Modeling Brain Representations of Words' Concreteness in Context Using GPT-2 and Human Ratings
Cogn Sci. 2023 Dec;47(12):e13388. doi: 10.1111/cogs.13388.ABSTRACTThe meaning of most words in language depends on their context. Understanding how the human brain extracts contextualized meaning, and identifying where in the brain this takes place, remain important scientific challenges. But technological and computational advances in neuroscience and artificial intelligence now provide unprecedented opportunities to study the human brain in action as language is read and understood. Recent contextualized language models seem to be able to capture homonymic meaning variation ("bat", in a baseball vs. a vampire context), a...
Source: Cognitive Science - December 16, 2023 Category: Neuroscience Authors: Andrea Bruera Yuan Tao Andrew Anderson Derya Çokal Janosch Haber Massimo Poesio Source Type: research
Modeling Brain Representations of Words' Concreteness in Context Using GPT-2 and Human Ratings
Cogn Sci. 2023 Dec;47(12):e13388. doi: 10.1111/cogs.13388.ABSTRACTThe meaning of most words in language depends on their context. Understanding how the human brain extracts contextualized meaning, and identifying where in the brain this takes place, remain important scientific challenges. But technological and computational advances in neuroscience and artificial intelligence now provide unprecedented opportunities to study the human brain in action as language is read and understood. Recent contextualized language models seem to be able to capture homonymic meaning variation ("bat", in a baseball vs. a vampire context), a...
Source: Cognitive Science - December 16, 2023 Category: Neuroscience Authors: Andrea Bruera Yuan Tao Andrew Anderson Derya Çokal Janosch Haber Massimo Poesio Source Type: research
Modeling Brain Representations of Words' Concreteness in Context Using GPT-2 and Human Ratings
Cogn Sci. 2023 Dec;47(12):e13388. doi: 10.1111/cogs.13388.ABSTRACTThe meaning of most words in language depends on their context. Understanding how the human brain extracts contextualized meaning, and identifying where in the brain this takes place, remain important scientific challenges. But technological and computational advances in neuroscience and artificial intelligence now provide unprecedented opportunities to study the human brain in action as language is read and understood. Recent contextualized language models seem to be able to capture homonymic meaning variation ("bat", in a baseball vs. a vampire context), a...
Source: Cognitive Science - December 16, 2023 Category: Neuroscience Authors: Andrea Bruera Yuan Tao Andrew Anderson Derya Çokal Janosch Haber Massimo Poesio Source Type: research
The N400 is Elicited by Meaning Changes but not Synonym Substitutions: Evidence From Persian Phrasal Verbs
Cogn Sci. 2023 Dec;47(12):e13394. doi: 10.1111/cogs.13394.ABSTRACTWe tested two accounts of the cognitive process underlying the N400 event-related potential component: one that it reflects meaning-based processing and one that it reflects the processing of specific words. The experimental design utilized separable Persian phrasal verbs, which form a strongly probabilistic, long-distance dependency, ideal for the study of probabilistic processing. In sentences strongly constraining for a particular continuation, we show evidence that between two low-probability words, only the word that changed the expected meaning of the ...
Source: Cognitive Science - December 13, 2023 Category: Neuroscience Authors: Kate Stone Naghmeh Khaleghi Milena Rabovsky Source Type: research
The N400 is Elicited by Meaning Changes but not Synonym Substitutions: Evidence From Persian Phrasal Verbs
Cogn Sci. 2023 Dec;47(12):e13394. doi: 10.1111/cogs.13394.ABSTRACTWe tested two accounts of the cognitive process underlying the N400 event-related potential component: one that it reflects meaning-based processing and one that it reflects the processing of specific words. The experimental design utilized separable Persian phrasal verbs, which form a strongly probabilistic, long-distance dependency, ideal for the study of probabilistic processing. In sentences strongly constraining for a particular continuation, we show evidence that between two low-probability words, only the word that changed the expected meaning of the ...
