Name: examining online syntactic processing of spoken complex sentences in chinese using dual-modal interference tasks
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Description: Watch this Scientific Journal Video about Examining Online Syntactic Processing of Spoken Complex Sentences in Chinese Using Dual-Modal Interference Tasks at JoVE.com

This study was supported by grants from the Ministry of Science and Technology, Taiwan, R.O.C. [NSC-101-2410-H-439-001] to the first author, Tuyuan Cheng. The authors thank lab members, Yang Ya-Hui and Chen&#160;Pei-Han, in NTIN, for their assistance in preparing and conducting the experiment.

The administration of these experiments followed all research ethics regulations. All subjects provided informed verbal and written consent before the experiments were administered. All the procedures, consent forms, and the experimental protocol were approved by the Research Ethics Committee of the National Cheng Kung University in Taiwan. Experiment 1 and Experiment 2 were respectively based on prior studies18,19. Representative results reported here are adopte...

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This study demonstrates that using DMI methods with both intra- and extrasentential interference tasks can help to elucidate the role of WM in spoken sentence processing and shed light on the issue of Chinese RC processing asymmetry. As expected, by measuring the extent to which interference from a secondary task affected listeners&#8217; performances on primary sentence processing, we can infer the patterns of Chinese RC processing and arrive at a feasible solution to the debate on the Chinese SRC/ORC processing advanta...

