Under many conditions auditory input interferes with visual processing, especially early in development. These interference effects are often more pronounced when the auditory input is unfamiliar than when the auditory input is familiar (e.g. human speech, pre-familiarized sounds, etc.). The current study extends this research by examining how…

Two experiments investigated whether motion metaphors for time affected the perception of spatial motion. Participants read sentences either about literal motion through space or metaphorical motion through time written from either the ego-moving or object-moving perspective. Each sentence was followed by a cartoon clip. Smiley-moving clips showed…

It has been a matter of debate whether the specifically human capacity to process syntactic information draws on attentional resources or is automatic. To address this issue, we recorded neurophysiological indicators of syntactic processing to spoken sentences while subjects were distracted to different degrees from language processing. Subjects…

We present two ERP studies on the processing of word order variations in Japanese, a language that is suited to shedding further light on the implications of word order freedom for neurocognitive approaches to sentence comprehension. Experiment 1 used auditory presentation and revealed that initial accusative objects elicit increased processing…

The effects of lexical context on phonological processing are pervasive and there have been indications that such effects may be modulated by attention. However, attentional modulation in speech processing is neither well documented nor well understood. Experiment 1 demonstrated attentional modulation of lexical facilitation of speech sound…

Prior eye-tracking studies of spoken sentence comprehension have found that the presence of two potential referents, e.g., two frogs, can guide listeners toward a Modifier interpretation of "Put the frog on the napkin..." despite strong lexical biases associated with "Put" that support a Goal interpretation of the temporary ambiguity (Tanenhaus,…

In two experiments, we explored the time course and flexibility with which speakers' eye gaze can be used to disambiguate referring expressions in spontaneous dialog. Naive director/matcher pairs were separated by a barrier and saw each other's faces but not their displays. Displays held identical objects, with the matcher's arranged in a row and…

The placement of laughter in the speech of hearing individuals is not random but "punctuates" speech, occurring during pauses and at phrase boundaries where punctuation would be placed in a transcript of a conversation. For speakers, language is dominant in the competition for the vocal tract since laughter seldom interrupts spoken phrases. For…

A large battery of reading related skills were orally administered to 111 4-year old and 118 5-year old Korean kindergartners, who were also tested on reading of regular and irregular Korean Hangul words. In regression equations, speeded naming was uniquely associated with reading of both regular and irregular words. In contrast, only the three…

Spatial reasoning or locating objects in a spatial space has long been an important area of research in cognitive science because analyzing space categorically and finding objects is a fundamental act of mental perception and cognition. Premise integration in tasks of spatial reasoning has recently received considerable research attention. This is…

Discusses research which provides evidence that an adult's vocabulary may be segmented into specific categories that can be disrupted "highly selectively" when the brain is injured. (JN)

Proposes a method for processing datasets that show whether or not each of several patients was impaired on each of several tests, and expressing conclusions about them. Advantages are that results from the patterns of impairment alone are shown, uninfluenced by theories, previous empirical work, knowledge of lesions, or ideas about what the tests…

Describes lexical influences on selective adaptation using words with ambiguous phonemes as adapters. (Author/VWL)

Why females generally perform better on language tasks than males is unknown. Sex differences were here identified in children (ages 9-15) across two linguistic tasks for words presented in two modalities. Bilateral activation in the inferior frontal and superior temporal gyri and activation in the left fusiform gyrus of girls was greater than in…

In this article we investigate the effects of first language (L1) on second language (L2) neural processing for two grammatical constructions (verbal domain dependency and grammatical gender), focusing on the event-related potential P600 effect, which has been found in both L1 and L2 processing. Native Dutch speakers showed a P600 effect for both…