Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Conceptual Representation In Bilinguals: A Feature-Based Approach, Eriko Matsuki

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

A challenge for bilinguals is that translation equivalent words often do not convey exactly the same conceptual information. A bilingual exhibits a “semantic accent” when they comprehend or use a word in one language in a way that is influenced by knowledge of its translation equivalent. Semantic accents are well-captured by feature-based models, such as the Distributed Conceptual Feature model and the Shared (Distributed) Asymmetrical model, however, few empirical studies have used semantic features to provide direct evidence for these models. The goal of this thesis is to use a feature-based approach to identify conceptual differences in translation equivalent words …

A Memory-Based Explanation Of Antecedent-Ellipsis Mismatches New Insights From Computational Modeling, Daniel Parker

Arts & Sciences Articles

An active question in psycholinguistics is whether or not the parser and grammar reflect distinct cognitive systems. Recent evidence for a distinct-systems view comes from cases of ungrammatical but acceptable antecedent-ellipsis mismatches (e.g., *Tom kicked Bill, and Matt was kicked by Tom too.). The finding that these mismatches show varying degrees of acceptability has been presented as evidence for the use of extra-grammatical parsing strategies that restructure a mismatched antecedent to satisfy the syntactic constraints on ellipsis (Arregui et al. 2006; Kim et al. 2011). In this paper, I argue that it is unnecessary to posit a special class of …

The Cognitive Effects Of Late Bilingualism On Executive Functions: Lifelong Benefits, Rachel Casper

Intuition: The BYU Undergraduate Journal of Psychology

Late bilinguals, those who learn a language past the critical period, are often thought to not receive much benefits from their language learning in comparison to their early bilingual counterparts. A large of body of recent research suggests otherwise. Late bilinguals receive the same cognitive benefits as early bilinguals; these benefits are in higher levels of executive functions, specifically in inhibitory control and attentional switching. Higher levels of executive functions assist learners in improving their mental processing and cognitive health over the course of their lifetime. Aging bilinguals have greater cognitive health due to more white and gray matter density. …

Syntactic Processing And Cross-Linguistic Structural Priming In Heritage Spanish Speakers And Late Bilinguals: Effects Of Exposure To L2 English On Processing Illicit Structures In L1 Spanish, Ian Phillips

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This study examines real-time heritage language syntactic processing and tests the hypothesis that some commonly observed properties of heritage languages—apparent instability in grammatical knowledge and divergence from monolingual grammatical norms—can be attributed to cross-linguistic influence from the socially dominant language during online processing. To test this hypothesis, a novel cross-linguistic structural priming experiment based on self-paced listening was conducted with a group of heritage Spanish speakers and late Spanish-English bilinguals to test whether exposure to preposition stranding in English—a feature of core syntax that does not exist in Spanish—could facilitate processing of (ungrammatical) preposition stranding in a subsequently encountered Spanish …

De-Centering The Monolingual: A Psychophysiological Study Of Heritage Speaker Language Processing, Christen N. Madsen Ii

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Models of grammar, processing and acquisition are primarily built on evidence from monolinguals and adult learners of a second language. Heritage speakers, who are bilinguals of a societal minority language, acquire and use their heritage language in informal settings; but who live, work, and are educated in the societal majority language. The differences between heritage speakers and both monolinguals and adult second language learners are extensive: heritage speakers are not educated in the heritage language, their input is typically not from a prestige variety of the heritage language, and they are dominant in the majority language, using it more frequently …

Not All Phrases Are Equally Attractive: New Evidence For Selective Agreement Attraction Effects In Comprehension, Daniel Parker, Adam An

Arts & Sciences Articles

Research on memory retrieval during sentence comprehension suggests that similarity-based interference is mediated by the grammatical function of the distractor. For instance, Van Dyke and McElree (2011) observed interference during retrieval for subject-verb thematic binding when the distractor occurred as an oblique argument inside a prepositional phrase (PP), but not when it occurred as a core argument in direct object position. This contrast motivated the proposal that constituent encodings vary in the distinctiveness of their memory representations based on an argument hierarchy, which makes them differentially susceptible to interference. However, this hypothesis has not been explicitly tested. The present …

