Are scalar implicatures automatically processed and different for each individual? A mismatch negativity (MMN) study

Autistic traits and event-related potentials in the general population: A scoping review and meta-analysis

BACKGROUND

Differences in short and long-latency Event-Related Potentials (ERPs) can help us infer abnormalities in brain processing, considering early and later stages of stimuli processing across tasks and conditions. In autism research, the adult population remains largely understudied compared to samples at early stages of development. In this context, this scoping review briefly summarises what has been described in community and subclinical adult samples of autism.

METHOD

The current scoping review and meta-analysis includes 50 records (N = 1652) and comprehensively explores short and long-latency ERP amplitudes and their relationship with autistic traits in adult community samples.

RESULTS

This meta-analysis identified, with small to medium effect sizes, distinctive patterns in late ERP amplitudes, indicating enhanced responses to visual stimuli and the opposite patterns to auditory tasks in the included sample. Additionally, a pattern of higher amplitudes was also found for the component P3b in autistic traits.

DISCUSSION

Differential effects in visual and auditory domains are explored in light of the predictive processing framework for Autism. It remains possible that different brain mechanisms operate to explain symptoms related with different sensory modalities. P3b is discussed as a possible component of interest in future studies as it revealed a more robust effect for differentiating severity in the expression of autistic traits in adulthood.

The role of discriminability in face perception: Interference processing of expression, gender, and gaze

Eye gaze plays a fundamental role in social interaction and facial recognition. However, interference processing between gaze and other facial variants (e.g., expression) and invariant information (e.g., gender) remains controversial and unclear, especially the role of facial information discriminability in interference. A Garner paradigm was used to conduct two experiments. This paradigm allows simultaneous investigation of the mutual influence of two kinds of facial information in one experiment. In Experiment 1, we manipulated facial expression discriminability and investigated its role in interference processing of gaze and facial expression. The results show that individuals were unable to ignore expression when classifying gaze with both high and low discriminability but could ignore gaze when classifying expression with high discriminability only. In Experiment 2, we manipulated gender discriminability and investigated its function in interference processing of gaze and gender. Participants were unable to ignore gender when classifying gaze with both high and low discriminability but could ignore gaze when classifying gender with low discriminability only. The results indicate that gaze categorization is affected by facial expression and gender regardless of facial information discriminability, whereas interference of gaze on facial expression and gender depends on the degree of discriminability. The present study provides evidence that the processing of gaze and other variant and invariant information is interdependent.

Rashid S, Nimehchisalem V, Geok Imm L, Price J, Ronderos CR. What second-language speakers can tell us about pragmatic processing

Upon hearing the phrase Some cats meow, a listener might pragmatically infer that 'Some but not all cats meow'. This is known as a scalar implicature and it often arises when a speaker produces a weak linguistic expression instead of a stronger one. Several L2 studies claim that pragmatic inferences are generated by default and their comprehension presents no challenges to L2 learners. However, the evidence obtained from these studies largely stems from offline-based tasks that provide limited information about how scalar implicatures are processed. This study investigated scalar implicature processing among L2 speakers of English and the degree to which differences in L2 proficiency and Theory of Mind abilities would modulate pragmatic responding. The experiment used an online sentence verification paradigm that required participants to judge, among multiple control items, the veracity of under-informative sentences, such as Some cats are mammals, and to respond as quickly as possible. A true response to this item is indicative of a logical some and perhaps all reading and a false response to a pragmatic some but not all reading. Our results showed evidence that scalar inferences are not generated by default. The answer linked to the pragmatic reading some but not all took significantly longer to make relative to the answer that relies on the logical interpretation some and perhaps all. This processing slowdown was also significantly larger among participants with lower English proficiency. Further exploratory analyses of participants' Theory of Mind, as measured by the Social Skill subscale in the Autism Spectrum Quotient, revealed that socially inclined participants are more likely than the socially disinclined to derive a scalar inference. These results together provide new empirical insights into how L2 learners process scalar implicatures and thus implications for processing theories in experimental pragmatics and second language acquisition.

