Abstract

Contrastive focus highlights the information in the discourse that challenges the existing assumptions. Psycholinguistic evidence shows that contrastive focus is interpreted by activating focus alternatives. However, there is not much evidence on whether the activation of focus alternatives in the production and comprehension systems is similar or different. The current study investigates how contrastive prosody and the resulting activation of focus-alternatives influence lexical access during word production and word recognition. In two experiments, we used cross- modal priming with prosodic focus (narrow vs. contrastive) and semantic relatedness (within- category focus alternatives vs. unrelated control items) as experimental factors. In Experiment 1, we assessed picture naming latencies, and in Experiment 2, we employed a lexical decision task. We expected a semantic interference (Experiment 1) or facilitation effect (Experiment 2) when processing items from the same semantic category. Furthermore, we expected that these effects would be modulated by contrastive prosodic focus. The observed interference (Experiment 1) and the facilitation (Experiment 2) for focus alternatives confirmed earlier findings that same-category prime-target pairs lead to interference in production, and facilitation in comprehension. However, the absence of a modulation of these effects by prosodic focus suggested that the relationship between contrastive prosody and the activation of focus alternatives may be weaker than previously thought, and might depend on other factors.

Abstract

Listeners vary in the perception and interpretation of speech prosody (the variations in intonation, loudness, and rhythm of spoken language). The source of this variability is unknown. We investigated whether the ability to recognise and classify prosodic structure is related to working memory (WM) capacity. This hypothesis stems from the tight connection between prosodic and syntactic (grammatical) structure, while processing syntax is known to relate to WN capacity. Healthy adult speakers of Dutch judged prosodic structures in a gating paradigm. The phrases contained early and late intonational cues that signalled whether the phrases contained an internal grouping or not. Listeners also took part in WM (digit span) and processing speed (letter comparison) tasks. There was an interaction between performance in the prosody judgement and WM tasks: high-WM listeners were better at classifying prosodic structure and required less prosodic information to detect the correct structure. There was no interaction between prosody processing and processing speed, suggesting that the interaction between prosodic judgement and WM capacity was not due to motivational or attentional differences. The results demonstrate a close relationship between prosody processing and WM abilities, implying that WM is an important component of prosody processing.

Abstract

All areas of psychology deal with constructs in one way or another. The use of psychological constructs presents four distinct challenges that are central to address: describing, defining, deploying, and distinguishing constructs. Refining a psychological construct refers to an iterative process of dealing with these challenges