Journal of rehabilitation research and development
The Veterans Health Administration (VHA) is the largest integrated healthcare system in the world... more The Veterans Health Administration (VHA) is the largest integrated healthcare system in the world and provides care to approximately 20,000 multiple sclerosis (MS) patients. Here, we report that these MS patients are disproportionately more likely to be older, male, unemployed, and disabled with lower levels of education and financial resources when compared to veterans not receiving care within the VHA or to nonveteran MS patients. When comparing the VHA MS patients to a cohort of nonveteran MS patients matched for age, sex, and disability, we found that veterans receiving care within the VHA were equally likely to have received care from a neurologist and more likely to have received care from rehabilitation specialists and primary care physicians than nonveterans. Similarly, veterans in the VHA were more likely to receive therapy with certain symptomatic medications but were less likely to be treated with disease-modifying agents for MS (DMAMS) than nonveterans. When treated with...
The symptom of a garden path in sentence processing is an important anomaly in the input string. ... more The symptom of a garden path in sentence processing is an important anomaly in the input string. This anomaly signals to the parser that an error has occurred, and provides cues for how to repair it. Anomaly detection is thus an important aspect of sentence processing. In the present study, we investigated how the parser responds to unambiguous sentences that contain syntactic anomalies and pragmatic anomalies, examining records of eye movement during reading. While sensitivity to the two kinds of anomaly was very rapid and essentially simultaneous, qualitative differences existed in the patterns of first-pass reading times and eye regressions. The results are compatible with the proposal that syntactic information and pragmatic information are used differently in garden-path recovery.
We assume that comprehension is not a monolithic process. It is marked by a number of sub-stages ... more We assume that comprehension is not a monolithic process. It is marked by a number of sub-stages of processing which, if not fully modular, are at least sufficiently encapsulated that their individual contributions are readily discernable. The strongest form of this hypothesis has it that grammatical and non-grammatical information are handled by distinct processing mechanisms. Evidence supporting this supposition comes from divergent sources, including:
Given that meaning in language is conveyed by sequences of words occurring one at a time, questio... more Given that meaning in language is conveyed by sequences of words occurring one at a time, questions of timing in studies of sentence processing are inescapable. The modularity hypothesis (Fodor, 1983) generates predictions regarding the relative timing of the availability and use of various sources of information in the resolution of structural ambiguities. A fundamental tenet of the modularity hypothesis is that plausibility considerations do not influence the structure-building operations of the parser. The ...
Given that meaning in language is conveyed by sequences of words occurring one at a time, questio... more Given that meaning in language is conveyed by sequences of words occurring one at a time, questions of timing in studies of sentence processing are inescapable. The modularity hypothesis (Fodor, 1983) generates predictions regarding the relative timing of the availability and use of various sources of information in the resolution of structural ambiguities. A fundamental tenet of the modularity hypothesis is that plausibility considerations do not influence the structure-building operations of the parser. The ...
Journal of rehabilitation research and development
The Veterans Health Administration (VHA) is the largest integrated healthcare system in the world... more The Veterans Health Administration (VHA) is the largest integrated healthcare system in the world and provides care to approximately 20,000 multiple sclerosis (MS) patients. Here, we report that these MS patients are disproportionately more likely to be older, male, unemployed, and disabled with lower levels of education and financial resources when compared to veterans not receiving care within the VHA or to nonveteran MS patients. When comparing the VHA MS patients to a cohort of nonveteran MS patients matched for age, sex, and disability, we found that veterans receiving care within the VHA were equally likely to have received care from a neurologist and more likely to have received care from rehabilitation specialists and primary care physicians than nonveterans. Similarly, veterans in the VHA were more likely to receive therapy with certain symptomatic medications but were less likely to be treated with disease-modifying agents for MS (DMAMS) than nonveterans. When treated with...
ABSTRACT A central issue in the study of sentence processing is the manner in which various sourc... more ABSTRACT A central issue in the study of sentence processing is the manner in which various sources of information are used in resolving structural ambiguities. According to one proposal, the garden path model (e.g. Frazier & Rayner, 1982), perceivers are initially guided by strategies based solely on the structural properties of sentences. Another class of models, constraint satisfaction models, emphasise the influence of lexical properties in decisions among the alternative analyses of an ambiguous sentence fragment (e.g. Tanenhaus, Garnsey, & Boland,1991). In this paper, we explore the prediction of an alternative model, the referential theory (e.g. Crain &Steedman, 1985). The referential theory maintains that the relative complexity of discourse representations plays a key role in determining the perceiver's immediate parsing preferences. We present four experiments designed to weigh the influence of semantic/referential complexity and general world knowledge in the on-line resolution of two kinds of structurally ambiguous sentences. In eachexperiment,weexaminedpairsofsentencesthatwereidenticalexceptfor the alternation between the definite determiner THE and the focus operator ONLY. Two techniques were used to assess ambiguity resolution: word-byword reading and eye movement recording. The results indicate that semantic/referential principles are applied immediately in on-line ambiguity resolution and that these principles pre-empt general world knowledge. The use of world knowledge was found to depend on working memory capacity, whereas the resolution of ambiguity by means of semantic/referential principles appeared to be independent of memory resource. Taken together, the findings are interpreted as support for the referential theory of ambiguity resolution.
