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The non-fluent/agrammatic variant of primary progressive aphasia (nfvPPA) is a neurodegenerative syndrome primarily defined by the presence of apraxia of speech (AoS) and/or expressive agrammatism. In addition, many patients exhibit dysarthria and/or receptive agrammatism. This leads to substantial phenotypic variation within the speech-language domain across individuals and time, in terms of both the specific combination of symptoms as well as their severity. How to resolve such phenotypic heterogeneity in nfvPPA is a matter of debate. 'Splitting' views propose separate clinical entities: 'primary progressive apraxia of speech' when AoS occurs in the absence of expressive agrammatism, 'progressive agrammatic aphasia' (PAA) in the opposite case, and 'AOS + PAA' when mixed motor speech and language symptoms are clearly present. While therapeutic interventions typically vary depending on the predominant symptom (e.g. AoS versus expressive agrammatism), the existence of behavioural, anatomical and pathological overlap across these phenotypes argues against drawing such clear-cut boundaries. In the current study, we contribute to this debate by mapping behaviour to brain in a large, prospective cohort of well characterized patients with nfvPPA (n = 104). We sought to advance scientific understanding of nfvPPA and the neural basis of speech-language by uncovering where in the brain the degree of MRI-based atrophy is associated with inter-patient variability in the presence and severity of AoS, dysarthria, expressive agrammatism or receptive agrammatism. Our cross-sectional examination of brain-behaviour relationships revealed three main observations. First, we found that the neural correlates of AoS and expressive agrammatism in nfvPPA lie side by side in the left posterior inferior frontal lobe, explaining their behavioural dissociation/association in previous reports. Second, we identified a 'left-right' and 'ventral-dorsal' neuroanatomical distinction between AoS versus dysarthria, highlighting (i) that dysarthria, but not AoS, is significantly influenced by tissue loss in right-hemisphere motor-speech regions; and (ii) that, within the left hemisphere, dysarthria and AoS map onto dorsally versus ventrally located motor-speech regions, respectively. Third, we confirmed that, within the large-scale grammar network, left frontal tissue loss is preferentially involved in expressive agrammatism and left temporal tissue loss in receptive agrammatism. Our findings thus contribute to define the function and location of the epicentres within the large-scale neural networks vulnerable to neurodegenerative changes in nfvPPA. We propose that nfvPPA be redefined as an umbrella term subsuming a spectrum of speech and/or language phenotypes that are closely linked by the underlying neuroanatomy and neuropathology.

While a large body of work in sentence comprehension has explored how different types of linguistic information are used to guide syntactic parsing, less is known about the effect of discourse structure. This study investigates this question, focusing on the main and subordinate discourse contrast manifested in the distinction between restrictive relative clauses (RRCs) and appositive relative clauses (ARCs) in American English. In three self‐paced reading experiments, we examined whether both RRCs and ARCs interfere with the matrix clause content and give rise to the agreement attraction effect. While the standard attraction effect was consistently observed in the baseline RRC structures, the effect varied in the ARC structures. These results collectively suggest that discourse structure indeed constrains syntactic dependency resolution. Most importantly, we argue that what is at stake is not the static discourse structure properties at the global sentence level. Instead, attention should be given to the incremental update of the discourse structure in terms of which discourse questions are active at any given moment of a discourse. The current findings have implications for understanding the way discourse structure, specifically the active state of discourse questions, constrains memory retrieval. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this study, we investigated whether different morphosyntactic features, i.e. number and gender, play a role during the adult online comprehension of subject relative clauses (SRC) and object relative clauses (ORC), in Italian. This study was inspired by developmental studies showing that children struggle with ORC compared to SRC; yet, ORC comprehension improves if the head and the subject of the RC mismatch in relevant morphosyntactic features (e.g. number but not gender in Italian, based on the featural Relativized Minimality principle, fRM). We found that Italian adults read ORC more slowly than SRC verbs; moreover, ORC verbs were read faster in the head-subject number mismatch condition, while there was no facilitation in the head-subject gender mismatch condition, in line with developmental studies and fRM. We conclude that online parsing is feature-sensitive, that features are not all equally “relevant”, and that current models should be refined to account for these differences.

Introduction: This study examined whether visuospatial perspective uses the character perspective during narrative comprehension. Method: Participants read narrative stimuli depicting the spatial positional relationships between characters and objects and judged whether the objects were on the left or right from the character's perspective. We manipulated whether the spatial positional relationships between characters depicted in the narrative stimuli resulted in a visuospatial perspective. We hypothesized that the high-load perspective-taking condition would indicate longer reaction times compared to the low-load perspective-taking condition, as shifting perspectives between characters in the high-load condition require more time for visuospatial perspective-taking. Results: As predicted, the reaction time was longer for high-load perspective- taking than for low-load perspective-taking. Discussion: During narrative comprehension, the reaction time for visuospatial perspective-taking must move virtually within the representation from the main character's perspective to that of another character. Visuospatial perspective- taking is involved in narrative comprehension. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objectives: This study aimed to examine age-related differences in the comprehension of Korean comparative sentences with varying word orders by employing both offline and online measures, and to investigate how variations in word order affect sentence processing across different age groups. Methods: A total of 52 monolingual native Korean speakers, 26 young adults, and 26 older adults, completed a sentence-picture-matching task under two word order conditions: comparative-first and nominative-first. Offline measures included accuracy and response time, while an online method involved eye)tracking within the Visual World Paradigm. Data analyses were performed using linear and generalized linear mixed-effects models. Results: Older adults demonstrated lower accuracy and longer response times compared to younger individuals. Distinctive fixation patterns were observed, particularly in the sentential-final phrase, across different age groups. Specifically, nominative-first sentences elicited greater target advantage scores among younger adults, whereas older adults showed higher scores in comparative-first sentences. Conclusion: The study highlights the potential of comparative sentences in elucidating age-related changes in sentence comprehension. These differences were evident not only in offline tasks but also in real-time processing, as evidenced by eye-tracking data. The findings suggest distinct processing strategies employed by young and older adults and underscore the importance of considering both syntactic and semantic cues in sentence comprehension. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sentence comprehension requires the integration of linguistic units presented in a temporal sequence based on a non-linear underlying syntactic structure. While it is uncontroversial that storage is mandatory for this process, there are opposing views regarding the relevance of general short-term-/working-memory capacities (STM/WM) versus language specific resources. Here we report results from 43 participants with an acquired brain lesion in the extended left hemispheric language network and resulting language deficits, who performed a sentence-to-picture matching task and an experimental task assessing phonological short-term memory. The sentence task systematically varied syntactic complexity (embedding depth and argument order) while lengths, number of propositions and plausibility were kept constant. Clinical data including digit-/ block-spans and lesion size and site were additionally used in the analyses. Correlational analyses confirm that performance on STM/WM-tasks (experimental task and digit-span) are the only two relevant predictors for correct sentence-picture-matching, while reaction times only depended on age and lesion size. Notably increasing syntactic complexity reduced the correlational strength speaking for the additional recruitment of language specific resources independent of more general verbal STM/WM capacities, when resolving complex syntactic structure. The complementary lesion-behaviour analysis yielded different lesion volumes correlating with either the sentence-task or the STM-task. Factoring out STM measures lesions in the anterior temporal lobe correlated with a larger decrease in accuracy with increasing syntactic complexity. We conclude that overall sentence comprehension depends on STM/WM capacity, while increases in syntactic complexity tax another independent cognitive resource.

