Implicit Prosodic Priming and Autistic Traits in Relative Clause - - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

Implicit Prosodic Priming and Autistic Traits in Relative Clause Attachment

Sun-Ah Jun & Jason Bishop

jun@humnet.ucla.edu; jbishop@gc.cuny.edu

UCLA & CUNY

Speech Prosody 7, May 22, 2014, Dublin

Introduction: ambiguous RC attachment

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Low attachment Rel.Cl High attachment

• Ex. Someone shot the servant of the actress who was on the balcony.

e.g., English, Arabic, Romanian e.g., Spanish, Dutch, German, French

Rel.Cl. NP NP1 PP P NP

• f

servant NP NP1 PP P NP NP1

• f

actress

Introduction: The Implicit Prosody Hypothesis

• The attachment decision has been shown to be influenced by the

length of RC in various languages regardless of their attachment preferences.

(e.g., Fernandez & Bradley 1999 on Spanish, Quinn et al. 2000 on French, English, Arabic, Lovric et al. 2001 on Croatian, Hirose 1999

• n Japanese, Wijnen 2004 on Dutch, Vasishth et al. 2004 on Hindi,

Jun & Kim 2004 on Korean).

• ex. Someone shot the servant of the actress who was on the balcony.

Someone shot the servant of the actress who was on the balcony of the Hotel Romania.

=> suggests prosody is involved.

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Introduction: The Implicit Prosody Hypothesis

• The Implicit Prosody Hypotheses (IPH) (Fodor 1998, 2002)
• In silent reading, a default prosodic contour is projected onto the

sentence and influences syntactic ambiguity resolution. Other things being equal, the parser favors the syntactic analysis associated with the default prosodic contour for the construction.

• Claim: speakers interpret a prosodic break before an RC as a marker
• f a stronger syntactic boundary, which then prompts high attachment

NP1 NP2 RC

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//

How can we access “Implicit Prosody”?

• Is Implicit prosody the same as explicit or overt prosody?
• Fodor and her colleagues assumed that implicit prosody and

explicit prosody are equivalent, and examined the phrasing of explicit prosody (i.e., out-of-the-blue reading).

• But, recent production studies (e.g., Bergman et al. 2008, Jun

2010) suggest that the explicit prosody, in the form of out-of-the- blue reading, is not a suitable way to access implicit prosody.

• Can we manipulate implicit prosody and see its effects on

processing?

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• The effect of implicit prosody in RC attachment has been shown via

visual display (e.g., Swets et al. 2007, Traxler 2007, 2009) When the entire sentence “NP1 NP2 RC … ” is presented on a single line, e.g., The sister of the writer that had blonde hair arrived this morning.

English subj preferred low attachment and Dutch subj high attachment; However, English subj with low working memory capacity (WMC) preferred high attachment, suggesting (NP1 NP2)(RC) phrasing.

But, when the RC is presented on a separate line from the two head nouns, i.e., The sister of the writer that had blonde hair arrived this morning high attachment is preferred regardless of native language or WMC. => suggest the line break introduced an implicit prosodic boundary before RC and affected RC attachment.

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Can we observe implicit prosody at work?

Can we prime implicit prosody?

• Structural priming

: tendency to better process the current sentence because of its structural similarity to a previously experienced (“prime”) sentence (Bock 1986)

e.g., RC or PP attachment primes RC attachment

(Scheepers 2003, Locncke et al. 2011)

• Prosodic priming by explicit prosody

: Jun & Bishop (2013) Explicit phrase boundary before RC, i.e., (NP1 NP2) // (RC)  primes High attachment

but, syntactic structure could have primed the attachment

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Experiment: Priming by implicit prosody

Present study: manipulate an implicit prosodic break by a visual cue, a comma, (with no possible syntactic priming) and see if it primes implicit prosody of a new sentence, thus affecting RC attachment resolution.

• Restrictive relative clause vs. Non-restrictive relative clause
• with a single head noun

e.g., The newspaper reporter phoned the secretary who was annoyed.

