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Biomedical subjects

J D Fodor

Publications and source records attributed to J D Fodor.

8 recordsLinked to original sources
PubMed2000

Syntactic features in reanalysis: positive and negative symptoms.

Meng and Bader have presented evidence that a Case conflict is a more effective cue for garden-path reanalysis than a number conflict is, for German wh-sentences with subject-object ambiguities. The preferred first-pass analysis has the wh-trace in subject position, although object position is correct. In a speeded grammaticality judgment task, perceivers accepted Case-disambiguated examples more often and more rapidly than number-disambiguated examples, although comprehension questions indicated that both were eventually understood correctly. For ungrammatical sentences, a Case mismatch error resulted in more false positive grammaticality judgments than a number mismatch error. We offer an explanation for why Case and number features differ in these two ways in their effects on sentence processing. We propose, within the Diagnosis Model of garden-path processing, that reanalysis triggered by a Case mismatch guides the parser more effectively toward the correct structure. Case is a positive symptom, which carries information about the new structure that must be built. By contrast, a number mismatch is a negative symptom; it invalidates the incorrect structure without showing how to rebuild it. This difference in the transparency of garden-path repair can also account for the greater overacceptance of Case-disambiguated ungrammatical sentences. The speeded grammaticality judgment task is designed to encourage hasty responses. Usually, these are hasty rejections of garden path sentences that, on calmer reflection, the parser would find acceptable. Conversely, over-hasty acceptance could occur if some initial progress is made in resolving a grammatical problem. Thus, a higher rate of false positives on ungrammaticals is to be expected where reanalysis proceeds successfully for a while before blocking.

Affect↗
PubMed1998

Anomaly detection: eye movement patterns.

The symptom of a garden path in sentence processing is an important anomaly in the input string. This anomaly signals to the parser that an error has occurred, and provides cues for how to repair it. Anomaly detection is thus an important aspect of sentence processing. In the present study, we investigated how the parser responds to unambiguous sentences that contain syntactic anomalies and pragmatic anomalies, examining records of eye movement during reading. While sensitivity to the two kinds of anomaly was very rapid and essentially simultaneous, qualitative differences existed in the patterns of first-pass reading times and eye regressions. The results are compatible with the proposal that syntactic information and pragmatic information are used differently in garden-path recovery.

Humans↗
PubMed1996

Tasks and timing in the perception of linguistic anomaly.

Three experiments were conducted to investigate the relative timing of syntactic and pragmatic anomaly detection during sentence processing. Experiment 1 was an eye movement study. Experiment 2 employed a dual-task paradigm with compressed speech input, to put the processing routines under time pressure. Experiment 3 used compressed speech input in an anomaly monitoring task. The outcomes of these experiments suggest that there is little or no delay in pragmatic processing relative to syntactic processing in the comprehension of unambiguous sentences. This narrows the possible explanations for any delays that are observed in the use of pragmatic information for ambiguity resolution.

Cognition↗
PubMed1994

Using cross-modal lexical decision tasks to investigate sentence processing.

Recent investigations of sentence processing have used the cross-modal lexical decision task to show that the antecedent of a phonologically empty noun phrase (specifically, WH-trace) is reactivated at the trace position. G. McKoon, R. Ratcliff, and G. Ward (1994) claimed that (a) a design feature concerning the choice of related and unrelated targets is a possible confound in this work and (b) the conclusions drawn from this previous research are therefore called into question. These claims are considered in light of both McKoon et al.'s experimental findings and results of our own experiments in which we test their linguistic materials. We argue that their results may be due to the nature of their materials. Additionally, we argue that a follow-up experiment reported by G. McKoon and R. Ratcliff (1994) used a technique that is not comparable to the cross-modal lexical decision task. It is concluded that current evidence supports the claim that structural information is using during on-line sentence processing and that the cross-modal technique is sensitive to this.

Cognition↗
PubMed1989

Contextual information and temporal terms.

We report an experiment designed to identify how contextual information can influence children's performance on an experimental task involving temporal terms. Crain (1982) reported improved performance on a comprehension task when subjects were provided with contextual information, and he suggested that the improvement was due to satisfaction of presuppositions. However, this contextual information might have served to simplify task demands by providing prior information concerning an important aspect of the task. The present study distinguishes these factors by incorporating contextual information into the subordinate clause of the test sentences in a comprehension experiment (to satisfy presupposions) or into the main clause (to provide comparable prior information without satisfying presuppositions). We conclude that contextual information results in a significant improvement only when such information can be used to satisfy presuppositions.

Child Language↗
PubMedDate not supplied

Garden path repair: diagnosis and triage.

Meng and Bader (2000b) have shown that for garden-path repair in German, case is a more effective cue than number. They argue that sensitivity to the nature of the cue supports a diagnosis model of garden path repair such as we have proposed. However, in making this argument Meng and Bader introduced a new notion of diagnosis. Retaining the original "basic" diagnosis system, they added a new function that we call triage. Triage determines the probable revisability of a structure, in order to decide whether to make the effort of trying to reanalyze it. To determine whether triage is a feature of human parsing, its scope must be established. We compare four hypotheses about how much work triage could do. A powerful triage component would succeed where the human parser fails. Limited local triage does no work if symptom effectiveness varies within a language. An intermediate hypothesis discriminates better between easy and difficult revisions. However, this variant of triage with the strongest claim to psychological reality is the most difficult to distinguish from no triage at all, since it shares important properties with basic diagnosis. We identify some empirical predictions that differentiate diagnosis with triage from simple basic diagnosis. What little evidence there is at present suggests that the human sentence parser has no triage capability.

Cues↗