Reading Comprehension and Eye Movements
Dr. Meredyth Daneman, Psychology Department, University of Toronto
Dr. Craig Chambers, Psychology Department, University of Toronto
Mindaugas Mozuraitis, Psychology Department, University of Toronto
Abstract: The purpose of this project is to get insight on the processes involved in the incorporation of the information conveyed by a verb aspect during understanding of a broader discourse. For example, imperfective verb aspect (e.g., she was knitting a new sweater) is meant to point out that an action is ongoing whereas perfective verb aspect (e.g, she knitted a new sweater) refers to an action that is already finished. The main goal of this experiment was to explore if and in what way these subtle grammatical differences manifest themselves during the discourse comprehension by the senior population.
To address these questions, we asked the participants to read a number of short stories. For half of the participants, the stories contained sentences with imperfective verb aspect:
Mr. Adams was always fascinated by his wife's abilities. She was knitting a new sweater. She wore her new garment on Christmas Eve. Everyone thought the sweater was just amazing.
For the other half of the participants, the same stories contained sentences with perfective verb aspect:
Mr. Adams was always fascinated by his wife's abilities. She knitted a new sweater. She wore her new garment on Christmas Eve. Everyone thought the sweater was just amazing.
The "aspect" sentences were followed by a description of an event that was either consistent with a given aspect or not. For example, a sentence like She was knitting a new sweater refers to the action that is not over yet, so it should be somewhat unexpected to encounter a next sentence like She wore her new garment on Christmas Eve. However, a pair like She knitted a new sweater. She wore her new garment on Christmas Eve is perfectly acceptable.
In order to investigate whether readers detect the above mentioned inconsistencies, participants' eye movements were tracked using miniature cameras attached to a headband. When readers detect something unusual in a text, they slow down and make regressive fixations in order to try to resolve the inconsistency. In this way, we could discover whether readers detect the inconsistencies without asking them directly, which could potentially change the way they read the text.
Conclusion: Readers had greater difficulty processing the second event (She wore...) if it followed the imperfective (was knitting) rather than the perfective (knitted) version of the earlier-mentioned event. This suggests that aspect information is encoded online and that the “in progress” interpretation of the imperfective impeded integration of the second event into the discourse model. However, world knowledge modulated the effect: When the first event was of short duration (e.g., writing a check), the influence of aspect was not evident in the early moments of processing. These effects were independent of age group, suggesting that the mechanisms involved in coordinating temporal information in discourse are stable across the adult lifespan.
Investigating how People Interpret Events in Groups
Cheyenne Thannikkotu, Meredyth Daneman
Background/Study Context: Dalton and Daneman (2006 , Memory, 14, 486–501) showed that young adults can be induced to accept misinformation from a co-witness, even if it contradicts central features of a previously witnessed event. This study investigated whether older adults are also susceptible to social suggestion, and if so, whether to the same or different degree as their younger counterparts. The study also investigated whether participants were more likely to succumb to suggestions delivered by a peer or an older figure.
Methods: Younger and older adults viewed an action video in the presence of a younger or older confederate co-witness. During a postevent discussion, the confederate introduced misinformation about central and peripheral features of the co-witnessed event. Finally, participants responded to true-false statements about the event and rated how confident they were in their decisions.
Results: Older adults were able to correctly reject false statements about an event that had been mentioned during the discussion by the confederate less often than they were able to correctly reject false statements that had not been mentioned, even if the misstatements contradicted central features of the previously witnessed event. However, older adults were no more susceptible to a co-witness's misleading suggestions than were their younger counterparts, and the age of the confederate did not influence the size of the suggestibility effect for younger or older adults.
Conclusion: When baseline memory accuracy (correct rejection rates for unmentioned false information) is controlled, older adults are no more susceptible to misleading suggestions from a co-witness than are their younger counterparts. Age of the confederate did not influence the size of the suggestibility effect and thus provided no support for the predictions that participants are more likely to succumb to misleading suggestions delivered by a peer or by an older authority figure.
The effects of overspecification, noise, and aging on real-time speech comprehension.
Craig Chambers, Agatha C. Rodrigues, Robert Redford
The current study aims to contribute to the literature on age-related differences in real-time language processing under high cognitive load conditions.
Past research has shown that when communicating about objects, listeners expect speakers to use adjectives contrastively – to tell apart similar objects. It is unknown whether superfluous adjectives will increase the amount of effort listeners must expend in order to understand what was said, and keep up in the conversation. To investigate the effects of adhering to or violating speech norms, participants will be placed in one of three conditions, where the auditory instructions differ in the amount of relevant information provided:
(1) Felicitous: an adjective is provided to contrast two objects from the same noun category
(2) Superfluous: a needless adjective is provided as there is no contrasting object present
(3) Control: no adjective is provided as there is no contrasting object present
To gauge the impact of a presumably increased cognitive load on downstream processing, this experiment will use a word recognition task in which participants will be asked to discriminate between rhyme competitors against background noise. Previous studies found that older adults achieve similar accuracy rates as younger adults on this cognitively demanding task, but at a slower processing speed, suggesting the existence of compensatory mechanisms in language processing.
Eye tracking methodology will be used to capture word comprehension in real time, and the performance of older and younger adults will be compared.
Through this study, we hope to gain a greater understanding of our ability to process language efficiently.