Grammatical Gender in German Influences How Role-Nouns Are Interpreted: Evidence from ERPs

How to make a difference: the impact of gender-fair language on text comprehensibility amongst adults with and without an academic background

Introduction

The proliferation of gender-fair language as a medium of communication that represents all genders can be considered as an exciting development in today's rapidly changing world. In this context, the use of the gender asterisk has become especially prominent in German, it being a grammatical gender language. However, critics often argue that gender-fair language makes texts less comprehensible and decreases its aesthetic appeal. The present study tests this assumption for the German language and is the first one to test the influence of an academic background on the comprehensibility of gender-fair language.

Method

A text, either written in gender-fair language using the gender star in its singular and plural form or a version using only masculine-only forms, was randomly assigned to 81 adults without an academic background and 82 adults with an academic background (77% women in both groups). Participants were asked to fill out a web-based questionnaire answering questions on text comprehensibility and on their attitudes toward gender-fair language.

Results

The results show no statistically significant difference in comprehensibility ratings between participants who read a text in gender-fair language and those who read a text in masculine-only language. In addition, attitudes toward gender-fair language did not affect comprehensibility ratings in participants who read the text written in gender-fair language using the gender star. Further, the academic background had no effect on the assessment of gender-fair language.

Discussion

To conclude, the present study suggests that there is no evidence that gender-fair language reduces the comprehensibility of texts.

Early ERP indices of gender-biased processing elicited by generic masculine role nouns and the feminine-masculine pair form

In most gender-marked languages, the masculine form is used to refer to male people specifically as well as to people of any gender generically. This dual functionality was shown in behavioral studies to lead to male-biased mental representations. Here, using EEG, we targeted the neurophysiological basis of this bias by investigating whether and how the generic masculine influences the early perceptual and cognitive processing of anaphoric references to men and women. We found that ERP amplitudes in the P200 range were larger for references to women than to men after generic masculine role nouns, while amplitudes in the P300 range were larger for references to men than to women after the feminine-masculine pair form. These findings suggest that the generic masculine primes the perceptual system towards processing men and that neither this form nor the feminine-masculine pair form elicits gender-balanced computations during early processing in the human brain.

Linguistic and emotional responses evoked by pseudoword presentation: An EEG and behavioral study

When the semantic properties of words are turned off, such as in pseudowords, the grammatical properties of the stimuli indicated through suffixes may provide cues to the meaning. The application of electroencephalography (EEG), combined with the pseudoword paradigm, allows for evaluating the effects of verbs and nouns as linguistic categories within the time course of processing. To contribute to the ongoing discussion regarding the functional processing of words from different grammatical classes, we conducted an EEG experiment, followed by a behavioral lexical decision task (LDT). The EEG and LDT indicated different neural and behavioral reactions to the presented grammar classes, allowing for a deeper understanding of the neuro- and psycholinguistic dimensions of grammar.

Are Second Person Masculine Generics Easier to Process for Men than for Women? Evidence from Polish

In Polish, it is obligatory to mark feminine or masculine grammatical gender on second-person singular past tense verbs (e.g., Dostałaś list 'You received-F a letter'). When the addressee's gender is unknown or unspecified, masculine but never feminine gender marking may be used. The present self-paced reading experiment aims to determine whether this practice creates a processing disadvantage for female addressees in such contexts. We further investigated how men process being addressed with feminine-marked verbs, which constitutes a pragmatic violation. To this end, we presented Polish native speakers with short narratives. Each narrative contained either a second-person singular past tense verb with masculine or feminine gender marking, or a gerund verb with no gender marking as a baseline. We hypothesised that both men and women would read the verbs with gender marking mismatching their own gender more slowly than the gender-unmarked gerund verbs. The results revealed that the gender-mismatching verbs were read equally fast as the gerund verbs, and that the verbs with gender marking matching participant gender were read faster. While the relatively high reading time of the gender-unmarked baseline was unexpected, the pattern of results nevertheless shows that verbs with masculine marking were more difficult to process for women compared to men, and vice versa. In conclusion, even though masculine gender marking in the second person is commonly used with a gender-unspecific intention, it created similar processing difficulties for women as the ones that men experienced when addressed through feminine gender marking. This study is the first one, as far as we are aware, to provide evidence for the male bias of second-person masculine generics during language processing.

Does the use of Gender-Fair Language Impair the Comprehensibility of Video Lectures? – An Experiment Using an Authentic Video Lecture Manipulating Role Nouns in German

Gender-fair language makes women and other genders, their interests, and their achievements more visible and is particularly relevant to grammatical gender languages such as German, in which most nouns and personal pronouns are assigned to a specific gender. The present study tested the often repeated critical claims that gender-fair language impairs the comprehensibility and aesthetic appeal of videos. In an experiment with N = 105 students, participants watched a video on self-determination theory, either with masculine-only forms or using the glottal stop, a form of spoken gender-fair language that inserts an abrupt and sustained closure of the vocal cords in the larynx between the masculine form or the stem and the feminine ending of words (e.g. in German “Leserʔinnen”, ∼feʔmale readers). Subsequently, participants completed a questionnaire regarding the video's comprehensibility. The results show no statistically significant impairment regarding the general subjective comprehensibility (partial η2 < .01), the ease of ascribing meaning to the words (partial η2 < .01), the ease of decoding the syntax of the sentences (partial η2 = .03), or the aesthetic appeal of the videos (partial η2 = .02). The critics’ claims are therefore questioned.