The newspaper reporter phoned the secretary, who was annoyed.

• Non-restrictive RC (cued by a comma) is often produced with a big

prosodic boundary before RC (e.g., Watson & Gibson 2004)

Prediction: Non-restrictive RC prime sentences will increase high attachment

responses in the target S, compared to restrictive RC primes.

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method: stimuli

• 30 prime sentences, in two RC types
• - all had a single head noun and 4-6σ RC
• 15 Restrictive RC prime sentences (without a comma)
• ex. The newspaper reporter phoned the secretary who was annoyed.
• 15 Non-restrictive RC prime sentences (with a comma)
• ex. The newspaper reporter phoned the secretary, who was annoyed.
• 16 target sentences (4-6 σ RC with two head nouns, unbiased)

An RC attachment question for each target sentence

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method: stimuli (cont’)

Fillers

• 30 filler prime sentences
• 15 sentences without a comma
• 15 sentences with a comma
• A question for each filler prime sentence
• 28 filler sentences and a question about each sentence

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• 120 native speakers of American English
• UCLA undergrads

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method: Subjects

Procedures and experiment design

• Main experiment (15~20 min)

: subjects read 3 prime sentences of the same RC type on a computer screen, then read a target sentence, at their own pace, and answered an attachment question (i.e., choose NP1 or NP2). demo:

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Experiment: “demo 1” – prime 1

My uncle had to repair the bicycle tire, which my mom purchased.

“demo 1” – prime 2

The newspaper reporter phoned the secretary, who was annoyed.

“demo 1” – prime 3

The early sun sparkled on the phone’s propeller, which was broken.

“demo 1” – target

The lady mended the sleeve of the shirt which had been stained. What had been stained? A B the shirt the sleeve

“demo 2” – prime 1

The coach looked at the varsity players who were very happy.

“demo 2” – prime 2

The lady from London disliked the player who didn’t say much.

“demo 2” – prime 3

The article failed to mention the library which had just been built.

“demo 2” – target

Jennifer blackmailed the boss of the clerk who was dishonest. Who was dishonest? A B the boss the clerk

Procedures and experiment design (cont)

• For each experimental trial, the MATLAB script selected one of

the 16 target sentences and 3 prime sentences, all from the same RC type condition. The order of the primes was randomized for each trial.

• To prevent subjects from not reading prime sentences, any of the

three filler-prime sentences was randomly followed by a question.

• The prime-target pair was counterbalanced across subjects, and

so was the location of attachment answer (left or right)

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Procedures (cont’)

• Subjects also completed a task measuring individual differences

that are known to affect sentence processing

• Autism Spectrum Quotient (AQ) questionnaire (Baron-Cohen et al. 2001)

(10~15 min)

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The Autism Spectrum Quotient (AQ)

(Baron-Cohen, Wheelwright, Skinner, Martin & Clubley, 2001)

• A self-administered 50-item questionnaire for measuring “autistic”-like

personality traits in neurotypical (i.e., non-autistic) individuals

• 50 items, composed of 5 subscales (communication, social skills, attention

switching, attention to detail, imagination):

• ex. “I am often the last to understand the point of a joke.” (communication)

“I would rather go to a library than a party.” (social skill) “I frequently get so strongly absorbed in one thing that I lose sight of other things.” (attention switching)

• Higher AQ score = more prominent autistic traits

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• Why AQ score?

AQ has been shown to affect performance in experimental tasks requiring the integration of various types of linguistically-relevant information, including prosody (Stewart & Ota 2008, Xiang et al. 2011,

Bishop, 2012 & 2013)

=> Among AQ subscales, Communication subscale has often been found the most influential for tasks incorporating pragmatic information.

