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Sá-Leite AR, Simpson IC, Fraga I, Comesaña M. A standardized approach to measuring gender transparency in languages. Acta Psychol (Amst) 2024; 246:104236. [PMID: 38613854 DOI: 10.1016/j.actpsy.2024.104236] [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: 08/04/2023] [Revised: 03/11/2024] [Accepted: 03/21/2024] [Indexed: 04/15/2024] Open
Abstract
Languages can express grammatical gender through different ortho-phonological regularities present in nouns (e.g., the cues "-o" and "-a" for the masculine and the feminine respectively in Italian, Portuguese, or Spanish). The term "gender transparency" was coined to describe these regularities (Bates et al., 1995). In gendered languages, we can hence distinguish between transparent nouns, i.e., those displaying form regularities; opaque nouns, i.e., those with ambiguous endings; and irregular nouns, i.e., those that display the typical form regularities but are associated with the opposite gender. Following a descriptive analysis of such regularities, languages have been recently classified according to their degree of gender transparency, which seems relevant in regard to gender acquisition and processing. Yet, there are certain inconsistencies in determining which languages are overall transparent and which are opaque. In particular, it is not clear whether some other complex regularities such as derivational suffixes are also "transparent" cues for gender, what really constitutes an "opaque" noun, or which role orthography and morphology have in transparency. Given the existing inconsistencies in classifying languages as transparent or opaque, this work introduces a proposal to assess gender transparency systematically. Our methodology adapts the standardized factors proposed by Audring (2019) to analyse the relative complexity of gender systems. Such factors are adapted to gender transparency on the basis of the literature on gender acquisition and processing. To support the feasibility of such a proposal, the concepts have been instantiated in a quantitative model to obtain for the first time an objective measure of gender transparency using European Portuguese and Dutch as instances of target languages. Our results coincide with the theoretically expected outcome: European Portuguese obtains a high value of gender transparency while Dutch obtains a moderately low one. Future adaptations of this model to the gender systems of other languages could allow the continuum of gender transparency to sustain robust predictions in studies on gender processing and acquisition.
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Affiliation(s)
- Ana Rita Sá-Leite
- Institut für Romanische Sprachen und Literaturen, Goethe University Frankfurt, Germany; Cognitive Processes & Behaviour Research Group, Department of Social Psychology, Basic Psychology, and Methodology, University of Santiago de Compostela, Spain.
| | - Ian Craig Simpson
- Mind, Brain and Behavior Research Center (CIMCYC), University of Granada, Granada, Spain; Department of Experimental Psychology, University of Granada, Granada, Spain
| | - Isabel Fraga
- Cognitive Processes & Behaviour Research Group, Department of Social Psychology, Basic Psychology, and Methodology, University of Santiago de Compostela, Spain
| | - Montserrat Comesaña
- Psycholinguistics Research Line, CIPsi, School of Psychology, University of Minho, Portugal
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Sá-Leite AR, Lago S. The role of word form in gender processing during lexical access: A theoretical review and novel proposal in language comprehension. Psychon Bull Rev 2024:10.3758/s13423-023-02426-8. [PMID: 38383840 DOI: 10.3758/s13423-023-02426-8] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Accepted: 11/14/2023] [Indexed: 02/23/2024]
Abstract
In contrast to language production, there are few comprehension models of the representation and use of grammatical gender in long-term memory. To bridge this gap, we conducted a systematic review of empirical studies on the role of gender-form regularities in the recognition of nouns in isolation and within sentences. The results of a final sample of 40 studies suggest that there are two routes for the retrieval of gender during real-time comprehension: a form-based route and a lexical-based route. Our review indicates that the use of these routes depends on the degree of gender transparency of the language and the degree of overtness of the experimental paradigm. To accommodate these findings, we incorporate a dual-route mechanism within a general model of lexical access in comprehension, the AUSTRAL (Activation Using Structurally Tiered Representations and Lemmas) model, and identify directions for future research.
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Affiliation(s)
- A R Sá-Leite
- Institut für Romanische Sprachen und Literaturen, Goethe University Frankfurt, Frankfurt, Germany.
- Cognitive Processes and Behaviour Research Group, Department of Social Psychology, Basic Psychology and Methodology, University of Santiago de Compostela, 15782, Santiago de Compostela, Spain.