The role of working memory (WM) during spoken sentence processing is self-evident: due to the transient nature of speech, listeners must retain the component acoustic forms in their memories until they are processed. This aspect becomes even more important during&#160;processing of syntactically complex sentences. Assigning syntactic relations to words in complex sentences involves performing computational operations on items retained in memory for short periods of time, resulting in a higher memory demand. However, how the WM system is involved in spoken sentence processing is controversial.
This controversy involves two major disagreements: some researchers argue that a single WM system exists that is used for all verbal tasks1,2&#8212;in other words, syntactic processing relies on the same memory resources used by more general cognitive processes. This is the single-resource model. Others have claimed that determining the meaning of a sentence based on its syntactic structure involves a specialized WM system separate from that used for other verbal tasks3,4. In this vein, syntactic processing is modular. This is the separate-sentence-interpretation resource model.
In psycholinguistic research, the dual-modal interference paradigm has been used to examine the two competing accounts. Based on the assumption that WM storage capacity is limited5,6, the paradigm addresses issues by complicating a primary task with a secondary intervening task. Given that the primary task competes for limited resources with the secondary intervening task, the difficulty increases and the primary task exhibits longer reaction times. Given this situation, the dual-modal interference approach makes it possible to assess the processing load and extent of the WM&#8217;s involvement when a participant is given a task that requires fulfilling both tasks simultaneously.
Sentences containing RC components, which cause more comprehension difficulties due to their well-known complex syntactic structures, are widely used to investigate how the WM system is involved in processing complex sentences. However, although processing complex sentences places a higher demand on the WM resources associated with speech processing, it is less clear whether the WM that is thought to contribute to the costs of syntactic movements in languages with head-initial RC constructions (such as English) reflects the syntactic complexity of languages with head-final RCs (such as Chinese). Through the use of a dual-modal interference paradigm, the current study sheds light on this issue.
The difficulties associated with processing two RC structures, subject-gapped and object-gapped relative clauses (SRCs vs. ORCs), have been the subject of extensive debate. These controversies are mainly observed across typologically different languages. In head-initial languages such as English, in which a relative clause follows the head noun it modifies, the general finding is that SRCs such as in example 1(a) below are processed more easily than ORCs in example 1(b).
<img alt="Equation 1" src="/files/ftp_upload/59660/59660equ01.jpg" />
As shown in example (1), in English, the surface location of the gap differs minimally between SRCs and ORCs. This gap is indexed as e1, the empty position after the head noun &#8216;actor&#8217; (called filler) left by its removal out of the RC. However, SRCs and ORCs differ substantially in terms of the grammatical structure and function of the gap in the RC domain. The memory cost for integrating and resolving the structural dependency between the filler and the gap is an apt target for experimental study and has been widely used to gain insights into the role of WM in language processing and comprehension.
For example, comprehending and processing these postnominal RCs requires indexing the head noun &#8216;actor&#8217; as either a functional subject or the object of the verb &#8216;criticized&#8217; in SRC and ORC and then storing the head noun in WM so it can later be assigned to the grammatical subject of the verb &#8216;admitted&#8217; in the main clause.
In contrast to the consistent finding with head-initial languages that comprehending SRCs is easier than comprehending ORCs, mixed results have been reported regarding the RC processing asymmetry for Chinese, which is a head-final language in which a relative clause precedes the head noun. Some have observed an SRC processing advantage, while others have reported the opposite pattern (i.e., an ORC processing advantage). The latter lines of research also proposed that RC processing asymmetry can be modulated by WM, as suggested by results obtained from studies of self-paced reading performance7,8,9.
As mentioned above, there are two competing models regarding the role that WM plays in the (complex) syntactic processing. One is that &#8220;syntactic processing is modular&#8221;, and the other is that &#8220;syntactic processing is general&#8221;. Complex sentences with well-known differences in comprehension difficulty, i.e., SRCs vs. ORCs in English, are frequently used in dual-modal interference (DMI) tasks to examine these two assertions with respect to the question of modularity because the involvement of WM is claimed to parallel the processing asymmetry. Thus, inducing concurrent memory load through interfering tasks demonstrates WM effects on syntactic processing. The rationale is that whether a single verbal WM system or separate modular syntactic systems exist, engaging the system with an interfering task makes syntactic processing less efficient due to WM resource limitations. The way in which processing syntactically more complex sentences (ORC, in English) suffers in DMI tasks compares to processing syntactically simpler sentences (SRC, in English) provides evidence regarding the specific effect of WM and indicates the extent to which WM is involved.
In contrast to head-initial languages such as English, Chinese RCs manifests a head-final formation and exhibits a gap-filler relationship. The indexed moved-out element, the gap, precedes the head noun associating&#160;with it, as illustrated in 2(a), SRC, and 2(b), ORC.
<img alt="Equation 1" src="/files/ftp_upload/59660/59660equ02v2.jpg" />
The controversy that stems from processing Chinese RCs is that SRCs are not consistently reported as easier to process than ORCs, and this discrepancy has posed a challenge for theories of language processing and comprehension. Because the prenominal content before the relativizer &#8216;DE&#8217; must be stored in WM until after the gap&#8212;the moved head noun &#8216;actor&#8217;, is linked and retrieved&#8212;understanding this process still helps in obtaining insights into the role of WM in language processing.