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Experiment: Data Analysis and Results

• Data collected: RC attachment choice, Response time (RT), AQ-scores
• Used mixed effects logistic regression to model the probability of subjects’

high attachment responses

• Random effects: subjects, items
• Fixed effects Predictors:

3 stimulus variables: RC type in the prime sentences Order of NPs in Answers Experimental trial 2 Subject variables: Gender AQ sub-scale scores Various Interactions

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40% 42% 44% 46% 48% 50% 52% 54% 56%

Restrictive Non-restrictive

% High Attachment Result 1: Prime type -- significant main effect (p=.035)

More %High attachment after non-restrictive RC prime sentences

(with a comma)

*

Result 2: Prime type X AQ-Comm: -- significant, p=.02

Subjects with higher AQ-Communication scores were significantly more influenced by the presence of a comma in prime sentences

(‘Low’ and ‘High’ includes subjects scoring 1 SD below and above the mean AQ-Comm score)

• 3%

0% 3% 5% 8% 10% 13% 15%

Low Mid High AQ-Communication Score

Change in % High Attachment

Result 3: AQ-Attention Switching -- main effect (p=.007)

Participants with high AQ-Attention Switching scores chose High Attachment significantly more often than those with lower scores. 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% Low Mid High

AQ-Attention Switching Score % High Attachment

Summary and discussion

• After reading primes with a comma before the RC, participants

more often choose high attachment for a novel RC sentence.

• This suggests that implicit prosody can prime implicit prosody
• f another sentence.
• It also demonstrates that silently-generated prosodic

boundaries influence attachment systematically— (note that the primes and targets have different syntactic structures, i.e., one vs. two head nouns) thus, supporting the IPH.

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Discussion – individual differences

• The results from the present study add to a growing body of work

showing that autistic traits in the neurotypical population are relevant to predicting sensitivity to prosody in sentence processing.

• Higher AQ-communication scores (indicative of more autistic-

like communication skills) were associated with a greater influence of an implicit prosodic boundary on the parsing of ambiguous RCs.

• why?
• “disruption” hypothesis: the prosodic juncture might have

disrupted processing, prompting closure at the location of boundary, thus making NP1, the head of NP, more active than NP2.

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Discussion

• Higher AQ-Attention-Switching scores (indicating poorer

attention-switching abilities) were associated with higher

• verall rates of high attachment.
• This relation resembles the one between attachment preference

and WMC (i.e., low WMC -> high attachment), possibly because both of these reflect similar general processing resources, i.e., difficulty in integrating multiple sources of information.

• cf. main effect of trial

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Conclusion

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• We have shown that implicit prosody can be primed by implicit

prosody of other sentence and affects RC attachment, supporting IPH.

• This study also suggests that speakers differ in their strategy to

process or incorporate prosodic information in sentence processing.

• Further research is needed to understand the processing

mechanism underlying the performance of individuals with more prominent autistic traits.

Acknowledgments also to:

Henry Tehrani, Katie Brown, Sewon Na, Hannah Kim & UCLA Faculty Research Grant

Thank you!

References (selected)

• Baron-Cohn, S., Wheelwright, S., Skinner, R., Martin, J., & Clubley, E. (2001) The Autism-Spectrum Quotient

(AQ): Evidence from Asperger Syndrom/High-Functioning Autism, Males and Females, Scientists and

• Mathematicians. J. of Autism and Developmental Disorders 31(1): 5-17.
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production study. Proceedings of Speech Prosody 2008, Campinas, Brazil.

• Bishop, J. (2012) Information structure, prosodic prominence and individual differences: Evidence from on-line

processing, a talk given at GLOW 35 Workshop on the production and perception of prosodically-encoded information structure. March 12

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presented at the 12th annual CUNY conference on human sentence processing, New York.

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Processes 25(7): 1201-1233.

• Jun, S.-A (2014) Typology: By Prominence Type, Word Prosody, and Macro-rhythm”, in Sun-Ah Jun (ed.)

Prosodic Typology II: The Phonology of Intonation and Phrasing. Oxford University Press.

References (cont.)

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Presented at the SUNY/CUNY/NYU Conference. N.Y.

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investigation of informativeness and pragmatic abilities. J. of Memory and Language 63:324-346.

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12th CUNY Conference, New York.

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Ferrreira & J. Henderson (Eds). The Interface of Language, Vision and Action: Eye Movements and the Visual World, 59-104, Psychology Press.

