Postdoctoral Fellowship: SPRF: Neurolinguistic Mechanisms of Grammatical Processing across Different Dialects

该奖项是美国国家科学基金会社会、行为和经济科学博士后研究奖学金（SPRF）和语言学项目的一部分。SPRF计划的目标是为学术界、工业界或私营部门和政府的科学事业准备有前途的早期职业博士级科学家。SPRF奖励包括在知名科学家的赞助下进行为期两年的培训，并鼓励博士后进行独立研究。美国国家科学基金会寻求促进科学界各阶层的科学家，包括那些未被充分代表的群体的科学家，参与其研究项目和活动；博士后阶段被认为是实现这一目标的一个重要的专业发展阶段。每个博士后必须解决各自学科领域的重要科学问题。在宾夕法尼亚州立大学珍妮特·范·海尔博士的赞助下，这个博士后奖学金奖支持一位研究方言变异的神经认知过程的早期职业科学家。每个人都经历着与不同语言变体相关的语法多样性，也被称为方言。例如，在许多英语变体中，不管句子的主语是单数还是复数，“was”都会被使用（例如，“他们很高兴”）。大多数说英语的美国人都能识别出这种模式，并且似乎能毫不费力地适应方言差异，但人们对这一过程是如何在大脑中实时展开的知之甚少。这个项目提供了听众如何适应方言之间语法差异的第一个描述之一，它建立在之前专注于不同口音和语言的语言处理的神经认知研究的基础上。我们预测人们会根据他们听到的方言来调整他们对语法的期望，但他们确切的策略将取决于他们自己对特定方言的体验。为了验证这一假设，我们将使用神经认知（EEG）方法完成一系列实验，测量正在进行的大脑活动。参与者将听到由不同的演讲者讲的带有规则的主谓一致的句子（“他们很高兴”），并配有图片。本文将比较不同语言背景的被试对正规化主谓一致反应的事件相关电位。在此之后，单方言参与者将完成一项训练研究，以确定增加的接触如何影响对语法规则的实时神经认知调整。在最后一项研究中，我们将测试听众如何适应说话者的方言转换，测试这样一个假设，即接触两种英语语言的听众会期望给定的说话者以社会条件的方式在语法系统之间转换。这个项目将多样性，特别是语言多样性，置于人类认知理论的中心。此外，它可以为跨方言交流对少数族裔说话者造成负担的情况提供应用问题，例如教育系统，少数族裔学生通常被期望用不熟悉的方言学习，以及刑事司法系统，在这些情况下，占主导地位的说话者对少数族裔方言的理解较低可能导致偏见判断。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

This award was provided as part of the NSF Social, Behavioral and Economic Sciences Postdoctoral Research Fellowships (SPRF) and Linguistics programs. The goal of the SPRF program is to prepare promising, early career doctoral-level scientists for scientific careers in academia, industry or private sector, and government. SPRF awards involve two years of training under the sponsorship of established scientists and encourage Postdoctoral Fellows to perform independent research. NSF seeks to promote the participation of scientists from all segments of the scientific community, including those from underrepresented groups, in its research programs and activities; the postdoctoral period is considered to be an important level of professional development in attaining this goal. Each Postdoctoral Fellow must address important scientific questions that advance their respective disciplinary fields. Under the sponsorship of Dr. Janet van Hell at the Pennsylvania State University, this postdoctoral fellowship award supports an early career scientist investigating neurocognitive processing of dialect variation. Everyone experiences grammatical diversity associated with different language varieties, also known as dialects. For example, in many varieties of English, "was" is used regardless of whether the subject of the sentence is singular or plural (e.g., "They was happy"). Most speakers of English from the United States recognize such patterns and appear to adjust to dialect differences with minimal difficulty, but little is known about how this process unfolds in real time in the brain. This project provides one of the first accounts of how listeners adjust to grammatical differences between dialects, building from previous neurocognitive research focused on language processing across different accents and languages. We predict that people will adjust their expectations of grammar based on the dialect they hear, but their exact strategy will depend on their own experience with a given dialect. To test this hypothesis, we will complete a series of experiments using neurocognitive (EEG) methods that measure ongoing brain activity. Participants will hear sentences with regularized subject-verb agreement ("They was happy") spoken by a variety of speakers with accompanying images. Event-related potentials (ERPs) in response to regularized subject-verb agreement will be compared across participants with different linguistic backgrounds. Following this, monodialectal participants will complete a training study to determine how increased exposure affects real-time neurocognitive adjustment to grammatical rules. In a final study, we will test how listeners adjust to dialect shifts within a speaker, testing the hypothesis that listeners who are exposed to both English language varieties would expect a given speaker to shift between grammatical systems in socially conditioned ways. This project places diversity, particularly linguistic diversity, at the center of theorizing about human cognition. Moreover, it could inform applied questions regarding situations where cross-dialect communication poses a burden to minoritized speakers, such as the education system, where minoritized students are often expected to learn in an unfamiliar dialect, and the criminal justice system, where dominant speakers’ lower comprehension of minoritized dialects may contribute to biased judgments.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.