1
|
Johns BT. Determining the Relativity of Word Meanings Through the Construction of Individualized Models of Semantic Memory. Cogn Sci 2024; 48:e13413. [PMID: 38402448 DOI: 10.1111/cogs.13413] [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: 09/06/2022] [Revised: 11/11/2023] [Accepted: 01/27/2024] [Indexed: 02/26/2024]
Abstract
Distributional models of lexical semantics are capable of acquiring sophisticated representations of word meanings. The main theoretical insight provided by these models is that they demonstrate the systematic connection between the knowledge that people acquire and the experience that they have with the natural language environment. However, linguistic experience is inherently variable and differs radically across people due to demographic and cultural variables. Recently, distributional models have been used to examine how word meanings vary across languages and it was found that there is considerable variability in the meanings of words across languages for most semantic categories. The goal of this article is to examine how variable word meanings are across individual language users within a single language. This was accomplished by assembling 500 individual user corpora attained from the online forum Reddit. Each user corpus ranged between 3.8 and 32.3 million words each, and a count-based distributional framework was used to extract word meanings for each user. These representations were then used to estimate the semantic alignment of word meanings across individual language users. It was found that there are significant levels of relativity in word meanings across individuals, and these differences are partially explained by other psycholinguistic factors, such as concreteness, semantic diversity, and social aspects of language usage. These results point to word meanings being fundamentally relative and contextually fluid, with this relativeness being related to the individualized nature of linguistic experience.
Collapse
|
2
|
Gullifer JW, Pivneva I, Whitford V, Sheikh NA, Titone D. Bilingual Language Experience and Its Effect on Conflict Adaptation in Reactive Inhibitory Control Tasks. Psychol Sci 2023; 34:238-251. [PMID: 36454726 DOI: 10.1177/09567976221113764] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 12/03/2022] Open
Abstract
We used machine-learning techniques to assess interactions between language and cognitive systems related to inhibitory control and conflict adaptation in reactive control tasks. We built theoretically driven candidate models of Simon and Number Stroop task data (N = 777 adult bilinguals ages 18-43 years living in Montréal, Canada) that differed in whether bilingual experience interacted with inhibitory control, including two forms of conflict adaptation: shorter term sequential congruency effects and longer term trial order effects. Models with continuous aspects of bilingual experience provided signal in predicting new, unmodeled data. Specifically, mixed language usage predicted trial order adaptation to conflict. This effect was restricted to Number Stroop, which overtly involves linguistic or symbolic information and relatively higher language- and response-related uncertainty. These results suggest that bilingual experience adaptively tunes aspects of the control system and offers a novel integrative modeling approach that can be used to pursue other complex individual difference questions within the psychological sciences.
Collapse
Affiliation(s)
- Jason W Gullifer
- Department of Psychology, McGill University.,Centre for Research on Brain, Language and Music, McGill University
| | - Irina Pivneva
- Department of Psychology, McGill University.,Centre for Research on Brain, Language and Music, McGill University
| | - Veronica Whitford
- Centre for Research on Brain, Language and Music, McGill University.,Department of Psychology, University of New Brunswick
| | - Naveed A Sheikh
- Department of Psychology, McGill University.,Centre for Research on Brain, Language and Music, McGill University
| | - Debra Titone
- Department of Psychology, McGill University.,Centre for Research on Brain, Language and Music, McGill University
| |
Collapse
|
3
|
Tiv M, O'Regan E, Titone D. The role of mentalizing capacity and ecological language diversity on irony comprehension in bilingual adults. Mem Cognit 2023; 51:253-272. [PMID: 36002643 PMCID: PMC9402273 DOI: 10.3758/s13421-022-01349-4] [Citation(s) in RCA: 1] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Accepted: 07/20/2022] [Indexed: 01/11/2023]
Abstract
Diverse bilingual experiences have implications for language comprehension, including pragmatic elements such as verbal irony. Irony comprehension is shaped by an interplay of linguistic, cognitive, and social factors, including individual differences in bilingual experience. We examined the relationship between individual differences related to bilingualism, specifically, the capacity to understand others' mental states and ambient exposure to language diversity, on irony comprehension. We tested 54 healthy bilingual adults, living in a linguistically diverse region-Montréal, Canada-on an irony comprehension task. This task involved reading positive and negative short stories that concluded with an ironic or literal statement, which were rated on appropriateness and perceived irony. While both irony forms were rated as less appropriate and more ironic than literal statements, ironic criticisms (following a negative context) were rated as more appropriate and higher in perceived irony than ironic compliments (following a positive context). As expected, these ratings varied as a function of individual differences in mentalizing and neighborhood language diversity. Greater mentalizing patterned with more appropriate ratings to ironic statements in high language diversity neighborhoods and with less appropriate ratings to ironic statements in low language diversity neighborhoods. Perceived irony ratings to ironic compliments increased with mentalizing as neighborhood language diversity increased. These results indicate that pragmatic language comprehension and its social cognitive underpinnings may be environmentally contextualized processes.