Abstract The putamen is a subcortical structure. However, neuroimaging studies have demonstrated the involvement of the left putamen in other language functions such as bilingual language processing. Some studies have also shown the role of the right putamen in higher-order language functions. The present reanalysis aims to investigate the role of the bilateral putamen during the L1-L2 sentence comprehension in bilinguals using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). Hence, 36 Turkish-Persian bilinguals (21 females and 15 males), who had acquired their second language at the age of seven after entering school, were selected in a purposive sampling method to perform an auditory grammaticality judgment task within an alternative language switching paradigm. After detecting the activity of the bilateral putamen at the whole-brain level, in FSL, percent signal change was extracted per participant as an intensity measure and analyzed statistically in SPSS. At the whole-brain level, the findings demonstrated that the bilateral putamen was involved in the comprehension of syntactic structures during the alternating presentation of L1 and L2 stimuli. In addition, regardless of the hemisphere involved, the significant grammaticality effect for L1 as well as the increased sensitivity for L1-violation stimuli compared to L2-violation stimuli may imply the standard language dominance effect also in the putamen. Keywords: Bilingualism, Sentence comprehension, Putamen, L1, fMRI Introduction Subcortical structures are considered a key component in language processing in bilinguals. Basal ganglia are a group of subcortical structures found deep within the White Matter of the brain and have extensive connections with the cerebral cortex, especially Broca's area and speech motor cortex. These nuclei include Putamen, Caudate, Pallidum, substantia nigra and subthalamic. Nowadays, the involvement of Putamen in production processes is evidenced, nevertheless, very little is known about the contribution of this region in understanding syntax in bilinguals. To our knowledge, no studies have examined the role of Putamen in syntactic processing in bilinguals. Here, we aimed to explore it within an alternative language switching paradigm. To address this gap, the current reanalysis focuses on the following research question. How is the performance of bilateral Putamen during L1-L2 syntactic processing? To answer this research question guiding this study, a bilingual task with alternating language switching paradigm were developed. In this task, brain imaging was performed using event-related fMRI while the participants listened to a total of 128 sentences in two Turkish and Persian languages. Materials and methods To allow for reliable ROI-based analysis, 36 right-handed and balanced Turkish-Persian bilingual students were recruited to participate in this study. All participants were native speakers of Turkish and learned Persian at school from the age of seven. Participants' language proficiency levels were assessed by the Bilingual Dominance Scale (BDS) and no significant difference was observed between Turkish and Persian (i.e., between L1 and L2) in language dominance. During a bilingual grammaticality judgement task, participants heard 128 test sentences (64 in L1 and 64 in L2, with 50% violation per language) and made their judgment by pressing a button. Stimuli were presented using the Psychtoolbox in MATLAB via headphones. Stimuli were randomized for each condition, but alternated in a fixed sequence for language. MRI data were collected in NBML, Tehran, Iran, using a Siemens Prisma 3T scanner with a 20-channel head coil. For each participant, a high-resolution T1-weighted anatomical scan was acquired (TR = 1800msec, TE = 3053 msec, flip angle: 7°, 192 axial slices, slice thickness = 1 mm, field of view (FOV) = 256 mm2, 256 × 256 acquisition matrix, voxel size: 1×1×1 mm). After the anatomical scan, participants underwent a 21.5-min fMRI scan that used a whole brain echo planar imaging (EPI) sequence (TE: 30 ms, TR: 3000 ms, flip angle: 90°, slice thickness: 3 mm, voxel size: 3×3×3 mm, matrix size: 64×64, FOV: 192 mm2, 430 volumes and 45 axial slices per volume). Processing of the fMRI data was carried out using FEAT in FSL. Preprocessing steps included motion correction, slice-timing correction, non-brain removal using BET, spatial smoothing (6 mm FWHM), normalization, temporal filtering (with sigma = 50.0 s), and exploratory ICA-based data analysis. Statistical analyses of fMRI data were conducted using general linear modeling (GLM), as implemented in FSL. Z statistic images were thresholded using clusters determined by Z > 2.6 and a (corrected) cluster significance threshold of P < 0.05. After detecting the Cerebellum activation in the whole-brain analysis, percent signal changes were extracted as an intensity measure in this brain region. All statistical analyses were conducted in IBM SPSS Statistics 26. Discussion of results and conclusions The present reanalysis investigate the contribution of Putamen in Turkish-Persian participants during processing syntax. Our research question concerns whether there are differences in syntactic processing between L1 and L2 in bilateral Putamen in non-native participants. At the whole-brain level, the findings indicated that the bilateral Putamen is involved in modulating the syntactic aspects of language, supporting the previous pathological studies on Putamen as well as its association with cortical areas in the realm of bilingualism. Another crucial point is regarding the significant effect of grammaticality in L1 and significant differences between L1-ungrammatical and L2-ungrammatical sentences, irrespective of the involved hemisphere. This is in line with the behavioral performance of present sample in which bilinguals had longer reaction time and more errors for L1 which was leading to more brain activations. This could be arguably because of the standard language dominance effect placed on L1, as mentioned by Declerck & Koch (2023), demonstrating that the present population may have relied more on their L1 than L2. Accordingly, using Chinese-English bilingual speakers, Wang and his colleagues (2009) found that sustained and transient language control induced differential activation patterns, and that sustained and transient activities in the human brain modulate the behavioral costs during switching-related language control. Thus, it is reasonable to say that in mixed-language blocks, balanced bilinguals performed better in L1 than in L2. In sum, based on current sample and task, we propose that bilinguals who had learnt L2 at the age of seven when entering school have employed the bilateral Putamen during processing syntax with standard language dominance effect (i.e., better performance in L1 than in L2).