| | - S Lago
- Institut für Romanische Sprachen und Literaturen, Goethe University Frankfurt, Frankfurt, Germany
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Casado A, Sá-Leite AR, Pesciarelli F, Paolieri D. Exploring the nature of the gender-congruency effect: implicit gender activation and social bias. Front Psychol 2023; 14:1160836. [PMID: 37287785 PMCID: PMC10242114 DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2023.1160836] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 02/07/2023] [Accepted: 05/05/2023] [Indexed: 06/09/2023] Open
Abstract
The aim of the study was to explore the nature of the gender-congruency effect, characterized by a facilitation on the processing of congruent words in grammatical gender. Moreover, we explored whether resemblances between gender identities and gender attitudes with grammatical gender modulated lexical processing. We designed a gender-priming paradigm in Spanish, in which participants decided the gender of a masculine or feminine pronoun preceded by three different primes: biological gender nouns (mapping biological sex), stereotypical nouns (mapping biological and stereotypical information), and epicene nouns (arbitrary gender assignment). We found faster processing of gender congruent pronouns independently of the type of prime, showing that the grammatical gender feature is active even when processing bare nouns that are not conceptually related to gender. This indicates that the gender-congruency effect is driven by the activation of the gender information at the lexical level, which is transferred to the semantic level. Interestingly, the results showed an asymmetry for epicene primes: the gender-congruency effect was smaller for epicene primes when preceding the feminine pronoun, probably driven by the grammatical rule of the masculine being the generic gender. Furthermore, we found that masculine oriented attitudes can bias language processing diminishing the activation of feminine gender, which ultimately could overshadow the female figure.
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Affiliation(s)
- Alba Casado
- Mind, Brain, and Behavior Research Center, Department of Experimental Psychology, University of Granada, Granada, Spain
- Department of Experimental Psychology, University of Granada, Granada, Spain
| | - Ana Rita Sá-Leite
- Department of Social Psychology, Basic Psychology and Methodology, University of Santiago de Compostela, A Coruña, Spain
- Institut für Romanische Sprachen und Literaturen, Goethe University Frankfurt, Frankfurt, Germany
| | - Francesca Pesciarelli
- Department of Biomedical, Metabolic and Neural Sciences, University of Modena and Reggio Emilia, Modena, Italy
| | - Daniela Paolieri
- Mind, Brain, and Behavior Research Center, Department of Experimental Psychology, University of Granada, Granada, Spain
- Department of Experimental Psychology, University of Granada, Granada, Spain
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Zeller J, Bylund E, Lewis AG. The parser consults the lexicon in spite of transparent gender marking: EEG evidence from noun class agreement processing in Zulu. Cognition 2022; 226:105148. [DOI: 10.1016/j.cognition.2022.105148] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 09/20/2021] [Revised: 02/22/2022] [Accepted: 04/22/2022] [Indexed: 11/03/2022]
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Pescuma VN, Zanini C, Crepaldi D, Franzon F. Form and Function: A Study on the Distribution of the Inflectional Endings in Italian Nouns and Adjectives. Front Psychol 2021; 12:720228. [PMID: 34690878 PMCID: PMC8529016 DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2021.720228] [Citation(s) in RCA: 2] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.7] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 06/03/2021] [Accepted: 09/09/2021] [Indexed: 11/13/2022] Open
Abstract
Inflectional values, such as singular and plural, sustain agreement relations between constituents in sentences, allowing sentence parsing and prediction in online processing. Ideally, these processes would be facilitated by a consistent and transparent correspondence between the inflectional values and their form: for example, the value of plural should always be expressed by the same ending, and that ending should only express plural. Experimental research reports higher processing costs in the presence of a non-transparent relation between forms and values. While this effect was found in several languages, and typological research shows that consistency is far from common in morphological paradigms, it is still somewhat difficult to precisely quantify the transparency degree of the inflected forms. Furthermore, to date, no accounts have quantified the transparency in inflection with regard to the declensional classes and the extent to which it is expressed across different parts of speech, depending on whether these act as controllers of the agreement (e.g., nouns) or as targets (e.g., adjectives). We present a case study on Italian, a language that marks gender and number features in nouns and adjectives. This work provides measures of the distribution of forms in the noun and adjective inflection in Italian, and quantifies the degree of form-value transparency with respect to inflectional endings and declensional classes. In order to obtain these measures, we built Flex It, a dedicated large-scale database of inflectional morphology of Italian, and made it available, in order to sustain further theoretical and empirical research.
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Affiliation(s)
| | - Chiara Zanini
- Romanisches Seminar, University of Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland
| | - Davide Crepaldi
- Neuroscience Area, International School for Advanced Studies, Trieste, Italy
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Casado A, Palma A, Paolieri D. The scope of grammatical gender in Spanish: Transference to the conceptual level. Acta Psychol (Amst) 2021; 218:103361. [PMID: 34175670 DOI: 10.1016/j.actpsy.2021.103361] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 07/09/2020] [Revised: 06/18/2021] [Accepted: 06/22/2021] [Indexed: 10/21/2022] Open
Abstract
The aim of the present study was to explore under what circumstances we could observe a transference from grammatical gender to the conceptual representation of sex in Spanish, a two-gender language. The participants performed a lexical decision task and a gender decision task in the auditory modality, including words referencing inanimate entities associated with males or females. The sex stereotype could be congruent (falda [skirt], feminine) or incongruent (corbata [tie], feminine) with the grammatical gender. If the transfer from grammatical gender to conceptual information related to sex is settled, we should observed faster access for the congruent words compared with the incongruent ones both in the gender decision task and in the lexical decision task. The results showed a facilitation while processing congruent vs. incongruent words where attention to gender was mandatory during the adapted gender decision task. However, there was a lack of transference during the lexical decision task that might have been caused by the absence of direct conceptual activation by the time the decision was made. Additionally, we found that grammatical gender and sex-related information are closely connected, such as the indexical information about the sex of the speaker primes the activation of information related to sex at the conceptual (sex stereotype) and also at the lexical level (grammatical gender). Altogether, the results indicate that gender congruency effect is magnified by direct gender activation.
