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Zuanazzi A, Ripollés P, Lin WM, Gwilliams L, King JR, Poeppel D. Negation mitigates rather than inverts the neural representations of adjectives. PLoS Biol 2024; 22:e3002622. [PMID: 38814982 PMCID: PMC11139306 DOI: 10.1371/journal.pbio.3002622] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 07/27/2023] [Accepted: 04/11/2024] [Indexed: 06/01/2024] Open
Abstract
Combinatoric linguistic operations underpin human language processes, but how meaning is composed and refined in the mind of the reader is not well understood. We address this puzzle by exploiting the ubiquitous function of negation. We track the online effects of negation ("not") and intensifiers ("really") on the representation of scalar adjectives (e.g., "good") in parametrically designed behavioral and neurophysiological (MEG) experiments. The behavioral data show that participants first interpret negated adjectives as affirmative and later modify their interpretation towards, but never exactly as, the opposite meaning. Decoding analyses of neural activity further reveal significant above chance decoding accuracy for negated adjectives within 600 ms from adjective onset, suggesting that negation does not invert the representation of adjectives (i.e., "not bad" represented as "good"); furthermore, decoding accuracy for negated adjectives is found to be significantly lower than that for affirmative adjectives. Overall, these results suggest that negation mitigates rather than inverts the neural representations of adjectives. This putative suppression mechanism of negation is supported by increased synchronization of beta-band neural activity in sensorimotor areas. The analysis of negation provides a steppingstone to understand how the human brain represents changes of meaning over time.
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Affiliation(s)
- Arianna Zuanazzi
- Department of Psychology, New York University, New York, New York, United States of America
| | - Pablo Ripollés
- Department of Psychology, New York University, New York, New York, United States of America
- Music and Audio Research Lab (MARL), New York University, New York, New York, United States of America
- Center for Language, Music and Emotion (ClaME), New York University, New York, New York, United States of America
| | - Wy Ming Lin
- Hector Research Institute for Education Sciences and Psychology, University of Tübingen, Tübingen, Germany
| | - Laura Gwilliams
- Department of Psychology, Stanford University, Stanford, California, United States of America
| | - Jean-Rémi King
- Department of Psychology, New York University, New York, New York, United States of America
- Ecole Normale Supérieure, PSL University, Paris, France
| | - David Poeppel
- Department of Psychology, New York University, New York, New York, United States of America
- Center for Language, Music and Emotion (ClaME), New York University, New York, New York, United States of America
- Ernst Strüngmann Institute for Neuroscience, Frankfurt, Germany
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Albu E, Dudschig C, Warren T, Kaup B. Does negation influence the choice of sentence continuations? Evidence from a four-choice cloze task. Q J Exp Psychol (Hove) 2024; 77:90-110. [PMID: 36760063 PMCID: PMC10712206 DOI: 10.1177/17470218231158109] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 07/27/2022] [Revised: 01/07/2023] [Accepted: 01/29/2023] [Indexed: 02/11/2023]
Abstract
Event plausibility facilitates the processing of affirmative sentences, but little is known about how it affects negative sentences. In six behavioural experiments, we investigated negation's impact on the choice of sentence continuations that differ with respect to event plausibility. In a four-choice cloze task, participants saw affirmative and negative sentence fragments (The child will [not] eat the . . .) in combination with four potential continuations: yoghurt (a plausible word), shellfish (a weak world knowledge violating word), branch (a severe world knowledge violating word), and minivan (a word resulting in a semantic violation). Across all experiments the plausible word was highly preferred in both affirmative and negative sentences. Experiment 2 replicated Experiment 1 while ruling out the possibility that the lack of effect of negation in Experiment 1 stemmed from participants not fully processing the negation. Experiment 3 showed that the observed plausibility effects can be generalised to other aspectual forms (The child has [not] eaten the yoghurt). Experiment 4 ruled out the possibility that the choices were mainly driven by lexical associations and additionally suggested a role for informativity. Experiment 5 replicated Experiment 4 and reinforced the general pattern according to which negative sentences express the denial of plausible positive events. Experiment 6 provided evidence that informativity might be driving patterns of choices in the negative sentences. All in all, these findings suggest that upcoming continuations are chosen to maximise the plausibility of the event in the affirmative sentences and to deny that event in the negative sentences. The observed plausibility effects do not seem to be modulated by the internal representation of events, but they can be modulated by changes to the expected informativity of the sentence.
