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Introduction: The acquisition of reading skills is a crucial milestone in early education, with formal instruction and practice playing pivotal roles. The outbreak of COVID-19 led to widespread school closures and a shift to remote learning. Methods: This study aimed to investigate the effects of school closures on reading acquisition and fluency among a large sample of second-grade children, considering socioeconomic status (SES) and gender differences. In 2019, a cohort of 2228 second-grade students from 34 schools was assessed for word reading fluency and comprehension. In 2020, during the pandemic, 765 students from a subsample of 20 original schools were re-evaluated using the same measures. The study also collected school-related data. Results: The findings from the entire sample indicated no significant differences in fluency and comprehension scores between children in the second grade in 2019 and 2020. However, a significant interaction emerged when analyzing low SES versus high SES children. Children from low SES backgrounds exhibited notably lower reading scores after a year of remote learning due to the COVID-19 outbreak. Moreover, the disparity in reading scores between low SES and high SES children nearly doubled in 2020. Gender differences were also detected. Discussion: These results underscore the impact of remote learning during the COVID-19 crisis on exacerbating gaps in reading fluency and comprehension between children from high and low SES backgrounds. The implications of these findings highlight the critical role of in-person schooling and targeted support for disadvantaged students, especially during pivotal stages of reading development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

IntroductionThe acquisition of reading skills is a crucial milestone in early education, with formal instruction and practice playing pivotal roles. The outbreak of COVID-19 led to widespread school closures and a shift to remote learning.MethodsThis study aimed to investigate the effects of school closures on reading acquisition and fluency among a large sample of second-grade children, considering socioeconomic status (SES) and gender differences. In 2019, a cohort of 2228 second-grade students from 34 schools was assessed for word reading fluency and comprehension. In 2020, during the pandemic, 765 students from a subsample of 20 original schools were re-evaluated using the same measures. The study also collected school-related data.ResultsThe findings from the entire sample indicated no significant differences in fluency and comprehension scores between children in the second grade in 2019 and 2020. However, a significant interaction emerged when analyzing low SES versus high SES children. Children from low SES backgrounds exhibited notably lower reading scores after a year of remote learning due to the COVID-19 outbreak. Moreover, the disparity in reading scores between low SES and high SES children nearly doubled in 2020. Gender differences were also detected.DiscussionThese results underscore the impact of remote learning during the COVID-19 crisis on exacerbating gaps in reading fluency and comprehension between children from high and low SES backgrounds. The implications of these findings highlight the critical role of in-person schooling and targeted support for disadvantaged students, especially during pivotal stages of reading development.

Objectives: This study examined whether older adults with hearing loss (HL) experience greater difficulties in auditory sentence comprehension compared to those with typical-hearing (TH) when the linguistic burdens of syntactic complexity were systematically manipulated by varying either the sentence type (active vs. passive) or sentence length (3- vs. 4-phrases). Methods: A total of 22 individuals with HL and 24 controls participated in the study, completing sentence comprehension test (SCT), standardized memory assessments, and pure-tone audiometry tests. Generalized linear mixed effects models were employed to compare the effects of sentence type and length on SCT accuracy, while Pearson correlation coefficients were conducted to explore the relationships between SCT accuracy and other factors. Additionally, stepwise regression analyses were employed to identify memory-related predictors of sentence comprehension ability. Results: Older adults with HL exhibited poorer performance on passive sentences than on active sentences compared to controls, while the sentence length was controlled. Greater difficulties on passive sentences were linked to working memory capacity, emerging as the most significant predictor for the comprehension of passive sentences among participants with HL. Conclusion: Our findings contribute to the understanding of the linguisticcognitive deficits linked to age-related hearing loss by demonstrating its detrimental impact on the processing of passive sentences. Cognitively healthy adults with hearing difficulties may face challenges in comprehending syntactically more complex sentences that require higher computational demands, particularly in working memory allocation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduction: Psycholinguistic research often focuses on Indo-European and other commonly studied major languages, while typologically diverse languages remain understudied. In this paper, we examine the morphological and conceptual influences on the real-time comprehension of optional plural-marked sentences in Yucatec Maya, an indigenous language of Mexico with a less commonly studied optional plural marking system. Methods: Fifty-one speakers of Yucatec Maya participated in a picture-sentence matching experiment carried out in the Yucatan Peninsula of Mexico. Pictures of one, two, or seven humans or animals depicting an intransitive action (conceptual number) were paired with auditorily presented sentences that had no plural marking, one plural, or two plurals (morphological number). Participants indicated by key press whether the picture and the sentence were an acceptable match, and decision time was recorded. Results: In the analysis of decision (yes versus no) and accuracy, morphological and conceptual factors interacted. In the analysis of decision time, however, morphological plural marking, but not conceptual number, led to faster decisions. Discussion: In light of previous work on the role of conceptual factors in the computation of number agreement, the interaction between conceptual and morphological factors suggests that a language with optional plural marking (or low "morphological richness") is associated with high conceptual influence on sentence comprehension. Importantly, the results of this study expand the empirical base of language types that have been investigated using psycholinguistic methods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Previous research on the processing of language embedded in a rich visual context has revealed the strong eect that a recently viewed action event has on language comprehension. It has been shown that listeners are more likely to view the target object of a recently performed event than look at the target object of a plausible future event during sentence utterance, regardless of the tense cue. In the current visual-world eye-tracking experiments, we tested the strength of the recently observed visual context with a group of English monolingual and two groups of English–French early and late bilingual speakers. By comparing these different groups, we examined whether bilingual speakers, as a consequence of greater cognitive flexibility when integrating visual context and language information, show early anticipatory eye-movements toward the target object. We further asked whether early and late bilinguals show differences in their processing. The findings of the three eye-tracking experiments revealed an overall preference for the recently seen event. However, as a result of the early provision of tense cue, this preference was quickly diminished in all three groups. Moreover, the bilingual groups showed an earlier decrease in reliance on the recently seen event compared to monolingual speakers and the early bilinguals showed anticipatory eye-movements toward the plausible future event target. Furthermore, a post experimental memory test revealed that the bilingual groups recalled the future events marginally better than the recent events, whereas the reverse was found in the monolingual groups. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Transferred epithet can be regarded as a reflection of semantic markedness since the modifier and the modified conflict with each other and lead to semantic deviation; yet the corresponding processing mechanism is less studied. The present study examined the neurocognitive mechanism of Chinese transferred epithet comprehension by employing ERP technique from the perspective of Iconicity of Markedness. Participants were required to read materials with different types of semantic markedness, namely unmarked linguistic expression (literal sentences) and marked linguistic expression (transferred epithets), and then judge whether the targets were words or pseudo-words. In terms of semantic markedness, the targets are words reflecting the unmarked semantic meaning of literal sentences and marked semantic meaning of transferred epithets respectively. The target words after transferred epithets elicited a larger N400 and a smaller LPC than those in literal sentences. These results suggest that processing sentences with marked and unmarked iconicity involve different neural mechanisms, with the former requiring more cognitive efforts to extract the similarity features. