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Jachmann TK, Drenhaus H, Staudte M, Crocker MW. When a look is enough: Neurophysiological correlates of referential speaker gaze in situated comprehension. Cognition 2023; 236:105449. [PMID: 37030139 DOI: 10.1016/j.cognition.2023.105449] [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: 08/26/2020] [Revised: 03/16/2023] [Accepted: 03/23/2023] [Indexed: 04/10/2023]
Abstract
Behavioral studies have shown that speaker gaze to objects in a co-present scene can influence listeners' expectations about how the utterance will unfold. These findings have recently been supported by ERP studies that linked the underlying mechanisms of the integration of speaker gaze with an utterance meaning representation to multiple ERP components. This leads to the question, however, as to whether speaker gaze should be considered part of the communicative signal itself, such that the referential information conveyed by gaze can help listeners not only form expectations but also to confirm referential expectations induced by the prior linguistic context. In the current study, we investigated this question by conducting an ERP experiment (N=24, Age:[19,31]), in which referential expectations were established by linguistic context together with several depicted objects in the scene. Those expectations then could be confirmed by subsequent speaker gaze that preceded the referential expression. Participants were presented with a centrally positioned face performing gaze actions aligned to utterances comparing two out of three displayed objects, with the task to judge whether the sentence was true given the provided scene. We manipulated the gaze cue to be either Present (toward the subsequently named object) or Absent preceding contextually Expected or Unexpected referring nouns. The results provided strong evidence for gaze as being treated as an integral part of the communicative signal: While in the absence of gaze, effects of phonological verification (PMN), word meaning retrieval (N400) and sentence meaning integration/evaluation (P600) were found on the unexpected noun, in the presence of gaze effects of retrieval (N400) and integration/evaluation (P300) were solely found in response to the pre-referent gaze cue when it was directed toward the unexpected referent with attenuated effects on the following referring noun.
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Affiliation(s)
- Torsten Kai Jachmann
- Language Science and Technology, Campus C7, Saarland University, D-66123 Saarbrücken, Germany.
| | - Heiner Drenhaus
- Language Science and Technology, Campus C7, Saarland University, D-66123 Saarbrücken, Germany
| | - Maria Staudte
- Language Science and Technology, Campus C7, Saarland University, D-66123 Saarbrücken, Germany
| | - Matthew W Crocker
- Language Science and Technology, Campus C7, Saarland University, D-66123 Saarbrücken, Germany
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2
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Tourtouri EN, Delogu F, Crocker MW. Rational Redundancy in Referring Expressions: Evidence from Event-related Potentials. Cogn Sci 2021; 45:e13071. [PMID: 34897768 DOI: 10.1111/cogs.13071] [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: 12/01/2020] [Revised: 10/29/2021] [Accepted: 12/03/2021] [Indexed: 11/30/2022]
Abstract
In referential communication, Grice's Maxim of Quantity is thought to imply that utterances conveying unnecessary information should incur comprehension difficulties. There is, however, considerable evidence that speakers frequently encode redundant information in their referring expressions, raising the question as to whether such overspecifications hinder listeners' processing. Evidence from previous work is inconclusive, and mostly comes from offline studies. In this article, we present two event-related potential (ERP) experiments, investigating the real-time comprehension of referring expressions that contain redundant adjectives in complex visual contexts. Our findings provide support for both Gricean and bounded-rational accounts. We argue that these seemingly incompatible results can be reconciled if common ground is taken into account. We propose a bounded-rational account of overspecification, according to which even redundant words can be beneficial to comprehension to the extent that they facilitate the reduction of listeners' uncertainty regarding the target referent.
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Affiliation(s)
- Elli N Tourtouri
- Department of Language Science and Technology, Saarland University
| | - Francesca Delogu
- Department of Language Science and Technology, Saarland University
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3
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Abashidze D, Knoeferle P. Influence of Actor's Congruent and Incongruent Gaze on Language Processing. Front Psychol 2021; 12:701742. [PMID: 34721148 PMCID: PMC8553990 DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2021.701742] [Citation(s) in RCA: 1] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 04/28/2021] [Accepted: 08/23/2021] [Indexed: 11/13/2022] Open
Abstract
In interpreting spoken sentences in event contexts, comprehenders both integrate their current interpretation of language with the recent past (e.g., events they have witnessed) and develop expectations about future event possibilities. Tense cues can disambiguate this linking but temporary ambiguity in their interpretation may lead comprehenders to also rely on further, situation-specific cues (e.g., an actor's gaze as a cue to his future actions). How comprehenders reconcile these different cues in real time is an open issue that we must address to accommodate comprehension. It has been suggested that relating a referential expression (e.g., a verb) to a referent (e.g., a recent event) is preferred over relying on other cues that refer to the future and are not yet referentially grounded (“recent-event preference”). Two visual-world eye-tracking experiments compared this recent-event preference with effects of an actor's gaze and of tense/temporal adverbs as cues to a future action event. The results revealed that people overall preferred to focus on the recent (vs. future) event target in their interpretation, suggesting that while a congruent and incongruent actor gaze can jointly with futuric linguistic cues neutralize the recent-event preference late in the sentence, the latter still plays a key role in shaping participants' initial verb-based event interpretation. Additional post-experimental memory tests provided insight into the longevity of the gaze effects.