The interplay between respectfulness and lexical-semantic in reading Chinese: evidence from ERPs

Language comprehension requires the processing of both linguistic and extra-linguistic information, such as syntax, semantics, and pragmatic information. Previous studies have systematically examined the interplay between syntactic and semantic processing. However, there is a lack of data on how pragmatic processing proceeds and its interaction with semantic processing. Using event-related potentials (ERPs), the present study manipulated the semantic coherence of a verb phrase (VP) and the respect consistency of the object noun phrase in the VP, resulting in four types of critical sentences. Participants read 160 critical Chinese sentences and 220 filler sentences. After electroencephalogram recordings, they completed the Autism Quotient Communication (AQ-Comm) subscale and a sentence acceptability rating task. The ERP results showed that respect violation elicited a larger N400 response and a late negative activity in the pragmatically less-skilled subgroup (as indexed by higher scores on the AQ-Comm subscale). In contrast, respect violation elicited a P600 response in the pragmatically skilled subgroup (as indexed by lower scores on the AQ-Comm subscale). The double violation condition elicited an ERP pattern that was similar to that of the semantic violation condition in both subgroups, suggesting that respect violation effects were present only when the VP was semantically coherent. These results suggest that semantic violation can preclude readers from engaging in pragmatic inferencing, regardless of the participants' pragmatic skills. Strategies for resolving respect violation and corresponding brain activities vary according to participants' pragmatic abilities.

SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION

The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s11571-021-09700-2.

Empathy influences how listeners interpret intonation and meaning when words are ambiguous

This study examines how individual pragmatic skills, and more specifically, empathy, influences language processing when a temporary lexical ambiguity can be resolved via intonation. We designed a visual-world eye-tracking experiment in which participants could anticipate a referent before disambiguating lexical information became available, by inferring either a contrast meaning or a confirmatory meaning from the intonation contour alone. Our results show that individual empathy skills determine how listeners deal with the meaning alternatives of an ambiguous referent, and the way they use intonational meaning to disambiguate the referent. Listeners with better pragmatic skills (higher empathy) were sensitive to intonation cues when forming sound-meaning associations during the unfolding of an ambiguous referent, and showed higher sensitivity to all the alternative interpretations of that ambiguous referent. Less pragmatically skilled listeners showed weaker processing of intonational meaning because they needed subsequent disambiguating material to select a referent and showed less sensitivity to the set of alternative interpretations. Overall, our results call for taking into account individual pragmatic differences in the study of intonational meaning processing and sentence comprehension in general.

The Role of Working Memory in the Processing of Scalar Implicatures of Patients With Schizophrenia Spectrum and Other Psychotic Disorders

A number of studies have demonstrated pragmatic language difficulties in people with Schizophrenia Spectrum and Other Psychotic Disorders. However, research about how people with schizophrenia spectrum and other psychotic disorders understand scalar implicatures (SIs) is surprisingly rare, since SIs have generated much of the most recent literature. Scalar implicatures are pragmatic inferences, based on linguistic expressions like some, must, or, which are part of a scale of informativeness (e.g., some/many/all). Logically, the less informative expressions imply the more informative ones, but pragmatically people usually infer that the presence of a less informative term implies that the more informative term was not applicable. In one of the few existing studies with people with schizophrenia spectrum and other psychotic disorders, Wampers et al. (2018) observed that in general, people with schizophrenia spectrum and other psychotic disorders were less likely to derive SIs than controls. The current study has three main aims. First, we want to replicate the original finding with the scalar terms some-all. Second, we want to investigate how these patients deal with different scalar terms, that is, we want to investigate if scalar diversity is also observed in this clinical group. Third, we investigate the role of working memory, often seen as another important mechanism to enable inferring SIs. Twenty-one individuals with a psychotic disorder and 21 matched controls answered 54 under-informative statements, in which seven different pairs of scalar terms were used. In addition, working memory capacity was measured. Patients with schizophrenia spectrum and other psychotic disorders did not make more logical interpretations when processing quantifiers, disconfirming Wampers et al. (2018). However, certain scalar scales elicited more pragmatic interpretations than others, which is in line with the scalar diversity hypothesis. Additionally, we observed only partial evidence for the role of working memory. Only for the scalar scale and-or, a significant effect of working memory was observed. The implications of these results for patients with schizophrenia spectrum and other psychotic disorders are discussed, but also the role of working memory for pragmatic inferences, as well as the place of SIs in experimental pragmatics.

Scalar implicature is not a default process: An ERP study of the scalar implicature processing under the effect of focus factor

This study explored the processing mechanism of scalar implicatures under different focus conditions by the picture-sentence verification paradigm. Through the guidance of different types of incorrect sentences, scalar terms were controlled to adjust whether they were at the focus position and divided the focused and non-focused conditions. The behavioural results showed that when the content of the picture was "all squares have…", more participants under the focused condition could judge that the underinformative sentence "some squares have…" was not appropriate. Moreover, according to whether participants could stably determine that the underinformative sentences were inappropriate, they were divided into pragmatic and semantic responders. The ERP results showed that pragmatic responders evoked a P200 effect, an N400 effect and a sustained negativity effect according to the scalar terms, and a P200 effect and a sustained positivity effect according to the sentence-final words. In contrast, semantic responders did not elicit any ERP effect. These results indicate that the generation of scalar implicatures is not completely determined by the scalar terms and that the focus factor plays an important role in the scalar implicatures inference.

