11. On the cost of scalar implicatures : an eye-tracking studyGreta Mazzaggio, Anne Colette Reboul, Jean-Baptiste van der Henst, Anne Cheylus, Paolo Lorusso, Penka Stateva, 2022, published scientific conference contribution abstract Keywords: scalar implicatures, experimental pragamtics, eye-tracker, quantifiers
Published in RUNG: 08.08.2022; Views: 1233; Downloads: 23
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12. The atypical pattern of irony comprehension in autistic childrenFrancesca Panzeri, Greta Mazzaggio, Beatrice Giustolisi, Silvia Silleresi, Luca Surian, 2022, original scientific article Abstract: Nonliteral language understanding has always been recognized as problematic in autistic individuals. We ran a study on 26 autistic children (mean age = 7.3 years) and 2 comparison groups of typically developing children, 1 matched for chronological age, and 1 of younger peers (mean age = 6.11 years) matched for linguistic abilities, aiming at assessing their understanding of ironic criticisms and compliments, and identifying the cognitive and linguistic factors that may underpin this ability. Autistic participants lagged behind the comparison groups in the comprehension of both types of irony, and their performance was related to mindreading and linguistic abilities. Significant correlations were found between first-order Theory of Mind (ToM) and both types of irony, between second-order ToM and ironic compliments, and between linguistic abilities and ironic criticisms. The autistic group displayed an interesting, and previously unattested in the literature, bimodal distribution: the great majority of them (n = 18) displayed a very poor performance in irony understanding, whereas some (n = 6) were at ceiling. We discuss these results in terms of two different profiles of autistic children.
Keywords: irony, autism spectrum disorder, experimental pragmatics, theory of mind, irony comprehension
Published in RUNG: 05.05.2022; Views: 1471; Downloads: 0
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13. Experimental syntax and Slavic languagesArthur Stepanov, 2021, independent scientific component part or a chapter in a monograph Abstract: The chapter reviews a number of empirical domains that recently came into the focus of research in Slavic experimental syntax, including island phenomena, syntactic Superiority effects, various types of agreement, word order, and scope interaction, among others. This research mostly relies on sentence acceptability experiments applied across larger pools of participants, but the chapter also reviews selected studies using related experimental methods (e.g. elicited production and sentence–picture verification). The chapter concludes by identifying a number of conceptual issues in syntactic theory, for which we believe Slavic experimental syntax has a potential to make a particularly strong contribution.
Keywords: experimental syntax, Slavic language, syntactic island, unaccusativity, information structure, superiority effect, case matching, agreement, numeral phrase
Published in RUNG: 20.12.2021; Views: 1928; Downloads: 15
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18. Does irony understanding decline with age?Greta Mazzaggio, Hortense De Bettignies, Diana Mazzarella, 2021, published scientific conference contribution abstract Abstract: The use of non-literal language is deeply embedded in everyday communication and the ability to comprehend it changes across life. Research indicates that older adults sometimes struggle in understanding pragmatic aspects of language, such as presupposition (Domaneschi & Di Paola 2019), humor (Bischetti et al. 2019) or sarcasm (Phillips et al. 2015). The present study aims at broadening our understanding of these age-related changes by focusing on irony understanding. To understand irony (e.g., ‘The weather is great!’ uttered under a pouring rain), one needs to recognize that the speaker is expressing a dissociative attitude towards a proposition that is blatantly irrelevant or false, which echoes an attributed thought or statement (e.g., the proposition ‘The weather is great’ attributed to the mistaken weather forecaster). Previous research shows that the ability to process irony is closely related to Theory-of-Mind (ToM) and working memory (WM). As there is evidence of an age-related decline in both cognitive abilities, this decline may impact irony understanding in late adulthood. In our ongoing study, we test the effect of age on irony-processing by comparing self-paced reading times of ironic and literal statements across two age groups (young adults: 19-25 yo and older adults: 65-74 yo). Crucially, we manipulate the degree of explicitness of the statement echoed by the ironic speaker. We predict that the difference between the reading times for ironic and literal statements will be modulated by age. Moreover, we predict that reading times will be faster when the echo is explicit compared to when the echo is implicated and that this effect will be stronger for older adults. Finally, we expect that ToM and WM will both be significant predictors and that WM will play a crucial role when the implicitness of the echo poses higher cognitive demands
Keywords: irony, aging, cognitive decline, experimental pragmatics, processing
Published in RUNG: 22.09.2021; Views: 1709; Downloads: 45
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19. Indirect speech acts in high functioning autismGreta Mazzaggio, Simona Di Paola, Eleonora Marocchini, Filippo Domaneschi, 2019, published scientific conference contribution abstract Abstract: Few works have addressed the processing of indirect requests in High-Functioning Autism (HFA), and results are conflicting. Some studies report HFA individuals’ difficulties in indirect requests comprehension; others suggest that it might be preserved in HFA. Furthermore, the role of Theory of Mind in understanding indirect requests is an open issue. The goal of this work is twofold: first, assessing whether comprehension of indirect requests for information is preserved in HFA; second, explor- ing whether mind-reading skills predict this ability. We tested a group of (n = 14; 9–12 years) HFA children and two groups of younger (n = 19; 5–6 years) and older (n = 28; 9–12 years) typically developing (TD) children in a semi-structured task involving direct, indirect and highly indirect requests for information. Results suggested that HFA can understand indirect and highly indirect requests, as well as TD children. Yet, while Theory of Mind skills seem to enhance older TD children under- standing, this is not the case for HFA children. Therefore, interestingly, they could rely on different interpretative strategies
Keywords: indirect speech act, indirect requests, theory of mind, autism developmental disorders, experimental pragmatics
Published in RUNG: 22.09.2021; Views: 1747; Downloads: 45
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20. The case of scalar implicature processing : an eye- tracking studyGreta Mazzaggio, Anne Colette Reboul, Chiara Caretta, Mélody Darblade, Jean-Baptiste van der Henst, Anne Cheylus, Penka Stateva, 2019, published scientific conference contribution abstract Abstract: Implicatures like ‘Some politicians are smart’ (interpreted as ‘Some but not all politicians are smart’) are defined scalar implicatures. A heated linguistic debate has focused on how we derive those implicatures: some authors consider the computational process as linguistic in nature (Levinson, 2000), others as pragmatic in nature (Sperber & Wilson, 1995). A growing body of research, prompted by pioneering work by Bott and Noveck (2004), focused on the computational cost related with the computation of scalar implicatures. The present study addresses such topic through the use of different experimental techniques. With Experiment 1 (N = 57) we replicated the third experiment of Bott and Noveck (2004), the first study that identified a cost related to a pragmatic response. With Experiment 2 (N = 58), using a pseudo-word paradigm, we excluded the possibility that the computational cost is due to an experimental artifact, such as an increased difficulty in moving up in the conceptual hierarchy (e.g., ‘Some elephants are mammals’) than in moving down (e.g. ‘Some mammals are elephants’). In Experiment 3 (N = 54), with a Sentence Evaluation Task, we collected reading times, reaction times and eye gaze data. Results showed that the cost of the computation disappears when there is contextual support. Overall, our results seem to support the idea that scalar implicatures are not automatically computed with context playing an important role.
Keywords: scalar implicatures, eye-tracking, experimental pragmatics, reaction times
Published in RUNG: 22.09.2021; Views: 1821; Downloads: 7
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