Memory Processes Underlying Sentence Processing
Our experience of reading a sentence or listening to spoken language usually feels effortless. However, our ability to rapidly access the linguistic representations that support successful comprehension requires the effective coordination of multiple cognitive systems including perception, attention, and memory. One area of my work focuses on understanding the nature of the memory processes that contribute to language comprehension at different levels of linguistic representation. At the lexical level, I have used a repetition priming paradigm to investigate the processes of lexical encoding and retrieval that support recognition of words during natural reading (Lowder et al., 2013; Lowder et al., 2023). At the syntactic level, my work addresses the nature of the memory demands placed on readers during the processing of complex syntactic structures (Gordon & Lowder, 2012; Johnson et al., 2011; Lowder & Gordon, 2014, 2015, 2021). Regarding this latter topic, my work argues that the traditional notion of conceptualizing sentence processing as operating within a capacity-limited working-memory model is in many ways inadequate. Instead, sentence processing is better understood within a cue-based long-term memory framework under which relevant syntactic or semantic elements serve as memory cues that guide the encoding, storage, and retrieval of linguistic information.
Gordon, P. C., & Lowder, M. W. (2012). Complex sentence processing: A review of theoretical perspectives on the comprehension of relative clauses. Language and Linguistics Compass, 6, 403-415. [pdf]
Johnson, M. L., Lowder, M. W., & Gordon, P. C. (2011). The sentence-composition effect: Processing of complex sentences depends on the configuration of common noun phrases versus unusual noun phrases. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 140, 707-724. [pdf]
Lowder, M. W., Cardoso, A., Pittman, M., & Zhou, A. (2023). Effects of syntactic structure on the processing of lexical repetition during sentence reading. Memory & Cognition, 51, 1249-1263. [pdf]
Lowder, M. W., Choi, W., & Gordon, P. C. (2013). Word recognition during reading: The interaction between lexical repetition and frequency. Memory & Cognition, 41, 738-751. [pdf]
Lowder, M. W., & Gordon, P. C. (2014). Effects of animacy and noun-phrase relatedness on the processing of complex sentences. Memory & Cognition, 42, 794-805. [pdf]
Lowder, M. W., & Gordon, P. C. (2015). Focus takes time: Structural effects on reading. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 22, 1733-1738. [pdf]
Lowder, M. W., & Gordon, P. C. (2021). Relative clause effects at the matrix verb depend on type of intervening material. Cognitive Science, 45, e13039. [pdf]
Syntax-Semantics Interface
A sentence can be considered "complex" for a wide variety of reasons, including semantic factors (as in the case of figurative language) and syntactic factors (as in the case of relative clauses). Previous work has documented how these two sources of complexity independently impose processing costs on the comprehender. My research takes a different approach as it explains how processing is affected when sources of semantic and syntactic complexity combine in the same sentence. In several experiments, I have shown that the difficulty associated with processing a complex semantic expression is reduced when the words that create the complex meaning appear in separate clauses or are otherwise structurally separated. For example, the integration of an inanimate sentence subject with an action verb (The hammer smashed the window) is more semantically complex than when the sentence subject is animate (The burglar smashed the window), and this difference is detectable in reading times on the verb. However, my work demonstrates that the magnitude of this difference is substantially reduced when the action verb is not the main verb of the sentence but is instead embedded in a relative clause (The hammer/burglar that smashed the window...) (Lowder & Gordon, 2012, 2015a). I have shown in additional work that sentence structure modulates the processing of other types of complex semantic constructions such as metonymy (Lowder & Gordon, 2013) and complement coercion (Lowder & Gordon, 2015b, 2016). Â
Lowder, M. W., & Gordon, P. C. (2012). The pistol that injured the cowboy: Difficulty with inanimate subject-verb integration is reduced by structural separation. Journal of Memory and Language, 66, 819-832. [pdf]
Lowder, M. W., & Gordon, P. C. (2013). It's hard to offend the college: Effects of sentence structure on figurative-language processing. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 39, 993-1011. [pdf]
Lowder, M. W., & Gordon, P. C. (2015a). Natural forces as agents: Reconceptualizing the animate-inanimate distinction. Cognition, 136, 85-90. [pdf]
Lowder, M. W., & Gordon, P. C. (2015b). The manuscript that we finished: Structural separation reduces the cost of complement coercion. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 41, 526-540. [pdf]
Lowder, M. W., & Gordon, P. C. (2016). Eye-tracking and corpus-based analyses of syntax-semantics interactions in complement coercion. Language, Cognition and Neuroscience, 31, 921-939. [pdf]
Individual Differences in Reading and Sentence Processing
Even among literate adults, substantial variability exists in readers' abilities to process language. Much of my recent work has focused on attempting to explain the nature of this variability. In experiments with young adults, my work has shown that measures of verbal ability are particularly effective at explaining individual differences in reading behavior, such as the size of the perceptual span (Choi et al., 2015), as well as the magnitude of repetition-priming effects (Lowder & Gordon, 2017). My work has also shown that individual differences in a person's degree of print exposure can explain variability in word recognition abilities in lexical decision (Kim et al., 2021; Lee et al., 2019) and in eyetracking during reading (Gordon et al., 2020). Other aspects of my work have addressed questions relating to the effects of aging on reading. Although aging is typically associated with decrements in visual acuity, perceptual speed, and memory, several aspects of cognitive functioning such as semantic knowledge, vocabulary, and crystalized intelligence tend to remain constant or even improve as we age. As such, older adults seem to rely heavily on their intact abilities to compensate for impairments in other domains in order to achieve language comprehension performance that is often just as good as that of young adults (Choi et al., 2017; Gordon et al., 2016).