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent research on figurative phrases, factors (e.g., familiarity, transparency, meaning, and decomposability) have played a significant influence on how native and non-native English speakers (various L1 and L1 Arabic) acquire, process, and comprehend figurative language. These factors are not always described and operationalized precisely and are frequently considered autonomous. This study explores these factors in terms of language users' ratings and their abilities to accurately infer meaning from a variety of familiar English and translated idioms and novel metaphors. A total of 123 participants from various language groups engaged in this study. The findings showed that familiarity is a strong predictor of transparency. In the ability to infer the meaning correctly, the best-fit model included an interaction between transparency and familiarity. The findings showed that guessing the meaning correctly led to a greater increase in the scores of transparency and decomposability. We explore how these factors work together to enable speakers to infer the meaning of both known and new figurative words at various levels. These results have significant implications for the learning and teaching of figurative phrases in the English as a foreign language (EFL) context, as they indicate variables that may make a figurative phrase valuable in terms of teaching time and effort. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent research on figurative phrases, factors (e.g., familiarity, transparency, meaning, and decomposability) have played a significant influence on how native and non-native English speakers (various L1 and L1 Arabic) acquire, process, and comprehend figurative language. These factors are not always described and operationalized precisely and are frequently considered autonomous. This study explores these factors in terms of language users’ ratings and their abilities to accurately infer meaning from a variety of familiar English and translated idioms and novel metaphors. A total of 123 participants from various language groups engaged in this study. The findings showed that familiarity is a strong predictor of transparency. In the ability to infer the meaning correctly, the best-fit model included an interaction between transparency and familiarity. The findings showed that guessing the meaning correctly led to a greater increase in the scores of transparency and decomposability. We explore how these factors work together to enable speakers to infer the meaning of both known and new figurative words at various levels. These results have significant implications for the learning and teaching of figurative phrases in the English as a foreign language (EFL) context, as they indicate variables that may make a figurative phrase valuable in terms of teaching time and effort.

The goal of this study was to assess the relationships between computational approaches to analyzing constructed responses made during reading and individual differences in the foundational skills of reading in college readers. We also explored if these relationships were consistent across texts and samples collected at different institutions and texts. The study made use of archival data that involved college participants who produced typed constructed responses under thinking aloud instructions reading history and science texts. They also took assessments of vocabulary knowledge and proficiency in comprehension. The protocols were analyzed to assess two different ways to determine their cohesion. One approach involved assessing how readers established connections with themselves (i.e., to other constructed responses they produced). The other approach involved assessing connections between the constructed responses and the texts that were read. Additionally, the comparisons were made by assessing both lexical (i.e., word matching) and semantic (i.e., high dimensional semantic spaces) comparisons. The result showed that both approaches for analyzing cohesion and making the comparisons were correlated with vocabulary knowledge and comprehension proficiency. The implications of the results for theory and practice are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Considering the crosstalk between brain networks that contain linguistic and emotional information and that no studies have examined the impact of semantic information of affective nature on subject-verb number agreement, the present Event Related Potential (ERP) study investigated the extent to which emotional local nouns whose number mismatched that of subject head nouns might be considered by the parser during comprehension of grammatically correct sentences. To this end, twenty-eight Spanish native speakers were tested on a self-paced reading task while their brain activity was recorded. The experimental materials consisted of 120 sentences where the valence (negative vs. neutral) and number (singular vs. plural) of the local noun of the singular subject noun-phrase (NP) were manipulated; El gorro de aquel/aquellos cazador(es)/mecánico(s) era. . . [The hat of that/those hunter(s)/mechanic(s) was. . .]. ERP results measured in the local noun position showed that valence and number interacted in the 300-500 ms (negative component) and 780-880 ms (late positivity) time windows. In the (target) verb position, the two factors only interacted in the late 780-880 ms time window, revealing an "ungrammatical illusion" for plural marked neutral words. Our findings suggest that number agreement is sensitive to affective meaning but that the emotional information of an attractor is considered in different operations and at different stages during grammatical sentence processing; it can affect lexical and syntactic representation retrieval of a subject-NP and impact agreement encoding only at late stages of processing, during verb agreement and feature integration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study investigated inverse preference effects in L2 structural priming of English relative clauses and their potential influences on subsequent learning of target structures. One hundred fourteen Chinese learners of English at a low-to-intermediate proficiency level participated in a structural priming experiment with a pretest-posttest design. The experimental group underwent a priming task in which they orally produced syntactic structures immediately after viewing English object or passive relative clauses as primes, whereas the control group only read sentences unrelated to English relative clauses. A grammaticality judgment task and a sentence completion task were used to measure the inverse preference effect and its subsequent effects on L2 learning. The results showed the presence of structural priming and inverse preference effects in immediate production, which extended to subsequent learning of L2. In subsequent grammaticality judgments and production, L2 learners performed better with English object relative clauses than with English passive relative clauses in comparison with the pretest. The results are discussed in terms of the structural frequency in both L1 and L2 as well as the implicit learning mechanisms of structural priming. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The goal of this study was to assess the relationships between computational approaches to analyzing constructed responses made during reading and individual differences in the foundational skills of reading in college readers. We also explored if these relationships were consistent across texts and samples collected at different institutions and texts. The study made use of archival data that involved college participants who produced typed constructed responses under thinking aloud instructions reading history and science texts. They also took assessments of vocabulary knowledge and proficiency in comprehension. The protocols were analyzed to assess two different ways to determine their cohesion. One approach involved assessing how readers established connections with themselves (i.e., to other constructed responses they produced). The other approach involved assessing connections between the constructed responses and the texts that were read. Additionally, the comparisons were made by assessing both lexical (i.e., word matching) and semantic (i.e., high dimensional semantic spaces) comparisons. The result showed that both approaches for analyzing cohesion and making the comparisons were correlated with vocabulary knowledge and comprehension proficiency. The implications of the results for theory and practice are discussed.

