Online Processing
37-924-01
Dr. Sharon Armon-Lotem
On-line experimental techniques tap into
automatic unconscious processes involved
in language comprehension and production
and minimize participants‘ reliance on
explicit or metalinguistic knowledge.
Presentation by: Vicky Chondrogianni & Theo Marinis
“There are two basic types of time-sensitive
measures available to examine language
processing: behavioral measures (e.g.
comprehension response times and
production latencies) and physiological
measures (e.g. event-related brain
potentials (ERPs) and eye-movements).”
(Clahsen 2008, p. 3)
Behavioral methods
Eye tracking
 Priming experiments measuring reaction
time (children are usually slower than
adults)
 Cross modal priming
 Monitoring task (self paced
reading/listening) (Taxler 2005 from
Clahsen 2008)

Eye tracking
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Linguistic abilities are assessed by tracking and
recording eye movements in response to predetermined
verbal and visual stimuli
Eye-tracking in language processing studies allows
researchers to track and record participants' eye
movements when they:
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Read a sentence
Look at the pictures on the computer screen as they listen to
sentences that describe these pictures
Experimental eye tracking data is obtained to investigate:
understanding of spoken language
 cognitive processes related to spoken language
 ability to process and interpret metaphor and figurative language
 body language and lip reading
 turn taking in conversations
 audio-visual integration
 reading behavior
 tracking-task performance
 scene exploration strategies
(http://www.tobii.com/eye-tracking-research/global/research/linguistics/)

Preferential looking, Head-turn
method
Children (and adults) tend to look at
pictures corresponding to a sentence they
hear. This can be used to test word
comprehension as well as sentence
comprehension
She’s kissing the keys/ball
Garden-Path sentences
1.
2.
3.
4.
Since Jay always walks a mile seems
like a short distance to him.
The horse raced past the barn fell
As the woman edited the magazine
about fishing amused all the reporters
As the woman sailed the magazine
about fishing amused all the reporters


…magazine about fishing amused all the reporters
…noun
post noun
verb
post verb
“A regression is any eye movement
that begins at the right-most point
the reader has fixated and leaves
the currently fixated region to the
left. This definition is therefore only
concerned with disruption occurring
during initial processing. First-pass
time is the sum of the fixations
occurring within a region before the
first fixation outside the region. If the
eye fixates a point beyond the end of
a region before fixating the region for
the first time, then the first-pass time
for that region is zero. (This measure
is equivalent to the gaze-duration
measure [e.g., Rayner & Duffy,
1986], when the region is a single
word.) Total time is the sum of all
fixaions in a region.”
(Pickering & Traxler, 1998)

“The regressions and total-time data demonstrate that:
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readers misanalysed both types of ambiguous sentence
sentences with implausible object analyses were harder to
process during the critical noun phrase
sentences with plausible object analyses were harder to process
during the syntactically disambiguating verb phrase.
The regressions data demonstrate further that readers
incrementally interpreted the sentences, because
plausibility effects emerged before the point of syntactic
disambiguation.
Readers must have initially treated the magazine about
fishing as the object of the subordinate verb (with
magazine as the head noun).”
Clackson, K. & H. Clahsen 2011. Online
processing of cataphoric pronouns by
children and adults: Evidence from eyemovements during listening. In: Danis, N.,
Mesh, K. & H. Sung (eds.), Proceedings of
BUCLD 35. Vol.1, Cascadilla Press:
Somerville, MA, pp. 119-1 MORIA 17/1
Word monitoring Tasks (Tyler &
Marslen-Wilson, 1981)
Monitoring for the word hand in auditory stimulus.
a. John had to go back home. He had fallen out of
the swing and had hurt his hand on the ground.
b. John had to sit on the shop. He had lived out of
the kitchen and had enjoyed his hand in the mud
c. The on sit top to had John. He lived had and
kitchen the out his of had enjoyed hand mud in the
Participants – 5, 7,10 and adults
 Reaction time was measured
 Findings – all showed the same gradation
 The gap was smaller for 5s – limited
processing

Priming tasks - Lexical
decision task
Kazanina 2006,
University of Ottawa
“The cortical representations of the prime
and target are interconnected or overlap in
some way such that activating the
representation of the prime automatically
activates the representation of the target
word.”
(Forster 1999, p. 6)
Cross-Modal Priming
Auditory prime, visual target 
Kazanina 2006,
University of Ottawa
Phonological priming (MarslenWilson & Zwiserlood 1985)
Kazanina 2006,
University of Ottawa
Phonological priming (MarslenWilson & Zwiserlood 1985)
Kazanina 2006,
University of Ottawa
Coreference (McKee, Nicol &
McDaniel, 1993 )
Alive or not alive?

