Coordinating Information in Sentence Processing

描述(由申请人提供)：这项研究监测视觉工作空间中物体的眼动，这与语言的产生和理解密切相关，因为参与者执行自然任务，如遵循产生和遵循指令，以及使用物体对话解决问题。目的是了解听者在理解语言时如何协调语言和非语言信息。协调信息是语言理解的核心，因为语言是以快速变化的瞬时声学事件的形式展开的。因此，听者在语言表达的多个层面上遇到歧义(例如，语音、词汇、句法、语义/话语模型等)。许多歧义是暂时的，因为随后的语言信息很快就解决了歧义；其他的通过求助于非语言语境--听到或阅读话语的特定环境--来解决；其他的通过求助于现实世界的知识来解决。歧义问题是普遍存在的：即使是明确的单词和短语也是暂时的歧义。然而，随着演讲的展开，理解者会迅速协调多个信息来源，以得出临时解释。这项研究的结果被用来开发和评估支持实时理解并能够解释主要经验现象的显性机制模型。这些模型对于理解正常的理解及其发展、发育障碍和可能由脑损伤引起的理解障碍至关重要。从该调查中产生的结果和方法也变得越来越与通知和评估基于计算机的口语对话系统相关。这些系统开始在与健康相关的领域找到应用(例如，使用口语与人类交互以回答询问的系统)，并正在开发提供建议的原型，例如，在协调对医疗紧急情况的快速反应方面。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): This research monitors eye movements to objects in a visual workspace, which are closely time-locked to language production and comprehension, as participants perform natural tasks, such as following producing and following instructions, and conversing to solve problems using the objects. The goal is to understand how listeners coordinate linguistic and non-linguistic information as they understand language. Coordinating information is central to language comprehension because speech unfolds as a rapidly changing transient acoustic event. As a consequence, listeners encounter ambiguities at multiple levels of linguistic representation (e.g., phonetic, lexical, syntactic, semantic/discourse model, etc.). Many ambiguities are temporary in that subsequent linguistic information soon resolves the ambiguity; others are resolved by appeal to non-linguistic context-the particular circumstances under which an utterance is heard or read; others by appeal to real-world knowledge. The ambiguity problem is pervasive: even unambiguous words and phrases are temporarily ambiguous. Yet, comprehenders quickly coordinate multiple sources of information to arrive at provisional interpretations as the speech unfolds. The results of this research are used to develop and evaluate explicit mechanistic models that support real-time comprehension and can account for the major empirical phenomena. These models are essential for understanding normal comprehension and its development, developmental disabilities, and comprehension impairments that may arise from brain injury. The results and methods that arise from this investigation are also becoming increasingly relevant to informing and evaluating computer-based spoken dialog systems. These systems are beginning to find applications in health-related domains (e.g., systems that interact with humans using spoken language to answer queries) and prototypes are under development that offer advice, for example, in coordinating rapid response to medical emergencies.