shallow processing - language and reading

Question 1

what is shallow processing?

Answer 1

the cognitive processing of a stimulus that focuses on its superficial, perceptual characteristics rather than its meaning
- e.g. Can a man marry his widow’s sister?
- to be a widow the man must be dead
- around only 30% notice this

Question 2

Traditional model and assumption

Answer 2

• traditional models of language comprehension are based on the assumption that the overarching goal of the language comprehension system is to deliver an accurate and detailed representation of the speaker’s or writer’s utterance
• readers and listeners engage in full lexical retrieval and integration into a fully specific syntactic structure. So, we fully analyse the meaning of every word and then fully integrate it into a fully specific grammatical structure
• e.g. Just and Carpenter (1980) on incremental interpretation “readers interpret a word while they are fixating it, and they continue to fixate it until they have processed it as far as they can”

Question 2

why engage in shallow processing?

Answer 2

• the need for system tolerance
• The language that we encounter everyday is so full of ambiguities and contradictions that we need to be able to get the gist of a message, even when it is delivered badly
• e.g. commentators when confuse 2 metaphors due to speaking quickly “I’d love to be a mole on the wall in the Liverpool dressing room at half-time.”

Question 3

what did MacDonald, Pearlmutter, and Seidenberg (1994) acknowledge?

Answer 3

the communicative goal of the listener can be achieved with only a partial analysis of the sentence, however, they viewed these as ‘degenerate cases

Question 4

evidence for shallow processing

Answer 4

• Incomplete semantic commitment.
• Garden path sentences: Lingering incorrect interpretations.
• Pragmatic normalisation: Misinterpretation of passive sentences
• Failure to detect semantic anomalies.
• Failure to notice text changes.

Question 5

what is incomplete semantic commitment?

Answer 5

we may not be committing fully to exactly what the word refers to
e.g.
1. Mary bought a brand new Hitachi Radio
2. It was in Selfridge’s window
what is it?
- The particular radio that she bought, so after she bought it, it was gone?
- The type of radio, so after she bought it, it was still there?
3. Later, when Joan saw it, she decided too that it would be a good purchase

Question 6

Garden path sentences

Answer 6

• leads to a ‘lingering misinterpretation’ of the garden path sentence, suggesting that once the interpretation is “good enough”, people don’t bother clearing up the details

e.g.
While Anna dressed the baby played in the crib.
- Did the baby play in the crib?
- Did Anna dress the baby?

Question 7

Pragmatic normalisation

Answer 7

• A breakdown of local semantic interpretation because of pragmatic override.

e.g. who is the ‘do-er’?
1. active sentences
a. The dog bit the man (99% accurate)
b. The man bit the dog (99% accurate)

2. Passive sentences
   a. The dog was bitten by the man (74% accurate)
   b. The man was bitten by the dog (88% accurate)

Question 8

The survivors problem (Barton & Sanford, 1993)

Answer 8

read scenario:
There was a tourist flight travelling from Vienna to Barcelona. On the last leg of the journey, it developed engine trouble. Over the Pyrenees, the pilot started to lose control. The plane eventually crashed right on the border. Wreckage was equally strewn in France and Spain. The authorities were trying to decide where to bury the survivors.
asked: Where should the survivors be buried?

• correct answer: the survivors shouldn’t be buried anywhere, as they aren’t dead!
• . Barton and Sanford tested people on this scenario using a number of different terms – such as “where would you bury the survivors/injured/wounded/maimed”?
• results: people were far better at detecting the anomaly, i.e., saying that you wouldn’t bury these people, when the word ‘survivors’ was used, compared to these other terms. This would suggest that relevant core meaning may aid detection

Question 9

The survivors problem (Barton & Sanford, 1993) adaptation

Answer 9

• Words that ‘fit the context’ may be processed less deeply.
• The influence of the scenario: a. Air crash (33% detection rate)
  b. Bicycle crash (80% detection rate)

Question 10

failure to detect semantic anomalities

Answer 10

1. Easy-to-detect anomalies:
   a. He spread the warm bread with socks (Kutas & Hillyard, 1980)
   - doesn’t fit well with the context
2. Hard-to-detect anomalies
   a. How many animals of each kind did Moses take on the Ark? (Erickson & Mattson, 1981)
   - fit well with the context

Question 11

Why do people miss these anomalies?