The ability to think about nonpresent time is a crucial aspect of human cognition. Both the past and future imply a temporal displacement of an event outside the "now." They also intrinsically differ: The past refers to inalterable events; the future to alterable events, to possible worlds. Are the past and future processed similarly or differently? In this study, we addressed this question by investigating how Spanish speakers process past/future time reference violations during sentence processing, while recording eye movements. We also investigated the role of verbs (in isolation; within sentences) and adverbs (deictic; nondeictic) during time processing. Existing accounts propose that past processing, which requires a link to discourse, is more complex than future processing, which-like the present-is locally bound. Our findings show that past and future processing differs, especially at early stages of verb processing, but this difference is not limited to the presence/absence of discourse linking. We found earlier mismatch effects for past compared to future time reference in incongruous sentences, in line with previous studies. Interestingly, it took longer to categorize the past than the future tense when verbs were presented in isolation. However, it took longer to categorize the future than the past when verbs were presented in congruous sentences, arguably because the future implies alterable worlds. Finally, temporal adverbs were found to play an important role in reinspection and reanalysis triggered by the presence of undefined time frames (nondeictic adverbs) or incongruences (mismatching verbs). (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

The putamen is a subcortical structure. However, neuroimaging studies have demonstrated the involvement of the left putamen in other language functions such as bilingual language processing. Some studies have also shown the role of the right putamen in higher-order language functions. The present reanalysis aims to investigate the role of the bilateral putamen during the L1-L2 sentence comprehension in bilinguals using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). Hence, 36 Turkish-Persian bilinguals (21 females and 15 males), who had acquired their second language at the age of seven after entering school, were selected in a purposive sampling method to perform an auditory grammaticality judgment task within an alternative language switching paradigm. After detecting the activity of the bilateral putamen at the whole-brain level, in FSL, percent signal change was extracted per participant as an intensity measure and analyzed statistically in SPSS. At the whole-brain level, the findings demonstrated that the bilateral putamen was involved in the comprehension of syntactic structures during the alternating presentation of L1 and L2 stimuli. In addition, regardless of the hemisphere involved, the significant grammaticality effect for L1 as well as the increased sensitivity for L1-violation stimuli compared to L2-violation stimuli may imply the standard language dominance effect also in the putamen. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study attempted to examine the impacts of conceptual and perceptual primes on the word recognition and sentence comprehension of beginner, intermediate and advanced EFL learners. Consequently, 246 EFL learners were recruited for study and categorized into three English proficiency levels. The needed data was collected via Lexical Decision Tasks (LDTs) and a constructed multiple-choice sentence comprehension test. The findings indicated that both priming techniques improved word recognition and sentence comprehension of the participants significantly, however the conceptual primes were more facilitative for both word recognition and sentence comprehension tasks. Moreover, language proficiency was found to be determinant of priming efficiency, in the way that, as the learners become more proficient their performance would be more positively affected by both conceptual and perceptual priming techniques. Finally, the pedagogical implications and suggestions are discussed in the light of the findings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Several studies have reported subtle differences in cognition between individuals with subjective cognitive decline (SCD) compared to those with normal cognition. This study aimed to (i) identify these differences using discrepancy scores (e.g., categorial–phonemic verbal fluency performance) derived from neuropsychological tests in three cognitive domains (memory: Wechsler’s Word List and Digits; executive functions: Stroop and verbal fluency; and language: BNT and ECCO_Senior) and (ii) determine which discrepancy scores are significant for classification. Seventy-five older adults were included: 32 who were labeled SCD+ (age 71.50 ± 5.29), meeting Jessen et al.’s criteria, and 43 in the normal cognition group (SCD−; age 69.81 ± 4.62). Both groups completed a protocol including screening and the specified neuropsychological tests. No differences were found between the groups in their age, education, episodic memory, global cognitive state, or mood. Significant differences between the groups were observed regarding the discrepancy scores derived from BNT (naming) and ECCO_Senior (sentence comprehension). These scores accurately classified participants (71.6%), with ECCO_Senior having a primary role. ROC curves indicated a poor-to-fair model quality or diagnostic accuracy (AUC_BNT = 0.690; AUC_ECCO = 0.722). In conclusion, discrepancy scores in the language domain are important for distinguishing between individuals with SCD and normal cognition, complementing previous findings in this domain. However, given their relatively poor diagnostic accuracy, they should be used with caution as part of a more detailed neuro-psychological assessment.

