Deck 8: Understanding Sentence Structure and Meaning

Question 1

Which outcome suggests that participants process meaning during the shadowing task?

A) Participants' shadowing slows down when the sentence they are repeating combines meaningful words in nonsensical ways.
B) Participants say that they are processing the meaning as they shadow what they hear.
C) Researchers ask the participants to report the gist of each sentence.
D) Shadowing is the process of understanding.

Answer 1

A

Question 2

Which sentence is a garden path sentence?

A) The lawyer with a wart was hit by the gang leader.
B) The gang leader hit the lawyer with a wart.
C) The cruel man beat his puppy using a thick stick.
D) The puppy was beaten with a thick stick by the cruel man.

Answer 2

B

Question 3

In the sentence The stew simmered on the stove turned out to be delicious, the phrase simmered on the stove is ambiguous because it is missing certain function words. This grammatical structure is known as a

A) conjoined clause.
B) reduced relative clause.
C) sentence complement.
D) main clause.

Answer 3

B

Question 4

In the sentence The cruel man beat his puppy with a thick stick, _______ is the indirect object.

A) the cruel man
B) beat his puppy
C) puppy
D) a thick stick

Question 5

In the sentence The cruel man beat his puppy with a thick stick, _______ is the subject.

A) the cruel man
B) beat
C) his puppy
D) a thick stick

Question 6

Grammatically, _______ exemplifies a sentence in passive voice; whereas _______ uses an active voice.

A) The man jumped on the trampoline; The man is jumping on the trampoline
B) The plumber was sued by the baker; The baker sued the plumber
C) The horse is racing past the fence; The horse who was raced past the fence tripped
D) The thief is taking the jewels; The jewels were taken by the thief

Question 7

Imagine that you are designing a study to evaluate whether certain types of sentences are ambiguous and lead to misunderstanding. Which technique would permit the most natural environment for your study?

A) Self-paced reading task
B) Shadowing task
C) Moving window paradigm
D) Eye-tracking reading task

Question 8

Refer to the example, in which participants read through sentences a phrase at a time, pressing a button to advance from step 1 through 3.
1. The British ---- ------- -- -------- -------.
2. --- ------- left waffles -- -------- -------.
3. --- ------- ---- ------- on Falkland Islands.
-The above stimulus is an example of which research method?

A) Lexical decision task
B) Shadowing task
C) Eye-tracking method
D) Moving window paradigm

Question 9

Consider the sentence Let's eat grandma. Which vocal cue would help disambiguate the sentence?

A) A pause between the word eat and the word grandma
B) A rising intonation at the end of the sentence
C) Articulating grandma clearly
D) Speaking the sentence at an even speed

Question 10

The garden path theory stipulates that parsers rely on _______ to make initial predictions about the meaning of an ambiguous sentence.

A) strict rules
B) heuristics
C) interactive model processes
D) phonetic cues

Question 11

The garden path theory places emphasis on the _______ rather than _______ of processing during the initial parsing phase.

A) phonetics; syntax
B) speed; accuracy
C) semantics; syntax
D) rules; short cuts

Question 12

_______ suggested that people often use heuristics to solve problems, and sometimes these shortcuts in thought lead us to make errors in judgments.

A) Maryellen McDonald
B) John McIntyre
C) Daniel Kahneman
D) Tom Bever

Question 13

Understanding thematic relations of a verb

A) always results in the disambiguation of a garden path sentence.
B) does not help to disambiguate a garden path sentence.
C) allows a listener to make inferences about the event and participant relationships being described in a sentence.
D) is helpful for resolving ambiguities involving reduced relative clauses, but not other ambiguities.

Question 14

Which sentence contains an intransitive verb?

A) The long letter arrived.
B) Tim wrote a note to Arianna.
C) The portrait artist drew a face.
D) The dog ate my homework.

Question 15

Which sentence contains a sentential complement verb?

A) The yellow bird sings sweetly.
B) The weary traveler slept.
C) The police office recommended that she not drive at night.
D) Please hand me the largest wrench.

Question 16

In their 1998 study, John Trueswell and Al Kim (1998) found that they could steer readers toward one or another interpretation of a garden path sentence by subliminally presenting an unrelated verb that was biased toward either a direct object or a sentential complement frame. This shows

A) that inhibiting the activation of phonetic neighbors helps disambiguate a garden path sentence.
B) that readers must consciously select the right verb frame in disambiguating garden path sentences.
C) the importance of discourse context in disambiguating garden path sentences.
D) that it is possible to use a word to prime similar verb frames as well as similar meanings.

Question 17

Refer to the figure.
Based on the results of the experiment illustrated, how does context affect a subject's ability to make sense of the ambiguous component in the sentence Put the apple on the towel in the box?