Answer 11

1. Shallow processing hypothesis.
   a. Anomalies are not detected because the full meanings of the anomalous words are not retrieved and/or integrated with the representation of the discourse
2. Reduced awareness hypothesis
   a. The comprehension system retrieves the meaning of the anomalies and attempts to integrate the semantics of the word in question with the rest of the text, the fact of the anomaly may not reach conscious awareness

Question 12

Eye-tracking anomaly detection Bohan and Sanford (2008)

Answer 12

• monitored people’s eye movements as they read sentences containing hard-to-detect anomalies.
• participants read the scenarios, and also had to indicate whether they spotted anything wrong.
• The researchers also created a non-anomalous control condition in which the authorities ‘communicated’ with the hostages, rather than ‘negotiating’ with them. This then resulted in them being able to compare reading times on the word ‘hostages’ across three conditions

Question 13

conclusions of Eye-tracking anomaly detection

Answer 13

• no effects in first-pass reading times on the word ‘hostages’, which suggests that participants did not immediately register any issue
• participants showed longer reading times in the anomalous condition *but only when they also reported that there was an anomaly
• Detection is not immediate but slightly delayed (no early effects on HOSTAGES)
• Detection results in severe disruption.
• Disruption only observed when anomalies are consciously detected (No evidence for unconscious detection)

Question 14

Anomaly detection and ERPs

Answer 14

example of ‘Hard-to-detect’ anomaly
“Child abuse cases are being reported much more frequently these days. In a recent trial, a 10-year sentence was given to the victim, but this was subsequently appealed.”
- 3 conditions: non-anomalous condition in which a care order was given to the victim, Second anomalous condition in which a sentence was given to the victim and the participant reported that this was an anomaly, third condition in which the sentence was given to the victim, but the participant did not detect the anomaly

compared to ‘Easy-to-detect’ anomaly

Question 15

Findings of Anomaly detection and ERPs

Answer 15

easy-to-detect
- clear N400 effect for the easy-to-detect anomalies

hard-to-detect
- no N400 effect here, suggesting that these anomalies are not processed in the same way as ‘easy-to-detect’ anomalies

• this study also showed no evidence for ‘unconscious detection’ in these cases. This would again support the shallow processing hypothesis rather than the reduced awareness hypothesis.

Question 16

logical subordination (Baker & Wagner, 1987)

Answer 16

• Logical subordination clearly distinguishes focal information from ‘extra’ information.

Question 16

Linguistic focus (Bredart & Modolo, 1988)

Answer 16

the use of what is known as a ‘cleft construction’. A cleft construction is just the use of the phrase “It was X”, in order to answer an implied question
e.g.
- It was Moses who took two animals of each kind on the Ark
- This cleft construction answers the question: WHO took the animals on the Ark?

text-change detection
- participants are presented with a piece of text that they should just read normally. They are then shown the text again, and sometimes one of the words has changed

results: people were more likely to notice the change when the key word was in focus than when it wasn’t, suggesting that they had processed the word more deeply when it was in focus than when it was not.

Question 17

Discourse focus (Sturt et al. 2004)

Answer 17

• repeated the linguistic focus experiment but wanted to repicate it using discourse focus
• focused and unfocused conditions
• results: did successfully manage to replicate the results from Experiment , people will notice this regardless of whether or not it is in focus, when then change is more subtle, such as ‘hat’ changing to ‘cap’, people were more likely to spot this when the key word was in focus, suggesting that participants had processed it more deeply when it was in focus.

Question 18

text-change detection

Answer 18

• aims to discover when distinctions are not being made at some level of semantics.
• Based on the ‘Granularity hypothesis’. This refers to the fineness of detail there is in a representation.
• Focus increases the probability of detecting a change to a related word.
• Suggests that information in focus is represented at a finer level of detail.

Question 18

The use of attention-grabbing devices

Answer 18

• Depth of processing can be modulated by many attention-grabbing devices.
• Attention-grabbing devices may work in a similar way to focus devices.

Anomaly detection:
- MOSES decided to take two animals of each kind on the Ark (86.5% detection).
- Moses decided to take TWO animals of each kind on the Ark (68.3% detection).