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Extralinguistic factors affecting language comprehension: the automatic and interactive double nature of syntax. A decade of findings.
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Poster D28 in Poster Session D, Wednesday, October 25, 4:45 - 6:30 pm CEST, Espace Vieux-Port
Laura Jimenez Ortega1,2, Pilar Casado Martínez1,2, Tatiana Almeida-Ribera1,2, Miguel Rubianes2, Francisco Muñoz1,2, José Sanchez-Garcia2, Sabela Fondevila1,2, Manuel Martín-Loeches1,2; 1Psychobiology & Methodology in Behav. Sciences Department, UCM, 2Center UCM-ISCIII for Human Evolution and Behaviour
Syntactic processing has often been considered an utmost example of unconscious automatic processing. In this line, it has been demonstrated that masked words containing syntactic anomalies are unconsciously processed by our brain, triggering event-related potential (ERP) components like the ones triggered by consciously presented syntactic anomalies, thus supporting the automatic nature of syntax. In addition, several studies also point out that regardless of the level of awareness, relevant extralinguistic information like emotions, pupil size of the speaker, facial expressions, social presence, and personality modulate syntactic processing, thus demonstrating the interactive, flexible, and context-dependent nature of syntax. The main aim of the present work is to discuss a decade of studies supporting the automatic and interactive double nature of syntax considering both classical and recent models of language comprehension. Among the discussed syntax models, only one considered this double automatic and interactive nature (Pulvermüller et al., 2008), but it restricts automaticity up to 150 ms after the onset of the critical stimulus, while evidence shows that this window might be extended to up to 300-400 ms. Regarding the interactive nature of syntax, modulations of LAN and P600 components are observed by several extralinguistic variables relevant to communication. However, the direction of the modulations is very variable across studies. We hypothesize that different tasks, contexts, and even individual differences might activate different processing types and mental modes leading to different predictions resulting in the variety of the observed modulations. In conclusion, future research and language comprehension models should consider these syntax characteristics.
Topic Areas: Syntax and Combinatorial Semantics, Reading