A) The pencil does not aid the listener in A, but the apple in B provides context, helping the subject avoid confusion.
B) The listener is confused in both A and B. Since they do not know to look only at the apple on the towel, they look at the single apple first.
C) The time spent looking at the towel in A demonstrates a clear understanding of the sentence.
D) The two sets of timelines of eye-gaze duration in A and B show that context does not affect the listener's ability to disambiguate sentence.

Question 18

Refer to the figure.
Based on eye movements, which statement about subjects' perceptions of the two sentences is true?

A) Both sentences reveal some initial misinterpretation by listeners.
B) The first sentence reveals some initial misinterpretation, whereas the second sentence is smoothly and correctly parsed.
C) The second sentence reveals some initial misinterpretation, whereas the first sentence is smoothly and correctly parsed.
D) Listeners are able to use context to avoid misinterpretation in both sentences.

Question 19

Chambers et al. (2004) used an eye movement study to compare where people would look when given instructions about eggs that were either in their shell or cracked in a container. This study suggested that _______ plays an important role in disambiguating spoken language, supporting the _______.

A) frequency-based information; garden path theory
B) frequency-based information; constraint-based approach
C) context; garden path theory
D) context; constraint-based approach

Question 20

In which situation would speakers be most likely to use prosodic cues that are helpful for disambiguating spoken language?

A) Working together with a friend to build a birdhouse
B) Giving instructions for building a birdhouse over the phone to a friend
C) Reading instructions for building a birdhouse aloud to a friend
D) Recording instructions for building a birdhouse to be heard by a friend at a later time

Question 21

Refer to the figure.
According to Kamide et al.'s 2003 study, where would subjects look as they heard The beer was drunk by…?

A) Participants' eyes would jump around the scene, scanning all the objects until the sentence was completed.
B) Participants would look toward the girl before the sentence was even completed.
C) Participants would look toward the person wearing a helmet before the sentence was even completed.
D) Participants would focus on the beer until the sentence was completed.

Question 22

Kamide and colleagues (2003) investigated predictive language processes and found that after hearing only the first few words, Japanese speakers

A) wrongly interpreted grammatical cues to draw incorrect predictions about how a sentence might end.
B) used specific grammatical cues to predict how a sentence might end.
C) fixed their eyes on a picture of the subject of the sentence.
D) avoided making the kinds of predictions about the end of a sentence that English speakers often make in similar studies.

Question 23

Based on ERP studies of language predictability, which sentence would likely generate the largest N400 effect in response to the underlined word?

A) The teacher spilled his tea.
B) He stopped by the store to pick up a loaf of cheese.
C) The runner tripped over a root.
D) He eats his cereal in a bowls.

Question 24

What seems to be a crucial difference between using ERP analysis and eye tracking to evaluate subjects' moment-by-moment experiences of spoken language?

A) ERPs can capture unconscious processing, whereas eye-tracking studies can only provide information about conscious linguistic processes.
B) Eye tracking provides researchers with data about moment-by-moment processing of language, whereas ERP data only allows them to view discrete time points within the process.
C) ERP experiments allow researchers to test more abstract or complex language, whereas eye-tracking studies are limited to stimuli that can be easily represented in pictures.
D) Eye tracking is an older and more established technique among researchers, whereas ERP is still considered to be in its developmental infancy.

Question 25

Refer to the figure.
The figure represents the N400 values for the sentence The day was breezy so the boy went outside to fly… when subjects heard either airplane or kite as the final word. What can be inferred from the graph?

A) Subjects who heard kite showed greater N400 negativity, indicating less surprise.
B) Subjects who heard kite showed less N400 negativity, indicating more surprise.
C) Subjects who heard airplane showed less N400 negativity, indicating less surprise.
D) Subjects who heard airplane showed greater N400 negativity, indicating more surprise.

Question 26

Isabelle, 4, has the vocabulary of a 5-year-old. Sam, 5, has an average vocabulary for his age. In a study of language processing based on predictive eye movement,

A) Isabelle's eye movements toward relevant visual cues would be faster than Sam's.
B) Sam's eye movements toward relevant visual cues would be faster than Isabelle's.
C) the children would orient to relevant visual cues at similar speeds.
D) we would learn about orientation to relevant visual cues in young children because this age group has not yet been studied.

Question 27

Consider these two sentences:
1. The lawyer who the judge addressed stood.
2. The lawyer who addressed the judge stood.
-Based on the work of Ted Gibson (1998), which of these sentences will be more difficult to read, and why?

A) Sentence 1, because it contains an object relative clause
B) Sentence 1, because it contains two semantically similar nouns
C) Sentence 2, because it is more complex structurally
D) Sentence 2, because it contains a subject relative clause

Question 28

Consider these two sentences:
1. The lawyer who the judge addressed stood.
2. The lawyer who addressed the judge stood.
-Some researchers believe sentence 2 will be easier to read than sentence 1 because readers more frequently encounter the type of structure found in sentence 2. This expectation stresses the role of _______ in comprehension.