Collapse
Affiliation(s)
- Mehrgol Tiv
- Department of Psychology, McGill University, 2001 McGill College Ave., Montreal, Quebec, H3A 1G1, Canada.
- Center for Economic Studies, Research and Methodology Directorate, U.S. Census Bureau, Suitland-Silver Hill, MD, USA.
| | - Elisabeth O'Regan
- Department of Psychology, McGill University, 2001 McGill College Ave., Montreal, Quebec, H3A 1G1, Canada
- Department of Orthopedics, Lund University, Lund, Sweden
| | - Debra Titone
- Department of Psychology, McGill University, 2001 McGill College Ave., Montreal, Quebec, H3A 1G1, Canada.
| |
Collapse
|
4
|
Kutlu E, Chiu S, McMurray B. Moving away from deficiency models: Gradiency in bilingual speech categorization. Front Psychol 2022; 13:1033825. [PMID: 36507048 PMCID: PMC9730410 DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2022.1033825] [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: 09/01/2022] [Accepted: 11/03/2022] [Indexed: 11/25/2022] Open
Abstract
For much of its history, categorical perception was treated as a foundational theory of speech perception, which suggested that quasi-discrete categorization was a goal of speech perception. This had a profound impact on bilingualism research which adopted similar tasks to use as measures of nativeness or native-like processing, implicitly assuming that any deviation from discreteness was a deficit. This is particularly problematic for listeners like heritage speakers whose language proficiency, both in their heritage language and their majority language, is questioned. However, we now know that in the monolingual listener, speech perception is gradient and listeners use this gradiency to adjust subphonetic details, recover from ambiguity, and aid learning and adaptation. This calls for new theoretical and methodological approaches to bilingualism. We present the Visual Analogue Scaling task which avoids the discrete and binary assumptions of categorical perception and can capture gradiency more precisely than other measures. Our goal is to provide bilingualism researchers new conceptual and empirical tools that can help examine speech categorization in different bilingual communities without the necessity of forcing their speech categorization into discrete units and without assuming a deficit model.
Collapse
Affiliation(s)
- Ethan Kutlu
- Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, University of Iowa, Iowa City, IA, United States,Department of Linguistics, University of Iowa, Iowa City, IA, United States,*Correspondence: Ethan Kutlu,
| | - Samantha Chiu
- Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, University of Iowa, Iowa City, IA, United States
| | - Bob McMurray
- Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, University of Iowa, Iowa City, IA, United States,Department of Linguistics, University of Iowa, Iowa City, IA, United States
| |
Collapse
|
5
|
Burke N, Brezack N, Woodward A. Children’s social networks in developmental psychology: A network approach to capture and describe early social environments. Front Psychol 2022; 13:1009422. [PMID: 36312073 PMCID: PMC9614093 DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2022.1009422] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 08/01/2022] [Accepted: 09/22/2022] [Indexed: 11/25/2022] Open
Abstract
Psychologists are interested in understanding how early social environments impact children’s behavior and cognition. Early social environments are comprised of social relationships; however, there have been relatively few tools available to quantify the depth and breadth of children’s social relationships. We harnessed the power of social networks to demonstrate that networks can be used to describe children’s early social environments. Descriptive data from American children aged 6 months–5 years (n = 280; 47% female, 56% White) demonstrates that network properties can be used to provide a quantitative analysis of children’s early social environments and highlights how these environments vary across development. Social network methodology will provide researchers with a comprehensive picture of children’s early social experiences and improve studies exploring individual differences.
