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Ryskin R, Gibson E, Kiran S. Noisy-channel language comprehension in aphasia: A Bayesian mixture modeling approach. Psychon Bull Rev 2025:10.3758/s13423-025-02639-z. [PMID: 39875783 DOI: 10.3758/s13423-025-02639-z] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Accepted: 12/22/2024] [Indexed: 01/30/2025]
Abstract
Individuals with "agrammatic" receptive aphasia have long been known to rely on semantic plausibility rather than syntactic cues when interpreting sentences. In contrast to early interpretations of this pattern as indicative of a deficit in syntactic knowledge, a recent proposal views agrammatic comprehension as a case of "noisy-channel" language processing with an increased expectation of noise in the input relative to healthy adults. Here, we investigate the nature of the noise model in aphasia and whether it is adapted to the statistics of the environment. We first replicate findings that a) healthy adults (N = 40) make inferences about the intended meaning of a sentence by weighing the prior probability of an intended sentence against the likelihood of a noise corruption and b) their estimate of the probability of noise increases when there are more errors in the input (manipulated via exposure sentences). We then extend prior findings that adults with chronic post-stroke aphasia (N = 28) and healthy age-matched adults (N = 19) similarly engage in noisy-channel inference during comprehension. We use a hierarchical latent mixture modeling approach to account for the fact that rates of guessing are likely to differ between healthy controls and individuals with aphasia and capture individual differences in the tendency to make inferences. We show that individuals with aphasia are more likely than healthy controls to draw noisy-channel inferences when interpreting semantically implausible sentences, even when group differences in the tendency to guess are accounted for. While healthy adults rapidly adapt their inference rates to an increase in noise in their input, whether individuals with aphasia do the same remains equivocal. Further investigation of comprehension through a noisy-channel lens holds promise for a parsimonious understanding of language processing in aphasia and may suggest potential avenues for treatment.
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Affiliation(s)
- Rachel Ryskin
- University of California, Merced, 5200 N Lake Rd., Merced, CA, 95343, USA.
- Health Sciences Research Institute at UC Merced, Merced, USA.
| | - Edward Gibson
- Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, USA
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Milligan S, Jaime Brunet M, Caliskan N, Schotter ER. Parafoveal N400 effects reveal that word skipping is associated with deeper lexical processing in the presence of context-driven expectations. Atten Percept Psychophys 2025; 87:76-93. [PMID: 39567455 DOI: 10.3758/s13414-024-02984-6] [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] [Accepted: 10/15/2024] [Indexed: 11/22/2024]
Abstract
Readers are able to begin processing upcoming words before directly fixating them, and in some cases skip words altogether (i.e., never fixated). However, the exact mechanisms and recognition thresholds underlying skipping decisions are not entirely clear. In the current study, we test whether skipping decisions reflect instances of more extensive lexical processing by recording neural language processing (via electroencephalography; EEG) and eye movements simultaneously, and we split trials based on target word-skipping behavior. To test lexical processing of the words, we manipulated the orthographic and phonological relationship between upcoming preview words and a semantically correct (and in some cases, expected) target word using the gaze-contingent display change paradigm. We also manipulated the constraint of the sentences to investigate the extent to which the identification of sublexical features of words depends on a reader's expectations. We extracted fixation-related brain potentials (FRPs) during the fixation on the preceding word (i.e., in response to parafoveal viewing of the manipulated previews). We found that word skipping is associated with larger neural responses (i.e., N400 amplitudes) to semantically incongruous words that did not share a phonological representation with the correct word, and this effect was only observed in high-constraint sentences. These findings suggest that word skipping can be reflective of more extensive linguistic processing, but in the absence of expectations, word skipping may occur based on less fine-grained linguistic processing and be more reflective of identification of plausible or expected sublexical features rather than higher-level lexical processing (e.g., semantic access).
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Affiliation(s)
- Sara Milligan
- Department of Psychology, University of South Florida, 4202 E. Fowler Ave. PCD 4118G, Tampa, FL, 33620, USA.