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Affiliation(s)
- Elena Albu
- Department of Psychology, University of Tübingen, Tübingen, Germany
| | - Carolin Dudschig
- Department of Psychology, University of Tübingen, Tübingen, Germany
| | - Tessa Warren
- Department of Psychology, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA, USA
- Learning Research and Development Center, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA, USA
| | - Barbara Kaup
- Department of Psychology, University of Tübingen, Tübingen, Germany
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Groß A, Singh A, Banh NC, Richter B, Scharlau I, Rohlfing KJ, Wrede B. Scaffolding the human partner by contrastive guidance in an explanatory human-robot dialogue. Front Robot AI 2023; 10:1236184. [PMID: 37965633 PMCID: PMC10642948 DOI: 10.3389/frobt.2023.1236184] [Citation(s) in RCA: 1] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 06/07/2023] [Accepted: 10/11/2023] [Indexed: 11/16/2023] Open
Abstract
Explanation has been identified as an important capability for AI-based systems, but research on systematic strategies for achieving understanding in interaction with such systems is still sparse. Negation is a linguistic strategy that is often used in explanations. It creates a contrast space between the affirmed and the negated item that enriches explaining processes with additional contextual information. While negation in human speech has been shown to lead to higher processing costs and worse task performance in terms of recall or action execution when used in isolation, it can decrease processing costs when used in context. So far, it has not been considered as a guiding strategy for explanations in human-robot interaction. We conducted an empirical study to investigate the use of negation as a guiding strategy in explanatory human-robot dialogue, in which a virtual robot explains tasks and possible actions to a human explainee to solve them in terms of gestures on a touchscreen. Our results show that negation vs. affirmation 1) increases processing costs measured as reaction time and 2) increases several aspects of task performance. While there was no significant effect of negation on the number of initially correctly executed gestures, we found a significantly lower number of attempts-measured as breaks in the finger movement data before the correct gesture was carried out-when being instructed through a negation. We further found that the gestures significantly resembled the presented prototype gesture more following an instruction with a negation as opposed to an affirmation. Also, the participants rated the benefit of contrastive vs. affirmative explanations significantly higher. Repeating the instructions decreased the effects of negation, yielding similar processing costs and task performance measures for negation and affirmation after several iterations. We discuss our results with respect to possible effects of negation on linguistic processing of explanations and limitations of our study.
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Affiliation(s)
- André Groß
- Medical Assistance Systems, Medical School OWL, Bielefeld University, Bielefeld, Germany
- Center for Cognitive Interaction Technology,CITEC, Bielefeld University, Bielefeld, Germany
| | - Amit Singh
- Psycholinguistics, Faculty of Arts and Humanities, Paderborn University, Paderborn, Germany
| | - Ngoc Chi Banh
- Cognitive Psychology, Faculty of Arts and Humanities, Paderborn University, Paderborn, Germany
| | - Birte Richter
- Medical Assistance Systems, Medical School OWL, Bielefeld University, Bielefeld, Germany
- Center for Cognitive Interaction Technology,CITEC, Bielefeld University, Bielefeld, Germany
| | - Ingrid Scharlau
- Cognitive Psychology, Faculty of Arts and Humanities, Paderborn University, Paderborn, Germany
| | - Katharina J. Rohlfing
- Psycholinguistics, Faculty of Arts and Humanities, Paderborn University, Paderborn, Germany
| | - Britta Wrede
- Medical Assistance Systems, Medical School OWL, Bielefeld University, Bielefeld, Germany
- Center for Cognitive Interaction Technology,CITEC, Bielefeld University, Bielefeld, Germany
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Fyndanis V, Miceli G, Capasso R, Killmer H, Malefaki S, Grohmann KK. Production of Sentential Negation in German and Italian Non-fluent Aphasia. JOURNAL OF PSYCHOLINGUISTIC RESEARCH 2023; 52:497-524. [PMID: 35751768 PMCID: PMC10163124 DOI: 10.1007/s10936-022-09894-4] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Accepted: 06/01/2022] [Indexed: 05/07/2023]
Abstract
The ability of persons with non-fluent aphasia (PWAs) to produce sentential negation has been investigated in several languages, but only in small samples. Accounts of (morpho)syntactic impairment in PWAs have emphasized various factors, such as whether the negative marker blocks or interferes with verb movement, the position of the Negation Phrase in the syntactic hierarchy or the interpretability of negation. This study investigates the ability of German- and Italian-speaking PWAs to construct negative sentences, as well as the role of verbal working memory (WM) capacity and education in task performance and production of sentential negation. German and Italian differ in the syntactic properties of the negative markers that are relevant here (nicht and non, respectively). A sentence anagram task tapping into the construction of negative and affirmative declarative sentences was administered to 9 German- and 7 Italian-speaking PWAs, and to 14 German- and 11 Italian-speaking age- and education-matched healthy volunteers. We fitted generalized linear mixed-effects models to the datasets. There was no significant difference between negative and affirmative sentences in either group of PWAs. There was a main effect of verbal WM capacity on task performance, but no interaction between verbal WM capacity and production of negative vs. affirmative sentences. Education did not affect task performance. The results are discussed in light of different linguistically-informed accounts of (morpho)syntactic impairment in non-fluent aphasia.