Working memory (WΜ) components are investigated as correlates of complex sentence comprehension (cSC) in children, under the consideration of WM as a cognitive system of limited capacity. The present study aims to investigate the relationship between WM components and cSC in children of typical language development (TLD) as well as in children with Developmental Language Disorder (DLD), by systematically reviewing relevant studies. First, different tasks that are used to assess three distinct WM components are presented and task purity considerations on each of them are taken into account. Second, syntactically complex sentence types that are considered to constrain the already limited resources of WM are presented. Then, the systematic methods of the PRISMA-P protocol are followed. Based on them, six databases were thoroughly searched. After an initial screening stage and a final evaluation stage, twenty-eight studies were found to meet the inclusion criteria. Narrative synthesis was performed on the included studies. In TLD children, results on the role of verbal short-term memory (vST) and verbal working memory (vWM) in cSC are inconclusive, either supporting or questioning the capacity-limit approach. In DLD children, verbal working memory (vWM) has an important effect on cSC, rather than verbal short-term memory (vSTM). This suggests that a processing-execution component is important in DLD children’s cSC. For both children groups, a component serving as an interface between vSTM/vWM and long-term memory (vSTM/vWM-LTM) seems to play an important role; however, it is greatly understudied. Based on the results, future research directions and educational implications are suggested.

Introduction: Psycholinguistic research often focuses on Indo-European and other commonly studied major languages, while typologically diverse languages remain understudied. In this paper, we examine the morphological and conceptual influences on the real-time comprehension of optional plural-marked sentences in Yucatec Maya, an indigenous language of Mexico with a less commonly studied optional plural marking system. Methods: Fifty-one speakers of Yucatec Maya participated in a picture-sentence matching experiment carried out in the Yucatan Peninsula of Mexico. Pictures of one, two, or seven humans or animals depicting an intransitive action (conceptual number) were paired with auditorily presented sentences that had no plural marking, one plural, or two plurals (morphological number). Participants indicated by key press whether the picture and the sentence were an acceptable match, and decision time was recorded. Results: In the analysis of decision (yes versus no) and accuracy, morphological and conceptual factors interacted. In the analysis of decision time, however, morphological plural marking, but not conceptual number, led to faster decisions. Discussion: In light of previous work on the role of conceptual factors in the computation of number agreement, the interaction between conceptual and morphological factors suggests that a language with optional plural marking (or low "morphological richness") is associated with high conceptual influence on sentence comprehension. Importantly, the results of this study expand the empirical base of language types that have been investigated using psycholinguistic methods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Copyright of Lenguaje is the property of Universidad del Valle and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Language processing is predictive in nature. But how dopeople balance multiple competing options as they predictupcoming meanings? Here, we investigated whether readersgenerate graded predictions about grammatical gender ofnouns. Sentence contexts were manipulated so that theystrongly biased people's expectations towards two or morenouns that had the same grammatical gender (single biascondition), or they biased multiple genders from differentgrammatical classes (multiple bias condition). Ourexpectation was that unexpected articles should lead toelevated reading times (RTs) in the single-bias conditionwhen probabilistic expectations towards a particular genderare violated. Indeed, the results showed greater sensitivityamong language users towards unexpected articles in thesingle-bias condition, however, RTs on unexpected gender-marked articles were facilitated, and not slowed. Our dataconfirm that difficulty in sentence processing is modulatedby uncertainty about predicted information, and suggest thatreaders make graded predictions about grammatical gender.

Mild cognitive impairment (MCI) threatens a large percentage of the elderly population worldwide. Symptoms can also include language and speech difficulties. This article aims at speech/language comprehension difficulties at the sentence level in people with MCI, with the use of a case study. Sentence comprehension was examined in a female patient with amnestic MCI, by means of the Czech version of the Sentence Comprehension Test. Impaired comprehension of all sentence types was found, with a high need for repetition, as well as the influence of sentence complexity. The results show that limited cognitive resources are a reason for insufficient linguistic information processing. Thus, therapy focused on cognitive training will also improve or maintain language.

To understand language, we need to recognize words and combine them into phrases and sentences. During this process, responses to the words themselves are changed. In a step toward understanding how the brain builds sentence structure, the present study concerns the neural readout of this adaptation. We ask whether low-frequency neural readouts associated with words change as a function of being in a sentence. To this end, we analyzed an MEG dataset by Schoffelen et al. (2019) of 102 human participants (51 women) listening to sentences and word lists, the latter lacking any syntactic structure and combinatorial meaning. Using temporal response functions and a cumulative model-fitting approach, we disentangled delta- and theta-band responses to lexical information (word frequency), from responses to sensory and distributional variables. The results suggest that delta-band responses to words are affected by sentence context in time and space, over and above entropy and surprisal. In both conditions, the word frequency response spanned left temporal and posterior frontal areas; however, the response appeared later in word lists than in sentences. In addition, sentence context determined whether inferior frontal areas were responsive to lexical information. In the theta band, the amplitude was larger in the word list condition; 100 milliseconds in right frontal areas. We conclude that low-frequency responses to words are changed by sentential context. The results of this study show how the neural representation of words is affected by structural context and as such provide insight into how the brain instantiates compositionality in language. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study investigates the relative weighting of morphosyntactic and visual cues in spoken-language comprehension, and whether this varies systematically within and between first (L1) and second language (L2) speakers of German. In two experiments, 45 L1 and 39 L2 speakers answered probe questions targeting the action direction of subject- and object-extracted relative clauses, which were presented either in isolation (Experiment 1) or alongside scene depictions either matching or mismatching the action direction expressed in the sentence (Experiment 2). We hypothesized that visual cues contribute to shaping meaning representations in sentence comprehension, and that sensitivity to morphosyntactic cues during interpretation may predict reliance on visual cues in both L1 and L2 comprehension. We found reliable effects of visual cues in both groups, and in response to both relative-clause types. Further, proxies of morphosyntactic sensitivity were associated with higher agent-identification accuracy, especially in response to object-extracted relative clauses presented with mismatching visual cues. Lastly, morphosyntactic sensitivity was a better predictor of accuracy rates than L1–L2 grouping in our dataset. The results extend the generalizability of models of visuo-linguistic integration across populations and experimental settings. Further, the observed sentence-comprehension differences can be explained in terms of individual cue-weighting patterns, and thus point to the crucial role of sensitivity to distinct cue types in accounting for thematic-role assignment success in L1 and L2 speakers alike. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Gender stereotypes are often involved in language comprehension. This study investigated whether and to what extent their processing is under strategic control, by examining both proportion and order effects related to gender stereotypes for role nouns. We manipulated stereotypical gender consistencies, as in "Li's daughter/son was a nurse...", the relative proportions of gender-consistent and gender-inconsistent sentences (80%:20% and 50%:50% for high-proportion and equal-proportion sessions, respectively), and a between-participant factor of session order (high-proportion sessions preceding equal-proportion sessions and a reversed order for the high–equal and equal–high groups, respectively). Linear mixed-effect models revealed a larger N400 and a larger late negativity for stereotypically inconsistent compared to consistent sentences for the high–equal group only. These results indicate that even if sentence contexts have already determined the gender of target role characters, gender stereotypes for role nouns are still activated when the first half of the experiment facilitates their activation. The analyses of trial-by-trial dynamics showed that the N400 effects gradually decreased throughout equal-proportion sessions for the equal–high group. Our findings suggest that the processing of gender stereotypes can be under strategic control. In addition, readers may develop other strategies based on sentence contexts, when the processing strategy based on cue validity is not available. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

