Intersentential coreference expectations reflect mental models of events.
Theres Grüter1, Aya Takeda1, Hannah Rohde2
1University of Hawai'i at Mānoa, USA.
Cognition
|April 29, 2018
Summary
Listeners form mental models of events, influencing expectations about upcoming discourse. Completed events create stronger, proactive expectations for subsequent mentions, impacting language processing.
Area of Science:
- Cognitive Psychology
- Psycholinguistics
- Computational Linguistics
Background:
- Mental models are crucial for understanding discourse.
- Language processing involves updating and utilizing these mental models.
- The interplay between event representation and language comprehension is complex.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate the temporal dynamics of mental model updating during discourse.
- To examine how event structure influences listeners' expectations about subsequent mentions.
- To explore the proactive nature of mental models in language comprehension.
Main Methods:
- Visual world eye-tracking experiment.
- Measuring listeners' coreference expectations during an intersentential pause.
- Analyzing fixation patterns on 'Source' versus 'Goal' entities in transfer-of-possession events.
Main Results:
- A sustained preference for fixating the 'Goal' was observed.
- This 'Goal' fixation preference was significantly stronger for completed events compared to incomplete events.
- Expectations for subsequent mentions are temporally dispersed but sustained.
Conclusions:
- Mental models of events generate proactive expectations about upcoming discourse.
- Verb aspect, conveying event completion, modulates these expectations.
- This provides evidence for the dynamic and predictive nature of mental event representations in language processing.
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