Abstracts 2005 - The Psychonomic Society

Posters 3071–3077 Friday Evening
uate the impact of speaker and listener sex on emotion identification
judgments and to compare and discuss how factors of sex and language
promoted systematic confusions in the perceptual rating of
basic emotions communicated through vocal-prosodic expressions.
(3071)
Negative Emotion Processing: A Prosody-to-Face Interaction Study.
LAURA MONETTA & MARC D. PELL, McGill University (sponsored
by Daniel Levitin)—Previous findings on the facial affect decision
task (FADT) suggest that prosodic emotions are processed implicitly
and show congruency effects on the face (Pell, 2005). This study focused
on the processing of negative emotions, which yield more errors
and longer response times than do positive emotions (Pell, 2005).
Using the FADT, three negative emotions (sadness, anger, disgust)
were presented to 50 young adults, in order to establish whether negative
emotional prosody and facial expressions interact differently on
the basis of their underlying emotional congruity. Results established
that emotional prosody facilitates the accuracy and speed of decisions
about congruent face targets, suggesting that information about negative
discrete emotions is shared across nonverbal channels. Among
the incongruent targets, the results for the anger–disgust interaction
shows an ambiguity in the treatment of these two signals.
• BILINGUALISM/SECOND LANGUAGE ACQUISITION •
(3072)
Role of Phrase Prosody and Marker Position in Acquiring a Novel
Language. HENRIETTA LEMPERT, University of Toronto, & RE-
BECCA L. STEWART, Western University (sponsored by Henrietta
Lempert)—We examined whether phrase prosody would facilitate acquisition
of an artificial language in two versions, a preposed marker
dialect (ie vab o hift wadim) and a suffix dialect (vabie hifto wadim).
Prosodic and syntactic boundaries correlated perfectly in the phrase
prosody condition, whereas no relevant structural cues were imparted
in the monotone prosody condition. No phrase prosody facilitation
was detected in preposed marker learners either when written input
supplemented auditory input (Experiment 1) or when no written input
was available (Experiment 2). Phrase prosody was advantageous for
suffix dialect learners but had somewhat specific benefits: It enhanced
sensitivity to differences between syllables that could and
could not occur at syntactic boundaries but did not seem to facilitate
intraphrase analysis. The dialect difference suggests that phrase
prosody was informative for learners taught on suffixes but redundant
for preposed marker learners.
(3073)
Does Animacy Facilitate Acquisition of English Verb Agreement by
Chinese First-Language (CL1) Speakers? HENRIETTA LEMPERT,
ALIONA RUDCHENKO, EUGENE MA, & SALIMA SAYEED, University
of Toronto—Previous research suggests that CL1s rely heavily
on animacy to process word order relations in their native language.
Do they use animacy to acquire English syntax? CL1s at advanced,
intermediate, and low English second-language (EL2) proficiency
completed preambles that varied in head noun number, local noun number,
and animacy: animate–inanimate (The sprinter(s) in the race(s)...
fast), inanimate–animate (The letter(s) from the lawyer(s) ... lost),
and inanimate–inanimate (The piano(s) for the wedding(s)... tuned).
Advanced-EL2 CL1s produced more agreement errors in singular
than in plural head fragments; default use of singular be resulted in
greater plural than singular head agreement errors in low-EL2 CL1s
and no head number asymmetry in intermediates. All CL1 levels produced
more IA than AI or II errors in the PS condition. In low-EL2
CL1s, an IA > II > AI error pattern in plural head fragments suggests
that they use animacy to find the subject of English sentences.
(3074)
With Us or Against Us: Acquiring Categorical Rules Based on
Variable Input. MATTHEW GOLDRICK & MEREDITH LARSON,
98
Northwestern University—Language learners do not always match the
variability present in their input (Singleton & Newport, 2004). This
study reveals that categorical phonotactics (restrictions on sound sequences)
can be acquired on the basis of variable input. In a task developed
by Dell, Reed, Adams, and Meyer (2000), adults acquired
new phonotactics by reading aloud sequences of syllables where the
distribution of a consonant was restricted. Replicating previous results,
when the consonant was categorically restricted to one syllable
position (e.g., /s/ occurred in onset in 100% of the sequences) participants’
speech errors reflected the acquisition of categorical phonotactics.
Error outcomes were overwhelmingly restricted to the target
syllable position (e.g., /s/ errors almost never appeared in coda). Extending
these results, this study shows that when the language learners’
input was variable (e.g., /s/ occurred in onset in 60%–80% of the
sequences), speech errors were still categorically restricted to one position.
Learners appear to assume categorical phonotactics in the presence
of variability.
(3075)
The Effect of Gender Transparency on Learning Russian Case
Marking. VERA KEMPE, University of Stirling, & PATRICIA J.
BROOKS, City University of New York—In many richly inflected languages,
case-marking paradigms (i.e., declensions) coincide with
grammatical gender categories. Our study varied morphophonological
gender-marking regularity to explore its effect on adult L2 learners’
acquisition of Russian case marking. Group 1 encountered only
nontransparently gender-marked nouns (i.e., masc and fem nouns ending
in palatalized consonants): Here, the most successful learners associated
prepositions with case inflections, as indicated by systematic
gender confusion errors (e.g., producing the fem-locative instead of
the masc-locative suffix). Group 2, encountering only transparently
gender-marked nouns, committed mostly case confusion errors (e.g.,
producing the fem-dative instead of the fem-genitive suffix), which
indicates that gender formed the basis for learning case marking. Despite
overall superior performance in Group 2, rates of case confusion
errors for novel nouns in a generalization test were comparable across
groups: Apparently, discovery of underlying grammatical categories
(even morphophonologically transparent ones) is difficult for adult L2
learners faced with morphological complexity, and learning is largely
item based.
(3076)
Comparison of Implicit and Explicit Learning of Russian Grammatical
Gender. YELENA A. KOSHELEVA, University of Nebraska,
Lincoln (sponsored by John H. Flowers)—Participants naive to Slavic
languages were presented with either a rule-based or an exemplarbased
training session on Russian grammatical gender. Learning accuracy
was then assessed with a gender decision task. A cue-tocategory
strength analysis was implemented (MacWhinney, 1987) to
predict specific learning and error patterns. Model predictions
matched the performance of the exemplar-based (implicit learning)
training group but were unrelated to the performance of the rule-based
(explicit learning) training group. Furthermore, the error patterns observed
in implicit learning mirrored those in the normal course of
grammatical gender acquisition by Russian children. These findings
demonstrate that even following a very brief exposure to exemplars
(but not to explicit grammatical rules), structure induction and resulting
performance patterns take place in adult learning in a manner
highly similar to that experienced by children in natural language
learning.
(3077)
The Eyebrows Have It: Evidence for the Activation of Two Grammars
in ASL–English Bilinguals. JENNIE E. PYERS, University of
California, San Diego, & KAREN D. EMMOREY, San Diego State University
(sponsored by Karen D. Emmorey)—Research with bilinguals indicates
that the lexicons of both languages are always active even during
language-specific production. However, it is not clear whether the