Considering the crosstalk between brain networks that contain linguistic and emotional information and that no studies have examined the impact of semantic information of affective nature on subject-verb number agreement, the present Event Related Potential (ERP) study investigated the extent to which emotional local nouns whose number mismatched that of subject head nouns might be considered by the parser during comprehension of grammatically correct sentences. To this end, twenty-eight Spanish native speakers were tested on a self-paced reading task while their brain activity was recorded. The experimental materials consisted of 120 sentences where the valence (negative vs. neutral) and number (singular vs. plural) of the local noun of the singular subject noun-phrase (NP) were manipulated; El gorro de aquel/aquellos cazador(es)/mecánico(s) era… [The hat of that/those hunter(s)/mechanic(s) was…]. ERP results measured in the local noun position showed that valence and number interacted in the 300–500 ms (negative component) and 780–880 ms (late positivity) time windows. In the (target) verb position, the two factors only interacted in the late 780–880 ms time window, revealing an “ungrammatical illusion” for plural marked neutral words. Our findings suggest that number agreement is sensitive to affective meaning but that the emotional information of an attractor is considered in different operations and at different stages during grammatical sentence processing; it can affect lexical and syntactic representation retrieval of a subject-NP and impact agreement encoding only at late stages of processing, during verb agreement and feature integration.

Many production and comprehension experiments have studied attraction errors in agreement, primarily in number (e.g., "The key to the cabinets were rusty"). Studies on gender agreement attraction are still sparse, especially in comprehension. We present two self-paced reading experiments on Russian focusing on the role of syncretism in this phenomenon. Russian nouns are inflected for case and number, and some forms have the same inflections (are syncretic). In several experiments on Slovak, it was shown that both head and attractor syncretism play a role for gender agreement in production. We demonstrate for the first time that this is also the case in comprehension. The role of head noun syncretism has not been analyzed in any previous comprehension studies, also for number agreement. We conclude that syncretic forms create uncertainty, which is crucial for agreement disruption. These results are better compatible with retrieval approaches to agreement attraction. We discuss the implications of our findings for the nature of the retrieval cues used to establish morphosyntactic dependencies. The question whether case marking modulates agreement attraction in comprehension has also been addressed in a study on Armenian, and it found no evidence of such influence. We offer an explanation of the conflicting findings from several studies based on the syntactic constructions they used as materials. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Children with developmental language disorder (DLD) reportedly struggle with the comprehension of aspect. However, since aspect and tense are closely entangled in the languages spoken by the children with DLD in previous studies, it is unclear whether the difficulty stems from aspect, tense, or both. Mandarin Chinese, a language without morphological manifestations of tense, is ideal to investigate whether the comprehension of aspect is specifically affected in children with DLD, yet to date work on this is scarce and presents methodological limitations. In this study, we examined whether preschool Mandarin-speaking children with DLD have difficulty in comprehending perfective aspect (represented with the aspect marker - le) compared to imperfective aspect (represented with the aspect markers zai- and - zhe), whether performance can be explained in terms of the pre- vs. post-verbal realization of the aspect markers, and the potential role played by lexical aspect in the comprehension of grammatical aspect. Fourteen preschool children with DLD (mean age: 61.11 months old) and 14 TD children (mean age: 63.4 months old) matched for age and nonverbal intelligence participated in a sentence-picture matching task. Global results showed that, similar to their TD peers, children with DLD performed better on imperfective aspect than perfective aspect. Concerning specific aspect markers, while children with DLD indeed performed similarly to TD children on imperfective -zhe , they obtained significantly lower accuracy than TD children on perfective -le and imperfective zai-. However, considering verb types combined with these aspect markers, results revealed that children with DLD scored significantly higher on the prototypical combination(s) (e.g., zai- + Activity verbs) than on the non-prototypical combination(s) (e.g., zai- + Accomplishment verbs). The performance pattern suggests that the comprehension of aspect markers by children with DLD is particularly affected by lexical aspect. As this also affects younger TD children, children with DLD are arguably at an earlier stage of aspectual development than their age and nonverbal intelligence matched TD peers. Therefore, the aspectual development of children with DLD appears to be delayed rather than deviant. Given this, language programs addressing difficulties in DLD may need to incorporate training on the use of aspect markers, especially targeting their combination with non-prototypical verbs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many production and comprehension experiments have studied attraction errors in agreement, primarily in number (e.g., “The key to the cabinets were rusty”). Studies on gender agreement attraction are still sparse, especially in comprehension. We present two self-paced reading experiments on Russian focusing on the role of syncretism in this phenomenon. Russian nouns are inflected for case and number, and some forms have the same inflections (are syncretic). In several experiments on Slovak, it was shown that both head and attractor syncretism play a role for gender agreement in production. We demonstrate for the first time that this is also the case in comprehension. The role of head noun syncretism has not been analyzed in any previous comprehension studies, also for number agreement. We conclude that syncretic forms create uncertainty, which is crucial for agreement disruption. These results are better compatible with retrieval approaches to agreement attraction. We discuss the implications of our findings for the nature of the retrieval cues used to establish morphosyntactic dependencies. The question whether case marking modulates agreement attraction in comprehension has also been addressed in a study on Armenian, and it found no evidence of such influence. We offer an explanation of the conflicting findings from several studies based on the syntactic constructions they used as materials.