IntroductionStudies with heritage language speakers (HLS) have often used offline measurements, investigating the post-interpretive effects which emerge after processing has been completed. Relatively few studies have investigated heritage language processing using time-sensitive methods that allow the collection of evidence regarding real-time language processing rather than post-interpretive judgments. Using a self-paced-reading paradigm, we aimed to expand our understanding of HLS language processing by investigating evidentiality-the linguistic marking of information source, which is grammatically expressed in Turkish, but not in English.MethodParticipants were 54 bilingual speakers of Turkish and English: 24 HLS (English onset: 0-5 yrs) and 30 emigrant Turkish speakers (ES) who grew up in Turkey before emigrating to Australia (English onset = 6-17 yrs). Participants read sentences with evidential-marked verb forms that either matched or mismatched to the information source context. Word-by-word reading times and end-of-sentence acceptability judgment speed and accuracy were measured.ResultsThe results showed that although the HLS' responses were slower and less accurate than the ES in both reading times and end-of-sentence acceptability judgments, they showed similarities in online processing patterns. Both groups were faster at reading the mismatching sentences compared to the matching sentences; however, this pattern emerged during the time course of reading first for the indirect condition for the ES, and only later for the direct condition and for the HLS for both evidential conditions. Only HLS read faster in the target region with the direct evidential that is shown to be acquired earlier in childhood, than they did for the indirect evidential which is mastered later. In contrast, the end-of-sentence judgment data showed that while the ES group responded faster to matching direct sentences than matching indirect, this effect was missing for the HLS. Nevertheless, there were similar patterns for accuracy across evidential conditions: both groups were more accurate with the direct evidential.DiscussionOverall, the use of the self-paced-reading paradigm allowed insights into HLS' evidentiality processing above and beyond their generally slower and less accurate processing compared to the reference group. This study provides further evidence for differences in the patterns observed using online vs. post interpretive measures in HLS, reinforcing the importance of combining these methodologies for further understanding of HLS competence and performance.

IntroductionPsycholinguistic research often focuses on Indo-European and other commonly studied major languages, while typologically diverse languages remain understudied. In this paper, we examine the morphological and conceptual influences on the real-time comprehension of optional plural-marked sentences in Yucatec Maya, an indigenous language of Mexico with a less commonly studied optional plural marking system.MethodsFifty-one speakers of Yucatec Maya participated in a picture-sentence matching experiment carried out in the Yucatan Peninsula of Mexico. Pictures of one, two, or seven humans or animals depicting an intransitive action (conceptual number) were paired with auditorily presented sentences that had no plural marking, one plural, or two plurals (morphological number). Participants indicated by key press whether the picture and the sentence were an acceptable match, and decision time was recorded.ResultsIn the analysis of decision (yes versus no) and accuracy, morphological and conceptual factors interacted. In the analysis of decision time, however, morphological plural marking, but not conceptual number, led to faster decisions.DiscussionIn light of previous work on the role of conceptual factors in the computation of number agreement, the interaction between conceptual and morphological factors suggests that a language with optional plural marking (or low “morphological richness”) is associated with high conceptual influence on sentence comprehension. Importantly, the results of this study expand the empirical base of language types that have been investigated using psycholinguistic methods.

Bilinguals learn to resolve conflict between their two languages and that skill has been hypothesized to create long-term adaptive changes in cognitive functioning. Yet, little is known about how bilinguals recruit cognitive control to enable efficient use of one of their languages, especially in the less skilled and more effortful second language (L2). Here we examined how real-time cognitive control engagement influences L2 sentence comprehension (i.e., conflict adaptation). We tested a group of English monolinguals and a group of L2 English speakers using a recently-developed cross-task adaptation paradigm. Stroop sequences were pseudo-randomly interleaved with a visual-world paradigm in which participants were asked to carry out spoken instructions that were either syntactically ambiguous or unambiguous. Consistent with previous research, eye-movement results showed that Stroop-related conflict improved the ability to engage correct-goal interpretations, and disengage incorrect-goal interpretations, during ambiguous instructions. Such cognitive-to-language modulations were similar in both groups, but only in the engagement piece. In the disengagement portion, the modulation emerged earlier in bilinguals than in monolinguals, suggesting group differences in attentional disengagement following cognitive control recruitment. Additionally, incorrect-goal eye-movements were modulated by individual differences in working memory, although differently for each group, suggesting an involvement of both language-specific and domain-general resources.