Findings from the literature on language development, dyslexia, and adult sentence processing pro... more Findings from the literature on language development, dyslexia, and adult sentence processing provide a vehicle for comparing two models of the symptom complex associated with agrammatism. One model contends that agrammatism represents a deficit in linguistic structures. The other model maintains that the linguistic behavior associated with agrammatism is the result of a limitation in language processing. To adjudicate between the models, the present paper examines one linguistic construction, the restrictive relative clause. The results of experimental investigations across several subject populations reveal parallel patterns of linguistic behavior on this construction. The findings favor the processing limitation account of the linguistic difficulties experienced by agrammatic aphasics in comprehending sentences with a restrictive relative clause.
Evidence is presented that eye-movement patterns during reading distinguish costs associated with... more Evidence is presented that eye-movement patterns during reading distinguish costs associated with the syntactic processing of sentences from costs associated with relating sentence meaning to real world probabilities. Participants (N = 30) read matching sets of sentences that differed by a single word, making the sentence syntactically anomalous (but understandable), pragmatically anomalous, or non-anomalous. Syntactic and pragmatic anomaly each caused perturbations in eye movements. Subsequent to the anomaly, the patterns diverged. Syntactic anomaly generated many regressions initially, with rapid return to baseline. Pragmatic anomaly resulted in lengthened reading times, followed by a gradual increase in regressions that reached a maximum at the end of the sentence. Evidence of rapid sensitivity to pragmatic information supports the use of timing data in resolving the debate over the autonomy of linguistic processing. The divergent patterns of eye movements support indications fro...
Given that meaning in language is conveyed by sequences of words occurring one at a time, questio... more Given that meaning in language is conveyed by sequences of words occurring one at a time, questions of timing in studies of sentence processing are inescapable. The modularity hypothesis (Fodor, 1983) generates predictions regarding the relative timing of the availability and use of various sources of information in the resolution of structural ambiguities. A fundamental tenet of the modularity hypothesis is that plausibility considerations do not influence the structure-building operations of the parser. The ...
We assume that comprehension is not a monolithic process. It is marked by a number of sub-stages ... more We assume that comprehension is not a monolithic process. It is marked by a number of sub-stages of processing which, if not fully modular, are at least sufficiently encapsulated that their individual contributions are readily discernable. The strongest form of this hypothesis has it that grammatical and non-grammatical information are handled by distinct processing mechanisms. Evidence supporting this supposition comes from divergent sources, including:
Journal of rehabilitation research and development
The Veterans Health Administration (VHA) is the largest integrated healthcare system in the world... more The Veterans Health Administration (VHA) is the largest integrated healthcare system in the world and provides care to approximately 20,000 multiple sclerosis (MS) patients. Here, we report that these MS patients are disproportionately more likely to be older, male, unemployed, and disabled with lower levels of education and financial resources when compared to veterans not receiving care within the VHA or to nonveteran MS patients. When comparing the VHA MS patients to a cohort of nonveteran MS patients matched for age, sex, and disability, we found that veterans receiving care within the VHA were equally likely to have received care from a neurologist and more likely to have received care from rehabilitation specialists and primary care physicians than nonveterans. Similarly, veterans in the VHA were more likely to receive therapy with certain symptomatic medications but were less likely to be treated with disease-modifying agents for MS (DMAMS) than nonveterans. When treated with...
The symptom of a garden path in sentence processing is an important anomaly in the input string. ... more The symptom of a garden path in sentence processing is an important anomaly in the input string. This anomaly signals to the parser that an error has occurred, and provides cues for how to repair it. Anomaly detection is thus an important aspect of sentence processing. In the present study, we investigated how the parser responds to unambiguous sentences that contain syntactic anomalies and pragmatic anomalies, examining records of eye movement during reading. While sensitivity to the two kinds of anomaly was very rapid and essentially simultaneous, qualitative differences existed in the patterns of first-pass reading times and eye regressions. The results are compatible with the proposal that syntactic information and pragmatic information are used differently in garden-path recovery.
We assume that comprehension is not a monolithic process. It is marked by a number of sub-stages ... more We assume that comprehension is not a monolithic process. It is marked by a number of sub-stages of processing which, if not fully modular, are at least sufficiently encapsulated that their individual contributions are readily discernable. The strongest form of this hypothesis has it that grammatical and non-grammatical information are handled by distinct processing mechanisms. Evidence supporting this supposition comes from divergent sources, including:
Given that meaning in language is conveyed by sequences of words occurring one at a time, questio... more Given that meaning in language is conveyed by sequences of words occurring one at a time, questions of timing in studies of sentence processing are inescapable. The modularity hypothesis (Fodor, 1983) generates predictions regarding the relative timing of the availability and use of various sources of information in the resolution of structural ambiguities. A fundamental tenet of the modularity hypothesis is that plausibility considerations do not influence the structure-building operations of the parser. The ...