Children with developmental language disorder (DLD) reportedly struggle with the comprehension of aspect. However, since aspect and tense are closely entangled in the languages spoken by the children with DLD in previous studies, it is unclear whether the difficulty stems from aspect, tense, or both. Mandarin Chinese, a language without morphological manifestations of tense, is ideal to investigate whether the comprehension of aspect is specifically affected in children with DLD, yet to date work on this is scarce and presents methodological limitations. In this study, we examined whether preschool Mandarin-speaking children with DLD have difficulty in comprehending perfective aspect (represented with the aspect marker -le) compared to imperfective aspect (represented with the aspect markers zai- and -zhe), whether performance can be explained in terms of the pre- vs. post-verbal realization of the aspect markers, and the potential role played by lexical aspect in the comprehension of grammatical aspect. Fourteen preschool children with DLD (mean age: 61.11 months old) and 14 TD children (mean age: 63.4 months old) matched for age and nonverbal intelligence participated in a sentence-picture matching task. Global results showed that, similar to their TD peers, children with DLD performed better on imperfective aspect than perfective aspect. Concerning specific aspect markers, while children with DLD indeed performed similarly to TD children on imperfective -zhe, they obtained significantly lower accuracy than TD children on perfective -le and imperfective zai-. However, considering verb types combined with these aspect markers, results revealed that children with DLD scored significantly higher on the prototypical combination(s) (e.g., zai- + Activity verbs) than on the non-prototypical combination(s) (e.g., zai- + Accomplishment verbs). The performance pattern suggests that the comprehension of aspect markers by children with DLD is particularly affected by lexical aspect. As this also affects younger TD children, children with DLD are arguably at an earlier stage of aspectual development than their age and nonverbal intelligence matched TD peers. Therefore, the aspectual development of children with DLD appears to be delayed rather than deviant. Given this, language programs addressing difficulties in DLD may need to incorporate training on the use of aspect markers, especially targeting their combination with non-prototypical verbs.

This paper investigates the bilingualism originating from the native competence of a standard language (Italian) and a vernacular non-standardized local dialect (henceforth, bilectalism). We report results on the comprehension and production of narrative stories by 44 3- to 5-year-old typically developing children exposed to both Italian and Vicentino from birth. Our findings show that all children produced and comprehended Italian. As for the dialect, children can comprehend Vicentino, despite not producing any dialectal element. The study further revealed an implicational scale in dialectal competence: if a child exhibits some productions with dialectal syntax, s/he also produces dialects at the phonological, morphological, and lexical levels. These findings are in line with the dialectological studies on adult speakers: dialectal competence should be arranged along a fine-grained continuum and the dialectal speaker should be considered as a multi-factorial notion. Our study extends this observation to children's dialectal acquisition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study aims to examine the contribution of morphological awareness to second language (L2) Chinese reading comprehension through potential mediating factors. Adult L2 Chinese learners (n = 447) participated in the study and completed two morphological awareness tasks (segmentation and discrimination), two vocabulary knowledge tasks (character knowledge and word-meaning knowledge), one lexical inference task, and one reading comprehension task. By testing alternative path models, this study identified the preferred model assuming the covariates of morphological awareness and vocabulary knowledge. Morphological awareness and vocabulary knowledge jointly contributed to L2 Chinese reading comprehension through lexical inference. The written modality of morphological awareness induced the activation of both morphological and orthographic information in print. The result suggests that morphological awareness (in the form of grapho-morphological knowledge) and vocabulary knowledge seem to be two parallel components under the same construct predicting Chinese reading comprehension. More importantly, this study underscores the intermediary effect of lexical inference in associating morphological awareness and reading comprehension in L2 Chinese learners. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study aims to examine the contribution of morphological awareness to second language (L2) Chinese reading comprehension through potential mediating factors. Adult L2 Chinese learners (n = 447) participated in the study and completed two morphological awareness tasks (segmentation and discrimination), two vocabulary knowledge tasks (character knowledge and word-meaning knowledge), one lexical inference task, and one reading comprehension task. By testing alternative path models, this study identified the preferred model assuming the covariates of morphological awareness and vocabulary knowledge. Morphological awareness and vocabulary knowledge jointly contributed to L2 Chinese reading comprehension through lexical inference. The written modality of morphological awareness induced the activation of both morphological and orthographic information in print. The result suggests that morphological awareness (in the form of grapho-morphological knowledge) and vocabulary knowledge seem to be two parallel components under the same construct predicting Chinese reading comprehension. More importantly, this study underscores the intermediary effect of lexical inference in associating morphological awareness and reading comprehension in L2 Chinese learners.

This paper investigates the bilingualism originating from the native competence of a standard language (Italian) and a vernacular non-standardized local dialect (henceforth, bilectalism). We report results on the comprehension and production of narrative stories by 44 3- to 5-year-old typically developing children exposed to both Italian and Vicentino from birth. Our findings show that all children produced and comprehended Italian. As for the dialect, children can comprehend Vicentino, despite not producing any dialectal element. The study further revealed an implicational scale in dialectal competence: if a child exhibits some productions with dialectal syntax, s/he also produces dialects at the phonological, morphological, and lexical levels. These findings are in line with the dialectological studies on adult speakers: dialectal competence should be arranged along a fine-grained continuum and the dialectal speaker should be considered as a multi-factorial notion. Our study extends this observation to children’s dialectal acquisition.

Usage-based accounts of language acquisition suggest that bilingual language proficiency is dynamic and susceptible to changes in language use. The COVID-19 pandemic led to unprecedented modifications in the language learning environment of developing bilinguals. Drawing on this unique opportunity, we analyzed existing data of two matched groups of Mandarin-English bilingual children (ages 4 to 8 years, n = 38), one tested before (pre-COVID group) and the other during (COVID group) the pandemic. The dataset comprises responses to a language environment questionnaire, and scores on a sentence comprehension task and a sentence recall task in the bilinguals’ two languages. Questionnaire data revealed a richer Mandarin language environment for children in the COVID group compared to peers in the pre-COVID group. On both comprehension and production tasks, the two groups performed comparably in English but the COVID group showed better performance in Mandarin than the pre-COVID group. Within the pre-COVID group, English was stronger than Mandarin in both comprehension and production. Within the COVID group, the two languages were balanced in comprehension and Mandarin was stronger than English in production. Moreover, language use variables were correlated with production performance in both languages. These patterns illustrate the intimate relationships between language use and bilingual language proficiency through the lens of COVID-19 induced language environment modification.

