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M Hupet

Publications and source records attributed to M Hupet.

7 recordsLinked to original sources
PubMed1997

What does Daneman and Carpenter's reading span really measure?

Reading span was assessed in three conditions aiming at varying the processing demands of a reading task. In a Sentence Reading Condition, the participants read aloud lists of sentences and memorize the final word of each sentence as in the original task of Daneman and Carpenter. In two other conditions, each sentence was replaced either by a series of unrelated words (Word Reading Condition) or by a series of meaningless syllables (Syllable Reading Condition); in these two conditions, however, each series ended with the same test words as in the Sentence Reading Condition. There was no significant effect of the condition on the scores for reading span. It is concluded that the typically low scores on reading span are not so much due to the processing demands of the task as to the disruptive effects of the articulatory suppression which characterizes the original task.

Adult↗
PubMed1993

References in conversation between young and old normal adults.

This study compared the way in which young and elderly adults cooperate to achieve a mutually acceptable reference. Pairs of young and elderly interlocutors performed a repeated referential communication task in which they were asked to converse about arranging complex figures in a particular order. With repetition of the task, both partners, regardless of age, needed fewer words and speaking turns to find mutually acceptable references. However, the older Ss were slower to benefit from the repetition and required more collaborative work to reach an agreement. The elderly were less likely to take previously shared information into account; they produced proportionally less requests for potential elaboration, and they were more likely to be idiosyncratic in their interpretation of the referents.

Adult↗
PubMed1989

How to make young children produce cleft sentences.

The present study focuses on the effects of contextual demands on the selection of a particular syntactic device, in asking whether French-speaking children from 4 to 10 years old will spontaneously produce it-cleft sentences if there is a functional necessity arising from the context. Taking into account recent studies that have specified the discourse function(s) served by this marked sentence form, it was hypothesized that the cleft formulation would be more likely than its uncleft counterpart whenever the child's intention was to contrast their own belief or knowledge with that of their addressee. The study showed this to be the case when the matter of the disagreement concerned the agent of an action: that situation elicited an overwhelming majority (from 80% to 97%) of cleft constructions, even from the youngest children. On the other hand, when the matter of the disagreement concerned the patient, there were only a few cleft constructions, even with the oldest children; contrastive stress on the object constituent was the predominant device employed for marking information in that situation. The high proportion of clefts in the Agent condition, and the high proportion of stressed object constituents in the Patient condition, both differ from previously reported data. These differences are discussed with reference to differences in task requirements and to differences between the prosodic constraints of French and English.

Child↗
PubMed1986

Aphasics' sensitivity to contextual appropriateness conditions for pragmatic indicators.

Twenty normal and twenty aphasic subjects were tested for their understanding of implicit meanings of the French adverbs même (even), aussi (also), and surtout (mainly). Their sensitivity to the contextual appropriateness conditions of such items was analyzed in a multiple-choice paradigm requiring them to select from three figures the one which was best described by a sentence like "Show me the figure that is même (aussi, surtout) red." A global quantitative comparison indicates that aphasics' performance was inferior to that of the normal controls. Yet, the analysis of individual responses allowed the identification of three different subgroups of aphasics: the first produced responses identical to the normals' responses; the second seemed to ignore the adverb and systematically selected the figure with the highest amount of the asserted color; and the third produced responses identical to the normals' responses for surtout but had difficulties with même or aussi. As concerns the relationship between aphasics' performance and their scores on literal language comprehension tests, the data favor the dissociation between literal and pragmatic factors in comprehension. Finally, no clear relationship was observed between aphasia type and aphasics' performance, although three points are noted in the discussion: (1) all the conduction aphasics performed like normals, (2) among the Broca's aphasics, the one with the clearest agrammatic verbal output produced responses similar to those of the normals, and (3) there was no anomic patient in the second subgroup.

Adult↗