Given that meaning in language is conveyed by sequences of words occurring one at a time, questio... more Given that meaning in language is conveyed by sequences of words occurring one at a time, questions of timing in studies of sentence processing are inescapable. The modularity hypothesis (Fodor, 1983) generates predictions regarding the relative timing of the availability and use of various sources of information in the resolution of structural ambiguities. A fundamental tenet of the modularity hypothesis is that plausibility considerations do not influence the structure-building operations of the parser. The ...
Journal of rehabilitation research and development
The Veterans Health Administration (VHA) is the largest integrated healthcare system in the world... more The Veterans Health Administration (VHA) is the largest integrated healthcare system in the world and provides care to approximately 20,000 multiple sclerosis (MS) patients. Here, we report that these MS patients are disproportionately more likely to be older, male, unemployed, and disabled with lower levels of education and financial resources when compared to veterans not receiving care within the VHA or to nonveteran MS patients. When comparing the VHA MS patients to a cohort of nonveteran MS patients matched for age, sex, and disability, we found that veterans receiving care within the VHA were equally likely to have received care from a neurologist and more likely to have received care from rehabilitation specialists and primary care physicians than nonveterans. Similarly, veterans in the VHA were more likely to receive therapy with certain symptomatic medications but were less likely to be treated with disease-modifying agents for MS (DMAMS) than nonveterans. When treated with...
ABSTRACT A central issue in the study of sentence processing is the manner in which various sourc... more ABSTRACT A central issue in the study of sentence processing is the manner in which various sources of information are used in resolving structural ambiguities. According to one proposal, the garden path model (e.g. Frazier & Rayner, 1982), perceivers are initially guided by strategies based solely on the structural properties of sentences. Another class of models, constraint satisfaction models, emphasise the influence of lexical properties in decisions among the alternative analyses of an ambiguous sentence fragment (e.g. Tanenhaus, Garnsey, & Boland,1991). In this paper, we explore the prediction of an alternative model, the referential theory (e.g. Crain &Steedman, 1985). The referential theory maintains that the relative complexity of discourse representations plays a key role in determining the perceiver's immediate parsing preferences. We present four experiments designed to weigh the influence of semantic/referential complexity and general world knowledge in the on-line resolution of two kinds of structurally ambiguous sentences. In eachexperiment,weexaminedpairsofsentencesthatwereidenticalexceptfor the alternation between the definite determiner THE and the focus operator ONLY. Two techniques were used to assess ambiguity resolution: word-byword reading and eye movement recording. The results indicate that semantic/referential principles are applied immediately in on-line ambiguity resolution and that these principles pre-empt general world knowledge. The use of world knowledge was found to depend on working memory capacity, whereas the resolution of ambiguity by means of semantic/referential principles appeared to be independent of memory resource. Taken together, the findings are interpreted as support for the referential theory of ambiguity resolution.
Findings from the literature on language development, dyslexia, and adult sentence processing pro... more Findings from the literature on language development, dyslexia, and adult sentence processing provide a vehicle for comparing two models of the symptom complex associated with agrammatism. One model contends that agrammatism represents a deficit in linguistic structures. The other model maintains that the linguistic behavior associated with agrammatism is the result of a limitation in language processing. To adjudicate between the models, the present paper examines one linguistic construction, the restrictive relative clause. The results of experimental investigations across several subject populations reveal parallel patterns of linguistic behavior on this construction. The findings favor the processing limitation account of the linguistic difficulties experienced by agrammatic aphasics in comprehending sentences with a restrictive relative clause.
Evidence is presented that eye-movement patterns during reading distinguish costs associated with... more Evidence is presented that eye-movement patterns during reading distinguish costs associated with the syntactic processing of sentences from costs associated with relating sentence meaning to real world probabilities. Participants (N = 30) read matching sets of sentences that differed by a single word, making the sentence syntactically anomalous (but understandable), pragmatically anomalous, or non-anomalous. Syntactic and pragmatic anomaly each caused perturbations in eye movements. Subsequent to the anomaly, the patterns diverged. Syntactic anomaly generated many regressions initially, with rapid return to baseline. Pragmatic anomaly resulted in lengthened reading times, followed by a gradual increase in regressions that reached a maximum at the end of the sentence. Evidence of rapid sensitivity to pragmatic information supports the use of timing data in resolving the debate over the autonomy of linguistic processing. The divergent patterns of eye movements support indications fro...
Given that meaning in language is conveyed by sequences of words occurring one at a time, questio... more Given that meaning in language is conveyed by sequences of words occurring one at a time, questions of timing in studies of sentence processing are inescapable. The modularity hypothesis (Fodor, 1983) generates predictions regarding the relative timing of the availability and use of various sources of information in the resolution of structural ambiguities. A fundamental tenet of the modularity hypothesis is that plausibility considerations do not influence the structure-building operations of the parser. The ...
We assume that comprehension is not a monolithic process. It is marked by a number of sub-stages ... more We assume that comprehension is not a monolithic process. It is marked by a number of sub-stages of processing which, if not fully modular, are at least sufficiently encapsulated that their individual contributions are readily discernable. The strongest form of this hypothesis has it that grammatical and non-grammatical information are handled by distinct processing mechanisms. Evidence supporting this supposition comes from divergent sources, including:
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