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Affiliation(s)
- Dato Abashidze
- Leibniz-Zentrum für Allgemeine Sprachwissenschaft (ZAS), Berlin, Germany
| | - Pia Knoeferle
- Department of German Studies and Linguistics, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Berlin, Germany.,Berlin School of Mind and Brain, Einstein Center for Neurosciences Berlin, Berlin, Germany
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Yow WQ, Li X. Children consider a speaker’s information privilege and engage in adaptive selective trust in referential cues. COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT 2021. [DOI: 10.1016/j.cogdev.2021.101118] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/25/2022]
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Czerniak JN, Schierhorst N, Brandl C, Mertens A, Schwalm M, Nitsch V. A meta-analytic review of the reliability of the Index of Cognitive Activity concerning task-evoked cognitive workload and light influences. Acta Psychol (Amst) 2021; 220:103402. [PMID: 34506977 DOI: 10.1016/j.actpsy.2021.103402] [Citation(s) in RCA: 2] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.7] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 01/26/2021] [Revised: 08/04/2021] [Accepted: 08/19/2021] [Indexed: 11/16/2022] Open
Abstract
The Index of Cognitive Activity (ICA) was introduced as a promising pupillary workload measure for field investigations since, unlike pupil dilation, it is not affected by illumination. Recent studies have investigated the ICA for task-evoked cognitive workload with contradictory findings. However, few studies investigated the influence of illumination on the ICA. Therefore, to examine inconsistencies regarding the reliability for workload measurement and the effects of light, a meta-analysis was conducted based on a structured literature review. The meta-analysis considered k = 14 studies with a total sample size of N = 751 participants. Results showed significant effects for workload (r = 0.61) and light (r = 0.45) on the ICA. Since moderating effects were found for several between-study differences, it seems likely that different cognitive processes and settings affect the indicator and should be considered in empirical investigations. According to the findings, the ICA is a reliable indicator for task-evoked workload. However, light influences were found which indicates that evidence-based conclusions regarding the ICA's practical applicability require further research.
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Affiliation(s)
- Julia N Czerniak
- Institute of Industrial Engineering and Ergonomics (IAW), RWTH Aachen University, Eilfschornsteinstraße 18, 52062 Aachen, Germany.
| | - Nikolas Schierhorst
- Institute of Industrial Engineering and Ergonomics (IAW), RWTH Aachen University, Eilfschornsteinstraße 18, 52062 Aachen, Germany.
| | - Christopher Brandl
- Institute of Industrial Engineering and Ergonomics (IAW), RWTH Aachen University, Eilfschornsteinstraße 18, 52062 Aachen, Germany.
| | - Alexander Mertens
- Institute of Industrial Engineering and Ergonomics (IAW), RWTH Aachen University, Eilfschornsteinstraße 18, 52062 Aachen, Germany.
| | - Maximilian Schwalm
- Institute of Highway Engineering (ISAC), RWTH Aachen University, Mies-van-der-Rohe-Straße 1, 52074 Aachen, Germany.
| | - Verena Nitsch
- Institute of Industrial Engineering and Ergonomics (IAW), RWTH Aachen University, Eilfschornsteinstraße 18, 52062 Aachen, Germany.
