Increased reliance on world knowledge during language comprehension in healthy aging: evidence from verb-argument prediction.

Cognitive aging negatively impacts language comprehension performance. . However, there is evidence that older adults skillfully use linguistic context and their crystallized world knowledge to offset age-related changes that negatively impact comprehension. Two visual-world paradigm experiments examined how aging changes verb-argument prediction, a comprehension process that relies on world knowledge but has rarely been examined in the cognitive-aging literature. Older adults did not differ from younger adults in their activation of an upcoming likely verb argument, particularly when cued by a semantically-rich agent+verb combination (Experiment 1). However, older adults showed elevated activation of previously-mentioned agents (Experiment 1) and of unlikely but verb-congruent referents (Experiment 2). This is novel evidence that older adults exploit semantic context and world knowledge during comprehension to successfully activate upcoming referents. However, older adults also show elevated activation of irrelevant information, consistent with previous findings demonstrating that older adults may experience greater proactive interference and competition from task-irrelevant information.

Collocational frequency and context effects on idiom processing in advanced L2 speakers.

Multiword expressions have attracted attention recently following suggestions that they are acquired chunk-wise by children in the first language, while adults learning a second language may focus more on individual words within an expression. This is of particular interest for the acquisition of idioms, which are multiword expressions in which the literal meanings of the component words do not (always) directly contribute to overall phrasal meaning, resulting in a figurative interpretation. Figurative meaning access is speeded both by idiom-internal characteristics, like higher collocational frequency, and idiom-external characteristics, like supportive contexts. We examined the relationship between the collocational frequency of idioms' component words and the context in which an idiom is embedded. In a visual world eye-tracking study, advanced nonnative English speakers heard incomplete English phrases embedded within contexts that biased either literal or idiomatic continuations and saw images representing literal or figurative completions, or distractor images. Participants showed higher looks to figurative completions that were at odds with contextual bias, suggesting that integrating frequency information in context in adult L2 users may be overridden when a phrase is figurative. However, higher-proficiency participants showed more successful suppression of inappropriate figurative continuations. These results suggest that idiom conventionality when compared to literal phrases may be a stronger driver of predictive looks than collocational frequency or contextual bias alone, and that sensitivity to contextual fit when processing idioms may still be developing even among very advanced L2 users. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

Idioms show effects of meaning relatedness and dominance similar to those seen for ambiguous words.

Does the language comprehension system resolve ambiguities for single- and multiple-word units similarly? We investigate this question by examining whether two constructs with robust effects on ambiguous word processing - meaning relatedness and meaning dominance - have similar influences on idiom processing. Eye tracking showed that: (1) idioms with more related figurative and literal meanings were read faster, paralleling findings for ambiguous words, and (2) meaning relatedness and meaning dominance interacted to drive eye movements on idioms just as they do on polysemous ambiguous words. These findings are consistent with a language comprehension system that resolves ambiguities similarly regardless of literality or the number of words in the unit.

Idiom comprehension in aphasia: Literal interference and abstract representation.

We investigate three potential mechanisms underlying the deficit in idiom comprehension seen in aphasia: difficulty inhibiting literal meanings, inability to recognize that a figurative interpretation is required, and difficulty processing abstract words and concepts. Unimpaired adults and PWA read high and moderate familiarity idioms either preceded or followed by a figuratively biasing context sentence. They then completed a string-to-word probe selection task, choosing between a figurative target, a literal lure, and unrelated concrete and abstract lures. PWA chose the figurative target more often for more familiar idioms and after figuratively biasing contexts, suggesting that difficulty accessing figurative meanings may be a key contributor to idiom impairment in aphasia. Importantly, PWA chose abstract lures at the same rate as they chose literal lures, suggesting that abstract lures may be considered equally good matches for weak idiomatic representations in PWA, and therefore that idiomatic figurative meanings may be represented similarly to abstract concepts for PWA. These results have implications for models of idiom comprehension in aphasia, as well as the design of future studies of idiom comprehension in PWA.

World knowledge affects prediction as quickly as selectional restrictions: Evidence from the visual world paradigm.

There has been considerable debate regarding the question of whether linguistic knowledge and world knowledge are separable and used differently during processing or not (Hagoort, Hald, Bastiaansen, & Petersson, 2004; Matsuki et al., 2011; Paczynski & Kuperberg, 2012; Warren & McConnell, 2007; Warren, McConnell, & Rayner, 2008). Previous investigations into this question have provided mixed evidence as to whether violations of selectional restrictions are detected earlier than violations of world knowledge. We report a visual-world eye-tracking study comparing the timing of facilitation contributed by selectional restrictions versus world knowledge. College-aged adults (n=36) viewed photographs of natural scenes while listening to sentences. Participants anticipated upcoming direct objects similarly regardless of whether facilitation was provided by only world knowledge or a combination of selectional restrictions and world knowledge. These results suggest that selectional restrictions are not available earlier in comprehension than world knowledge.

Comprehending the impossible: what role do selectional restriction violations play?

To elucidate how different kinds of knowledge are used during comprehension, readers' eye movements were monitored as they read sentences that were: plausible, impossible because of a selectional restriction violation, or impossible because of a violation of general world knowledge. Eye movements on the pre-critical, critical, and post-critical words evidenced disruption in the selectional restriction violation condition compared to the other two conditions. These findings suggest that disruption associated with reading about impossible events is not directly determined by how impossible the event seems. Rather, the relationship between the verb and arguments in the sentence seems to matter. These findings are the strongest evidence to date that processing effects associated with selectional restrictions can dissociate from those associated with general world knowledge about events.