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The neural substrate of noun morphological inflection: A rapid event-related fMRI study in Italian. Neuropsychologia 2020; 151:107699. [PMID: 33271155 DOI: 10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2020.107699] [Citation(s) in RCA: 4] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 02/12/2020] [Revised: 11/26/2020] [Accepted: 11/26/2020] [Indexed: 11/21/2022]
Abstract
The present research investigated the neural correlates of nominal inflection and aimed at disclosing their possible link with the frequency distribution of noun inflectional features: grammatical gender, inflectional suffixes and inflectional classes. The properties of the Italian nominal system were exploited since it allows to explore exhaustively fine-grained phenomena in the inflectional processing. An event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) experiment was carried out where Italian masculine and feminine nouns were visually presented to 50 healthy participants in an overt inflectional task: the generation of the plural from the singular and vice versa. The grammatical gender and the citation form suffix of nouns were manipulated in a factorial design. Functional data showed that inflectional operations for nouns activate an extensive cortical network involving the left inferior and right superior frontal gyri, the left and right middle temporal gyri, the posterior cingulate cortex and the cerebellum. Activations were variably modulated by the distributional features of gender-dependent properties of nouns. Particularly, cortical activity increased during inflectional operations for small and/or scarcely consistent inflectional classes. These findings demonstrate the relevance of specific morphological (inflectional suffixes) and distributional features (size and consistency) shared by groups of words (inflectional classes) in a language, particularly when implementing cognitive operations required for language processing.
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Quiñones I, Molinaro N, Mancini S, Hernández-Cabrera JA, Barber H, Carreiras M. Tracing the interplay between syntactic and lexical features: fMRI evidence from agreement comprehension. Neuroimage 2018; 175:259-271. [DOI: 10.1016/j.neuroimage.2018.03.069] [Citation(s) in RCA: 7] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.2] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 01/10/2018] [Revised: 03/27/2018] [Accepted: 03/28/2018] [Indexed: 11/26/2022] Open
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Casado A, Palma A, Paolieri D. The Influence of Sex Information on Gender Word Processing. JOURNAL OF PSYCHOLINGUISTIC RESEARCH 2018; 47:557-583. [PMID: 29209913 DOI: 10.1007/s10936-017-9546-3] [Citation(s) in RCA: 1] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.2] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 06/07/2023]
Abstract
Three different tasks (word repetition, lexical decision, and gender decision) were designed to explore the impact of the sex clues (sex of the speaker, sex of the addressee) and the type of gender (semantic, arbitrary) on the processing of isolated Spanish gendered words. The findings showed that the grammatical gender feature was accessed when no mandatory attentional focus was required. In addition, the results indicated that the participants organize information according to their own sex role, which provides more salience to the words that match in grammatical gender with their own sex role representation, even when the gender assignment is arbitrary. Finally, the sex of the speaker biased the lexical access and the grammatical gender selection, serving as a semantic prime when the two dimensions have a congruent relationship. Furthermore, the masculine form serves as the generic gender representing both male and female figures.
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Affiliation(s)
- Alba Casado
- Department of Experimental Psychology, Mind, Brain, and Behavior Research Center, University of Granada, C/ Profesor Clavera s/n, 18071, Granada, Spain.
| | - Alfonso Palma
- Department of Experimental Psychology, Mind, Brain, and Behavior Research Center, University of Granada, C/ Profesor Clavera s/n, 18071, Granada, Spain
| | - Daniela Paolieri
- Department of Experimental Psychology, Mind, Brain, and Behavior Research Center, University of Granada, C/ Profesor Clavera s/n, 18071, Granada, Spain
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Caffarra S, Barber HA. Does the ending matter? The role of gender-to-ending consistency in sentence reading. Brain Res 2015; 1605:83-92. [DOI: 10.1016/j.brainres.2015.02.018] [Citation(s) in RCA: 22] [Impact Index Per Article: 2.4] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 08/26/2014] [Revised: 02/04/2015] [Accepted: 02/09/2015] [Indexed: 11/25/2022]
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Caffarra S, Janssen N, Barber HA. Two sides of gender: ERP evidence for the presence of two routes during gender agreement processing. Neuropsychologia 2014; 63:124-34. [DOI: 10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2014.08.016] [Citation(s) in RCA: 23] [Impact Index Per Article: 2.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 06/05/2013] [Revised: 08/04/2014] [Accepted: 08/14/2014] [Indexed: 11/28/2022]
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Bertram R, Hyönä J, Laine M. Morphology in language comprehension, production and acquisition. ACTA ACUST UNITED AC 2011. [DOI: 10.1080/01690965.2011.559102] [Citation(s) in RCA: 3] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.2] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 10/18/2022]
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