Stronger Syntactic Alignment in the Presence of an Interlocutor

Investigating syntactic priming cumulative effects in MT-human interaction

Background

A question that deserves to be explored is whether the interaction between English language learners and the popular Google neural machine translation (GNMT) system could result in learning and increased production of a challenging syntactic structure in English that differs in word order between speakers first language and second language.

Methods

In this paper, we shed light on this issue by testing 30 Brazilian Portuguese L2 English speakers in order to investigate whether they tend to describe an image in English with a relation of possession between nouns using a prepositional noun phrase (e.g. the cover of the book is red) or re-use the alternative syntactic structure seen in the output of the GNMT (e.g. the book cover is red), thus manifesting syntactic priming effects. In addition, we tested whether, after continuous exposure to the challenging L2 structure through Google Translate output, speakers would adapt to that structure in the course of the experiment, thus manifesting syntactic priming cumulative effects.

Results

Our results show a robust syntactic priming effect as well as a robust cumulative effect.

Conclusions

These results suggest that GNMT can influence L2 English learners linguistic behaviour and that L2 English learners unconsciously learn from the GNMT with continuous exposure to its output.

TelePriming sentence production in aphasia

Background

The application of videoconferencing to the assessment and treatment of aphasia has been rapidly increasing; however, there is a need to develop treatments targeting sentence production in persons with aphasia (PWA) that can be delivered through videoconferencing. Structural priming has received recent attention as a potential training method for PWA. We investigated the feasibility and efficacy of a collaborative structural priming task delivered via the internet, TelePriming, in facilitating sentence production in PWA and healthy adults.

Method

In Study 1, young adults (YA), older adults (OA), and PWA participated in a collaborative dialogue-like priming task through videoconferencing, taking turns with an interlocutor (experimenter) to describe transitive action pictures with the goal of finding matching pictures. We measured whether participants produced more passive sentences to describe their picture after hearing their interlocutor produce passive compared to active sentences (primes). In Study 2, we compared the data from the OA and PWA of Study 1 (TelePriming) to different groups of OA and PWA, who completed the same priming task in person.

Results

All three groups showed robust priming effects in Study 1, producing more passive sentences to describe target pictures after hearing the experimenter produce passive versus active sentences. In Study 2, when controlling for demographic information (age, education) and aphasia severity, TelePriming resulted in larger priming effects for OA and PWA, compared to the in-person priming task. Survey results revealed that both OA and PWA experienced increased comfort and satisfaction with using technology following the task.

Conclusion

Interactive message-structure alignment processes remain largely intact in PWA, and the positive effects of structural priming in a collaborative communicative task are not diminished by remote delivery. The findings demonstrate the feasibility and validity of TelePriming in OA and PWA, laying experimental groundwork for future use of TelePriming in the assessment and treatment of clinical populations with limited access to face-to-face sessions.

What has social neuroscience learned from hyperscanning studies of spoken communication? A systematic review

A growing body of literature examining the neurocognitive processes of interpersonal linguistic interaction indicates the emergence of neural alignment as participants engage in oral communication. However, questions have arisen whether the study results can be interpreted beyond observations of cortical functionality and extended to the mutual understanding between communicators. This review presents evidence from electroencephalography (EEG) and functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) hyperscanning studies of interbrain synchrony (IBS) in which participants communicated via spoken language. The studies are classified into: knowledge sharing; turn-taking speech co-ordination; cooperation, problem-solving and creativity; and naturalistic discussion paradigms according to the type of interaction specified in each study. Alignment predominantly occurred in the frontal and temporo-parietal areas, which may reflect activation of the mirror and mentalizing systems. We argue that the literature presents a significant contribution to advancing our understanding of IBS and mutual understanding between communicators. We end with suggestions for future research, including analytical approaches and experimental conditions and hypothesize that brain-inspired neural networks are promising techniques for better understanding of IBS through hyperscanning.