The study explored how well-dyslexic youth deals with written messages in an environment simulating popular social network communication system. The messaging systems, present more and more in pandemic and post-pandemic online world, are rich in nonverbal aspects of communicating, namely, the emoticons. The pertinent question was whether the presence of emoticons in written messages of emotional and non-emotional content changes the comprehension of the messages. Thirty-two pupils aged 11–15 took part in the study, 16 had a school-approved diagnosis of dyslexia and were included in the experimental group. Sixteen controls had no diagnosed disabilities. Both groups viewed short messages of four types (each including seven communicates): verbal-informative (without emoticons and emotional verbal content), verbal-emotive (without emoticons, with emotional verbal content), emoticon-informative (including emoticon-like small pictures, but without emotional content either verbal or nonverbal), and emoticon-emotive (with standard emoticons and including verbal-emotional content). The participants had to answer short questions after quick presentation of each message that tested their comprehension of the content. RTs and accuracy of the answers were analyzed. Students without dyslexia had shorter response times to the questions regarding all types of messages than the dyslexic participants. The answers of the experimental group to the questions about the emoticon-informative messages were less correct. The study pointed tentatively to the beneficial role of emoticons (especially the nonstandard, i.e., of non-emotional kind) in reading short messages with understanding. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study synthesized the correlation between reading strategy and reading comprehension of four categories based on Weinstein and Mayer's reading strategy model. The current meta-analysis obtained 57 effect sizes that represented 21,548 readers, and all selected materials came from empirical studies published from 1998 to 2019. Results showed that reading strategies in all the four categories had a similar correlation effect size with reading comprehension. The correlation between monitoring strategy and reading comprehension was significantly larger in first language scripts than second language scripts. Affective strategy and elaboration strategy had an independent effect on reading comprehension, which was not significantly moderated by selected moderators. Results suggested that the reading strategies of all the four categories may have a similar contribution to text comprehension activities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the present study, we explored the unique contribution of reading accuracy, reading fluency and linguistic comprehension within the frame of Simple View of Reading (SVR). The experimental sample included 118 3rd to 5th grade children learning Italian, a language with a highly regular orthography. We adopted a flexible method of analysis, i.e., the Network Analysis (NA), particularly suited for exploring relations among different domains and where the direct relations between a set of intercorrelated variables is the main interest. Results indicated an independent and unique contribution of syntactic comprehension skills as well as reading fluency and reading accuracy in the comprehension of a written text. The decoding measures were not directly associated with non-verbal reasoning and the latter was not directly associated with reading comprehension but was strongly related to oral syntactic comprehension. Overall, the pattern of findings is broadly consistent with the predictions of SVR and underscores how, in an orthographically regular language, reading fluency and reading accuracy as well as oral comprehension skills directly influence reading comprehension. Data are discussed in a cross-linguistic perspective. Implications for education and rehabilitation are also presented. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent evidence for the influence of morphological structure on the phonetic output goes unexplained by established models of speech production and by theories of the morphology-phonology interaction. Linear discriminative learning (LDL) is a recent computational approach in which such effects can be expected. We predict the acoustic duration of 4,530 English derivative tokens with the morphological functions DIS, NESS, LESS, ATION, and IZE in natural speech data by using predictors derived from a linear discriminative learning network. We find that the network is accurate in learning speech production and comprehension, and that the measures derived from it are successful in predicting duration. For example, words are lengthened when the semantic support of the word's predicted articulatory path is stronger. Importantly, differences between morphological categories emerge naturally from the network, even when no morphological information is provided. The results imply that morphological effects on duration can be explained without postulating theoretical units like the morpheme, and they provide further evidence that LDL is a promising alternative for modeling speech production. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While knowledge on the development of understanding positive integers is rapidly growing, the development of understanding zero remains not well-understood. Here, we test several components of preschoolers' understanding of zero: Whether they can use empty sets in numerical tasks (as measured with comparison, addition, and subtraction tasks); whether they can use empty sets soon after they understand the cardinality principle (cardinality-principle knowledge is measured with the give-N task); whether they know what the word "zero" refers to (tested in all tasks in this study); and whether they categorize zero as a number (as measured with the smallest-number and is-it-a-number tasks). The results show that preschoolers can handle empty sets in numerical tasks as soon as they can handle positive numbers and as soon as, or even earlier than, they understand the cardinality principle. Some also know that these sets are labeled as "zero." However, preschoolers are unsure whether zero is a number. These results identify three components of knowledge about zero: operational knowledge, linguistic knowledge, and meta-knowledge. To account for these results, we propose that preschoolers may understand numbers as the properties of items or objects in a set. In this view, zero is not regarded as a number because an empty set does not include any items, and missing items cannot have any properties, therefore, they cannot have the number property either. This model can explain why zero is handled correctly in numerical tasks even though it is not regarded as a number. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In three experiments, we measured individual patterns of pronoun comprehension (Experiments 1 and 2) and referential prediction (Experiment 3) in implicit causality (IC) contexts and compared these with a measure of participants' print exposure (Author Recognition Task; ART). Across all three experiments, we found that ART interacted with verb bias, such that participants with higher scores demonstrated a stronger semantic bias, i.e., they tended to select the pronoun or predict the re-mention of the character that was congruent with an implicit cause interpretation. This suggests that print exposure changes the way language is processed at the discourse level, and in particular, that it is related to implicit cause sensitivity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Usage-based accounts of language acquisition suggest that bilingual language proficiency is dynamic and susceptible to changes in language use. The COVID-19 pandemic led to unprecedented modifications in the language learning environment of developing bilinguals. Drawing on this unique opportunity, we analyzed existing data of two matched groups of Mandarin-English bilingual children (ages 4 to 8 years, n = 38), one tested before (pre-COVID group) and the other during (COVID group) the pandemic. The dataset comprises responses to a language environment questionnaire, and scores on a sentence comprehension task and a sentence recall task in the bilinguals' two languages. Questionnaire data revealed a richer Mandarin language environment for children in the COVID group compared to peers in the pre-COVID group. On both comprehension and production tasks, the two groups performed comparably in English but the COVID group showed better performance in Mandarin than the pre-COVID group. Within the pre-COVID group, English was stronger than Mandarin in both comprehension and production. Within the COVID group, the two languages were balanced in comprehension and Mandarin was stronger than English in production. Moreover, language use variables were correlated with production performance in both languages. These patterns illustrate the intimate relationships between language use and bilingual language proficiency through the lens of COVID-19 induced language environment modification. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Words that share form and meaning across two or more languages (i.e., cognates) are generally processed faster than control words (non-cognates) by bilinguals speaking these languages. This so-called cognate effect is considered to be a demonstration of language non-selectivity during bilingual lexical access. Still, research up till now has focused mainly on visual and auditory comprehension. For production, research is almost exclusively limited to speech, leaving written production out of the equation. Hence, the goal of the current study was to examine whether bilinguals activate representations from both languages during typewriting. Dutch-English bilinguals completed second-language written sentences with names of displayed pictures. Low-constraint sentences yielded a cognate facilitation effect, whereas high-constraint sentences did not. These findings suggest that co-activation of similar words across languages also occurs during written production, just as in reading and speaking. Also, the interaction effect with sentence constraint shows that grammatical and semantic sentence restrictions may overrule interlingual facilitation effects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The quest for meaning in life takes on new challenges and directions during late life. This mini-review draws on prior theory to analyze meaningfulness into six discrete dimensions (purpose, value, efficacy, self-worth, mattering, and comprehension) and covers research into how these apply and operate specifically during late life. Limited remaining time, concern with one's legacy, concerns with self-continuity and integration, variable challenges to self-worth, and prioritization of positivity emerge as key themes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent work has shown that linguistic and visual contexts jointly modulate linguistic expectancy and, thus, the processing effort for a (more or less) expected critical word. According to these findings, uncertainty about the upcoming referent in a visually-situated sentence can be reduced by exploiting the selectional restrictions of a preceding word (e.g., a verb or an adjective), which then reduces processing effort on the critical word (e.g., a referential noun). Interestingly, however, no such modulation was observed in these studies on the expectation-generating word itself. The goal of the current study is to investigate whether the reduction of uncertainty (i.e., the generation of expectations) simply does not modulate processing effort-or whether the particular subject-verb-object (SVO) sentence structure used in these studies (which emphasizes the referential nature of the noun as direct pointer to visually co-present objects) accounts for the observed pattern. To test these questions, the current design reverses the functional roles of nouns and verbs by using sentence constructions in which the noun reduces uncertainty about upcoming verbs, and the verb provides the disambiguating and reference-resolving piece of information. Experiment 1 (a Visual World Paradigm study) and Experiment 2 (a Grammaticality Maze study) both replicate the effect found in previous work (i.e., the effect of visually-situated context on the word which uniquely identifies the referent), albeit on the verb in the current study. Results on the noun, where uncertainty is reduced and expectations are generated in the current design, were mixed and were most likely influenced by design decisions specific to each experiment. These results show that processing of the reference-resolving word—whether it be a noun or a verb—reliably benefits from the prior linguistic and visual information that lead to the generation of concrete expectations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examines the relative contribution of vocabulary breadth (VB) and vocabulary depth (VD) to three different listening comprehension measures. One hundred and thirteen English majors were given VB and VD tests, and three listening comprehension tests. Based on three pairs of hierarchical multiple regression analyses, we found that the relative contribution of VB and VD varied across the three listening comprehension tests. Specifically, for the listening test with an expository text dictation to assess integrative skills, both VB and VD made a unique positive contribution to comprehension, but this was greater in the case of depth. For the listening test involving narrative conversations to assess literal comprehension, neither VB nor VD (after controlling for each other) could independently predict comprehension, whereas for the listening test that comprises expository passages to assess inferential comprehension, VD could separately predict comprehension but VB could not. These findings suggest that the relative contribution of VD and VB to listening comprehension may depend on how a listening test is constructed. Therefore, the findings will contribute to listening comprehension and vocabulary knowledge research, and vocabulary teaching and learning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study investigates how filler-gap dependencies associated with subject position are formed in online sentence comprehension. Since Crain and Fodor (1985), "filled-gap" studies have provided evidence that the parser actively seeks to associate a wh-filler with a gap in direct object position of a sentence wherever possible; the evidence that this same process applies for subject position, is, however, more limited (Stowe, 1986; Lee, 2004). We examine the processing of complement clauses, finding that wh dependency formation is actively attempted at embedded subject position (e.g., Kate in Who did Lucy think Kate could drive us home to?), unless, however, the embedded clause contains a complementizer (e.g., Who did Lucy think that Kate ....?). The absence of the dependency formation in the latter case demonstrates that the complementizer-trace effect (cf., ∗Who did Lucy think that could drive us home to mom? ; Perlmutter, 1968) is, like syntactic island constraints (Ross, 1967; Keshev and Meltzer-Asscher, 2017), immediately operative in online structure building. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Rumination has been linked to the onset and course of depression. Theoretical models and empirical evidence suggest that deficits controlling negative material in working memory underlie rumination. However, we do not know which component of cognitive control (inhibition, shifting, or updating) contributes most to rumination, and whether different components predict the more maladaptive (brooding) versus the more adaptive (reflection) forms of rumination. We aimed to advance theory and research by examining the contribution of different facets of cognitive control to the level and trajectory of brooding and reflection. At baseline, participants completed three cognitive tasks that assessed their inhibition, shifting, and updating biases, respectively. Next, using experience sampling methodology, participants rated their level of rumination and negative affect nine times during the 48 h after their most stressful exam. At each time point, higher levels of brooding, but not reflection, predicted higher levels of negative affect at the next time point. Furthermore, several facets of shifting and inhibition, but not updating, predicted brooding immediately after the exam and its trajectory of change over 48 h. Additionally, difficulty inhibiting neutral words predicted both brooding and reflection. These findings inform theoretical models describing the role of cognitive control in brooding and reflection. