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Syntactic Processing (syntactic + processing)

Distribution by Scientific Domains

Life Sciences	60%

Selected Abstracts

Functional Neuroimaging Studies of Syntactic Processing in Sentence Comprehension: A Critical Selective Review

LINGUISTICS & LANGUAGE COMPASS (ELECTRONIC), Issue 1-2 2007
David Caplan
This article critically reviews recent papers that use functional neuroimaging to localize syntactic representations, Universal Grammar, parsing operations, and the working memory system that supports parsing. It is concluded that greater control over experimental conditions is needed for studies to provide convincing evidence about the neural basis for these cognitive functions. [source]

Spatial and temporal analysis of fMRI data on word and sentence reading

EUROPEAN JOURNAL OF NEUROSCIENCE, Issue 7 2007
Sven Haller
Abstract Written language comprehension at the word and the sentence level was analysed by the combination of spatial and temporal analysis of functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). Spatial analysis was performed via general linear modelling (GLM). Concerning the temporal analysis, local differences in neurovascular coupling may confound a direct comparison of blood oxygenation level-dependent (BOLD) response estimates between regions. To avoid this problem, we parametrically varied linguistic task demands and compared only task-induced within-region BOLD response differences across areas. We reasoned that, in a hierarchical processing system, increasing task demands at lower processing levels induce delayed onset of higher-level processes in corresponding areas. The flow of activation is thus reflected in the size of task-induced delay increases. We estimated BOLD response delay and duration for each voxel and each participant by fitting a model function to the event-related average BOLD response. The GLM showed increasing activations with increasing linguistic demands dominantly in the left inferior frontal gyrus (IFG) and the left superior temporal gyrus (STG). The combination of spatial and temporal analysis allowed a functional differentiation of IFG subregions involved in written language comprehension. Ventral IFG region (BA 47) and STG subserve earlier processing stages than two dorsal IFG regions (BA 44 and 45). This is in accordance with the assumed early lexical semantic and late syntactic processing of these regions and illustrates the complementary information provided by spatial and temporal fMRI data analysis of the same data set. [source]

Neural correlates of noncanonical syntactic processing revealed by a picture-sentence matching task

HUMAN BRAIN MAPPING, Issue 9 2008
Ryuta Kinno
Abstract It remains controversial whether the left inferior frontal gyrus subserves syntactic processing or short-term memory demands. Here we devised a novel picture-sentence matching task involving Japanese sentences with different structures to clearly contrast syntactic reanalysis processes. Using event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), activations under three main conditions were directly compared: a canonical/subject-initial active sentence (AS), a noncanonical/subject-initial passive sentence (PS), and a noncanonical/object-initial scrambled sentence (SS). We found that activation in the dorsal region of the left inferior frontal gyrus (dF3t) was enhanced more by the noncanonical processing under the PS and SS conditions than by the canonical processing under the AS condition, and this enhancement was independent of domain-general factors, such as general memory demands and task difficulty. Moreover, the left posterior superior/middle temporal gyrus (pSTG/MTG) showed more enhanced responses to object-initial sentences under the SS condition than to subject-initial sentences under the AS and PS conditions, which were not significantly affected by task difficulty. Furthermore, activation in the left lateral premotor cortex (LPMC) increased under the AS, PS, and SS conditions, in that order. It is possible that task difficulty affects the left LPMC, but the three distinct activations patterns suggest that these frontal and temporal regions work in concert to process syntactic structures, with their respective contributions dynamically regulated by linguistic requirements. Hum Brain Mapp 2008. © 2007 Wiley-Liss, Inc. [source]

Syntactic Priming Effects in Comprehension: A Critical Review

LINGUISTICS & LANGUAGE COMPASS (ELECTRONIC), Issue 10 2010
Kristen M. Tooley
Syntactic priming occurs when processing of a target sentence is facilitated following processing of a prime sentence that has the same syntactic structure (Bock, 1986 Cognitive Psychology, 18. 355,387). Syntactic priming has been widely investigated in production (Bock, 1986 Cognitive Psychology, 18. 355,387; Bock and Griffin, 2000 General. 129(2). 177,192; Cleland and Pickering, 2003. Journal of Memory and Language, 49. 214,230; Cleland and Pickering 2006. Journal of Memory and Language, 54. 185,198; Pickering and Branigan, 1998. Journal of Memory and Language, 39. 633,651; and others), but only relatively recently in comprehension (Arai et al. 2007. Cognitive Psychology, 54(3). 218,250; Ledoux et al., 2007. Psychological Science. 18(2). 135,143; and others). This article reviews the current literature on syntactic priming in comprehension and contrasts these findings to those in production. Critically, syntactic priming effects in comprehension are observed more often when prime and target sentences share a content word, whereas in production, these effects are often observed when there are no shared content words between the primes and targets. Possible explanations for the differing degrees of lexical dependency between syntactic priming effects in production and in comprehension are posed and include differences in task paradigms and stimuli, differences in time course and syntactic processing between the two modalities, and mechanistic differences. Implications from the reviewed literature are then considered in attempts at determining the most likely mechanistic explanation for syntactic priming effects in both comprehension and production. A residual activation account (Pickering and Branigan, 1998. Journal of Memory and Language, 39. 633,651), an implicit learning account (Bock and Griffin, 2000 General. 129(2). 177,192; Chang et al. 2006. Psychological Review, 113(2). 234,272), and a dual mechanism account (Tooley, 2009. Is Syntactic Priming in Sentence Comprehension Really Just Implicit Learning? Paper presented to the 22nd Annual CUNY Conference on Human Sentence Processing, Davis, March 26,28) are outlined. The dual mechanism account may prove more consistent with a wider range of the reviewed research findings. [source]