Gricean Expectations in Online Sentence Comprehension: An ERP Study on the Processing of Scalar Inferences

There is substantial support for the general idea that a formalization of comprehenders' expectations about the likely next word in a sentence helps explaining data related to online sentence processing. While much research has focused on syntactic, semantic, and discourse expectations, the present event-related potentials (ERPs) study investigates neurolinguistic correlates of pragmatic expectations, which arise when comprehenders expect a sentence to conform to Gricean Maxims of Conversation. For predicting brain responses associated with pragmatic processing, we introduce a formal model of such Gricean pragmatic expectations, using an idealized incremental interpreter. We examine whether pragmatic expectancies derived from this model modulate the amplitude of the N400, a component that has been associated with predictive processing. As part of its parameterization, the model distinguishes genuine pragmatic interpreters, who expect maximally informative true utterances, from literal interpreters, who only expect truthfulness. We explore the model's non-trivial predictions for an experimental setup which uses picture-sentence verification with ERPs recorded at several critical positions in sentences containing the scalar implicature trigger some. We find that Gricean expectations indeed affect the N400, largely in line with the predictions of our model, but also discuss discrepancies between model predictions and observations critically.

Sins of omission are more likely to be forgiven in non-native speakers

Utterances produced by foreign-accented speakers are often judged as less credible, more vague, and more difficult to understand compared to those produced by native speakers. Some theoretical accounts argue that listeners have different expectations about the speech of non-native speakers. Other accounts argue that non-native speech is processed differently to the extent that a foreign accent taxes intelligibility and introduces additional processing load. Here we test the role of expectations for the processing of native vs. non-native speech in written texts where accents cannot be directly perceived (and thus affect processing load). In Experiment 1, native comprehenders gave higher ratings to the meaning of under-informative sentences ("Some people have noses with two nostrils") when they believed that the sentences were produced by non-native compared to native speakers. This difference was larger the more likely individual participants were to interpret under-informative sentences pragmatically (as opposed to logically). In Experiment 2, the tendency to forgive sins of information omission was shown to depend on the presumed L2 proficiency of non-native speakers. Experiment 3 replicated and extended the major finding. Since intelligibility of the sentences was identical across types of speakers, these findings provide support for the role of expectations for non-native speech comprehension, as well as for broader models of language processing that argue for a role of speaker identity.

Some Alternatives? Event-Related Potential Investigation of Literal and Pragmatic Interpretations of Some Presented in Isolation

In sentence verification tasks involving under-informative statements such as Some elephants are mammals, some adults appear more tolerant to pragmatic violations than others. The underlying causes of such inter-individual variability remain however essentially unknown. Here, we investigated inter-individual variation in adults deriving the scalar inference “not all” triggered by the quantifier some. We first assessed the individual intolerance to pragmatic violations in adult participants presented with under-informative some-statements (e.g., Some infants are young). We then recorded event-related brain potentials in the same participants using an oddball paradigm where an ambiguous deviant word some presented in isolation had to be taken either as a match (in its literal interpretation “at least some”) or as a mismatch (in its pragmatic interpretation “some but not all”) and where an unambiguous deviant target word all was featured as control. Mean amplitude modulation of the classic P3b provided a measure of the ease with which participants considered some and all as deviants within each experimental block. We found that intolerance to pragmatic violations was associated with a reduction in the magnitude of the P3b effect elicited by the target some when it was to be considered a literal match. Furthermore, we failed to replicate a straightforward literal interpretation facilitation effect in our experiment which offers a control for task demands. We propose that the derivation of scalar inferences also relies on general, but flexible, mismatch resolution processes.

Involvement of prefrontal cortex in scalar implicatures: evidence from magnetoencephalography

The present study investigated the neural correlates of the realisation of scalar inferences, i.e., the interpretation of some as meaning some but not all. We used magnetoencephalography, which has high temporal resolution, to measure neural activity while participants heard stories that included the scalar inference trigger some in contexts that either provide strong cues for a scalar inference or provide weaker cues. The middle portion of the lateral prefrontal cortex (Brodmann area 46) showed an increased response to some in contexts with fewer cues to the inference, suggesting that this condition elicited greater effort. While the results are not predicted by traditional all-or-nothing accounts of scalar inferencing that assume the process is always automatic or always effortful, they are consistent with more recent gradient accounts which predict that the speed and effort of scalar inferences is strongly modulated by numerous contextual factors.