The reindeer knows that the
alligator with the gigantic teeth is
looking at himself in an old shiny
mirror.

The reindeer knows that the
alligator with the gigantic teeth is
looking at him in an old shiny
mirror.
Traces in relative clauses: antecedent
reactivation (Roberts et al 2007 from
Clahsen 2008) - The effect of memory span

John saw the peacock to which the small
penguin gave the nice birthday present __ in the
garden last weekend.

John saw the peacock to which the small
penguin gave the nice birthday present __ in the
garden last weekend.
(PEACOCK, CARROT)
High span children and adult’s
mean reaction time
*
*
High memory span – shorted RT to
identical target (than unrelated) in the gap
position (than control for the related only)
 Low memory span – no antecedent
reactivation, but no difference in
comprehension

Monitoring task (self paced
reading/listening)
Participants listen and press a button for
the next word/phrase. RT is measured as
well as comprehension/judgment at the
end.
Presentation by: Vicky Chondrogianni & Theo Marinis
Self-paced reading (Taxler 2005
from Clahsen 2008)
When Sue tripped the girl fell over and the
vase was broken
 When Sue tripped the table fell over and
the vase was broken
 When Sue fell the policeman stopped and
helped her up

Presentation by: Vicky Chondrogianni & Theo Marinis
Presentation by: Vicky Chondrogianni & Theo Marinis
Presentations
Word monitoring: Montgomery, J. W., &
Leonard, L. B. (1998). Real-Time
Inflectional Processing by Children with
Specific Language Impairment: Effects
of Phonetic Substance. J of Speech
Language and Hearing Research,
41(6), 1432-1443. HALA 24/1
Montgomery, J. W., & Leonard, L. B.
(2006). Effects of Acoustic
Manipulation on the Real-Time
Inflectional Processing of Children With
Specific Language Impairment. J of
Speech Language and Hearing
Research, 49(6), 1238-1256
Participants: 16 with TLD (Mean age 8;11)
and 16 with SLI (Mean age = 9;0)
 Word recognition RT Task with enhanced
cues for low and high substance markers
 Grammaticality Judgment Task for similar
items (with and without enhancement)

Acoustic Enhancement
Grammaticality Judgment
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CA>SLI
Morpheme type
effect
Acoustic
enhancement effect
for both group with
more impact on the
low substance item
Specific morpheme
effect only for SLI
Word recognition
SLI>CA
Low>High
INF<STEM (but not for SLI on low substance morphemes)
No effect of enhancement
Enhancement help in the off-line task but
not in the on-line task
 The task demand (fast response) mask
the enhancement
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Cross modal picture priming: Marinis, T.
and van der Lely, H. (2007) On-line
processing of wh-questions in children
with G-SLI and typically developing
children. International Journal of Language
& Communication Disorders, 42 (5). pp.
557-582 SANDY 24/1
Self Paced Listening: Vicky Chondrogianni,
Theodoros Marinis, and Susan Edwards.
2010. On-line Processing of Articles and
Clitic Pronouns by Greek Children with SLI.
In Franich, K., Iserman, K, & Keil, L. (Eds.).
Proceedings of the 34th Annual Boston
University onference on Language
Development, Volume 1, 78-89.
The study examines whether Greek
children with SLI and a group of agematched typically-developing (TD) children
are sensitive to the omission of articles
and clitic pronouns when they listen to
sentences in real-time.
 Following Tsimpli & Stavrakaki’s (1999)
Interpretability Hypothesis a difference is
expected between indefinite article vs.
clitic pronouns and definite article