In the current study, spoken RC sentence processing is examined because listening is highly compressive during processing and is closely related to the functioning of WM. The dual modal interference paradigm is used because interference is a well-established forgetting function in short-term auditory memory. Representations stored in memory can be degraded and subsequently lost when interfering events occur10. Distractors that vary along different aspects (in the current case: intralinguistic and extradigital, see below) to the canonical spoken sentence allow us to measure the cost of integrating the incremental input during different processing phases and under differing interference conditions.
Based on the position that processing more syntactically complex sentences overloads WM more than does processing simpler sentences, one can hypothesize that manipulating the type of interference during the course of comprehension should have effects on sentence processing. By implication, processing syntactically more complex sentences will require either proportionately greater or disproportionately greater listening times online and show worse performance in postonline sentence comprehension assessment than will processing syntactically simpler constructions. The current study examines the hypothesis that interference during sentence processing can index WM involvement and virtually places its value beyond the issue of syntactic modularity: it proposes the idea that the controversy over Chinese RC processing can be elucidated through the investigation of WM due to its fundamental role in language comprehension. Therefore, the significance attached to the use of DMI tasks in Chinese RC processing provides a path to solving the ongoing debate concerning Chinese RC processing asymmetry.
This article presents two exemplar experiments involving auditory processing using both intra- and extrasentential interference. The goal of these two experiments was to explore to what extent WM is engaged in processing Chinese RC under differing types of interference.
In the first experiment, a visually presented lexical decision task was used as the intrasentential interference. As a secondary interfering task, the word/nonword lexical decision task (LDT) was introduced at three points during the auditory presentation of the target relative clause sentence, thus allowing the processing difficulty to be measured at these points. The major concern in this experiment is how the gap in the relative clause (RC) is associated with the filler in the matrix clause (MC) and whether it affects the processing of subsequent MC. Therefore, the three probing sites to be measured were set after the MC region. An example, replicated from (2), of the three probing sites indicated with arrows and aligned with corresponding syntactic concatenation, is illustrated in example 3, where 3(a) shows SRC and 3(b) shows ORC.
<img alt="Equation 1" src="/files/ftp_upload/59660/59660equ03v2.jpg" />
Figure 1 shows the procedure of interfering with the continuous auditory RC presentation by the LDT at any of the three probing sites. The timing design follows the conventional protocol of the LDT task in a previous Chinese processing study11. For example, each visual LDT trial begins with a cross sign &#8220;+&#8221; that indicates a fixation point in the center of the monitor for 500 ms, followed by the visual LDT stimulus, which is displayed on the screen for 3,000 ms and disappears immediately after the subject makes the lexical decision. A typical subject completes Experiment 1, including the practice session, within 30&#8211;35 minutes.
<img alt="Figure 1" class="xfigimg" src="/files/ftp_upload/59660/59660fig01.jpg" /> 
Figure 1: Intrasentential interference procedure with a lexical decision task. 
<a href="https://www.jove.com/files/ftp_upload/59660/59660fig01large.jpg" target="_blank">Please click here to view a larger version of this figure.</a>
The three probing sites along with the LDT task:
1. Position 1 (P1): Post-SMC region
The first position (P1) to be measured is immediately after the subject of the MC at the region after the RC boundary. Processing load is expected to incur at this site. For one thing, prior to this point (SMC), subject-gap and object-gap construction within the RC domain form contrastive verb-object (VO) and subject-verb (SV) structures, respectively. For another, to integrate the constituents in the RC region with the head noun in MC, listeners must identify the grammatical role of the gap and link it with the upcoming filler head noun
2. Position 2 (P2): Post-VMC region
The second position (P2) to be measured is immediately after the verb in the matrix clause (VMC). This site is also assumed to induce processing load. Integrating the verbal information requires listeners to retrieve the noun arguments in the sentence and to identify the agent of the matrix verb either from the preceding RC domain or from the head noun that the RC modifies.
3. Position 3 (P3): Postsentence region
The third position (P3) to be measured is immediately after the end of the sentence. Previous studies on processing propose that there is an end-of-sentence wrap-up effect&#8212;a phenomenon in which nonsyntactic information (e.g., discourse and semantic level) are considered at the end of a sentence to activate and complete comprehension12,13. Therefore, processing load should increase toward the end of the sentence due to the need to integrate this nonsyntactic information14,15. Position 3 is assumed to show a degradation in the processing load because sentence resolution has been attempted around this site.
In the second experiment, an auditory moving window (AMW) task was adopted. The AMW technique is considered to be able to capture patterns of resource allocation during online linguistic processing and has been widely used in attempts to distinguish between the two competing WM approaches16,17. It is presumed that extrasentential interference should cost listeners extra time during the course of processing the transient upcoming spoken sentence. Under the AMW paradigm, the participants heard sentences that were segmented into words, and they pressed a key on the keyboard to initiate playing of the subsequent segment. Thus, the durations of the pauses between keypresses to initiate the subsequent segment and control the flow of incoming information reflect the participants&#8217; responsiveness to the particular linguistic features in question. For example, if the extrasentential interference has certain effects on processing sentences of differing syntactic complexity, participants will exhibit correspondingly longer pause durations before initiating the subsequent segments. The procedures are schematized and presented in Figure 2.
<img alt="Figure 2" class="xfigimg" src="/files/ftp_upload/59660/59660fig02.jpg" /> 
Figure 2: Extrasentential interference procedure with a digit recall task. 
<a href="https://www.jove.com/files/ftp_upload/59660/59660fig02large.jpg" target="_blank">Please click here to view a larger version of this figure.</a>
The following protocol shows how researchers use a visually presented lexical decision task as intrasentential interference and the concurrent arithmetic interference load as extrasentential interference to investigate WM involvement and the processing asymmetry of Chinese RCs and elaborate the underlying logic.