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Processes 11 (1/2): 135-163.

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sentence production. Cognition 89: 179-205.

• Scheepers, C., Sturt, P., Martin, C., Myachykov, A., Teevan, K., & Viskupova, I. (2011) Structural Priming Across

Cognitive Domains: From Simple Arithmatic to Relative-Clause Attachment. Pscychological Science.

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157-162.

• Swets, B., Desmet, T., Hambrick, D.Z., and Ferreira, F. (2007) The Role of Working Memory in Syntactic Ambiguity

Resolution: A Psycometric Approach. J. of Experimental Psychology: General. 136(1):64-81.

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Research Methods. 37(3): 498-505.

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Questions for Communication subscale

• 7. Other people frequently tell me that what I’ve said is impolite, even though I think it is

polite.

• 17. I enjoy social chit-chat.
• 18. When I talk, it isn’t always easy for others to get a word in edgeways.
• 26. I frequently find that I don’t know how to keep a conversation going.
• 27. I felt it easy to “read between the lines” when someone is talking to me.
• 31. I know how to tell if someone listening to me is getting bored.
• 33. When I talk on the phone, I’m not sure when it’s my turn to speak.
• 35. I am often the last to understand the point of a joke.
• 38. I am good at social chit-chat.
• 39. People often tell me that I keep going on and on about the same thing.

Autistic Spectrum Quotient questionnaire (Baron-Cohen et al. 2001)

Questions for Social Skill subscale

• 1. I prefer to do things with others rather than on my own.
• 11. I find social situation easy.
• 13. I would rather go to a library than a party.
• 15. I find myself drawn more strongly to people than to things.
• 22. I find it hard to make new friends.
• 36. I find it easy to work out what someone is thinking or feeling just by looking at their

face.

• 44. I enjoy social occasions.
• 45. I find it difficult to work out people’s intentions.
• 47. I enjoy meeting new people.
• 48. I am a good diplomat.

AQ questionnaire (cont)

Questions for Attention Shifting subscale

• 2. I prefer to do things the same way over and over again.
• 4. I frequently get so strongly absorbed in one thing that I lose sight of other things.
• 10. In a social group, I can easily keep track of several different people’s conversations.
• 16. I tend to have very strong interests, which I get upset about if I can’t pursue.
• 25. It does not upset me if my daily routine is disturbed.
• 32. I find it easy to do more than one thing at once.
• 34. I enjoy doing things spontaneously.
• 37. If there is an interruption, I can switch back to what I was doing very quickly.
• 43. I like to plan any activities I participate in carefully.
• 46. New situations make me anxious.

AQ questionnaire (cont)

Questions for Attention to Detail subscale

• 5. I often notice small sounds when others do not.
• 6. I usually notice car number plates or similar strings of information.
• 9. I am fascinated by dates.
• 12. I tend to notice details that others do not.
• 19. I am fascinated by numbers.
• 23. I notice patterns in things all the time.
• 28. I usually concentrate more on the whole picture, rather than the small details.
• 29. I am not very good at remembering phone numbers.
• 30. I don’t usually notice small changes in a situation, or a person’s appearance.
• 49. I am not very good at remembering people’s date of birth.

AQ questionnaire (cont)

AQ questionnaire (cont)

Questions for Imagination subscale

• 3. If I try to imagine something, I find it very easy to create a picture in my mind.
• 8. When I’m reading a story, I can easily imagine what the characters might look like.
• 14. I find making up stories easy.
• 20. When I’m reading a story, I find it difficult to work out the characters’ intentions.
• 21. I don’t particularly enjoy reading fiction.
• 24. I would rather go to the theatre than a museum.
• 40. When I was young, I used to enjoy playing games involving pretending with other

children.

• 41. I like to collect information about categories of things (e.g., types of car, types of bird,

types of train, types of plant, etc.).

• 42. I find it difficult to imagine what it would be like to be someone else.
• 50. I find it very easy to play games with children that involve pretending.