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Sikos L, Stein K, Staudte M. A Rose by Any Other Verb: The Effect of Expectations and Word Category on Processing Effort in Situated Sentence Comprehension. Front Psychol 2021; 12:661898. [PMID: 34122248 PMCID: PMC8195234 DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2021.661898] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 01/31/2021] [Accepted: 04/12/2021] [Indexed: 11/16/2022] Open
Abstract
Recent work has shown that linguistic and visual contexts jointly modulate linguistic expectancy and, thus, the processing effort for a (more or less) expected critical word. According to these findings, uncertainty about the upcoming referent in a visually-situated sentence can be reduced by exploiting the selectional restrictions of a preceding word (e.g., a verb or an adjective), which then reduces processing effort on the critical word (e.g., a referential noun). Interestingly, however, no such modulation was observed in these studies on the expectation-generating word itself. The goal of the current study is to investigate whether the reduction of uncertainty (i.e., the generation of expectations) simply does not modulate processing effort-or whether the particular subject-verb-object (SVO) sentence structure used in these studies (which emphasizes the referential nature of the noun as direct pointer to visually co-present objects) accounts for the observed pattern. To test these questions, the current design reverses the functional roles of nouns and verbs by using sentence constructions in which the noun reduces uncertainty about upcoming verbs, and the verb provides the disambiguating and reference-resolving piece of information. Experiment 1 (a Visual World Paradigm study) and Experiment 2 (a Grammaticality Maze study) both replicate the effect found in previous work (i.e., the effect of visually-situated context on the word which uniquely identifies the referent), albeit on the verb in the current study. Results on the noun, where uncertainty is reduced and expectations are generated in the current design, were mixed and were most likely influenced by design decisions specific to each experiment. These results show that processing of the reference-resolving word—whether it be a noun or a verb—reliably benefits from the prior linguistic and visual information that lead to the generation of concrete expectations.
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Affiliation(s)
- Les Sikos
- Language Science and Technology, Saarland University, Saarbrücken, Germany
| | - Katharina Stein
- Language Science and Technology, Saarland University, Saarbrücken, Germany
| | - Maria Staudte
- Language Science and Technology, Saarland University, Saarbrücken, Germany
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Staudte M, Ankener C, Drenhaus H, Crocker MW. Graded expectations in visually situated comprehension: Costs and benefits as indexed by the N400. Psychon Bull Rev 2021; 28:624-631. [PMID: 33269463 PMCID: PMC8062388 DOI: 10.3758/s13423-020-01827-3] [Citation(s) in RCA: 3] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Accepted: 10/11/2020] [Indexed: 11/25/2022]
Abstract
Recently, Ankener et al. (Frontiers in Psychology, 9, 2387, 2018) presented a visual world study which combined both attention and pupillary measures to demonstrate that anticipating a target results in lower effort to integrate that target (noun). However, they found no indication that the anticipatory processes themselves, i.e., the reduction of uncertainty about upcoming referents, results in processing effort (cf. Linzen and Jaeger, Cognitive Science, 40(6), 1382-1411, 2016). In contrast, Maess et al. (Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, 10, 1-11, 2016) found that more constraining verbs elicited a higher N400 amplitude than unconstraining verbs. The aim of the present study was therefore twofold: Firstly, we examined whether the graded ICA effect, which was previously found on the noun as a result of a likelihood manipulation, replicates in ERP measures. Secondly, we set out to investigate whether the processes leading to the generation of expectations (derived during verb and scene processing) induce an N400 modulation. Our results confirm that visual context is combined with the verb's meaning to establish expectations about upcoming nouns and that these expectations affect the retrieval of the upcoming noun (modulated N400 on the noun). Importantly, however, we find no evidence for different costs in generating more or less specific expectations for upcoming nouns. Thus, the benefits of generating expectations are not associated with any costs in situated language comprehension.
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Affiliation(s)
- Maria Staudte
- Department of Language Science and Technology, Saarland University Saarbrücken, Saarbrücken, Germany
| | - Christine Ankener
- Department of Language Science and Technology, Saarland University Saarbrücken, Saarbrücken, Germany
| | - Heiner Drenhaus
- Department of Language Science and Technology, Saarland University Saarbrücken, Saarbrücken, Germany
| | - Matthew W. Crocker
- Department of Language Science and Technology, Saarland University Saarbrücken, Saarbrücken, Germany
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Abstract
How is human social intelligence engaged in the course of ordinary conversation? Standard models of conversation hold that language production and comprehension are guided by constant, rapid inferences about what other agents have in mind. However, the idea that mindreading is a pervasive feature of conversation is challenged by a large body of evidence suggesting that mental state attribution is slow and taxing, at least when it deals with propositional attitudes such as beliefs. Belief attributions involve contents that are decoupled from our own primary representation of reality; handling these contents has come to be seen as the signature of full-blown human mindreading. However, mindreading in cooperative communication does not necessarily demand decoupling. We argue for a theoretical and empirical turn towards "factive" forms of mentalizing here. In factive mentalizing, we monitor what others do or do not know, without generating decoupled representations. We propose a model of the representational, cognitive, and interactive components of factive mentalizing, a model that aims to explain efficient real-time monitoring of epistemic states in conversation. After laying out this account, we articulate a more limited set of conversational functions for nonfactive forms of mentalizing, including contexts of meta-linguistic repair, deception, and argumentation. We conclude with suggestions for further research into the roles played by factive versus nonfactive forms of mentalizing in conversation.