<table>
	<tbody>
		<tr>
			<td>E-Prime</td>
			<td>Psychology Software Tools</td>
			<td>version Professional 2.0</td>
			<td></td>
		</tr>
		<tr>
			<td>Headphone</td>
			<td>Logitech</td>
			<td></td>
			<td></td>
		</tr>
		<tr>
			<td>Praat</td>
			<td>Praat</td>
			<td>5.3.43</td>
			<td>The online software used to edit the sound files for listening; http://www.fon.hum.uva.nl/praat/</td>
		</tr>
		<tr>
			<td>Serial Response Box</td>
			<td>Psychology Software Tools</td>
			<td></td>
			<td></td>
		</tr>
		<tr>
			<td>Standard PC</td>
			<td>ASUS K42Jv laptop</td>
			<td></td>
			<td></td>
		</tr>
	</tbody>
</table>

examining online syntactic processing of spoken complex sentences in chinese using dual-modal interference tasks

Working memory (WM) plays a central role in the comprehension of complex sentences. Its function in the processing of spoken complex sentences is especially evident because spoken complex sentence processing is memory-intensive. The dual-modal interference paradigm has been used to examine how the WM system is involved in complex syntactic processing. This article presents two exemplar experiments involving auditory processing with either intra- or extrasentential interferences. In the first experiment, auditory stimuli [spoken-Chinese relative clause (RC) sentences with two syntactic types: subject-gapped (SRC) vs. object-gapped (ORC)] are interfered with via a visually presented lexical decision task within a sentence and manipulated using three different interference timepoints. In the second experiment, the same auditory stimuli, presented via an auditory window moving technique, are interfered with via a visually presented digital recall task beyond the sentence and manipulated using three digital memory loads. By assessing how the primary task of comprehending the RC sentences is affected by the secondary task, we can tackle the controversial issue concerning Chinese RC processing asymmetry. Our results reveal different patterns of RC processing compared to those reported in previous studies. Experiment 1 manifests no clear RC processing advantages in either SRC or ORC; however, a preference for ORC is observed at the ends of sentences, and a preference for SRC is found at the main verb site. Likewise, Experiment 2 presents a dynamic pattern. Under a no-digit load, SRCs show processing advantages in the RC marker region. However, under higher-digit-load interference, ORCs show processing advantages in the same region. These results lead to the conjecture that no obvious or intrinsic processing asymmetry exists in the processing of Chinese RCs. Using the approach of assessing specific interference during syntactic processing, these experiments demonstrate future research applications that explore the processing metrics of spoken sentences involving working memory.

The interference effect was observed in both the dual-modal intra-LDT and the extradigit load tasks. Considering the three probe sites in Experiment 1, the RT results of the intra-LDT task manifested a dynamic pattern of RC processing as a function of two RC types. As shown in Figure 3, the ORC type exhibits a processing advantage at the position post the matrix subject (SMC) after the RC (P1) and at the end of the sentence (P3), whereas the SRC type has an advantage at the positi...

Watch this Scientific Journal Video about Examining Online Syntactic Processing of Spoken Complex Sentences in Chinese Using Dual-Modal Interference Tasks at JoVE.com

Examining Online Syntactic Processing of Spoken Complex Sentences in Chinese Using Dual-Modal Interference Tasks

Here, we present a protocol employing dual-modal interference tasks to examine online processing of spoken-Chinese relative clause sentences. Two exemplar experiments involving auditory processing with intra- and extrasentential interferences are described. The paradigm provides a methodology for addressing the nature of working memory and its effects on sentence processing.

Working memory (WM) plays a central role in the comprehension of complex sentences. Its function in the processing of spoken complex sentences is ...