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Iconic gesture-speech integration is a relatively recent field of investigation with numerous researchers studying its various aspects. The results obtained are just as diverse. The definition of iconic gestures is often overlooked in the interpretations of results. Furthermore, while most behavioral studies have demonstrated an advantage of bimodal presentation, brain activity studies show a diversity of results regarding the brain regions involved in the processing of this integration. Clinical studies also yield mixed results, some suggesting parallel processing channels, others a unique and integrated channel. This review aims to draw attention to the methodological variations in research on iconic gesture-speech integration and how they impact conclusions regarding the underlying phenomena. It will also attempt to draw together the findings from other relevant research and suggest potential areas for further investigation in order to better understand processes at play during speech integration process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Human motor skills are exceptional compared to other species, no less than their cognitive skills. In this perspective paper, we suggest that "movement matters!," implying that motor development is a crucial driving force of cognitive development, much more impactful than previously acknowledged. Thus, we argue that to fully understand and explain developmental changes, it is necessary to consider the interaction of motor and cognitive skills. We exemplify this argument by introducing the concept of "embodied planning," which takes an embodied cognition perspective on planning development throughout childhood. From this integrated, comprehensive framework, we present a novel climbing paradigm as the ideal testbed to explore the development of embodied planning in childhood and across the lifespan. Finally, we outline future research directions and discuss practical applications of the work on developmental embodied planning for robotics, sports, and education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Action-sentence Compatibility Effect (ACE) is often taken as supporting the fundamental role of the motor system in understanding sentences that describe actions. This effect would be related to an internal "simulation," i.e., the reactivation of past perceptual and motor experiences. However, it is not easy to establish whether this simulation predominantly involves spatial imagery or motor anticipation. In the classical ACE experiments, where a real motor response is required, the direction and motor representations are mixed. In order to disentangle spatial and motor aspects involved in the ACE, we performed six experiments in different conditions, where the motor component was always reduced, asking participants to judge the sensibility of sentences by moving a mouse, thus requiring a purely spatial representation, compatible with nonmotor interpretations. In addition, our experiments had the purpose of taking into account the possible confusion of effects of practice and of compatibility (i.e., differences in reaction times simultaneously coming from block order and opposite motion conditions). Also, in contrast to the usual paradigm, we included no-transfer filler sentences in the analysis. The ACE was not found in any experiment, a result that failed to support the idea that the ACE could be related to a simulation where spatial aspects rather than motor ones prevail. Strong practice effects were always found and were carved out from results. A surprising effect was that no-transfer sentences were processed much slower than others, perhaps revealing a sort of participants' awareness of the structure of stimuli, i.e., their finding that some of them involved motion and others did not. The relevance of these outcomes for the embodiment theory is discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Word order alternation has been described as one of the most productive information structure markers and discourse organizers across languages. Psycholinguistic evidence has shown that word order is a crucial cue for argument interpretation. Previous studies about Spanish sentence comprehension have shown greater difficulty to parse sentences that present a word order that does not respect the order of participants of the verb's lexico-semantic structure, irrespective to whether the sentences follow the canonical word order of the language or not. This difficulty has been accounted as the cognitive cost related to the miscomputation of prominence status of the argument that precedes the verb. Nonetheless, the authors only analyzed the use of alternative word orders in isolated sentences, leaving aside the pragmatic motivation of word order alternation. By means of an eye-tracking task, the current study provides further evidence about the role of information structure for the comprehension of sentences with alternative word order and verb type, and sheds light on the interaction between syntax, semantics and pragmatics. We analyzed both "early" and "late" eye-movement measures as well as accuracy and response times to comprehension questions. Results showed an overall influence of information structure reflected in a modulation of late eye-movement measures as well as offline measures like total reading time and questions response time. However, effects related to the miscomputation of prominence status did not fade away when sentences were preceded by a context that led to non-canonical word order of constituents, showing that prominence computation is a core mechanism for argument interpretation, even in sentences preceded by context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We examined whether the N400 Event-Related Potential (ERP) component would be modulated by dispositional affect during sentence processing. In this study, 33 participants read sentences manipulated by direct object type (congruent vs. incongruent) and object determiner type (definite vs. demonstrative). We were particularly interested in sentences of the form: (i) The connoisseur tasted the wine on the tour vs. (ii) The connoisseur tasted the # roof ... We expected that processing incongruent direct objects (# roof) vs. congruent objects (wine) would elicit N400 effects. Previous ERP language experiments have shown that participants in (induced) positive and negative moods were differentially sensitive to semantic anomaly, resulting in different N400 effects. Presently, we ask whether individual dispositional affect scores (as measured by the Positive and Negative Affect Schedule; PANAS) would modulate N400 effects as shown previously. Namely, previous results showed larger N400 effects associated with happy moods and attenuated amplitudes associated with sad moods. Results revealed significant N400 effects, driven by the #roof vs. the wine , where larger amplitude differences were found for individuals showing smaller negative affect (NA) scores, thus partially replicating previous findings. We discuss our results in terms of theories of local (lexical) inhibition, such that low NA promotes stronger lexico-semantic links in sentences. Finally, our results support accounts of language processing that include social and biological characteristics of individuals during real-time sentence comprehension. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We tested the plausibility of a cognitive-emotional model to understand the effects of messages framed in terms of gain, non-loss, non-gain, and loss, and related to the health consequences of red/processed meat consumption. A total of 544 Italian participants reported their attitude toward reduced red/processed meat consumption and intention to eat red/processed meat (time 1 questionnaire). One week later, participants were randomly assigned to four different message conditions: (a) gain messages focused on the positive health outcomes associated with low meat consumption; (b) non-loss messages focused on the avoided negative health outcomes associated with low meat consumption; (c) non-gain messages focused on the missed positive health outcomes associated with high meat consumption; (d) loss messages focused on the negative health outcomes associated with high meat consumption (message sending). After reading the messages, participants answered a series of questions regarding their emotional and cognitive reactions to the messages, their evaluation of the messages, and again their attitude and intention toward red/processed meat consumption (time 2 questionnaire). Comparing different multivariate linear models under the Bayesian approach, we selected the model with the highest plausibility conditioned to observed data. In this model, message-induced fear influenced systematic processing, which in turn positively influenced message evaluation and attitude, leading to reduced intention to consume red/processed meat. Vice versa, message-induced anger reduced systematic processing, which in turn negatively influenced message evaluation, and led to no effect on attitude and intention. The comparison among message conditions showed that gain and non-loss messages activated integrated emotional and cognitive processing of the health recommendation, while loss and non-gain messages mainly activated emotional shortcuts toward attitude and intention. Overall, these results advance our comprehension of the effects of message framing on receivers' attitudes and intentions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Speech comprehension across languages depends on