Choi, W., Lowder, M. W., Ferreira, F., & Henderson, J. M. (2015). Individual differences in the perceptual span during reading: Evidence from the moving window technique. Attention, Perception, & Psychophysics, 77, 2463-2475. [pdf]
Choi, W., Lowder, M. W., Ferreira, F., Swaab, T., & Henderson, J. M. (2017). Effects of word predictability and preview lexicality on eye movements during reading: A comparison between young and older adults. Psychology and Aging, 32, 232-242.
Gordon, P. C., Lowder, M. W., & Hoedemaker, R. S. (2016). Reading in normally aging adults. In Wright, H. H. (Ed.), Cognition, Language and Aging (pp. 165-191). Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing. [pdf]
Gordon, P. C., Moore, M., Choi, W., Hoedemaker, R. S., & Lowder, M. W. (2020). Individual differences in reading: Separable effects of reading experience and processing skill. Memory & Cognition, 48, 553-565. [pdf]
Kim, D., Lowder, M. W., & Choi, W. (2021). Effects of print exposure on an online lexical decision task: A direct replication using a web-based experimental procedure. Frontiers in Psychology, 12, Article 710663. [pdf]
Lee, H., Seong, E., Choi, W., & Lowder, M. W. (2019). Development and assessment of the Korean Author Recognition Test (KART). Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 72, 1837-1846. [pdf]
Lowder, M. W., & Gordon, P. C. (2017). Print exposure modulates effects of repetition priming during sentence reading. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 24, 1935-1942. [pdf]
Prediction in Sentence Processing
A growing trend in the psycholinguistic literature argues that successful language processing relies on mechanisms of prediction. We have taken a slightly different perspective, arguing instead that the extent to which language processing relies on prediction depends on the sentence's information structure: prediction efforts are directed at information that is presented as new or focused rather than information that is presented as given or presupposed (Ferreira & Lowder, 2016). However, there are certainly linguistic contexts in which prediction is especially robust. One such context seems to be in the domain of speech disfluencies, as when a speaker says uh or um. In several experiments, we have shown that listeners are very sensitive to disfluencies and use them as cues to rapidly anticipate what the speaker will say next (Lowder & Ferreira, 2016a, 2016b, 2019; Lowder et al., 2020). At the syntactic level, we have shown that readers use the structure "not only...but also..." to rapidly anticipate what might come next, which then facilitates processing (Lowder et al., 2021). A final line of work that bears on the role of prediction in sentence processing takes a multidisciplinary approach by combining methods from eyetracking, fMRI, and computational linguistics. Recent developments in computational linguistics have provided us with algorithmic sentence parsers that objectively quantify processing difficulty on a word-by-word basis, using metrics based on a word's probability of occurring in a particular context. By recording participants' eye movements while they read texts in an fMRI scanner, we were able to employ a fixation-related fMRI technique to look for neural activity associated with surprisal--a parser-derived metric of sentence processing difficulty. Our findings demonstrate that the left interior frontal gyrus and left anterior superior temporal lobe--two regions previously implicated in syntactic processing--show increased activation when readers fixate words that are higher in surprisal (Henderson et al., 2016).
Ferreira, F., & Lowder, M. W. (2016). Prediction, information structure, and good-enough language processing. Psychology of Learning and Motivation, 65, 217-247. [pdf]
Henderson, J. M., Choi, W., Lowder, M. W., & Ferreira, F. (2016). Language structure in the brain: A fixation-related fMRI study of syntactic surprisal in reading. NeuroImage, 132, 293-300. [pdf]
Lowder, M. W., & Ferreira, F. (2016a). Prediction in the processing of repair disfluencies. Language, Cognition and Neuroscience, 31, 73-79. [pdf]
Lowder, M. W., & Ferreira, F. (2016b). Prediction in the processing of repair disfluencies: Evidence from the visual-world paradigm. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 42, 1400-1416. [pdf]
Lowder, M. W., & Ferreira, F. (2019). I see what you meant to say: Anticipating speech errors during online sentence processing. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 148, 1849-1858. [pdf]
Lowder, M. W., Maxfield, N. D., & Ferreira, F. (2020). Processing of self-repairs in stuttered and non-stuttered speech. Language, Cognition and Neuroscience, 35, 93-105. [pdf]
Lowder, M. W., Ryan, G., Opie, J., & Kaminsky, E. (2021). Effects of contrastive focus on lexical predictability during sentence reading: The case of not only...but also constructions. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 74, 179-186. [pdf]