Doctoral Dissertation Research: The interaction of discourse status and memory retrieval in real time language processing

本论文研究项目探讨人类如何阅读和理解句子的认知基础。更具体地说，该项目将通过研究如何在话语语境中表示和处理不同类型的语言信息，推进语义学和语用学的语言学理论。这项实验研究的结果将有助于我们理解工作记忆与语言和心理语言学之间的相互作用，并可能用于行为营销和新闻等领域，在这些领域，理解一个人对修辞和话语结构的解释至关重要。 该项目还将丰富共同主要研究者的指导和管理技能，该项目由多个句子加工实验组成，将操纵话语状态不同的关系从句类型--同位关系从句（ARC）和限制性关系从句（RRC）--探讨工作记忆中语篇结构和信息的组织与维持。采用多种方法（自定进度阅读和眼动追踪）来评估关系从句类型对阅读成本的影响：实验1-5比较了ARC和RRC语境中的数字一致吸引效应;实验6-7研究了主语与宾语关系从句的加工成本;实验8-11研究了ARC和RRC之间的代词指代和预设消解。研究结果将有助于理解话语状态如何影响实时语言处理中的工作记忆提取，也将为推进与话语结构相关的语言学理论提供见解。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并被认为值得通过使用基金会的智力价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估来支持。

This dissertation research project explores the cognitive underpinnings of how humans read and comprehend sentences. More specifically, the project will advance linguistic theories in semantics and pragmatics by investigating how different types of linguistic information in a discourse context are represented and processed. Results from this experimental investigation will inform our understanding of the interplay between working memory and language and psycholinguistics, and will potentially be of use to fields such as behavioral marketing and journalism, where understanding one’s interpretation of rhetorical and discourse structure is of crucial importance. The project will also enrich the co-PI’s mentoring and managerial skills, and will provide undergraduate assistants with valuable research experience.The project is comprised of multiple sentence processing experiments that will manipulate relative clause types that differ in discourse status--appositive relative clauses (ARCs) and restrictive relative clauses (RRCs)--to investigate the organization and maintenance of discourse structure and information in working memory. Multiple methods (self-paced reading and eye tracking) are deployed to assess the impact of relative clause type on reading costs: Number agreement attraction effects in ARC and RRC contexts are compared in Experiments 1–5; processing costs for subject- versus object-relative clauses are investigated in Experiments 6–7; and pronominal reference and presupposition resolution across ARCs and RRCs is examined in Experiments 8–11. Findings will contribute to the understanding of how discourse status impacts working memory retrieval in real-time language processing, and will also provide insight for advancing linguistic theories related to discourse structure.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.