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Affiliation(s)
- Valantis Fyndanis
- Department of Rehabilitation Sciences, Cyprus University of Technology, Limassol, Cyprus.
- MultiLing/Department of Linguistics and Scandinavian Studies, University of Oslo, Oslo, Norway.
- Department of Linguistics, University of Potsdam, Potsdam, Germany.
| | - Gabriele Miceli
- Department of Psychology and Cognitive Science, University of Trento, Trento/Rovereto, Italy
| | | | - Helene Killmer
- MultiLing/Department of Linguistics and Scandinavian Studies, University of Oslo, Oslo, Norway
- Department of Linguistics, University of Potsdam, Potsdam, Germany
| | - Sonia Malefaki
- Department of Mechanical Engineering and Aeronautics, University of Patras, Rio Patras, Greece
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Qin M, Xiao D, Yuan L, Karabulatova I. Emotive Tonality of the "Youth-Old Age" Dichotomy in Russian and Chinese Media Discourses: The Stage of Psychosemantic Expertise. JOURNAL OF PSYCHOLINGUISTIC RESEARCH 2023; 52:525-553. [PMID: 35788864 DOI: 10.1007/s10936-022-09899-z] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Accepted: 06/09/2022] [Indexed: 05/07/2023]
Abstract
The issue of attitude to age has the character of social stigma at different stages of human civilization, therefore, the identification of the general and particular in the assessments of the "youth-old age" dichotomy in different structural languages seems relevant. The results are based on the materials of an in-depth interview among 510 respondents belonging to different age groups: young, middle, and elderly; and 1257 respondents' responses. The in-depth interview covered 128 characteristics of interpersonal interaction. This made it possible to compile descriptor tables. The 54 characteristics identified were 27 bipolar scales. The objects of evaluation are characterized by 8 pole positions. A comparison was also made with data extracted from 368 articles in Russian and Chinese media. This work contributes to the understanding of the psycholinguistic processes of emotional perception of age in Russian and Chinese linguistic cultures.
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Affiliation(s)
- Meng Qin
- Department of Foreign Languages, Faculty of Philology, Peoples' Friendship, University of Russia, Moscow, Russian Federation
| | - Dongxia Xiao
- Department of Foreign Languages, Faculty of Philology, Peoples' Friendship, University of Russia, Moscow, Russian Federation
| | - Lin Yuan
- Department of Foreign Languages, Faculty of Philology, Peoples' Friendship, University of Russia, Moscow, Russian Federation
| | - Irina Karabulatova
- Laboratory of Machine Learning and Semantic Analysis, Institute of Artificial Intelligence, Lomonosov Moscow State University, Moscow, Russian Federation.
- Department of Machine Learning and Digital Humanities, Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology (National University), Moscow, Russian Federation.
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Pescuma VN, Serova D, Lukassek J, Sauermann A, Schäfer R, Adli A, Bildhauer F, Egg M, Hülk K, Ito A, Jannedy S, Kordoni V, Kuehnast M, Kutscher S, Lange R, Lehmann N, Liu M, Lütke B, Maquate K, Mooshammer C, Mortezapour V, Müller S, Norde M, Pankratz E, Patarroyo AG, Pleşca AM, Ronderos CR, Rotter S, Sauerland U, Schnelle G, Schulte B, Schüppenhauer G, Sell BM, Solt S, Terada M, Tsiapou D, Verhoeven E, Weirich M, Wiese H, Zaruba K, Zeige LE, Lüdeling A, Knoeferle P. Situating language register across the ages, languages, modalities, and cultural aspects: Evidence from complementary methods. Front Psychol 2023; 13:964658. [PMID: 36687875 PMCID: PMC9846624 DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2022.964658] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 06/08/2022] [Accepted: 09/27/2022] [Indexed: 01/06/2023] Open
Abstract
In the present review paper by members of the collaborative research center "Register: Language Users' Knowledge of Situational-Functional Variation" (CRC 1412), we assess the pervasiveness of register phenomena across different time periods, languages, modalities, and cultures. We define "register" as recurring variation in language use depending on the function of language and on the social situation. Informed by rich data, we aim to better understand and model the knowledge involved in situation- and function-based use of language register. In order to achieve this goal, we are using complementary methods and measures. In the review, we start by clarifying the concept of "register", by reviewing the state of the art, and by setting out our methods and modeling goals. Against this background, we discuss three key challenges, two at the methodological level and one at the theoretical level: (1) To better uncover registers in text and spoken corpora, we propose changes to established analytical approaches. (2) To tease apart between-subject variability from the linguistic variability at issue (intra-individual situation-based register variability), we use within-subject designs and the modeling of individuals' social, language, and educational background. (3) We highlight a gap in cognitive modeling, viz. modeling the mental representations of register (processing), and present our first attempts at filling this gap. We argue that the targeted use of multiple complementary methods and measures supports investigating the pervasiveness of register phenomena and yields comprehensive insights into the cross-methodological robustness of register-related language variability. These comprehensive insights in turn provide a solid foundation for associated cognitive modeling.