20 with TLD (Mean age 7;0) & 13 with SLI
(mean age 6;9)
 SPL with E-prime
 The grammatical version was recorded
and the clitic/article was spliced out to
generate the ungrammatical ones

(5) Definite article – subject position
‘Yesterday a dolphin was playing in the sea with the other
animals. Late / in the afternoon / (the) dolphin / chased / the fish.’
(6) Definite article – object position
‘Yesterday a kangaroo was playing with a green ball. The
kangaroo / kicked / (the) ball / on the pitch / yesterday
afternoon.’
(7) Indefinite article – object position
‘Yesterday a naughty fox chased some other animal. The fox /
chased / (a) donkey / in the woods / yesterday at midday.’
(8) Accusative direct object clitic pronoun
‘The lion wanted to eat the deer. The deer / got very scared /
when / the lion / (it) bit / in the jungle / on the rocks.’
Definite article in subject position
Both groups showed a main effect of Grammaticality (TD children: F1 (1, 26)
= 58.074, p < .001; F2 (1,7) = 26.375, p = .001; children with SLI: F1 (1, 12)
= 5.626, p < .05; F2 (1,7) = 5.397, p = .053).
Definite article in object position
TD children showed a main effect of Grammaticality in both analyses per
subjects and per items (F1(1,26) = 247.376, p <.001; F2(1,7) = 21.804, p <. 01).
Children with SLI showed a main effect of Grammaticality only in the analysis
per participants (F1 (1,12) = 6.423, p <.05; F2 (1,7) = 2.292, p >.1).
Indefinite article in object position
Both groups showed a main effect of Grammaticality (TD group: F1
(1,26) = 105.969, p <.001; F2 (1,7) = 47.920, p<.001; SLI group: F1
(1,12) = 62.471, p<.001; F2(1,7) = 81.401, p<.001).
Clitic pronoun condition
TD children showed a significant main effect of Grammaticality (F1 (1,26) =
12.189, p <.01; F2 (1,9) = 8.627, p <.01). In contrast, children with SLI showed
no main effect of Grammaticality for either the participant or item the analysis
(F1 (1,12) = 1.402, p > .1; F2 (1,9) = 1.243, p > .1).
Four major findings
1.
2.
3.
Children with TLD are sensitive to
grammaticality
Children with SLI are sensitive to omission of
indefinite article but not to clitic omission as
predicted by the Interpretability Hypothesis as
well as the Surface Hypothesis
Children with SLI are sensitive to definite
article omission which is not predicted – why?
Frequency
 Form-function mapping (consistency)
 Therapy effect
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Comparing across populations
SLI vs. L2
 Children vs. adults
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Picture matching: Marinis, T. and
Chondrogianni, V. (2011) Comprehension
of reflexives and pronouns in sequential
bilingual children: do they pattern similarly
to L1 children, L2 adults, or children with
specific language impairment? Journal of
Neurolinguistics, 24 (2). pp. 202-212 –
IRENA 24/1
Chondrogianni, V & Marinis, T. (2012).
Production and processing asymmetries in
the acquisition of tense morphology by
sequential bilingual children. Bilingualism:
Language & Cognition, 15, 5-21
28 monolingual TLD and 39 L2ers with L1
Turkish (6-9)
 TEGI – Production (“Here is a teacher. Tell
me what she does”).
 Word monitoring task for grammatical
inflections (Mary really likes to bake. Every
day she bake(s) cakes and sometimes
cookies and muffins)
 Comparison with SLI from Leonard &
Montgomery
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Accuracy in the production of tense
morphemes
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Main effect of
group and
morpheme
-S < -ed for L2
Moderate
correlation
between LoE
and –s
RT for tensed morphemes
Main effect for:
 group (L2>L1)
 morpheme type
(nontensed>tensed)
 grammaticality
(ungrammatical
>grammatical)
RT on non-tensed morphemes
No interaction >
the two groups
were equally good
at detecting
ungrammaticality
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Two groups by scores
on TEGI: below and
above the criterion
score.
For –s : sig dif for age
and LoE
For –ed: sig dif for LoE
No effect for group for
RT
Word recognition
INF<STEM (but not for SLI on low substance morphemes) – no
grammaticality effect