Does discourse priming change reference comprehension strategies?

你的经历如何影响你理解语言的心理策略？研究表明，人们会追踪他们的语言体验，例如，他们知道对“耳朵”的更常见的解释是作为身体的一部分，而不是一块玉米。但对于语言经验如何改变我们解读大块话语的方式，我们知之甚少。例如，语言理解的一个重要组成部分是解释指称。在《安娜看见莉兹》中。“她挥手了”，人们需要弄清楚“她”指的是安娜还是利兹。人们是否注意到指称模式的频率，并用它来解释歧义代词？最近的研究表明，他们可能会这样做。在我们的例子中，大多数人倾向于认为“她”指的是Ana，她是前一个从句的主语。但是，如果人们最近读了许多故事，在这些故事中，非主语被重新提到，比如当代词在语境中被话语参与者的性别所明确表达时（例如，Matt saw Lyn），这种对主语的偏见就会减弱。她挥手。)。这表明人们会根据上下文中最常见的参考模式来改变他们的策略。但研究人员并不确切知道这些偏见是如何习得的。例如，人们是对每个动词或动词类别分别学习偏见，还是假设参考频率可以跨句子类型进行概括？多少曝光是必要的，什么类型的曝光？拟议中的项目用成年人来测试这些问题。参与者阅读了大量的“启动”故事，这些故事显示一种类型的参考，例如，主题人物被重新提到，或者非主题人物被提到。关键的问题是，这是否会改变人们对模棱两可代词的解释方式，比如上面安娜/丽兹的例子中的“她”。所有的启动故事都使用明确的参考，例如在混合性别的故事中，所以代词的参考是明确的。第一组实验测试人们得出的概括类型，例如跨动词或动词类型，或基于句法和语义信息。第二组实验测试学习所需的条件，例如所需输入的数量或类型。本项目是首批研究语篇结构频率如何影响人们代词理解策略的研究之一。最近有证据表明，语言理解策略可以从语言输入的频率中习得。这个项目将有助于展示大脑如何利用来自环境的统计数据来塑造认知过程。研究结果对于研究高水平语言理解如何受经验影响的模型，以及开发干预措施来解决阅读和听力理解差的问题具有重要意义。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。

How are your mental strategies for understanding language influenced by your experience? Research suggests that people track their language experience, and they know for example that the more common interpretation of "ear" is as a body part and not a piece of corn. But a lot less is known about how language experience changes the way we interpret larger chunks of discourse. For example, an important part of language understanding is interpreting reference. In "Ana saw Liz. She waved", people need to figure out whether "She" refers to Ana or Liz. Do people pay attention to the frequency of referential patterns, and use this to interpret ambiguous pronouns? Recent findings suggest they might. In our example, most people tend to assume that "she" refers to Ana, who is the subject of the previous clause. But this bias toward the subject is weakened if people have recently read many stories where the non-subject gets re-mentioned, as when the pronoun is rendered unambiguous in context by the gender of the discourse participants (e.g., Matt saw Lyn. She waved.). This suggests that people shift their strategies on the basis of the most frequent reference patterns in context. But researchers do not know exactly how these biases are learned. For example, do people learn biases separately for each verb or verb class, or do they assume that frequencies of reference can be generalized across sentence types? How much exposure is necessary, and of what type? The proposed project tests these questions with adults. Participants read numerous "priming" stories that display one type of reference, for example where the subject character gets re-mentioned, or the non-subject character gets mentioned. The critical question is whether this changes the way people interpret ambiguous pronouns, like "she" in the Ana/Liz example above. All priming stories use unambiguous reference, for example in mixed-gender stories so the pronoun referent is clear. The first set of experiments tests the types of generalizations people draw, for example across verbs or verb types, or based on syntactic vs. semantic information. The second set of experiments tests the conditions necessary for learning, for example the amount or type of input needed. This project is one of the first studies to examine how the frequency of discourse structures influences the strategies people use for pronoun comprehension. This builds on other recent evidence that language comprehension strategies can be learned from the frequencies of language input. This project will help demonstrate how the mind uses statistics from the environment to shape cognitive processing. Results will be important for developing models of how higher-level language comprehension is influenced by experience, and for developing interventions to address problems with poor reading and listening comprehension.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.