psycholinguistics

Mental simulation theories of language comprehension propose that people automatically create mental representations of objects mentioned in sentences. Mental representation is often measured with the sentence-picture verification task, wherein …

Unlike children acquiring their first language (L1), L2/Ln learners can draw on existing grammatical knowledge to ease the task, at least for those properties where the grammars align. This means that, in addition to statistical learning, there might …

The acquisition of a third language (L3) often involves the transfer of morphosyntactic structures from the first language and/or the second language to the developing L3 grammar, allowing the recycling of previously acquired knowledge (Rothman et …

To err is human, but when it comes to creating research materials, mistakes can be reduced by sharing more of our work and by using some helpful tools. For instance, we can make our research materials FAIRer—that is, more Findable, Accessible, …

Slideshare Labotka, D., Sabo, E., Bonais, R., Gelman, S. A., & Baptista, M. (2023). Testing the effects of congruence in adult multilingual acquisition with implications for creole genesis. Cognition, 235, 105387. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cognition.2023.105387

Slideshare Jost, E., Brill-Schuetz, K., Morgan-Short, K., & Christiansen, M. H. (2019). Input complexity affects long-term retention of statistically learned regularities in an artificial language learning task. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, 13, 358. https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fnhum.2019.00358

Research has suggested that conceptual processing depends on both language-based and vision-based information. We tested this interplay at three levels of the experimental structure: individuals, words and tasks. To this end, we drew on three …

Multilevel analyses investigating the interplay between language-based and vision-based information in conceptual processing across semantic priming, semantic decision and lexical decision paradigms, with power analyses revealing sample size requirements for examining perceptual simulation and individual differences.

Linguistic relativity is the influence of language on other realms of cognition. For instance, the way movement is expressed in a person’s native language may influence how they perceive movement. Motion event encoding (MEE) is usually framed as a …

Part of the toolkit of language researchers is formed of stimuli that have been rated on various dimensions. The current study presents modality exclusivity norms for 336 properties and 411 concepts in Dutch. Forty-two respondents rated the auditory, …

Throughout the 1990s, two opposing theories were used to explain how people understand texts, later bridged by the Landscape Model of reading (van den Broek, Young, Tzeng, & Linderholm, 1999). A review is offered below, including a schematic representation of the Landscape Model. Memory-based view The memory-based view presented reading as an autonomous, unconscious, effortless process. Readers were purported to achieve an understanding of a text as a whole by combining the concepts, and implications readily afforded, in the text with their own background knowledge (Myers & O’Brien, 1998; O’Brien & Myers, 1999).

Het menselijk brein begrijpt de wereld om ons heen op een taalkundige en zintuiglijke manier. Pablo Bernabeu (Language and Communication) onderzocht waarom dat zo is.

We tested whether conceptual processing is modality-specific by tracking the time course of the Conceptual Modality Switch effect. Forty-six participants verified the relation between property words and concept words. The conceptual modality of …

Event-related potential experiment investigating conceptual modality switching, finding early-onset negativity effects (160-750 ms) that increase over time, suggesting sensory regions have a functional role in conceptual processing and supporting the compatibility of distributional and embodied processing.

We tested whether conceptual processing is modality-specific by tracking the time course of the Conceptual Modality Switch effect. Forty-six participants verified the relation between property words and concept words. The conceptual modality of consecutive trials was manipulated in order to produce an Auditory-to-visual switch condition, a Haptic-to-visual switch condition, and a Visual-to-visual, no-switch condition. Event-Related Potentials (ERPs) were time-locked to the onset of the first word (property) in the target trials so as to measure the effect online and to avoid a within-trial confound. A switch effect was found, characterized by more negative ERP amplitudes for modality switches than no-switches. It proved significant in four typical time windows from 160 to 750 milliseconds post word onset, with greater strength in posterior brain regions, and after 350 milliseconds. These results suggest that conceptual processing may be modality-specific in certain tasks, but also that the early stage of processing is relatively amodal.

An ERP study demonstrating that conceptual modality switch effects emerge within 200ms and increase throughout processing, supporting the role of perceptual simulation in conceptual processing while suggesting that both amodal and modal systems contribute to cognition.

Traditionally, the second word presented (whether noun or adjective) has been the point of measure, both for RTs and ERPs. Yet, could it be better to measure at the first word?