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

该奖项是作为NSF社会、行为和经济学博士后研究奖学金(SPRF)和语言学项目的一部分提供的。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职业生涯培养有前途的、早期职业博士水平的科学家。SPRF奖项包括在知名科学家的赞助下进行两年的培训，并鼓励博士后研究员进行独立研究。国家科学基金会致力于促进科学界所有阶层的科学家参与其研究方案和活动，包括那些来自代表性不足的群体的科学家；博士后阶段被认为是实现这一目标的专业发展的一个重要水平。每个博士后研究员都必须解决推动各自学科领域向前发展的重要科学问题。在宾夕法尼亚州立大学珍妮特·范·海尔博士的赞助下，这项博士后奖学金资助了一位研究方言变异的神经认知过程的早期职业科学家。每个人都会体验到与不同语言变体相关的语法多样性，也就是众所周知的方言。例如，在英语的许多变体中，无论句子的主语是单数还是复数(例如，他们很高兴)，都会使用“was”。大多数说英语的美国人都能认出这种模式，而且似乎能毫不费力地适应方言差异，但人们对这一过程如何在大脑中实时展开知之甚少。这个项目提供了第一批关于听者如何适应不同方言之间的语法差异的描述之一，建立在之前专注于不同口音和语言之间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，但他们的确切策略将取决于他们自己对某一种方言的经验。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，这些方法测量正在进行的大脑活动。参与者将听到各种说话者说出的具有规律化主谓一致的句子(他们很高兴)，并配上图片。不同语言背景的受试者对规则主谓一致反应的事件相关电位(ERPs)进行了比较。随后，单方言参与者将完成一项培训研究，以确定增加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，我们将测试听者如何适应说话者内部的方言变化，测试一种假设，即接触到这两种英语语言变体的听者会期望特定说话者以社交条件的方式在语法系统之间进行转换。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，它还可以向应用问题提供信息，这些问题涉及跨方言交流对弱势群体使用者构成负担的情况，例如教育系统，在教育系统中，弱势群体学生通常被期望用一种不熟悉的方言学习，以及刑事司法系统，在那里，主要群体使用者对弱势群体方言的理解较低，可能会导致有偏见的判断。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势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.