This study presents a web-based sentence comprehension test aimed at identifying high school students who are at risk for a language delay. By assessing linguistic skills on a sample of high school students with Italian as an L2 and their monolingual peers, attending a vocational school, we were able to identify a subgroup of L2 students with consistent difficulties in sentence comprehension, though their reading skills were within the average range. The same subgroup revealed to experience a lack of support within the school context, suggesting that poor L2 skills might be a critical variable to consider in order to identify students at risk for school exclusion. Regarding the test, accuracy to the on-line sentence comprehension task was significantly predicted by reading abilities and vocabulary skills, thus indicating that this test might represent a rapid but efficient way to assess linguistic abilities at school. We recommend that establishing a valid and practical procedure for the evaluation of linguistic skills in bilingual students who struggle with their L2 is the first step toward promoting social inclusion in the multilingual classroom, in order to increase their ability to actively participate in school and social activities.

The present study examined the processing of temporal adverbial phrases such as "last week," which must agree in temporal features with the verb they modify. We investigated readers' sensitivity to this feature match or mismatch in two eye-tracking studies. The main aim of this study was to expand the range of concord phenomena which have been investigated in real-time processing in order to understand how linguistic dependencies are formed during sentence comprehension (Felser et al., 2017). Under a cue-based perspective, linguistic dependency formation relies on an associative cue-based retrieval mechanism (Lewis et al., 2006; McElree, 2006), but how such a mechanism is deployed over diverse linguistic dependencies remains a matter of debate. Are all linguistic features candidate cues that guide retrieval? Are all cues given similar weight? Are different cues differently weighted based on the dependency being processed? To address these questions, we implemented a mismatch paradigm (Sturt, 2003) adapted for temporal concord dependencies. This paradigm tested whether readers were sensitive to a temporal agreement between a temporal adverb like last week and a linearly distant, but structurally accessible verb, as well as a linearly proximate but structurally inaccessible verb. We found clear evidence that readers were sensitive to feature match between the adverb and the linearly distant, structurally accessible verb. We found no clear evidence on whether feature match with the inaccessible verb impacted the processing of a temporal adverb. Our results suggest syntactic positional information plays an important role during the processing of the temporal concord relation.

Prior research suggests that cognitive control can assist the comprehension of sentences that create conflict between interpretations, at least under some circumstances. However, the mixed pattern of results suggests that cognitive control may not always be necessary for accurate comprehension. We tested whether cognitive control recruitment for language processing is systematically variable, depending on the type of sentential ambiguity or conflict, individual differences in cognitive control, and task demands. Participants completed two sessions in a web-based experiment. The first session tested conflict modulation using interleaved Stroop and sentence comprehension trials. Critical sentences contained syntax-semantics or phrase-attachment conflict. In the second session, participants completed three cognitive control and three working memory tasks. Exploratory factor analysis was used to index individual differences in a cognitive control factor and a working memory factor. At the group level, there were no significant conflict modulation effects for either syntax-semantics or phrase-attachment conflict. At the individual differences level, the cognitive control factor correlated with offline comprehension accuracy but not online processing measures for both types of conflict. Together, the results suggest that the role of cognitive control in sentence processing may vary according to task demands. When overt decisions are required, individual differences in cognitive control may matter such that better cognitive control results in better language comprehension performance. The results add to the mixed evidence on conflict modulation and raise questions about the situations under which cognitive control influences online processing.

Ageing entails different functional brain changes. Education, reading experience, and leisure activities, among others, might contribute to the maintenance of cognitive performance among older adults and are conceptualised as proxies for cognitive reserve. However, ageing also conveys a depletion of working memory capacity, which adversely impacts language comprehension. This study investigated how cognitive reserve proxies and working memory jointly predict the performance of healthy older adults in a sentence reading comprehension task, and how their predictive value changes depending on sentence structure and task demands. Cognitively healthy older adults (n = 120) completed a sentence–picture verification task under two conditions: concurrent viewing of the sentence and picture or their sequential presentation, thereby imposing greater demands on working memory. They also completed a questionnaire on cognitive reserve proxies as well as a verbal working memory test. The sentence structure was manipulated by altering the canonical word order and modifying the amount of propositional information. While the cognitive reserve was the main predictor in the concurrent condition, the predictive role of working memory increased under the sequential presentation, particularly for complex sentences. These findings highlight the complementary roles played by cognitive reserve and working memory in the reading comprehension of older adults. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Negation is frequently used in natural language, yet relatively little is known about its processing. More importantly, what is known regarding the neurophysiological processing of negation is mostly based on results of studies using written stimuli (the word-by-word paradigm). While the results of these studies have suggested processing costs in connection to negation (increased negativities in brain responses), it is difficult to know how this translates into processing of spoken language. We therefore developed an auditory paradigm based on a previous visual study investigating processing of affirmatives, sentential negation (not), and prefixal negation (un-). The findings of processing costs were replicated but differed in the details. Importantly, the pattern of ERP effects suggested less effortful processing for auditorily presented negated forms (restricted to increased anterior and posterior positivities) in comparison to visually presented negated forms. We suggest that the natural flow of spoken language reduces variability in processing and therefore results in clearer ERP patterns. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Translating experimental tasks that were designed to investigate differences between conditions at the group-level into valid and reliable instruments to measure individual differences in cognitive skills is challenging (Hedge et al., 2018; Rouder et al., 2019; Rouder & Haaf, 2019). For psycholinguists, the additional complexities associated with selecting or constructing language stimuli, and the need for appropriate well-matched baseline conditions make this endeavour particularly complex. In a typical experiment, a process-of-interest (e.g. ambiguity resolution) is targeted by contrasting performance in an experimental condition with performance in a wellmatched control condition. In many cases, careful between-condition matching precludes the same participant from encountering all stimulus items. Unfortunately, solutions that work for group-level research (e.g. constructing counterbalanced experiment versions) are inappropriate for individual-differences designs. As a case study, we report an ambiguity resolution experiment that illustrates the steps that researchers can take to address this issue and assess whether their measurement instrument is both valid and reliable. On the basis of our findings, we caution against the widespread approach of using datasets from group-level studies to also answer important questions about individual differences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We present a visual world eye‐tracking study on Tseltal (a Mayan language) and investigate whether verbal information can be used to anticipate an upcoming referent. Basic word order in transitive sentences in Tseltal is Verb–Object–Subject (VOS). The verb is usually encountered first, making argument structure and syntactic information available at the outset, which should facilitate anticipation of the post‐verbal arguments. Tseltal speakers listened to verb‐initial sentences with either an object‐predictive verb (e.g., "eat") or a general verb (e.g., "look for") (e.g., "Ya slo'/sle ta stukel on te kereme," Is eating/is looking (for) by himself the avocado the boy/ "The boy is eating/is looking (for) an avocado by himself") while seeing a visual display showing one potential referent (e.g., avocado) and three distractors (e.g., bag, toy car, coffee grinder). We manipulated verb type (predictive vs. general) and recorded participants' eye movements while they listened and inspected the visual scene. Participants' fixations to the target referent were analyzed using multilevel logistic regression models. Shortly after hearing the predictive verb, participants fixated the target object before it was mentioned. In contrast, when the verb was general, fixations to the target only started to increase once the object was heard. Our results suggest that Tseltal hearers pre‐activate semantic features of the grammatical object prior to its linguistic expression. This provides evidence from a verb‐initial language for online incremental semantic interpretation and anticipatory processing during language comprehension. These processes are comparable to the ones identified in subject‐initial languages, which is consistent with the notion that different languages follow similar universal processing principles. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

