Remembering Dr. Anne E. Fowler editor, Annals of Dyslexia, 1994-1999.
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Child↗
Biomedical subjects
Donald Shankweiler
Publications and source records attributed to Donald Shankweiler.
Sentence complexity and input modality effects in sentence comprehension: an fMRI study.
Cortical regions engaged by sentence processing were mapped using functional MRI. The influence of input modality (spoken word vs. print input) and parsing difficulty (sentences containing subject-relative vs. object-relative clauses) was assessed. Auditory presentation was associated with pronounced activity at primary auditory cortex and across the superior temporal gyrus bilaterally. Printed sentences by contrast evoked major activity at several posterior sites in the left hemisphere, including the angular gyrus, supramarginal gyrus, and the fusiform gyrus in the occipitotemporal region. In addition, modality-independent regions were isolated, with greatest overlap seen in the inferior frontal gyrus (IFG). With respect to sentence complexity, object-relative sentences evoked heightened responses in comparison to subject-relative sentences at several left hemisphere sites, including IFG, the middle/superior temporal gyrus, and the angular gyrus. These sites showing modulation of activity as a function of sentence type, independent of input mode, arguably form the core of a cortical system essential to sentence parsing.
Acoustic Stimulation↗
Readers' eye movements distinguish anomalies of form and content.
Evidence is presented that eye-movement patterns during reading distinguish costs associated with the syntactic processing of sentences from costs associated with relating sentence meaning to real world probabilities. Participants (N = 30) read matching sets of sentences that differed by a single word, making the sentence syntactically anomalous (but understandable), pragmatically anomalous, or non-anomalous. Syntactic and pragmatic anomaly each caused perturbations in eye movements. Subsequent to the anomaly, the patterns diverged. Syntactic anomaly generated many regressions initially, with rapid return to baseline. Pragmatic anomaly resulted in lengthened reading times, followed by a gradual increase in regressions that reached a maximum at the end of the sentence. Evidence of rapid sensitivity to pragmatic information supports the use of timing data in resolving the debate over the autonomy of linguistic processing. The divergent patterns of eye movements support indications from neurocognitive studies of a principled distinction between syntactic and pragmatic processing procedures within the language processing mechanism.
Eye Movements↗