Biomedical subjects

M J Traxler

Publications and source records attributed to M J Traxler.

7 recordsLinked to original sources

PubMed2001

Reading time evidence for enriched composition.

Verbs like 'begin' and 'enjoy' appear to semantically select a complement that expresses an activity or an event (Jackendoff, R. (1997). The architecture of the language faculty. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press; Pustejovsky, J. Cognition 41 (1991) 47; Pustejovsky, J. (1995). The generative lexicon. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press). When these verbs occur with a complement that does not directly denote either an activity or an event (e.g. '... began the book' or '... enjoyed the book'), the complement must be type-shifted from an object to an activity to conform to the verb's semantic restrictions. We report an experiment in which self-paced reading times were found to be longer for complements that required type-shifting than for complements that directly matched the semantic restrictions of the matrix verb. This finding is argued to provide on-line evidence for a type of enriched lexical processing posited in recent lexical semantic research.

Adult↗

PubMed2001

Strategies for processing unbounded dependencies: lexical information and verb-argument assignment.

This article describes 2 experiments about verb-argument relations in sentence processing in which there is no ambiguity involving the subcategorization of the verb but in which the role that the argument serves is initially unclear. Specifically, a self-paced reading experiment and an eye-tracking experiment investigated the way in which readers form unbounded dependencies when the verb is looking for both a direct object and a clause and when the filler either could be the direct object or could form part of the clause. The results suggested that readers treated the filler as the verb's direct object and probably also considered the clausal analysis at the same time. The results are interpreted with respect to current accounts of parsing.

Adult↗

PubMed2000

Priming in sentence processing: intralexical spreading activation, schemas, and situation models.

A series of eye-tracking experiments investigated priming in natural language understanding. Intralexical spreading activation accounts of priming predict that the response to a target word will be speeded (i.e., primed) when strong associates appear prior to the target. Schema-based priming accounts predict that priming will occur when the target word is a component of an activated schema or script. Situation model accounts predict that priming will occur when a target word can be integrated easily into an evolving discourse representation. In separate experiments, we measured the effect of associated words, synonyms, and identity primes on processing times for subsequently encountered target words. Our designs crossed prime type (e.g., synonyms vs. unassociated words) with semantic plausibility (i.e., the target word was a plausible vs. an implausible continuation of the sentence). The results showed that identity primes, but not associates or synonyms, primed target words in early measures of processing like first fixation and gaze duration. Plausibility effects tended to emerge in later measures of processing (e.g., on total reading time), although some evidence was obtained for early effects of semantic plausibility. We propose that priming in naturalistic conditions is not caused by intralexical spreading activation or access to precompiled schemas.

Eye Movements↗

PubMed2000

Effects of sentence constraint on priming in natural language comprehension.

In 4 cross-modal naming experiments, researchers investigated the role of sentence constraint in natural language comprehension. On the sentence constraint account, incoming linguistic material activates semantic features that in turn pre-activate likely upcoming words. The 1st and 2nd experiments investigated whether stimulus offset asynchrony played a critical role in previous studies supporting the sentence constraint account. The 3rd and 4th experiments examined further predictions of the sentence constraint account, in particular whether pre-activated words would compete for activation. In Experiment 3, the researchers manipulated whether an expected target word had a close competitor and found that response to the expected word was facilitated regardless of the proximity of a competitor. The 4th experiment established that close competitors were primed by the sentence frames and should have been available to compete with expected target words. Thus, word-level representations did not compete for activation.

Adult↗

PubMed1998

Predicting forage indigestible NDF from lignin concentration.

We used chemical composition and in vitro digestibility data from temperate and tropical forages to develop relationships between indices of lignification and forage indigestible NDF. Neutral detergent fiber indigestibility increased nonlinearly as the lignin concentration of the NDF increased. Differences in estimated indigestible NDF using equations developed for a specific forage class (C3 and C4 grasses and legumes) were small and are probably not biologically significant when compared to those estimated from a common equation. Selected equations were compared with the Cornell Net Carbohydrate and Protein System (CNCPS) for the prediction of ADG. The linear equation (2.4 times NDF lignin content) used by the CNCPS and the Beef NRC had some of the largest errors due to mean bias. A log-log model [4.37 x (lignin/NDF)(.84)] provided the best combination of low total prediction error, low mean bias, and minimal error due to regression bias when permanganate lignin was used. A similar equation based on sulfuric acid lignin [6.17 x (lignin/NDF)(.77)] also met the above criteria. These equations then were evaluated with the CNCPS model against animal growth data from diets ranging in forage quality. Regardless of the equation used for predicting unavailable fiber, the CNCPS underpredicted daily gain, with mean biases ranging from -.10 to -.22 kg/d. Regression bias ranged from .13 to .14 kg/d and the coefficients differed from unity (P = .0001). The new equations gave numerically lower energy allowable ADG by steers compared to the linear equation currently used by the CNCPS model. The estimates were lower due to a higher predicted indigestible NDF, which resulted in a lower estimated forage energy value.

Animal Feed↗

PubMed1996

Case-marking in the parsing of complement sentences: evidence from eye movements.

An eye-tracking experiment investigated the role of case-marking in parsing. We manipulated the case of pronouns in reduced complement sentences like I recognized you and your family would be unhappy here and I recognized she and her family would be unhappy here, in which the nominative pronoun she immediately disambiguates the sentences, in contrast to the ambiguous you. The nominative pronoun she disambiguates the sentence because I recognised she is ungrammatical, and thus she and her family must be the subject of an embedded sentence and not the NP-object of the preceding verb. Subjects took longer to read she and her family than you and your family during initial processing. The pattern reversed at the disambiguating phrase would be. Unambiguous control sentences containing the complementizer that did not produce case-marking effects. These results demonstrate very rapid effects of case-marking on parsing. Either case information is used immediately, or it is employed after an extremely short delay. We discuss implications for current theories of parsing.

Adult↗

PubMed1995

Influence of roughage and grain processing in high-concentrate diets on the performance of long-fed Holstein steers.

The effects of roughage source and timing of inclusion in high-concentrate diets on feedlot performance were evaluated in each of 2 yr with 144 and 120 long-fed Holstein steers, respectively. Roughage, when included in the diet, was delivered in a built-in-roughage (BIR) pellet supplying 15 and 6% roughage (percentage of DM) or hay crop silage (HCS) supplying 7 and 10% roughage (percentage of DM) for the growing and finishing periods, respectively. The six dietary treatments (two pens each) investigated were continuous whole corn and pelleted supplement (no added roughage; WSC-PEL); BIR with cracked corn either in the growing (BIR-G) or finishing (BIR-F) period with whole corn being fed with pelleted supplement when BIR was not part of the diet; BIR and cracked corn fed continuously (BIR-CONT); and two HCS treatments in which the corn was fed either whole (HCS-WSC) or cracked (HCS-CSC) for the entire feeding period. Replicates were slaughtered 4 and 3 wk apart for yr 1 and 2, respectively. Pooled daily gains (yr 1 and 2) for the entire trial (1.39 to 1.45 kg/d) were not different (P > .05). Daily DM and concentrate intakes were lower (P < .001) and gain efficiency was higher (P < .001) for the WSC-PEL than for the other treatments. Carcass characteristics were similar among treatments except for an improved yield grade (P < .02) for the HCS treatments over the BIR treatments. The WSC-PEL treatment was the most profitable (+/steer) and the BIR-CONT diet was the least profitable. The HCS treatments were the most profitable of the roughage treatments. A newly proposed intake prediction equation for feedlot cattle performed similarly to the 1984 NRC equation with long-fed Holstein steer calves.

Animal Feed↗