En este artículo presentamos un recorrido crítico sobre las diversas investigaciones realizadas hasta el momento en torno a la asimetría sujeto/objeto en la comprensión de oraciones de relativo en español. Revisamos los hallazgos alcanzados hasta aquí mediante distintas técnicas experimentales y ofrecemos un panorama de lo que esos descubrimientos aportan en la discusión de las principales propuestas teóricas sobre la comprensión de oraciones. Nos enfocamos en cuatro aspectos de las cláusulas relativas en español que pueden permitir enriquecer las hipótesis con las que contamos: (i) la ambigüedad estructural, (ii) la variedad de tipos de relativas en español (encabezadas, semilibres y libres), (iii) el orden de constituyentes y (iv) la información de animacidad y los rasgos de género, número y caso de los nominales de las relativas. Intentamos así identificar qué sabemos, qué resta por comprender y cuáles son las direcciones más relevantes de la investigación en español para informar los modelos teóricos contemporáneos.

ABSTRACT Purpose to investigate prosodic boundary effects on the comprehension of attachment ambiguities in Brazilian Portuguese and to test two hypotheses relying on the notion of boundary strength: the absolute boundary hypothesis (ABH) and the relative boundary hypothesis (RBH). Manipulations of prosodic structure influence how listeners interpret syntactically ambiguous sentences. However, the role of prosody in spoken language comprehension of sentences has received limited attention in languages other than English, particularly from a developmental perspective. Methods Twenty-three adults and 15 children participated in a computerized sentence comprehension task involving syntactically ambiguous sentences. Each sentence was recorded in eight different prosodic forms with acoustic manipulations of F0, duration and pause varying the boundary size to reflect predictions of the ABH and RBH. Results Children and adults differed in how prosody influenced their syntactic processing and children were significantly slower than adults. Results indicated that interpretation of sentences varied according to their prosodic forms. Conclusion Neither the ABH or the RBH explained how children and adults who speak Brazilian Portuguese use prosodic boundaries to disambiguate sentences. There is evidence that the way prosodic boundaries influence disambiguation varies cross-linguistically.

Although all healthy adults have advanced syntactic processing abilities in their native language, psycholinguistic studies report extensive variation among them. However, very few tests were developed to assess this variation, presumably, because when adult native speakers focus on syntactic processing, not being distracted by other tasks, they usually reach ceiling performance. We developed a Sentence Comprehension Test for the Russian language aimed to fill this gap. The test captures variation among participants and does not show ceiling effects. The Sentence Comprehension Test includes 60 unambiguous grammatically complex sentences and 40 control sentences that are of the same length, but are syntactically simpler. Every sentence is accompanied by a comprehension question targeting potential syntactic processing problems and interpretation errors associated with them. Grammatically complex sentences were selected on the basis of the previous literature and then tested in a pilot study. As a result, six constructions that trigger the largest number of errors were identified. For these constructions, we also analyzed which ones are associated with the longest word-by-word reading times, question answering times and the highest error rates. These differences point to different sources of syntactic processing difficulties and can be relied upon in subsequent studies. We conducted two experiments to validate the final version of the test. Getting similar results in two independent experiments, as well as in two presentation modes (reading and listening modes are compared in Experiment 2) confirms its reliability. In Experiment 1, we also showed that the results of the test correlate with the scores in the verbal working memory span test.

Negation is frequently used in natural language, yet relatively little is known about its processing. More importantly, what is known regarding the neurophysiological processing of negation is mostly based on results of studies using written stimuli (the word-by-word paradigm). While the results of these studies have suggested processing costs in connection to negation (increased negativities in brain responses), it is difficult to know how this translates into processing of spoken language. We therefore developed an auditory paradigm based on a previous visual study investigating processing of affirmatives, sentential negation (not), and prefixal negation (un-). The findings of processing costs were replicated but differed in the details. Importantly, the pattern of ERP effects suggested less effortful processing for auditorily presented negated forms (restricted to increased anterior and posterior positivities) in comparison to visually presented negated forms. We suggest that the natural flow of spoken language reduces variability in processing and therefore results in clearer ERP patterns.

