Edith Kaan - US grants

[unreadable] DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): The overall goal of this project is to investigate the cognitive and neural mechanisms of processing multisentence discourse, and the role of the 2 cerebral hemispheres therein. In particular, the project focuses on the processing of quantified noun phrases, such as "three" or "most". These expressions permit multiple ways to construct discourse coherence, and hence, are an ideal tool to investigate the on-going modification of mental representation of the discourse. More specifically, the project is aimed at (1) identifying Event- Related Potentials (ERPs) that index difficulty with the setting up a new discourse referent, and (2) determining whether there are hemispheric differences in the construction of new discourse referents and the resolution of ambiguity. The second question will be assessed using both ERPs and functional MRI. Results of this project will contribute to our understanding of human discourse processing and reasoning and its underlying neural mechanisms, in particular the role of the right hemisphere. In addition, results of this project may be used to test language disorders, and to track cognitive and neural reorganization in response to language rehabilitation therapies. [unreadable] [unreadable]

[unreadable] DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): The overall goal of this project is to investigate the cognitive and neural mechanisms of processing multisentence discourse, and the role of the 2 cerebral hemispheres therein. In particular, the project focuses on the processing of quantified noun phrases, such as "three" or "most". These expressions permit multiple ways to construct discourse coherence, and hence, are an ideal tool to investigate the on-going modification of mental representation of the discourse. More specifically, the project is aimed at (1) identifying Event- Related Potentials (ERPs) that index difficulty with the setting up a new discourse referent, and (2) determining whether there are hemispheric differences in the construction of new discourse referents and the resolution of ambiguity. The second question will be assessed using both ERPs and functional MRI. Results of this project will contribute to our understanding of human discourse processing and reasoning and its underlying neural mechanisms, in particular the role of the right hemisphere. In addition, results of this project may be used to test language disorders, and to track cognitive and neural reorganization in response to language rehabilitation therapies. [unreadable] [unreadable]

[unreadable] DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): The overall goal of this project is to investigate the cognitive and neural mechanisms of processing multisentence discourse, and the role of the 2 cerebral hemispheres therein. In particular, the project focuses on the processing of quantified noun phrases, such as "three" or "most". These expressions permit multiple ways to construct discourse coherence, and hence, are an ideal tool to investigate the on-going modification of mental representation of the discourse. More specifically, the project is aimed at (1) identifying Event- Related Potentials (ERPs) that index difficulty with the setting up a new discourse referent, and (2) determining whether there are hemispheric differences in the construction of new discourse referents and the resolution of ambiguity. The second question will be assessed using both ERPs and functional MRI. Results of this project will contribute to our understanding of human discourse processing and reasoning and its underlying neural mechanisms, in particular the role of the right hemisphere. In addition, results of this project may be used to test language disorders, and to track cognitive and neural reorganization in response to language rehabilitation therapies. [unreadable] [unreadable]

Understanding written sentences in a language learned at a later age is different from processing sentences in one's native language. This project aims to clarify what underlies this difference by testing to what extent a language learner's problems with sentence processing are related to 1) the lack of detailed word knowledge and rapid access word-level information, and 2) the reader's ability to suppress irrelevant information in general. Native speakers and second-language learners will be closely compared. The proposed project is a collaboration between the University of Florida (USA), the University of Utrecht (The Netherlands), and the Universidad De La Laguna (Spain), and will test native speakers of English, native speakers of Spanish, Dutch learners of English, and English learners of Spanish.

Results from this project may lead to a better understanding of how second-language learners comprehend written language and why certain individuals experience more problems than others when learning a second language. Outcomes of this project may inform research on language education and intervention techniques. This will ultimately benefit minority populations learning English as a second language, as well as populations with language impairments. Finally, the project will be integrated into the linguistics curriculum at University of Florida and will create international research opportunities for students to gain hands-on experience with psycholinguistic and electrophysiological research.

This work is co-funded by SBE/BCS and the Office of International Science and Engineering

Most bilinguals code-switch to some extent, that is, they move from one language to the other within the same utterance. The United States has an increasingly heterogeneous population, which includes a growing number of bilingual immigrants who use both English and their other language when communicating among each other. Code switching is often stigmatized and sometimes perceived as a deficiency in learning languages. However, code switching often occurs among highly-proficient bilinguals who are perfectly able to speak each language separately. Instead of condemning code switching, code switching should be seen as a cognitive tour de force. Investigating how bilingual speakers organize and select among the languages they know, how they process mixed languages, and what factors determine this, will therefore provide insight in human cognitive and social functioning in general.