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Affiliation(s)
- Valentina N. Pescuma
- Department of German Studies and Linguistics, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Berlin, Germany
| | - Dina Serova
- Institute of Archaeology, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Berlin, Germany
| | - Julia Lukassek
- Department of German Studies and Linguistics, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Berlin, Germany
| | - Antje Sauermann
- Department of German Studies and Linguistics, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Berlin, Germany
| | - Roland Schäfer
- Department of German Studies and Linguistics, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Berlin, Germany
| | - Aria Adli
- Institute of Romance Studies, Universität zu Köln, Cologne, Germany
| | - Felix Bildhauer
- Department of German Studies and Linguistics, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Berlin, Germany
| | - Markus Egg
- Department of English and American Studies, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Berlin, Germany
| | - Kristina Hülk
- Institute of Archaeology, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Berlin, Germany
| | - Aine Ito
- Department of German Studies and Linguistics, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Berlin, Germany
- Department of English, Linguistics and Theatre Studies, National University of Singapore, Singapore, Singapore
| | | | - Valia Kordoni
- Department of English and American Studies, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Berlin, Germany
| | - Milena Kuehnast
- Department of German Studies and Linguistics, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Berlin, Germany
| | - Silvia Kutscher
- Institute of Archaeology, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Berlin, Germany
| | - Robert Lange
- Department of German Studies and Linguistics, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Berlin, Germany
| | - Nico Lehmann
- Department of German Studies and Linguistics, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Berlin, Germany
| | - Mingya Liu
- Department of English and American Studies, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Berlin, Germany
| | - Beate Lütke
- Department of German Studies and Linguistics, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Berlin, Germany
| | - Katja Maquate
- Department of German Studies and Linguistics, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Berlin, Germany
| | - Christine Mooshammer
- Department of German Studies and Linguistics, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Berlin, Germany
| | | | - Stefan Müller
- Department of German Studies and Linguistics, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Berlin, Germany
| | - Muriel Norde
- Department for Northern European Studies, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Berlin, Germany
| | - Elizabeth Pankratz
- Department of German Studies and Linguistics, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Berlin, Germany
- Centre for Language Evolution, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, United Kingdom
| | - Angela G. Patarroyo
- Department of German Studies and Linguistics, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Berlin, Germany
| | - Ana-Maria Pleşca
- Department of German Studies and Linguistics, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Berlin, Germany
| | - Camilo R. Ronderos
- Department of German Studies and Linguistics, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Berlin, Germany
- Department of Philosophy, Classics, History of Art and Ideas, University of Oslo, Oslo, Norway
| | - Stephanie Rotter
- Department of English and American Studies, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Berlin, Germany
| | | | - Gohar Schnelle
- Department of German Studies and Linguistics, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Berlin, Germany
| | - Britta Schulte
- Department of German Studies and Linguistics, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Berlin, Germany
| | - Gediminas Schüppenhauer
- Department of German Studies and Linguistics, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Berlin, Germany
- Leibniz-Centre General Linguistics, Berlin, Germany
| | - Bianca Maria Sell
- Department of German Studies and Linguistics, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Berlin, Germany
| | | | - Megumi Terada
- Department of German Studies and Linguistics, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Berlin, Germany
| | - Dimitra Tsiapou
- Department of German Studies and Linguistics, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Berlin, Germany
| | - Elisabeth Verhoeven
- Department of German Studies and Linguistics, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Berlin, Germany
| | - Melanie Weirich
- Leibniz-Centre General Linguistics, Berlin, Germany
- Institute for Germanic Linguistics, Friedrich-Schiller-Universität Jena, Jena, Germany
| | - Heike Wiese
- Department of German Studies and Linguistics, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Berlin, Germany
| | - Kathy Zaruba
- Department of German Studies and Linguistics, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Berlin, Germany
| | - Lars Erik Zeige
- Department of German Studies and Linguistics, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Berlin, Germany
| | - Anke Lüdeling
- Department of German Studies and Linguistics, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Berlin, Germany
| | - Pia Knoeferle
- Department of German Studies and Linguistics, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Berlin, Germany
- Berlin School of Mind and Brain, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Berlin, Germany
- Einstein Center for Neurosciences Berlin-Charité, Berlin, Germany
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