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Wiggins MW. A behaviour-based approach to the assessment of cue utilisation: implications for situation assessment and performance. THEORETICAL ISSUES IN ERGONOMICS SCIENCE 2020. [DOI: 10.1080/1463922x.2020.1758828] [Citation(s) in RCA: 5] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 10/24/2022]
Affiliation(s)
- Mark W. Wiggins
- Centre for Elite Performance, Expertise, and Training, Macquarie University, North Ryde, NSW, Australia
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Hanna JE, Brennan SE, Savietta KJ. Eye Gaze and Head Orientation Cues in Face-to-Face Referential Communication. DISCOURSE PROCESSES 2019. [DOI: 10.1080/0163853x.2019.1675467] [Citation(s) in RCA: 2] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.4] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 10/25/2022]
Affiliation(s)
- Joy E. Hanna
- Department of Psychological Sciences, Daemen College
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Rational over-specification in visually-situated comprehension and production. JOURNAL OF CULTURAL COGNITIVE SCIENCE 2019. [DOI: 10.1007/s41809-019-00032-6] [Citation(s) in RCA: 10] [Impact Index Per Article: 2.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 10/26/2022]
Abstract
Abstract
Contrary to the Gricean maxims of quantity (Grice, in: Cole, Morgan (eds) Syntax and semantics: speech acts, vol III, pp 41–58, Academic Press, New York, 1975), it has been repeatedly shown that speakers often include redundant information in their utterances (over-specifications). Previous research on referential communication has long debated whether this redundancy is the result of speaker-internal or addressee-oriented processes, while it is also unclear whether referential redundancy hinders or facilitates comprehension. We present an information-theoretic explanation for the use of over-specification in visually-situated communication, which quantifies the amount of uncertainty regarding the referent as entropy (Shannon in Bell Syst Tech J 5:10, 10.1002/j.1538-7305.1948.tb01338.x, 1948). Examining both the comprehension and production of over-specifications, we present evidence that (a) listeners’ processing is facilitated by the use of redundancy as well as by a greater reduction of uncertainty early on in the utterance, and (b) that at least for some speakers, listeners’ processing concerns influence their encoding of over-specifications: Speakers were more likely to use redundant adjectives when these adjectives reduced entropy to a higher degree than adjectives necessary for target identification.
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Abstract
Aimed at the problem of how to objectively obtain the threshold of a user’s cognitive load in a virtual reality interactive system, a method for user cognitive load quantification based on an eye movement experiment is proposed. Eye movement data were collected in the virtual reality interaction process by using an eye movement instrument. Taking the number of fixation points, the average fixation duration, the average saccade length, and the number of the first mouse clicking fixation points as the independent variables, and the number of backward-looking times and the value of user cognitive load as the dependent variables, a cognitive load evaluation model was established based on the probabilistic neural network. The model was validated by using eye movement data and subjective cognitive load data. The results show that the absolute error and relative mean square error were 6.52%–16.01% and 6.64%–23.21%, respectively. Therefore, the model is feasible.
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Ankener CS, Sekicki M, Staudte M. The Influence of Visual Uncertainty on Word Surprisal and Processing Effort. Front Psychol 2019; 9:2387. [PMID: 30618905 PMCID: PMC6302025 DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2018.02387] [Citation(s) in RCA: 8] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.6] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 05/18/2018] [Accepted: 11/13/2018] [Indexed: 11/24/2022] Open
Abstract
A word’s predictability or surprisal, as determined by cloze probabilities or language models (Frank, 2013) is related to processing effort, in that less expected words take more effort to process (Hale, 2001; Lau et al., 2013). A word’s surprisal, however, may also be influenced by the non-linguistic context, such as visual cues: In the visual world paradigm (VWP), anticipatory eye movements suggest that listeners exploit the scene to predict what will be mentioned next (Altmann and Kamide, 1999). How visual context affects surprisal and processing effort, however, remains unclear. Here, we present a series of four studies providing evidence on how visually-determined probabilistic expectations for a spoken target word, as indicated by anticipatory eye movements, predict graded processing effort for that word, as assessed by a pupillometric measure (the Index of Cognitive Activity, ICA). These findings are a clear and robust demonstration that the non-linguistic context can immediately influence both lexical expectations, and surprisal-based processing effort.
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Affiliation(s)
- Christine S Ankener
- Department of Language Science and Technology, Saarland University, Saarbrücken, Germany
| | - Mirjana Sekicki
- Department of Language Science and Technology, Saarland University, Saarbrücken, Germany
| | - Maria Staudte
- Department of Language Science and Technology, Saarland University, Saarbrücken, Germany
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