encoding the pitch variations in frequency-modulated (FM) sweeps at different timescales and frequency ranges. While timescale and spectral contour of FM sweeps play important roles in differentiating acoustic speech units, relatively little work has been done to understand the interaction between the two acoustic dimensions at early cortical processing. An auditory oddball paradigm was employed to examine the interaction of timescale and pitch contour at pre-attentive processing of FM sweeps. Event-related potentials to frequency sweeps that vary in linguistically relevant pitch contour (fundamental frequency F0 vs. first formant frequency F1) and timescale (local vs. global) in Mandarin Chinese were recorded. Mismatch negativities (MMNs) were elicited by all types of sweep deviants. For local timescale, FM sweeps with F0 contours yielded larger MMN amplitudes than F1 contours. A reversed MMN amplitude pattern was obtained with respect to F0/F1 contours for global timescale stimuli. An interhemispheric asymmetry of MMN topography was observed corresponding to local and global-timescale contours. Falling but not rising frequency difference waveforms sweep contours elicited right hemispheric dominance. Results showed that timescale and pitch contour interacts with each other in pre-attentive auditory processing of FM sweeps. Findings suggest that FM sweeps, a type of non-speech signal, is processed at an early stage with reference to its linguistic function. That the dynamic interaction between timescale and spectral pattern is processed during early cortical processing of non-speech frequency sweep signal may be critical to facilitate speech encoding at a later stage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examined how vocabulary, syntactic knowledge, and orthographic knowledge are related to comprehension monitoring and whether comprehension monitoring mediates the relations between these language skills and reading comprehension. Eighty-nine Chinese children were assessed on their vocabulary, syntactic knowledge, orthographic knowledge, and comprehension monitoring in Grade 1. Their reading comprehension skills were assessed in Grade 1 and Grade 3. Results showed that in Grade 1, comprehension monitoring mediated the relations between vocabulary and syntactic knowledge and reading comprehension. For Grade 3 reading comprehension, syntactic knowledge in Grade 1 was the only significant predictor. These findings indicate that multiple language skills make direct and indirect contributions via comprehension monitoring to Chinese reading comprehension, and the relations would change as children's reading skills develop. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is considerable evidence that listeners' understanding of a spoken sentence need not always follow from a full analysis of the words and syntax of the utterance. Rather, listeners may instead conduct a superficial analysis, sampling some words and using presumed plausibility to arrive at an understanding of the sentence meaning. Because this latter strategy occurs more often for sentences with complex syntax that place a heavier processing burden on the listener than sentences with simpler syntax, shallow processing may represent a resource conserving strategy reflected in reduced processing effort. This factor may be even more important for older adults who as a group are known to have more limited working memory resources. In the present experiment, 40 older adults (M age = 75.5 years) and 20 younger adults (M age = 20.7) were tested for comprehension of plausible and implausible sentences with a simpler subject-relative embedded clause structure or a more complex object-relative embedded clause structure. Dilation of the pupil of the eye was recorded as an index of processing effort. Results confirmed greater comprehension accuracy for plausible than implausible sentences, and for sentences with simpler than more complex syntax, with both effects amplified for the older adults. Analysis of peak pupil dilations for implausible sentences revealed a complex three-way interaction between age, syntactic complexity, and plausibility. Results are discussed in terms of models of sentence comprehension, and pupillometry as an index of intentional task engagement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Learning from a text–picture multimedia document is particularly effective if learners can link information within the text and across the verbal and the pictorial representations. The ability to create a mental model successfully and include those implicit links is related to the ability to generate inferences. Text processing research has found that text cohesion facilitates the generation of inferences, and thus text comprehension for learners with poor prior knowledge or reading abilities, but is detrimental for learners with good prior knowledge or reading abilities. Moreover, multimedia research has found a positive effect from adding visual representations to text information, particularly when implementing signaling, which consists of verbal or visual cues designed to guide attention to the pictorial representation of relevant information. We expected that, as with text-only documents, struggling readers would benefit from high text cohesion (Hypothesis 1) and that signaling would foster inference generation as well (Hypothesis 2). Further, we hypothesized that better learning outcomes would be observed when text cohesion was low and signaling was present (Hypothesis 3). Our first experimental study investigated the effect of those two factors (cohesion and signaling) on three levels of comprehension (text based, local inferences, global inferences). Participants were adolescents in prevocational schools (n = 95), where some of the students are struggling readers. The results showed a trend in favor of high cohesion, but with no significant effect, a significant positive effect of cross-representational signaling (CRS) on comprehension from local inferences, and no interaction effect. A second experiment focused on signaling only and attention toward the picture, with collection of eye-tracking data in addition to measures of offline comprehension. As this study was conducted with university students (n = 47), who are expected to have higher reading abilities and thus are less likely to benefit from high cohesion, the material was presented in its low cohesive version. The results showed no effect of conditions on comprehension performances but confirmed differences in processing behaviors. Participants allocated more attention to the pictorial representation in the CRS condition than in the no signaling condition.

What is the nature and function of mental representations in cognitive science, and in human language in particular? How do they come into existence and interact, and how is the information attributed to them stored in and retrieved from the human mind? Some theories treat constructions as primitive entities used for structure-building, central in both production and comprehension, while other theories only admit construction-like entities as devices to map the structure into semantics or to relate them to specific morphophonological exponents. In this positional piece, we seek to elucidate areas of commonality across what have traditionally been divergent approaches to the role of constructions in language. Here we outline a robust specification of the differences in how chunks of structure containing information are treated in the two main approaches, and we seek to offer a path toward a more unified theoretical stance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present study aims to delineate the working mechanism of prediction in sentence comprehension, by disentangling the influence of the facilitated general memory retrieval from the coexistent influence of the predicted language-specific semantic and/or syntactic information for the first time. The results support that prediction might influence the downstream cognitive processing in two aspects: (1) the pre-activated information facilitates the retrieval of a matched input in memory and, (2) the pre-activated information interacts with higher-level semantic/syntactic processing. More importantly, the present findings suggest that these two types of influences seem to occur at different stages of sentence comprehension: the facilitated memory retrieval of the input modulates N400 amplitude and the latency of post-N400 late central-parietal positivity/P600, while the predicted semantic/syntactic information and/or their interactions modulate the amplitude of the late positivity. The present findings would be helpful for interpreting the underlying mechanism of observed effects in prediction studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]