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

Summary

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.

Abstract

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.

Introduction

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 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 disagreement....

Protocol

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 studies^18,19. Representative results reported here are adopte.......

Discussion

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’ 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.......

Materials

Name	Company	Catalog Number	Comments
E-Prime	Psychology Software Tools	version Professional 2.0
Headphone	Logitech
Praat	Praat	5.3.43	The online software used to edit the sound files for listening; http://www.fon.hum.uva.nl/praat/
Serial Response Box	Psychology Software Tools
Standard PC	ASUS K42Jv laptop