In everyday communication, speakers make errors and produce language in a noisy environment. Recent work suggests that comprehenders possess cognitive mechanisms for dealing with noise in the linguistic signal: a noisy-channel model. A key parameter of these models is the noise model: the comprehender's implicit model of how noise affects utterances before they are perceived. Here we examine this noise model in detail, asking whether comprehension behavior reflects a noise model that is adapted to context. We asked readers to correct sentences if they noticed errors, and manipulated context by including exposure sentences containing obvious deletions (A bystander was rescued by the fireman in the nick time.), insertions, exchanges, mixed errors, or no errors. On test sentences (The bat swung the player.), participants' corrections differed depending on the exposure condition. The results demonstrate that participants model specific types of errors and make inferences about the intentions of the speaker accordingly.

Language comprehension has been a fascinating area of research for grammarians, linguists, philosophers and computer scientists alike. In Marathi grammatical tradition, a sentence is viewed from the verb-centric position in several treatises. Moreover, the complete discussion is put in a theoretical framework. The current report, the extension of earlier research on the Marathi language, adopts an experimental outlook to examine the communicative aspect of the sentence in colloquial (non-standard variety) Marathi written conversations. Based on the subjective reports of 95 native and non-native readers obtained from four experiments it is argued that a single-verb in a conversation is comprehensible hence can be regarded as a complete sentence itself. The contrastive analysis suggests that complete sentences are easier to process than single-verb sentences, which in turn, are more accurately comprehended than nominal sentences. Resorting on textual and sociolinguistic variables, the report also probes into the underlying nuances of language comprehension. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The main goal of the present study is to investigate visual and verbal short-term memory side to side with sentence comprehension in Catalan-speaking subjects with aphasia in comparison with subjects without brain damage. We aim to examine whether there are any significant correlations between their performance on short-term memory and comprehension tasks in order to evaluate the hypothesis that linguistic and memory deficits in aphasia are the result of a dysfunction of a common mechanism, usually short-term memory. Eigthy-four control subjects and twelve individuals suffering from different types of aphasia were assessed using the Catalan version of the Comprehensive Aphasia Test (CAT-CAT), which includes one recognition task and two digit and word span tests to evaluate visual and verbal short-term memory, respectively, as well as a sentence-to-picture comprehension task. The results showed that the performance of subjects with aphasia was significantly low on all tasks. Yet, the logistic regression analysis revealed that the magnitude of the differences between the control and experimental group varied across subtests, and that visual short-term memory was better preserved than verbal memory. The results also showed that there were no significant correlations between memory and language comprehension, which rules out the hypothesis that the deficits observed are due to a common underlying mechanism. Individual variation was also observed, specially on memory subtests, which suggest that memory impairments cannot explain the comprehension deficit in aphasia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents "Test porozumění větám", the adapted Czech version of the original Slovak test. The aim of the article is a brief description of the test, the process of adaptation and setting the standards for the Czech version, with some results and discussion. Percentile standards for adults were determined with respect to age (Nohová et al., in preparation). The dia­gnostic tool is used for an in-depth assessment of spoken language comprehension at the sentence level. It contains 48 sentences with various syntactic constructions and linguistic factors. It can be used in a number of patients - in people with aphasia, cognitive-communication disorders and others. Its further use is the subject of follow-up and future research.

The main goal of the present study is to investigate visual and verbal short-term memory side to side with sentence comprehension in Catalan-speaking subjects with aphasia in comparison with subjects without brain damage. We aim to examine whether there are any significant correlations between their performance on short-term memory and comprehension tasks in order to evaluate the hypothesis that linguistic and memory deficits in aphasia are the result of a dysfunction of a common mechanism, usually short-term memory. Eigthy-four control subjects and twelve individuals suffering from different types of aphasia were assessed using the Catalan version of the Comprehensive Aphasia Test (CAT-CAT), which includes one recognition task and two digit and word span tests to evaluate visual and verbal short-term memory, respectively, as well as a sentence-to-picture comprehension task. The results showed that the performance of subjects with aphasia was significantly low on all tasks. Yet, the logistic regression analysis revealed that the magnitude of the differences between the control and experimental group varied across subtests, and that visual short-term memory was better preserved than verbal memory. The results also showed that there were no significant correlations between memory and language comprehension, which rules out the hypothesis that the deficits observed are due to a common underlying mechanism. Individual variation was also observed, specially on memory subtests, which suggest that memory impairments cannot explain the comprehension deficit in aphasia.

Alpha power attenuation during cognitive task performing has been suggested to reflect a process of release of inhibition, increase of excitability, and thereby benefit the improvement of performance. Here, we hypothesized that changes in individual alpha power during the execution of a complex language comprehension task may correlate with the individual performance in that task. We tested this using magnetoencephalography (MEG) recorded during comprehension of German sentences of different syntactic complexity.Results showed that neither the frequency nor the power of the spontaneous oscillatory activity at rest were associated with the individual performance. However, during the execution of a sentences processing task, the individual alpha power attenuation did correlate with individual language comprehension performance. Source reconstruction localized these effects in left temporal-parietal brain regions known to be associated with language processing and their right-hemisphere homologues.Our results support the notion that in-task attenuation of individual alpha power is related to the essential mechanisms of the underlying cognitive processes, rather than merely to general phenomena like attention or vigilance.

Translating experimental tasks that were designed to investigate differences between conditions at the group-level into valid and reliable instruments to measure individual differences in cognitive skills is challenging (Hedge et al., 2018; Rouder et al., 2019; Rouder & Haaf, 2019). For psycholinguists, the additional complexities associated with selecting or constructing language stimuli, and the need for appropriate well-matched baseline conditions make this endeavour particularly complex. In a typical experiment, a process-of-interest (e.g. ambiguity resolution) is targeted by contrasting performance in an experimental condition with performance in a well-matched control condition. In many cases, careful between-condition matching precludes the same participant from encountering all stimulus items. Unfortunately, solutions that work for group-level research (e.g. constructing counterbalanced experiment versions) are inappropriate for individual-differences designs. As a case study, we report an ambiguity resolution experiment that illustrates the steps that researchers can take to address this issue and assess whether their measurement instrument is both valid and reliable. On the basis of our findings, we caution against the widespread approach of using datasets from group-level studies to also answer important questions about individual differences.