Collapse
Affiliation(s)
- Nicole Burke
- Department of Psychology, New York University, New York, NY, United States
- Department of Psychology, University of Chicago, Chicago, IL, United States
- *Correspondence: Nicole Burke,
| | - Natalie Brezack
- Department of Psychology, University of Chicago, Chicago, IL, United States
| | - Amanda Woodward
- Department of Psychology, University of Chicago, Chicago, IL, United States
| |
Collapse
|
6
|
Sanches de Oliveira G, Bullock Oliveira M. Bilingualism is always cognitively advantageous, but this doesn't mean what you think it means. Front Psychol 2022; 13:867166. [PMID: 36051209 PMCID: PMC9426683 DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2022.867166] [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: 01/31/2022] [Accepted: 07/07/2022] [Indexed: 11/24/2022] Open
Abstract
For decades now a research question has firmly established itself as a staple of psychological and neuroscientific investigations on language, namely the question of whether and how bilingualism is cognitively beneficial, detrimental or neutral. As more and more studies appear every year, it seems as though the research question itself is firmly grounded and can be answered if only we use the right experimental manipulations and subject the data to the right analysis methods and interpretive lens. In this paper we propose that, rather than merely improving prior methods in the pursuit of evidence in one direction or another, we would do well to carefully consider whether the research question itself is as firmly grounded as it might appear to be. We identify two bodies of research that suggest the research question to be highly problematic. In particular, drawing from work in sociolinguistics and in embodied cognitive science, we argue that the research question of whether bilingualism is cognitively advantageous or not is based on problematic assumptions about language and cognition. Once these assumptions are addressed head on, a straightforward answer to the question arises, but the question itself comes to seem to be a poor starting point for research. After examining why this is so, we conclude by exploring some implications for future research.
Collapse
Affiliation(s)
| | - Maggie Bullock Oliveira
- Faculty of Social and Cultural Sciences, European University Viadrina, Frankfurt Oder, Germany
| |
Collapse
|
7
|
Kutlu E, Tiv M, Wulff S, Titone D. Does race impact speech perception? An account of accented speech in two different multilingual locales. Cogn Res Princ Implic 2022; 7:7. [PMID: 35089448 PMCID: PMC8799814 DOI: 10.1186/s41235-022-00354-0] [Citation(s) in RCA: 8] [Impact Index Per Article: 4.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 03/11/2021] [Accepted: 01/02/2022] [Indexed: 11/10/2022] Open
Abstract
Upon hearing someone's speech, a listener can access information such as the speaker's age, gender identity, socioeconomic status, and their linguistic background. However, an open question is whether living in different locales modulates how listeners use these factors to assess speakers' speech. Here, an audio-visual test was used to measure whether listeners' accentedness judgments and intelligibility (i.e., speech perception) can be modulated depending on racial information in faces that they see. American, British, and Indian English were used as three different English varieties of speech. These speech samples were presented with either a white female face or a South Asian female face. Two experiments were completed in two locales: Gainesville, Florida (USA) and Montreal, Quebec (Canada). Overall, Montreal listeners were more accurate in their transcription of sentences (i.e., intelligibility) compared to Gainesville listeners. Moreover, Gainesville listeners' ability to transcribe the same spoken sentences decreased for all varieties when listening to speech paired with South Asian faces. However, seeing a white or a South Asian face did not impact speech intelligibility for the same spoken sentences for Montreal listeners. Finally, listeners' accentedness judgments increased for American English and Indian English when the visual information changed from a white face to a South Asian face in Gainesville, but not in Montreal. These findings suggest that visual cues for race impact speech perception to a greater degree in locales with greater ecological diversity.
Collapse
Affiliation(s)
- Ethan Kutlu
- Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, University of Iowa, Iowa City, USA
- Department of Linguistics, University of Iowa, Iowa City, USA
| | - Mehrgol Tiv
- Department of Psychology, McGill University, Montreal, Canada
| | - Stefanie Wulff
- Department of Linguistics, University of Florida, Gainesville, USA.
- Department of Language and Culture, UiT The Arctic University of Norway, Tromsø, Norway.
| | - Debra Titone
- Department of Psychology, McGill University, Montreal, Canada
| |
Collapse
|