Exposing implicit biases and stereotypes in human and artificial intelligence: state of the art and challenges with a focus on gender

Biases in cognition are ubiquitous. Social psychologists suggested biases and stereotypes serve a multifarious set of cognitive goals, while at the same time stressing their potential harmfulness. Recently, biases and stereotypes became the purview of heated debates in the machine learning community too. Researchers and developers are becoming increasingly aware of the fact that some biases, like gender and race biases, are entrenched in the algorithms some AI applications rely upon. Here, taking into account several existing approaches that address the problem of implicit biases and stereotypes, we propose that a strategy to cope with this phenomenon is to unmask those found in AI systems by understanding their cognitive dimension, rather than simply trying to correct algorithms. To this extent, we present a discussion bridging together findings from cognitive science and insights from machine learning that can be integrated in a state-of-the-art semantic network. Remarkably, this resource can be of assistance to scholars (e.g., cognitive and computer scientists) while at the same time contributing to refine AI regulations affecting social life. We show how only through a thorough understanding of the cognitive processes leading to biases, and through an interdisciplinary effort, we can make the best of AI technology.

The Influence of the Gender Asterisk ("Gendersternchen") on Comprehensibility and Interest

Recently, the gender asterisk ("Gendersternchen") has become more widespread in grammatical gender languages in order to represent all genders. Such gender-fair language is intended to help better address women and other genders and make their interests and achievements more visible. Critics often argue this would make the language less comprehensible and less aesthetically appealing. Two experiments examined the effects of the gender asterisk on text comprehensibility, aesthetic perception, and interest. N = 159 and N = 127 participants were randomly provided with a text in either masculine-only form or alternatively in gender-fair language with the gender asterisk. The results of the first experiment showed no impairment of comprehensibility and aesthetic evaluation of the texts by the gender asterisk and no effect on interest in the game, while the second experiment showed significant impairments of comprehensibility, aesthetic evaluation, and interest in the game by the gender asterisk. The proportion of singular forms is discussed as a possible explanation for the different results. Experiment 1 predominantly used plural forms like die Spieler*innen (∼"the fe*male players") and did not include forms such as der*die Spieler*in (∼"the*the fe*male player"), whereas Experiment 2 included many such more complex singular forms. We argue that this issue might be crucial, and that it deserves full attention in future studies.

The male bias of a generically-intended masculine pronoun: Evidence from eye-tracking and sentence evaluation

Two experiments tested whether the Dutch possessive pronoun zijn ‘his’ gives rise to a gender inference and thus causes a male bias when used generically in sentences such as Everyone was putting on his shoes. Experiment 1 (N = 120, 48 male) was a conceptual replication of a previous eye-tracking study that had not found evidence of a male bias. The results of the current eye-tracking experiment showed the generically-intended masculine pronoun to trigger a gender inference and cause a male bias, but for male participants and in stereotypically neutral stereotype contexts only. No evidence for a male bias was thus found in stereotypically female and male context nor for female participants altogether. Experiment 2 (N = 80, 40 male) used the same stimuli as Experiment 1, but employed the sentence evaluation paradigm. No evidence of a male bias was found in Experiment 2. Taken together, the results suggest that the generically-intended masculine pronoun zijn ‘his’ can cause a male bias for male participants even when the referents are previously introduced by inclusive and grammatically gender-unmarked iedereen ‘everyone’. This male bias surfaces with eye-tracking, which taps directly into early language processing, but not in offline sentence evaluations. Furthermore, the results suggest that the intended generic reading of the masculine possessive pronoun zijn ‘his’ is more readily available for women than for men.

Implicit consequentiality bias in English: A corpus of 300+ verbs

This study provides implicit verb consequentiality norms for a corpus of 305 English verbs, for which Ferstl et al. (Behavior Research Methods, 43, 124-135, 2011) previously provided implicit causality norms. An online sentence completion study was conducted, with data analyzed from 124 respondents who completed fragments such as "John liked Mary and so…". The resulting bias scores are presented in an Appendix, with more detail in supplementary material in the University of Sussex Research Data Repository (via https://doi.org/10.25377/sussex.c.5082122 ), where we also present lexical and semantic verb features: frequency, semantic class and emotional valence of the verbs. We compare our results with those of our study of implicit causality and with the few published studies of implicit consequentiality. As in our previous study, we also considered effects of gender and verb valence, which requires stable norms for a large number of verbs. The corpus will facilitate future studies in a range of areas, including psycholinguistics and social psychology, particularly those requiring parallel sentence completion norms for both causality and consequentiality.