Do visual cues influence how sentences with different word orders are processed?

心理语言学是研究人们如何处理（即理解）和产生语言的学科。然而，到目前为止，该领域的大多数工作都只关注英语。事实上，在世界上6k多种语言中，只有大约0.6%的语言被用心理语言学的方法研究过。这意味着世界语言的多样性在文献中被大大低估了，而且许多理论和发现是否可以推广仍然是未知的。本研究通过研究语序变化的跨语言处理有助于解决这些问题。我们的目标是回答以下问题：视觉线索是否会影响不同词序的句子的处理方式？我们使用行为方法来解决这个问题。我们的语言样本是英语和意大利语。明确的（即“明显的”）视觉线索已被证明有助于句子处理。在“把苹果放在盒子里的毛巾上”这句话中，我不清楚我是应该把一个已经放在毛巾上的苹果放在盒子里，还是应该把一个苹果放在已经放在盒子里的毛巾上。看到一个能明显澄清这种困惑的图像（例如，一个苹果已经在毛巾上了）有助于人们处理这样的句子。内隐（即“不明显的”）视觉线索已被证明会影响句子的生成。当人们的注意力“无意识地”被一个物体/人物吸引时，他们倾向于用这个物体/人物开始他们的句子。这些线索似乎触发了一种对场景的“思考方式”，从而影响了他们如何谈论场景。我们假设这种“思维方式”不仅会影响我们如何产生句子，还会影响我们如何处理句子。然而，内隐暗示尚未被用于研究句子加工。一般来说，英语主要依靠词序来表明参与者在句子中所扮演的角色。在“约翰踢彼得”中，我们知道“约翰”是做动作的人，“彼得”是被动作的人。然而，意大利语允许更自由的词序变化，允许“混乱”的句子，如“（他）踢了彼得·约翰”。这是因为意大利语动词的结尾总是与动词的结尾“一致”。然而，在参与者的注意力被吸引到哪里（以及以什么顺序）和他们在句子中期望的词序之间是否存在一对一的映射，这一点仍然未知。我们采用了一种适用于句子处理工作的内隐提示范式来对此进行研究。这使我们能够进入“超越意识意识”的过程，从而减少有意的、有意识的思维过程的干扰。我们将在曼彻斯特大学的心理语言学实验室进行三个实验。还计划在意大利进行实地考察。这项工作将有助于正在进行的“情境语言处理”研究-一种语言研究方法，强调非语言信息来源在语言处理过程中的重要贡献。研究结果有可能影响使用内隐启动技术来帮助发展理解策略的语言教学方法。

Psycholinguistics is the study of how people process (i.e., understand) and produce language. However, most work in the field to date has focused solely on English. In fact, of the 6k+ languages in the world, only around 0.6% have been studied using psycholinguistic methods. This means that the diversity of the world's languages is drastically underrepresented in the literature and it remains unknown whether many theories and findings are generalisable. This research contributes to addressing these concerns, by investigating the processing of word order variation cross-linguistically. We aim to answer the following: do visual cues influence how sentences with different word orders are processed? We address this using behavioural methods. Our language sample is English and Italian.Explicit (i.e., "obvious") visual cues have been shown to assist in sentence processing. In the sentence "put the apple on the towel in the box", it is unclear whether I should put an apple that is already on a towel into a box, or whether I should put an apple onto a towel that is already in a box. Seeing an image that obviously clears up this confusion (e.g., an apple already on a towel) helps people to process such sentences.Implicit (i.e., "unobvious") visual cues have been shown to influence sentence production. When people's attention is "unconsciously" drawn towards an object/character, they tend to begin their sentence with that object/character. These cues seem to trigger a "way of thinking about" the scene which affects how they speak about it. We assume that this "way of thinking" should affect not just how we produce, but also process, sentences. However, implicit cueing has yet to be used to investigate sentence processing.In general, English relies primarily on word order to indicate what roles participants are playing in a sentence. In "John kicked Peter", we know that "John" is the one doing the action and "Peter" is the one that is acted upon. Italian, however, permits freer word order variation, allowing "scrambled" sentences like "(he) kicked Peter John". This is because Italian verbs always take an ending that 'agrees with' the one doing the verb. It remains unknown, though, whether there is a one-to-one mapping between which participant(s) people's attention is drawn to (and in what order) and what word order they expect in a sentence.We employ a version of the implicit cueing paradigm adapted to sentence processing work to investigate this. This allows us to tap into processes that are "beyond conscious awareness", thus reducing interference from intentional, conscious thought processes. We will conduct three experiments in the University of Manchester's Psycholinguistics Lab. Fieldwork is also planned in Italy.This work will contribute to ongoing research in "situated language processing" - an approach to language research which emphasises the important contributions that non-linguistic sources of information make during language processing. Findings have the potential to influence language teaching methods that make use of implicit priming techniques to assist in developing comprehension strategies.