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Edwards, Jan; Gross, Megan; Chen, Jianshen; MacDonald, Maryellen C.; Kaplan, David; Brown, Megan; Seidenberg, Mark S. – Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 2014
Purpose: This study was designed to examine the relationships among minority dialect use, language ability, and young African American English (AAE)-speaking children's understanding and awareness of Mainstream American English (MAE). Method: Eighty-three 4- to 8-year-old AAE-speaking children participated in 2 experimental tasks. One task…
Descriptors: African American Children, Black Dialects, North American English, Comprehension
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Stallings, Lynne M.; MacDonald, Maryellen C. – Journal of Psycholinguistic Research, 2011
Heavy-NP shift is the tendency for speakers to place long direct object phrases at the end of a clause rather than next to the verb. Though some analyses have focused on length of the direct object phrase alone, results from two experiments demonstrate that the length of the direct object relative to that of other phrases, and not the length of…
Descriptors: Form Classes (Languages), Word Order, Nouns, Verbs
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Amato, Michael S.; MacDonald, Maryellen C. – Cognition, 2010
A study combining artificial grammar and sentence comprehension methods investigated the learning and online use of probabilistic, nonadjacent combinatorial constraints. Participants learned a small artificial language describing cartoon monsters acting on objects. Self-paced reading of sentences in the artificial language revealed comprehenders'…
Descriptors: Sentences, Artificial Languages, Cartoons, Language Processing
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Acheson, Daniel J.; MacDonald, Maryellen C.; Postle, Bradley R. – Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 2011
The influence of semantic processing on the serial ordering of items in short-term memory was explored using a novel dual-task paradigm. Participants engaged in 2 picture-judgment tasks while simultaneously performing delayed serial recall. List material varied in the presence of phonological overlap (Experiments 1 and 2) and in semantic content…
Descriptors: Models, Semantics, Serial Ordering, Short Term Memory
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Acheson, Daniel J.; MacDonald, Maryellen C. – Journal of Memory and Language, 2011
Research on written language comprehension has generally assumed that the phonological properties of a word have little effect on sentence comprehension beyond the processes of word recognition. Two experiments investigated this assumption. Participants silently read relative clauses in which two pairs of words either did or did not have a high…
Descriptors: Reading Tests, Phonological Awareness, Sentences, Phrase Structure
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Haskell, Todd R.; Thornton, Robert; MacDonald, Maryellen C. – Cognition, 2010
A robust result in research on the production of grammatical agreement is that speakers are more likely to produce an erroneous verb with phrases such as "the key to the cabinets", with a singular noun followed by a plural one, than with phrases such as "the keys to the cabinet", where a plural noun is followed by a singular. These asymmetries are…
Descriptors: Nouns, Grammar, Error Patterns, Verbs
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Acheson, Daniel J.; MacDonald, Maryellen C. – Psychological Bulletin, 2009
Verbal working memory (WM) tasks typically involve the language production architecture for recall; however, language production processes have had a minimal role in theorizing about WM. A framework for understanding verbal WM results is presented here. In this framework, domain-specific mechanisms for serial ordering in verbal WM are provided by…
Descriptors: Recall (Psychology), Serial Ordering, Short Term Memory, Verbal Communication
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Christiansen, Morten H.; MacDonald, Maryellen C. – Language Learning, 2009
Most current approaches to linguistic structure suggest that language is recursive, that recursion is a fundamental property of grammar, and that independent performance constraints limit recursive abilities that would otherwise be infinite. This article presents a usage-based perspective on recursive sentence processing, in which recursion is…
Descriptors: Sentences, Language Processing, Language Usage, Grammar
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Almor, Amit; Aronoff, Justin M.; MacDonald, Maryellen C.; Gonnerman, Laura M.; Kempler, Daniel; Hintiryan, Houri; Hayes, UnJa L.; Arunachalam, Sudha; Andersen, Elaine S. – Brain and Language, 2009
We tested the ability of Alzheimer's patients and elderly controls to name living and non-living nouns, and manner and instrument verbs. Patients' error patterns and relative performance with different categories showed evidence of graceful degradation for both nouns and verbs, with particular domain-specific impairments for living nouns and…
Descriptors: Semantics, Verbs, Nouns, Alzheimers Disease
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Wells, Justine B.; Christiansen, Morten H.; Race, David S.; Acheson, Daniel J.; MacDonald, Maryellen C. – Cognitive Psychology, 2009
Many explanations of the difficulties associated with interpreting object relative clauses appeal to the demands that object relatives make on working memory. MacDonald and Christiansen [MacDonald, M. C., & Christiansen, M. H. (2002). "Reassessing working memory: Comment on Just and Carpenter (1992) and Waters and Caplan (1996)." "Psychological…
Descriptors: Sentences, Short Term Memory, Language Processing, Word Order
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Almor, Amit; MacDonald, Maryellen C.; Kempler, Daniel; Andersen, Elaine S.; Tyler, Lorraine K. – Language and Cognitive Processes, 2001
Two studies are discussed. The first tested the effect of intervening material on the processing of subject-verb number agreement in Alzheimer's Disease patients and in normal elderly adults. The second examined the effect of intervening material on the processing of pronoun-antecedent number agreement in the same patients. (Author/VWL)
Descriptors: Alzheimers Disease, Cognitive Processes, Grammar, Language Processing
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Haskell, Todd R.; MacDonald, Maryellen C. – Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 2005
A number of studies have shown that structural factors play a much larger role than the linear order of words during the production of grammatical agreement. These findings have been used as evidence for a stage in the production process at which hierarchical relations between constituents have been established (a necessary precursor to…
Descriptors: Syntax, Verbs, Grammar, Language Processing
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Dagerman, Karen Stevens; MacDonald, Maryellen C.; Harm, Michael W. – Cognitive Science, 2006
Older and younger adults' abilities to use context information rapidly during ambiguity resolution were investigated. In Experiments 1 and 2, younger and older adults heard ambiguous words (e.g., fires) in sentences where the preceding context supported either the less frequent or more frequent meaning of the word. Both age groups showed good…
Descriptors: Young Adults, Older Adults, Sentences, Simulation
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MacDonald, Maryellen C. – Language and Cognitive Processes, 1994
Studied "pre-ambiguity" plausibility information, information about verb argument structure frequencies, and "post-ambiguity" constraints in undergraduates. All three types of constraints were helpful in the resolution of ambiguities. Ambiguity resolution becomes more difficult as the competitor interpretations becomes stronger. Study items are…
Descriptors: Ambiguity, Cognitive Processes, College Students, Higher Education
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MacDonald, Maryellen C. – Language and Cognitive Processes, 1997
Reviews some history of how lexical representations have acquired an important role in sentence processing research. Discusses relevant issues, including the importance of timecourse information in theorizing; the importance of frequency information in theories of sentence processing; and the question of the grain of frequency information. (42…
Descriptors: Ambiguity, Form Classes (Languages), Language Processing, Language Research
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