Source: Cognitive Science - December 13, 2023 Category: Neuroscience Authors: Kate Stone Naghmeh Khaleghi Milena Rabovsky Source Type: research
The N400 is Elicited by Meaning Changes but not Synonym Substitutions: Evidence From Persian Phrasal Verbs
Cogn Sci. 2023 Dec;47(12):e13394. doi: 10.1111/cogs.13394.ABSTRACTWe tested two accounts of the cognitive process underlying the N400 event-related potential component: one that it reflects meaning-based processing and one that it reflects the processing of specific words. The experimental design utilized separable Persian phrasal verbs, which form a strongly probabilistic, long-distance dependency, ideal for the study of probabilistic processing. In sentences strongly constraining for a particular continuation, we show evidence that between two low-probability words, only the word that changed the expected meaning of the ...
Source: Cognitive Science - December 13, 2023 Category: Neuroscience Authors: Kate Stone Naghmeh Khaleghi Milena Rabovsky Source Type: research
The N400 is Elicited by Meaning Changes but not Synonym Substitutions: Evidence From Persian Phrasal Verbs
Cogn Sci. 2023 Dec;47(12):e13394. doi: 10.1111/cogs.13394.ABSTRACTWe tested two accounts of the cognitive process underlying the N400 event-related potential component: one that it reflects meaning-based processing and one that it reflects the processing of specific words. The experimental design utilized separable Persian phrasal verbs, which form a strongly probabilistic, long-distance dependency, ideal for the study of probabilistic processing. In sentences strongly constraining for a particular continuation, we show evidence that between two low-probability words, only the word that changed the expected meaning of the ...
Source: Cognitive Science - December 13, 2023 Category: Neuroscience Authors: Kate Stone Naghmeh Khaleghi Milena Rabovsky Source Type: research
Rational Sentence Interpretation in Mandarin Chinese
In this study, we test the noisy-channel model in Mandarin Chinese, a language taxonomically different from English. We present native Mandarin speakers sentences in a written modality (Experiment 1) and an auditory modality (Experiment 2) in three pairs of syntactic alternations. The critical materials are literally implausible but require differing numbers and types of edits in order to form more plausible sentences. Each sentence is followed by a comprehension question that allows us to infer whether the speakers interpreted the item literally, or made an inference toward a more likely meaning. Similar to previous resea...
Source: Cognitive Science - December 11, 2023 Category: Neuroscience Authors: Meilin Zhan Sihan Chen Roger Levy Jiayi Lu Edward Gibson Source Type: research
Perspective Taking Reflects Beliefs About Partner Sophistication: Modern Computer Partners Versus Basic Computer and Human Partners
Cogn Sci. 2023 Dec;47(12):e13385. doi: 10.1111/cogs.13385.ABSTRACTWe investigate partner effects on spatial perspective taking behavior in listeners, comparing behavior with a human versus a computer partner (Experiments 1 and 2), and with computer partners of different perceived capabilities (Experiment 3). Participants responded to spoken instructions from their partner which could be interpreted egocentrically (from their own perspective) or othercentrically (from their partner's perspective). In contrast to earlier work, we found that participants were more egocentric with a computer than a human partner. Participants ...
Source: Cognitive Science - December 11, 2023 Category: Neuroscience Authors: Jia E Loy Vera Demberg Source Type: research
Rational Sentence Interpretation in Mandarin Chinese
In this study, we test the noisy-channel model in Mandarin Chinese, a language taxonomically different from English. We present native Mandarin speakers sentences in a written modality (Experiment 1) and an auditory modality (Experiment 2) in three pairs of syntactic alternations. The critical materials are literally implausible but require differing numbers and types of edits in order to form more plausible sentences. Each sentence is followed by a comprehension question that allows us to infer whether the speakers interpreted the item literally, or made an inference toward a more likely meaning. Similar to previous resea...
