Self-Organized Sentence Processing and Reading Ability

自组织句子处理和阅读能力

• 批准号: 7751890
• 负责人: Anuenue P Kukona
• 金额: $ 3.26万
• 依托单位: UNIVERSITY OF CONNECTICUT STORRS
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 财政年份: 2009
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2009-01-01 至 2011-12-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/7751890
• 关键词: Accounting; Adult; Behavioral Mechanisms; Biological Neural Networks; Cognition; Communities; Complex; Comprehension; Conceptions; Connecticut; Education; Eye; Failure; Feedback; Hand; Hearing; Human; Individual; Individual Differences; Intuition; Laboratories; Language; Level of Evidence; Linguistics; Measures; Mind; Modality; Modeling; Muscle Rigidity; Participant; Perception; Performance; Play; Population; Process; Psyche structure; Reader; Reading; Research; Research Project Grants; Role; Running; Source; Stimulus; Structure; Students; System; Systems Theory; Techniques; Testing; Time; Universities; Visual; Vocabulary; Writing; design; falls; flexibility; insight; language processing; lexical; novel; pressure; relating to nervous system; research study; self organization; skills; success; syntax; theories; trend; university student; young adult

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): When individuals read or hear language, they must construct a syntactic parse that connects the various words in a sentence together and allows the individual to comprehend the message. However, this process may not be as straightforward as intuition might imply. Self-organizing models of sentence processing claim that the mind spends significant amounts of time in states of partial aggregation, forming partially coherent parses that do not from a cohesive whole. This framework also predicts that interference from partially coherent syntactic structures plays a role in the comprehension difficulties of poor readers at the level of the sentence. The aim of the current research project is to examine the role of partial coherence in human sentence processing, and to investigate the role of partially coherent structures as a source of difficulty in poor readers. The current project uses the technique of Visual World eye tracking, in which participants hear language over headphones while looking at a visual scene. By measuring trends in the distributions of looks, we can figure out the process by which people make sense of the language in the context of the visual scene, and we can discover ways in which participants fail to reach states of complete coherence. We make systematic comparisons between stimuli presented in the spoken form versus the written form to understand how reading specifically may go awry. In certain designs, we measure reading times on individual words using Self-Paced reading, where readers see the words one at a time and push a button to move to the next word. In other designs, we first have participants read sentences, and then perform tasks involving visual scenes that test their comprehension of the language. The current project studies reading difficulty in individuals with a wide range of abilities, including young adults for whom difficulties with reading have been a hindrance to educational success. We believe that people plateau in states of partial reading success because the mind can fall into a state of gridlock. This project probes the circumstances under which such gridlock arises in the domain of reading as a step toward understanding individual and societal flexibility/rigidity generally.

描述（由申请人提供）：当个人阅读或听到语言时，他们必须构建一个语法分析，将句子中的各个单词连接在一起，并允许个人理解信息。然而，这个过程可能不像直觉暗示的那么简单。句子处理的自组织模型声称，大脑在部分聚合状态下花费大量时间，形成部分连贯的解析，而不是从一个连贯的整体出发。该框架还预测了部分连贯句法结构的干扰在句子层面上对阅读困难的不良读者的理解困难起作用。当前研究项目的目的是检查部分连贯在人类句子处理中的作用，并调查部分连贯结构作为贫困读者的困难来源的作用。目前的项目使用了视觉世界眼动追踪技术，参与者在观看视觉场景时通过耳机听到语言。通过测量表情分布的趋势，我们可以弄清楚人们在视觉场景的背景下理解语言的过程，我们可以发现参与者无法达到完全连贯状态的方式。我们对口头形式和书面形式的刺激进行了系统的比较，以了解具体的阅读是如何出错的。在某些设计中，我们使用自定节奏阅读来测量单个单词的阅读时间，读者一次看到一个单词，然后按下一个按钮移动到下一个单词。在其他设计中，我们首先让参与者阅读句子，然后执行涉及视觉场景的任务，以测试他们对语言的理解。目前的项目研究了不同能力的个体的阅读困难，包括那些阅读困难已经成为教育成功障碍的年轻人。我们认为，人们在部分阅读成功的状态下会停滞不前，因为大脑会陷入僵局。这个项目探讨了在阅读领域出现这种僵局的情况，作为理解个人和社会灵活性/刚性的一个步骤。