Previous psycholinguistic research on language switching has reported that switching between languages is difficult or costly. These studies have mostly ignored the bilingual's daily switching habits. The current study challenges the view that code switching is always costly by testing language users who code-switch on a regular basis, using multilinguals in Algeria as a case study. This population switches frequently between Algerian-Arabic and French; however, switching between Standard-Arabic and French is not common. This makes this population ideal to investigate whether the habit of switching between a pair of languages rather than another pair affects the expectation of switching, thus potentially minimizing or even eliminating the costs. In particular, the proposed research will test to what extent the switch costs depend on (1) the semantic expectancy of a particular word in a sentence; and (2) the daily frequency of switching between certain language pairs compared to others. Importantly, the current study will use spoken language, which is more naturalistic than the reading-only paradigms used in previous studies. In addition, the outcomes of the listening study will be related to the results from a survey on the language habits of the bilinguals in the study and their perception of and attitudes towards code switching. Findings from this project will therefore provide insight into the linguistic and non-linguistic factors that drive code-switching.

Language variation is a very prominent phenomenon in society. The growing social and geographical mobility of the world's population had led to an increasing number of bilinguals and non-native speakers in the US, and subsequently, to an increased presence and public awareness of different languages, accents, and registers within communities and the media. In spite of these developments, research on how humans learn, speak, and understand language has been primarily concerned with monolingual speakers of a standard language variety. Language processing models of bilinguals, heritage speakers (in particular, children of immigrants), and second-language learners have been primarily defined as being different from the monolingual native, "invariant" case. This however ignores the fact that speakers who identify as monolingual also need to deal with language variation on a daily basis, and that a majority of the world's population is bilingual. Given the importance and ubiquity of language variation, this phenomenon can therefore no longer be ignored in language processing research.

Language variation is a challenge for language acquisition and processing models. How do listeners realize that different utterances are different ways of saying the same thing, rather than different things? How do speakers/listeners determine which option is more appropriate or relevant given the context and whom they are talking to? The aim of the special session of the 2016 CUNY conference is to increase awareness regarding language variation in general, and its importance for research on language learning and processing more specifically, by giving an overview of the state-of-the-art research on language variation, particularly in bilinguals. Invited speakers will be asked to address the challenges of language variation for language acquisition and processing, and to provide answers as to how language variation can be taken into account. The ultimate goal is to create a more realistic and representative picture of how the human mind represents, processes and acquires language. This will help provide critical empirical findings relevant for improving language education, techniques to diagnose and treat language impairment, and expand research and processing models to underrepresented groups in the language sciences.

Bilingual individuals, broadly defined as anyone who can communicate in more than one language, encounter a myriad of linguistic choices, often guided by the linguistic needs of their conversation partners and the environmental setting such as being in a commercial setting, school, or work. They confront even more complex choices when conversing with other bilinguals. While bilinguals may choose to stay in one language, they may also code-switch between languages within a conversation. This immense variability in bilingual language use potentially relies upon general cognitive control mechanisms which over time may result in more efficient processing, a hypothesis known as the bilingual advantage. Prior research has had mixed results in confirming or disconfirming this hypothesis, in part due to reliance upon between-groups experimental designs and correlational analyses. This project builds on prior work by examining what aspects of bilingual language use may engage cognitive control within the same bilingual individuals and across the comprehension and production modalities.

This project utilizes an experimental paradigm known as conflict adaptation across four experiments. The experiments intersperse two different tasks, one linguistic and the other not, under the assumption that engaging with cognitive control to resolve conflict on one task will lead to more efficient use of cognitive control on a subsequent task (the conflict adaptation effect). The four experiments test whether different forms of code-switching that vary in their degree of complexity will lead to differences in behavioral (Experiments 1, 2, 4) and neural (Experiment 3) performance on a subsequent non-linguistic task. Experiment 4 further tests the relationship between production and comprehension. Results from this project will help refine recent models of language control and lead to a better understanding of the link between bilingualism and cognitive control, underscoring the dynamic and adaptive nature of human sentence processing.

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.