Dual Route Model Of Idiom Processing In The Bilingual Context, Tianshu Zhu

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

The dual route model predicts that idiomatic phrases show a processing advantage over matched novel phrases. This model postulates that familiar phrases are processed by a faster direct route, and novel phrases are processed by an indirect route. This thesis investigated the role of familiar form and concept in direct route activation. Study 1 provided norming evidence for experimental stimuli selection. Study 2 examined whether direct route can be activated for translated Chinese idioms in Chinese-English bilinguals. Bilinguals listened to the idiom up until the last word (e.g., draw a snake and add), then saw either the idiom ending (e.g., …

Russian Sentence Corpus: Benchmark Measures Of Eye Movements In Reading In Russian, Anna K. Laurinavichyute, Irina A. Sekerina, Svetlana Alexeeva, Kristina Bagdasaryan, Reinhold Kliegl

Publications and Research

This article introduces a new corpus of eye movements in silent reading—the Russian Sentence Corpus (RSC). Russian uses the Cyrillic script, which has not yet been investigated in cross-linguistic eye movement research. As in every language studied so far, we confirmed the expected effects of low-level parameters, such as word length, frequency, and predictability, on the eye movements of skilled Russian readers. These findings allow us to add Slavic languages using Cyrillic script (exemplified by Russian) to the growing number of languages with different orthographies, ranging from the Roman-based European languages to logographic Asian ones, whose basic eye movement benchmarks …

The Effect Of Idiomatic Language On Event Processing, Katrina Turick

Honors Scholar Theses

Mental representations of object states are necessary to keep track of changing objects in the world. When the object undergoes change and there are two representations, it creates competition between the object states. This is seen in sentences during which an object changes and is then subsequently referred to again (e.g. “The chef will chop the onion. And then, he will sniff the onion.”). When there is a larger degree of change between the states of the object, there is more competition, which is indicated by an increase in reading time when the object is referred to for the second …

Fresa Style In Mexico: Sociolinguistic Stereotypes And The Variability Of Social Meanings, Rebeca Martinez Gomez

Linguistics ETDs

This dissertation examines the flexibility in the social meanings of sociolinguistic stereotypes and how linguistic and non-linguistic information affect these meanings. The investigation consists of four empirical studies surrounding the case of fresas in Mexico –members of the upper class that are perceived as using a unique linguistic style.

Study 1 investigates the linguistic and non-linguistic characteristics associated with the fresa stereotype. Through a qualitative analysis of 64 webpages and 3 performances of the style, it is shown that fresasare perceived as the counterpart of another construct, nacos,and that their linguistic style is linked to English due to …

Reasoning With Pseudowords: How Properties Of Novel Verbal Stimuli Influence Item Difficulty And Linguistic-Group Score Differences On Cognitive Ability Assessments, Paul Agnello

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Pseudowords (words that are not real but resemble real words in a language) have been used increasingly as a technique to reduce contamination due to construct-irrelevant variance in assessments of verbal fluid reasoning (Gf). However, despite pseudowords being researched heavily in other psychology sub-disciplines, they have received little attention in cognitive ability testing contexts. Thus, there has been an assumption that all pseudowords work equally and work equally well for all test-takers. The current research examined three objectives with the first being whether changes to the pseudoword properties of length and wordlikeness (how much a pseudoword resembles a typical or …

Auditory Distraction On Visual Translation: Language Interference In Spanish-English Bilinguals, Violet A. Young

Digital Repository: Showcase of Undergraduate Research Excellence

No abstract provided.

Auditory Distraction On Visual Translation: Language Interference In Spanish-English Bilinguals, Violet A. Young

Digital Repository: Showcase of Undergraduate Research Excellence

No abstract provided.

