) found that reading times were shorter at the ellipsis site when the antecedent was a temporarily ambiguous garden-path structure. As a post-hoc explanation of this finding, Paape assumed that the antecedent&rsquo;s memory representation was reactivated during syntactic reanalysis, making it easier to retrieve. In two eye tracking experiments, we subjected the reactivation hypothesis to further empirical scrutiny. Experiment 1, carried out in French, showed no evidence in favor in the reactivation hypothesis. Instead, results for one out of the three types of garden-path sentences that were tested suggest that subjects sometimes failed to resolve the temporary ambiguity in the antecedent clause, and subsequently failed to resolve the ellipsis. The results of Experiment 2, a conceptual replication of Paape&rsquo;s (Paape, 2016) original study carried out in German, are compatible with the reactivation hypothesis, but leave open the possibility that the observed speedup for ambiguous antecedents may be due to occasional retrievals of an incorrect structure.</p

Does antecedent complexity affect ellipsis processing? An empirical investigation

In two self-paced reading experiments, we investigated the effect of changes in antecedent complexity on processing times for ellipsis. Pointer- or “sharing”-based approaches to ellipsis processing (Frazier & Clifton 2001, 2005; Martin & McElree 2008) predict no effect of antecedent complexity on reading times at the ellipsis site while other accounts predict increased antecedent complexity to either slow down processing (Murphy 1985) or to speed it up (Hofmeister 2011). Experiment 1 manipulated antecedent complexity and elision, yielding evidence against a speedup at the ellipsis site and in favor of a null effect. In order to investigate possible superficial processing on part of participants, Experiment 2 manipulated the amount of attention required to correctly respond to end-of-sentence comprehension probes, yielding evidence against a complexity-induced slowdown at the ellipsis site. Overall, our results are compatible with pointer-based approaches while casting doubt on the notion that changes antecedent complexity lead to measurable differences in ellipsis processing speed