Source: Cognitive Science - December 11, 2023 Category: Neuroscience Authors: Meilin Zhan Sihan Chen Roger Levy Jiayi Lu Edward Gibson Source Type: research
Perspective Taking Reflects Beliefs About Partner Sophistication: Modern Computer Partners Versus Basic Computer and Human Partners
Cogn Sci. 2023 Dec;47(12):e13385. doi: 10.1111/cogs.13385.ABSTRACTWe investigate partner effects on spatial perspective taking behavior in listeners, comparing behavior with a human versus a computer partner (Experiments 1 and 2), and with computer partners of different perceived capabilities (Experiment 3). Participants responded to spoken instructions from their partner which could be interpreted egocentrically (from their own perspective) or othercentrically (from their partner's perspective). In contrast to earlier work, we found that participants were more egocentric with a computer than a human partner. Participants ...
Source: Cognitive Science - December 11, 2023 Category: Neuroscience Authors: Jia E Loy Vera Demberg Source Type: research
Rational Sentence Interpretation in Mandarin Chinese
In this study, we test the noisy-channel model in Mandarin Chinese, a language taxonomically different from English. We present native Mandarin speakers sentences in a written modality (Experiment 1) and an auditory modality (Experiment 2) in three pairs of syntactic alternations. The critical materials are literally implausible but require differing numbers and types of edits in order to form more plausible sentences. Each sentence is followed by a comprehension question that allows us to infer whether the speakers interpreted the item literally, or made an inference toward a more likely meaning. Similar to previous resea...
Source: Cognitive Science - December 11, 2023 Category: Neuroscience Authors: Meilin Zhan Sihan Chen Roger Levy Jiayi Lu Edward Gibson Source Type: research
Perspective Taking Reflects Beliefs About Partner Sophistication: Modern Computer Partners Versus Basic Computer and Human Partners
Cogn Sci. 2023 Dec;47(12):e13385. doi: 10.1111/cogs.13385.ABSTRACTWe investigate partner effects on spatial perspective taking behavior in listeners, comparing behavior with a human versus a computer partner (Experiments 1 and 2), and with computer partners of different perceived capabilities (Experiment 3). Participants responded to spoken instructions from their partner which could be interpreted egocentrically (from their own perspective) or othercentrically (from their partner's perspective). In contrast to earlier work, we found that participants were more egocentric with a computer than a human partner. Participants ...
Source: Cognitive Science - December 11, 2023 Category: Neuroscience Authors: Jia E Loy Vera Demberg Source Type: research
On the Connection Between Language Change and Language Processing
Cogn Sci. 2023 Dec;47(12):e13384. doi: 10.1111/cogs.13384.ABSTRACTPrevious studies provided evidence for a connection between language processing and language change. We add to these studies with an exploration of the influence of lexical-distributional properties of words in orthographic space, semantic space, and the mapping between orthographic and semantic space on the probability of lexical extinction. Through a binomial linear regression analysis, we investigated the probability of lexical extinction by the first decade of the twenty-first century (2000s) for words that existed in the first decade of the nineteenth-c...
Source: Cognitive Science - December 10, 2023 Category: Neuroscience Authors: Peter Hendrix Ching Chu Sun Henry Brighton Andreas Bender Source Type: research
Conversational Eyebrow Frowns Facilitate Question Identification: An Online Study Using Virtual Avatars
Cogn Sci. 2023 Dec;47(12):e13392. doi: 10.1111/cogs.13392.ABSTRACTConversation is a time-pressured environment. Recognizing a social action (the ''speech act,'' such as a question requesting information) early is crucial in conversation to quickly understand the intended message and plan a timely response. Fast turns between interlocutors are especially relevant for responses to questions since a long gap may be meaningful by itself. Human language is multimodal, involving speech as well as visual signals from the body, including the face. But little is known about how conversational facial signals contribute to the commun...
Source: Cognitive Science - December 7, 2023 Category: Neuroscience Authors: Naomi Nota James P Trujillo Judith Holler Source Type: research
