We tested two accounts of the cognitive process underlying the N400 event-related potential component: one that it reflects meaning-based processing and one that it reflects the processing of specific words. The experimental design utilized separable Persian phrasal verbs, which form a strongly probabilistic, long-distance dependency, ideal for…

Speech planning is a sophisticated process. In dialog, it regularly starts in overlap with an incoming turn by a conversation partner. We show that planning spoken responses in overlap with incoming turns is associated with higher processing load than planning in silence. In a dialogic experiment, participants took turns with a confederate…

Referential gaze has been shown to benefit language processing in situated communication in terms of shifting visual attention and leading to shorter reaction times on subsequent tasks. The present study simultaneously assessed both visual attention and, importantly, the immediate cognitive load induced at different stages of sentence processing.…

Extending new verbs is important in becoming a productive speaker of a language. Prior results show children have difficulty extending verbs when they have seen events with varied agents. This study further examines the impact of variability on verb learning and asks whether variability interacts with event complexity or differs by language.…

There is mounting evidence that language comprehension involves the activation of mental imagery of the content of utterances (Barsalou, 1999; Bergen, Chang, & Narayan, 2004; Bergen, Narayan, & Feldman, 2003; Narayan, Bergen, & Weinberg, 2004; Richardson, Spivey, McRae, & Barsalou, 2003; Stanfield & Zwaan, 2001; Zwaan, Stanfield, & Yaxley, 2002).…

Two studies investigated the interaction between utterance and scene processing by monitoring eye movements in agent-action-patient events, while participants listened to related utterances. The aim of Experiment 1 was to determine if and when depicted events are used for thematic role assignment and structural disambiguation of temporarily…