A) memory
B) morphology
C) semantic similarity
D) structural complexity

Question 29

According to Just and Carpenter (1992), subjects who score poorly on the reading span test should

A) have considerably more difficulty interpreting object relative clauses than subject relative clauses.
B) avoid committing to a single interpretation of a garden path sentence.
C) show weak long-term retention of sentences that are syntactically ambiguous.
D) show an especially large P600 effect for ungrammatical sentences.

Question 30

The _______ is an experimental method, developed by Daneman and Carpenter (1980), in which a subject's verbal working memory is measured.

A) shadowing task
B) Stroop test
C) reading span test
D) window moving paradigm

Question 31

During the Stroop test, subjects

A) experience interference from the physical characteristics of a word, such as the color in which it is written, as they attempt to read the word out loud.
B) are asked to identify a visually presented word while another word is simultaneously presented auditorily.
C) are asked to repeat out loud what they hear through head phones as soon as they hear it.
D) experience interference from the semantic characteristics of words as they attempt to identify their physical characteristics, such as color.

Question 32

Considering the "kindergarten-path effect," if your 4.5-year-old sister was asked to Put the bunny on the blanket on the shelf, what would she do?

A) She would have no trouble following the directions, since cognitive control in children is quite developed from a very early age.
B) There is less than a 50 percent chance that she would follow the directions as they are given, as children her age seem to have a tough time understanding ambiguous sentences.
C) She would not be able to follow the directions, as cognitive control does not begin to mature until adolescence.
D) She would put both the bunny and the blanket on the shelf, as children interpret such sentences as indicating that all objects listed are subject to the action.

Question 33

Which pair offers the best example of competence and performance, respectively?

A) Distinguishing grammatical sentences from ungrammatical ones; being able to speak grammatically
B) Being able to write grammatical sentences; explaining the rules of grammar to your friend
C) Speaking a foreign language; reading a foreign language
D) Speaking a foreign language; understanding what is said in a foreign language

Question 34

Which of the following is a confound, preventing researchers from concluding that bilinguals have an advantage in cognitive control?

A) Bilinguals are known to be smarter on average, making them better at language learning.
B) Bilinguals have a wide variety of different language experiences and different amounts of exposure to their two languages.
C) Cultural effects from bilinguals' native countries interfere with their ability to complete certain kinds of tasks similarly enough to monolinguals.
D) Interference from bilinguals' native languages interferes with their second language, preventing them from completing assessments in the same way as monolinguals.

Question 35

What are garden path sentences? Provide an example of a garden path sentence as well as a possible way to remedy it.

Question 36

The mouse the cat chased keeled over. For the sentence, identify the main and subordinate clauses and the reasons for this classification.

Question 37

How does the garden path theory explain our ability to parse and interpret sentences that contain ambiguities, such as The patient accepted the prognosis was dire?

Question 38

Consider the sentences.
The man led to the bench had a walking stick.
The man sat on the bench had a walking stick.
How does the constraint-based approach account for the parsing of these garden path sentences? Based on this approach, how would it affect your reading of the sentences to know that the man had dementia?

Question 39

What is one of the major differences between garden path and constraint-based theories of sentence parsing?

Question 40

Consider the results of Trueswell and Kim's 1998 study of syntactic framing in which subjects were asked to complete a self-paced reading task on sentences containing ambiguities. Did the researchers demonstrate that it is possible to affect a person's ability to disambiguate garden path sentences without that person having conscious access to disambiguating information? Explain.

Question 41

Refer to the figure.
Based on the results of Kamide et al.'s 2003 study, which images would a participant look at as they hear The beer was drunk by…? How does this outcome help us understand the time course of sentence parsing and how various sources of information are integrated?

Question 42

ERP and eye tracking have both been found to be useful for studying predictive language processing in spoken language, but there may be specific experimental circumstances in which one would be more appropriate than the other. What would you need to consider when deciding whether to use the ERP or the eye-tracking method?

Question 43

How is working memory involved in the process of understanding the structure and meaning of a sentence? Do some sentences place a heavier burden on working memory than others?

Question 44

Do individual differences affect people's language parsing abilities? Provide empirical evidence to support your argument.

Question 45

Carolina is a 64-year-old woman who grew up in a Spanish-speaking family but has always lived in an English-speaking neighborhood. In her current job, she deals with both English- and Spanish-speaking clients on a daily basis. Frank is a 33-year-old man who spoke only English until college, when he learned Italian. He doesn't have much opportunity to speak Italian with friends or colleagues, but he enjoys reading challenging books in Italian. Would Carolina or Frank be more likely to show enhanced cognitive control compared to her/his monolingual peers? Base your answer on current explanations for the effect of bilingualism on cognitive control.

Question 46

Describe the task researchers used to measure cognitive control in working memory, and how this relates to the processing of garden path sentences.