The DMI experimental paradigm can be used to examine how the working memory is involved in the complex syntactic processing. And to further assess the processing assymetry of the Chinese writing courses. Combining DMI paradigm with the last co-decision task and on the Matco moving window technique is a novel approach for measuring the cross of a spoken sentence processing in real time.Demonstrating the procedure with me will be Peihan Chen, a college student at NTIN. Before beginning the experiment, select a total of 48 bi-syllabic Chinese words, including 24 words and 24 non-words for the Lexical decision task. Select the words from the Sinica Corpus Technical Report, taking care that all of the target words are of a medium frequency.Create the 24 non-words by using two monosyllabic characters that are individually meaningful but whose combination is semantically anomalus avoiding bisyllabic character words with identical radicals. Manually collocate the 24 non-words in filler sentences and the 24 words in target relative clause sentences. Compose the auditory stimuli into 72 sentences including 24 subject-gapped relative clause sentences, 24 object-gapped relative clause sentences, and 24 filler sentences.Then divide the 48 relative clause sentences evenly into two groups to create an incomplete counterbalanced design to forming 48 trials. To set up the software for the experiment, open an appropriate behavioral research software program and use the software to randomize all of the stimuli. Then configure the software system to record the response time, the accuracy rate of the participant's responses in the lexical decision test, and the post sentence comprehension based on the participant's keyboard inputs.Include feedback regarding the participant's incorrect lexical decision or lack of response to be displayed on the monitor screen immediately after the participant's incorrect or missing response. Before beginning the dual-modal intrasentential interference task experiment, seat the participant in front of a computer and equip them with headphones. Provide the participant with instructions both in written form on the computer screen and in verbal form by the experimenter.Instruct the participant to listen to the sentences played through their headphones while simultaneously performing a lexical decision task. Instruct the participant to decide whether the interfering visual probe displayed on the screen is a word or non-word and to press yes for a word and no for a non-word as quickly and accurately as possible. Inform the participant that a comprehension question will follow immediately after the sentence and remind the participant to listen attentively to the auditory sentence while simultaneously performing the task.After giving all of the instructions, have the participant complete a practice section involving trials with feedback. After the practice session, start the dual-modal intrasentential lexical decision test interference task allowing the participant to take a break between every 24 trials. For a dual-modal extrasentential interference task experiment, compose the auditory stimuli into 96 sentences including 24 subject-gapped relative clause sentences, 24 object-gapped relative clause sentences, and 48 filler sentences.Divide the 48 RC sentences evenly into two groups to created an incomplete counterbalanced design with 96 total trials with zero, three, five-digit combinations with each zero, three, or five-digit load evenly assigned to all of the sentence trials. In the experimental software program, randomly assign the participant to one of the two stimuli sets representing the combinations of two within subject factors of sentence type and memory load. Instruct the participant that they will need to listen to the sentences segmented into words and played through the headphones and to pace themselves as quickly as possible by pressing the keyboard to initiate the playing of the subsequent segmented word.Inform the participant that a question mark will appear on the screen that is followed by a yes no comprehension question related to the information they will have just heard in the preceding sentence and that they should answer the question. A short beep sound will be played when the participant presses the yes or no key to answer the comprehension question. Then, instruct the participant that after the beep the participant should follow the instructions that appear on the screen and should repeat the digit they observed prior to listening to the sentence.To start the experiment, provide the participant with the 1500 millisecond visual representation of the digits. Then start the self-paced listening auditory moving window task and instruct the participant to keep the preceding visual presentation in memory. Because stage recall induces a greater memory load, instruct the participants to prioritize attempting to remember digits correctly while listening to the sentences as quickly as possible.While the participant is completing the task, record the participant's digit recall responses on a score sheet. In this representative intrasentential experiment the ORC sentence type exhibited a processing advantage at the post matrix subject after the relative clause and at the end of the sentence. Whereas the SRC sentence had an advantage at the post matrix verb after the relative clause.The simple main effect of sentence type was significant at the post matrix verb region and the post sentence region indicating that the SRC sentence had a lower processing load with the lexical decision interfering task at the matrix verbs. While the ORC sentences had a lower processing load at the ends of the sentences. Under a zero-digit load extrasentential interference, participants showed an advantage for ORC sentences at the initial processing region of the relative clause that demonstrated an SRC processing advantage at the relative clause marker DE and the matrix verb regions.Under the three-digit load extrasentential interference, no subject or object-gapped relative clause sentence differences were observed around the pre DE regions. However, participants demonstrated an SRC sentence advantage at DE and an ORC sentence advantage at the matrix verb region. Under the five-digit load extrasentential interference, participants showed an overall ORC sentence advantage around the pre DE and post DE regions in the matrix subject region.Our results show that the Chinese RC processing demonstrate a dynamic pattern that leads the conjecture that no intrinsic processing asymmetry exists in the processing of Chinese RCs. The current DMI technique can be extended to the self-paced reading paradigm to investigate how working memory is involved in the processing of reading in a natural reading context with interference.

Research

JoVE Journal

Behavior

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