| | - Milca Jaime Brunet
- Department of Psychology, University of South Florida, 4202 E. Fowler Ave. PCD 4118G, Tampa, FL, 33620, USA
| | - Neslihan Caliskan
- Department of Psychology, University of South Florida, 4202 E. Fowler Ave. PCD 4118G, Tampa, FL, 33620, USA
| | - Elizabeth R Schotter
- Department of Psychology, University of South Florida, 4202 E. Fowler Ave. PCD 4118G, Tampa, FL, 33620, USA
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Kauf C, Kim HS, Lee EJ, Jhingan N, Selena She J, Taliaferro M, Gibson E, Fedorenko E. Linguistic inputs must be syntactically parsable to fully engage the language network. BIORXIV : THE PREPRINT SERVER FOR BIOLOGY 2024:2024.06.21.599332. [PMID: 38948870 PMCID: PMC11212959 DOI: 10.1101/2024.06.21.599332] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 07/02/2024]
Abstract
Human language comprehension is remarkably robust to ill-formed inputs (e.g., word transpositions). This robustness has led some to argue that syntactic parsing is largely an illusion, and that incremental comprehension is more heuristic, shallow, and semantics-based than is often assumed. However, the available data are also consistent with the possibility that humans always perform rule-like symbolic parsing and simply deploy error correction mechanisms to reconstruct ill-formed inputs when needed. We put these hypotheses to a new stringent test by examining brain responses to a) stimuli that should pose a challenge for syntactic reconstruction but allow for complex meanings to be built within local contexts through associative/shallow processing (sentences presented in a backward word order), and b) grammatically well-formed but semantically implausible sentences that should impede semantics-based heuristic processing. Using a novel behavioral syntactic reconstruction paradigm, we demonstrate that backward-presented sentences indeed impede the recovery of grammatical structure during incremental comprehension. Critically, these backward-presented stimuli elicit a relatively low response in the language areas, as measured with fMRI. In contrast, semantically implausible but grammatically well-formed sentences elicit a response in the language areas similar in magnitude to naturalistic (plausible) sentences. In other words, the ability to build syntactic structures during incremental language processing is both necessary and sufficient to fully engage the language network. Taken together, these results provide strongest to date support for a generalized reliance of human language comprehension on syntactic parsing.
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Affiliation(s)
- Carina Kauf
- Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA 02139 USA
- McGovern Institute for Brain Research, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA 02139 USA
| | - Hee So Kim
- Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA 02139 USA
- McGovern Institute for Brain Research, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA 02139 USA
| | - Elizabeth J. Lee
- Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA 02139 USA
- McGovern Institute for Brain Research, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA 02139 USA
| | - Niharika Jhingan
- Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA 02139 USA
- McGovern Institute for Brain Research, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA 02139 USA
| | - Jingyuan Selena She
- Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA 02139 USA
- McGovern Institute for Brain Research, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA 02139 USA
| | - Maya Taliaferro
- Department of Psychology, New York University, New York, NY 10012 USA
| | - Edward Gibson
- Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA 02139 USA
| | - Evelina Fedorenko
- Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA 02139 USA
- McGovern Institute for Brain Research, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA 02139 USA
- The Program in Speech and Hearing Bioscience and Technology, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA 02138 USA
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Zhan M, Chen S, Levy R, Lu J, Gibson E. Rational Sentence Interpretation in Mandarin Chinese. Cogn Sci 2023; 47:e13383. [PMID: 38073607 DOI: 10.1111/cogs.13383] [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: 06/14/2023] [Revised: 11/03/2023] [Accepted: 11/08/2023] [Indexed: 12/18/2023]
Abstract
Previous work has shown that English native speakers interpret sentences as predicted by a noisy-channel model: They integrate both the real-world plausibility of the meaning-the prior-and the likelihood that the intended sentence may be corrupted into the perceived sentence. In this study, we test the noisy-channel model in Mandarin Chinese, a language taxonomically different from English. We present native Mandarin speakers sentences in a written modality (Experiment 1) and an auditory modality (Experiment 2) in three pairs of syntactic alternations. The critical materials are literally implausible but require differing numbers and types of edits in order to form more plausible sentences. Each sentence is followed by a comprehension question that allows us to infer whether the speakers interpreted the item literally, or made an inference toward a more likely meaning. Similar to previous research on related English constructions, Mandarin participants made the most inferences for implausible materials that could be inferred as plausible by deleting a single morpheme or inserting a single morpheme. Participants were less likely to infer a plausible meaning for materials that could be inferred as plausible by making an exchange across a preposition. And participants were least likely to infer a plausible meaning for materials that could be inferred as plausible by making an exchange across a main verb. Moreover, we found more inferences in written materials than spoken materials, possibly a result of a lack of word boundaries in written Chinese. Overall, the fact that the results were so similar to those found in related constructions in English suggests that the noisy-channel proposal is robust.
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Affiliation(s)
- Meilin Zhan
- Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
| | - Sihan Chen
- Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
| | - Roger Levy
- Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
| | - Jiayi Lu
- Department of Linguistics, Stanford University
| | - Edward Gibson
- Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
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