The memory processes underpinning complex communication: the association of non-adjacent words

理解需要我们将单词联系起来：以话语(1)为例，理解者必须将“film”与“watched”联系起来。这种语法上的联系——单词之间被其他单词分隔开来——是语言组合和表达能力的核心，也是人类进行复杂交流能力的基础。你猜乔昨晚看了什么电影？我们如何将名词“film”和动词“watched”联系起来？一种理论认为，我们在工作记忆中积极保存有关“电影”的信息，以指导寻找合适的搭配动词。另一种建议是，我们在处理“观看”这个词之后，从陈述性记忆中提取“电影”作为合适的对象。“维护”和“检索”两个词都有证据，但都没有最终结论。Wagers和Phillips（2014）提出，一些词的“特征”——构成词的信息，如词类（如名词、动词）、性别（阳性/阴性）、animacy（在动画中）或number（单数/复数）——被保留，而其他词被检索，从而推进了维护/检索的争论。在这种“混合”模式下，关于“film”的词类信息被保存在工作记忆中，并被解析器用来定位它在“watched”之后的标准理解位置（例如Jo观看了一部电影）。然而，语义信息在初始处理后会衰减，当解析器遇到“被监视”时，必须从声明性内存中检索。检索到的特征与维护的特征重新集成，从而允许理解。该方法将维护模型的低理解错误率与检索模型对工作记忆的处理需求相结合。Ness和Meltzer-Asscher（2017;2019）进行的一系列自定节奏阅读研究发现，名词的语法生命力（阳性与阴性）是在解析传入语言材料时在工作记忆中保留的一个特征。在我的硕士论文（约克，2020）中，我改编并扩展了Ness和Meltzer-Asscher的实验范式，没有发现证据表明名词的数量（单数与复数）是工作记忆中保持的特征，并且，通过扩展，是一个经历检索的特征。本博士将继续努力确定单词的哪些特征在工作记忆中保持，以指导单词之间关系的建立。当单词信息被解析器“删除”时，这项工作将绘制出该特征衰减的时间过程。我将通过复制Ness和Meltzer-Asscher进行的阅读研究以及我的硕士论文中对单词信息（性别、格、词类等）的操纵以及句子结构和长度的变化来实现这一目标。这项工作将建立一个全面和宝贵的理解关于使用单词特征来指导单词之间关系建立的心理解析器的应用层次。由于语法的差异，不同语言的使用者很可能依赖于维护不同的单词特征来引导联想。除了英语外，我还将对俄语使用者进行研究，以建立一个跨语言的单词联想图。这种工作的好处是巨大的。它将为长期以来围绕句子处理中的信息维护和检索的争论提供清晰的答案。同样重要的是，更好地理解单词特征的应用将为一系列相关的句子处理领域带来新的维度。这也将有利于语言研究：通过调查解析器将远端单词联系起来的能力，这项研究将阐明最终支撑所有复杂语言交流的记忆过程。这项研究需要收集心理语言学实验数据。我将使用两种实验技术：自定阅读速度（在互联网上进行）和在阅读时使用约克语言学实验室的眼动仪进行眼动追踪。

Comprehension requires us to associate words: consider utterance (1), in which the comprehender must link 'film' with 'watched'. Such grammatical association-between words separated from each other by other words-is central to the combinatory and expressive power of language, and underpins humans' capacity for complex communication.1. What film do you reckon Jo watched last night?How do we associate the noun 'film' and the verb 'watched'? One theory holds that we maintain information about 'film' actively in working memory to guide the search for a suitable partnering verb. Another suggests we retrieve 'film' from declarative memory as a suitable object after processing 'watched'. Evidence is found for both word 'maintenance' and 'retrieval', with neither ultimately conclusive. Wagers and Phillips (2014) advanced the maintenance/retrieval debate by suggesting that some word 'features'-information constituting words, such as word class (e.g. noun, verb), gender (masculine/feminine), animacy ((in)animate), or number (singular/plural)-are maintained while others are retrieved. Under this 'hybrid' model, word class information about 'film' is maintained in working memory and used by the parser to locate its canonical comprehension position after 'watched' (c.f. Jo watched a film). Semantic information, however, decays after initial processing and must be retrieved from declarative memory when the parser encounters 'watched'. The features retrieved are reintegrated with the features maintained, allowing comprehension. This account combines the low comprehension error rate of maintenance models with the reduced processing demands on working memory of retrieval models.A series of self-paced reading studies by Ness and Meltzer-Asscher (2017;2019) found that a noun's grammatical animacy (masculine vs feminine) is a feature held in working memory during the parsing of incoming linguistic material. In my MA thesis (York, 2020), I adapted and extended Ness and Meltzer-Asscher's experimental paradigm, finding no evidence that a noun's number (singular vs plural) is a feature maintained in working memory, and, by extension, is a feature that undergoes retrieval.This PhD will continue efforts to establish which features of words are maintained in working memory to guide the establishment of relationships between words. When word information is 'dropped' by the parser, this work will chart the time-course of this feature decay. I will achieve this by replicating the kinds of reading studies conducted by Ness and Meltzer-Asscher and in my MA thesis with manipulations of word information (gender, case, word class etc.) and variations in sentence structure and length. This work will build a comprehensive and invaluable understanding of the mental parser's hierarchy of application regarding the use of word features to guide relationship establishment between words. With differences in grammar, it is likely that speakers of different languages rely on maintenance of different word features to guide associations. I will conduct research on Russian speakers, in addition to English, to build a cross-linguistic picture of word association. The benefits of such work are substantial. It will add clarity to the longstanding debate around information maintenance and retrieval in sentence processing. Equally importantly, a better understanding of the applications of word features will bring new dimensions to an array of related sentence processing fields. It will also benefit linguistic inquiry writ large: by investigating the parser's ability to associate distant words, this research will elucidate the memory processes ultimately underpinning all complex linguistic communication.This research requires collection of psycholinguistic experimental data. I will use two experimental techniques: self-paced reading (conducted over the Internet) and eye-tracking while reading using the eye-tracker in York's Linguistics lab.