Biomedical subjects

Z M Griffin

Publications and source records attributed to Z M Griffin.

5 recordsLinked to original sources

PubMed2001

Gaze durations during speech reflect word selection and phonological encoding.

Speakers produced the sentence frame The A and the B are above the C to describe three pictured objects while their eye movements were monitored. Object B or C varied in codability (the number of alternative names for it) and in the frequency of its dominant name. Codability is known to affect speed of word selection, and word frequency, speed to retrieve a word's pronunciation (phonological encoding). Speakers gazed longer at lower codability and lower frequency objects before naming them. However, the codability and frequency of B and C did not affect when speakers began naming A, even when utterances were perfectly fluent. The results indicate that speakers began "The A..." once they had a name prepared for A, before selecting names for B and C. Similar gaze patterns during less constrained scene description tasks in other studies suggest that speakers often incrementally select and phonologically encode nouns in fluent utterances.

Adult↗

PubMed2000

Structural priming as implicit learning: a comparison of models of sentence production.

Structural priming reflects a tendency to generalize recently spoken or heard syntactic structures to different utterances. We propose that it is a form of implicit learning. To explore this hypothesis, we developed and tested a connectionist model of language production that incorporated mechanisms previously used to simulate implicit learning. In the model, the mechanism that learned to produce structured sequences of phrases from messages also exhibited structural priming. The ability of the model to account for structural priming depended on representational assumptions about the nature of messages and the relationship between comprehension and production. Modeling experiments showed that comprehension-based representations were important for the model's generalizations in production and that nonatomic message representations allowed a better fit to existing data on structural priming than traditional thematic-role representations.

Cognition↗

PubMed2000

The persistence of structural priming: transient activation or implicit learning?

Structural priming in language production is a tendency to recreate a recently uttered syntactic structure in different words. This tendency can be seen independent of specific lexical items, thematic roles, or word sequences. Two alternative proposals about the mechanism behind structural priming include (a) short-term activation from a memory representation of a priming structure and (b) longer term adaptation within the cognitive mechanisms for creating sentences, as a form of procedural learning. Two experiments evaluated these hypotheses, focusing on the persistence of structural priming. Both experiments yielded priming that endured beyond adjacent sentences, persisting over 2 intervening sentences in Experiment 1 and over 10 in Experiment 2. Although memory may have short-term consequences for some components of this kind of priming, the persisting effects are more compatible with a learning account than a transient memory account.

Adult↗

PubMed2000

What the eyes say about speaking.

To study the time course of sentence formulation, we monitored the eye movements of speakers as they described simple events. The similarity between speakers' initial eye movements and those of observers performing a nonverbal event-comprehension task suggested that response-relevant information was rapidly extracted from scenes, allowing speakers to select grammatical subjects based on comprehended events rather than salience. When speaking extemporaneously, speakers began fixating pictured elements less than a second before naming them within their descriptions, a finding consistent with incremental lexical encoding. Eye movements anticipated the order of mention despite changes in picture orientation, in who-did-what-to-whom, and in sentence structure. The results support Wundt's theory of sentence production.

Adolescent↗

PubMed1999

Frequency of meaning use for ambiguous and unambiguous words.

When using verbal stimuli, researchers usually equate words on frequency of use. However, for some ambiguous words (e.g., ball as a round object or a formal dance), frequency counts fail to distinguish how often a particular meaning is used. This study evaluates the use of ratings to estimate meaning frequency. Analyses show that ratings correlate highly with word frequency counts when orthographic and meaning frequencies should converge, are not unduly influenced by semantic factors, and may provide a better measure of relative meaning dominance than the word association task does. Furthermore, the ratings allow researchers to equate or manipulate frequency of meaning use for ambiguous and unambiguous words. Ratings for 211 words are reported.

Humans↗