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K M Dobroth

Publications and source records attributed to K M Dobroth.

3 recordsLinked to original sources
PubMed1996

The influence of prosodic structure on the resolution of temporary syntactic closure ambiguities.

This paper investigates the influence of prosodic structure on the process of sentence comprehension, with a specific focus on the relative contributions of syntactic and prosodic information to the resolution of temporary syntactic closure ambiguities. We argue that prosodic structure provides an initial memory representation for spoken sentences, and that information from this prosodic representation is available to inform syntactic parsing decisions. This view makes three predictions for the processing of temporary syntactic ambiguity: 1. When prosodic and syntactic boundaries coincide, syntactic processing should be facilitated. 2. When prosodic boundaries are placed at misleading points in syntactic structure, syntactic processing should show interference effects. 3. The processing difficulties that have been reliably demonstrated in reading experiments for syntactically complex sentences should disappear when those sentences are presented with a felicitous prosodic structure in listening experiments. These predictions were confirmed by series of experiments measuring end-of-sentence comprehension time and cross-modal naming time for sentences with temporary syntactic closure ambiguities. Sentences with coinciding or conflicting prosodic and syntactic boundaries were compared to a prosodic baseline condition.

Cognition↗
PubMed1987

Differences between traits: properties associated with interjudge agreement.

The present study concerns the relation between properties of personality traits and the agreement with which they are applied to real individuals. Subjects rated the 100 personality items of the California Q-Set on nine subjective dimensions, six of which loaded highly on a first principal component. This factor was interpreted as reflecting each trait's "easy visibility" to an outside observer. Actual interjudge agreement in applying each trait to real individuals was assessed in two ways: Self-other agreement was assessed in two independent samples, and interpeer agreement was assessed in three samples. Impressive and stable agreement was found for most Q items. The traits that were applied to individuals with the greatest interjudge agreement were the same ones that seemed most easily visible and tended to be positively relevant to extraversion and negatively relevant to neuroticism (identified through a factor analysis by McCrae, Costa, & Busch, 1986). The results suggest that traits defining extraversion are revealed relatively directly in social behavior and, therefore, are easy to judge, that traits defining neuroticism are less visible and, so, are judged less accurately, and that lay perceivers of personality are generally sensitive to this difference between traits.

Adult↗