The Modulatory Effect Of Expectations On Memory Retrieval During Sentence Comprehension, Luca Campanelli, Julie A. Van Dyke, Klara Marton

Publications and Research

Memory retrieval and probabilistic expectations are recognized factors in sentence comprehension that capture two different critical aspects of processing difficulty: the cost of retrieving and integrating previously processed elements with the new input words and the cost of incorrect predictions about upcoming words or structures in a sentence. Although these two factors have independently received substantial support from the extant literature, how they interact remains poorly understood. The present study investigated memory retrieval and expectation in a single experiment, pitting these factors against each other. Results showed a significant interference effect in both response time to the comprehension questions and …

The Way You Make Me Feel: Semantic Response Behavior Following A Status Prime In The Context Of Romantic Relationships, Robert James Konefal

Senior Projects Spring 2018

Intimate Partner Violence is a potential result of an imbalance within a romantic relationship that comes with grave consequences. Often, abusers find that their higher status position assists them in their ability to harm someone with a lower status position, which thereby leading to higher likelihood of aggression. It is currently unknown whether or not people who verbalize this status imbalance through semantic choice will have a higher likelihood of aggressing. The power of suggestion is a strong phenomenon. Not only can semantics be used in priming to affect various types of behavior such as emotional responses (Hansen & Shantz, …

The Unwilling Spectator: How Secondary Exposure To Trauma Through Journalism Affects Our Emotional Processing, Chanya Riddick

Senior Projects Spring 2018

Police-brutality, especially directed towards black people, has been a hot-button issue in the media for the past few years. With the constant exposure to the death and brutalization of black bodies, however, some people, especially black people, have reported experiencing emotional defects as a result of these reports. The current study aims to see how exposure to police-brutality related journalism affects implicit emotional processes, such as approach-avoidance motivations. More specifically, the current study seeks to see if the race of the person whom police-brutality is directed towards in these journalistic reports further influences these effects. From a college-aged population, black …

Cross-Modal Distraction On Simultaneous Translation: Language Interference In Spanish-English Bilinguals, Violet A. Young

Honors Undergraduate Theses

Bilingualism has been studied extensively in multiple disciplines, yet we are still trying to figure out how exactly bilinguals think. A bilingual advantage has been observed in various experimental studies, but also has not been observed in many other studies. A bilingual advantage has been shown in tasks using selective attention. These tasks study the effects of language interference, where two types of interference are observed: interlingual (between-languages) and intralingual (within one language). This study examined language interference in Spanish-English bilinguals, using an auditory-visual simultaneous translation experimental setup. 16 college English monolinguals and 17 college Spanish-English bilinguals were tested. The …

Listener's Perceptions Of Stuttering, Katie Lauren Smith

Linguistics Senior Research Projects

Stuttering is a neurodevelopmental disorder that causes disruptions in the normal flow of speech. Often, the disorder is accompanied by anxiety, stress, and discomfort in communication. Due to prominence of the disorder, stuttering can cause discomfort for both the listener and speaker. While some factors, such as level of fluency, familiarity with the disorder, and openness about the disorder can influence listener perceptions, the risk of negative stereotyping is high. In the following study, listener perceptions of stuttering are measured in a Christian, college-aged environment. 31 participants were asked to fill out a questionnaire about stuttering. Of the 31, 6 …

Linguistic Correlates Of The Quiet Ego In Narratives About The Self, Katherine Maurer

Masters Theses

Increasingly, research has shown that the drive to elevate the self and the excessive pursuit of self-esteem have negative effects on well-being and mental health. In addition, many of the defensive and aggressive tendencies seen in psychological research can be seen as efforts to defend and elevate the self. In contrast to these tendencies, the quiet ego construct describes a state of ego balance characterized by an inclusive sense of identity, perspective-taking, detached awareness (mindfulness), and growth orientation. The quiet ego and related qualities have been associated with many positive outcomes. A body of research using the Linguistic Inquiry and …