journal_articles.bib

@article{LaurinavichyuteMalsburg2022,
  author = {Anna Laurinavichyute and {von der Malsburg}, Titus},
  title = {Semantic attraction in sentence comprehension},
  journal = {Cognitive Science},
  year = {2022},
  volume = 46,
  number = 2,
  pages = {e13086},
  doi = {10.1111/cogs.13086},
  url = {https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdfdirect/10.1111/cogs.13086},
  abstract = {Agreement attraction is a cross-linguistic phenomenon where a verb occasionally agrees not with its subject, as required by grammar, but instead with an unrelated noun (“The key to the cabinets were…”). Despite the clear violation of grammatical rules, comprehenders often rate these sentences as acceptable. Contenders for explaining agreement attraction fall into two broad classes: Morphosyntactic accounts specifically designed to explain agreement attraction, and more general sentence processing models, such as the Lewis and Vasishth model, which explain attraction as a consequence of how linguistic structure is stored and accessed in content-addressable memory. In the present research, we disambiguate between these two classes by testing a surprising prediction made by the Lewis and Vasishth model but not by the morphosyntactic accounts, namely, that attraction should not be limited to morphosyntax, but that semantic features of unrelated nouns equally induce attraction. A recent study by Cunnings and Sturt provided initial evidence that this may be the case. Here, we report three single-trial experiments in English that compared semantic and agreement attraction and tested whether and how the two interact. All three experiments showed strong semantically induced attraction effects closely mirroring agreement attraction effects. We complement these results with computational simulations which confirmed that the Lewis and Vasishth model can faithfully reproduce the observed results. In sum, our findings suggest that attraction is a more general phenomenon than is commonly believed, and therefore favor more general sentence processing models, such as the Lewis and Vasishth model.}
}
@article{MalsburgAngele2017,
  sortname = {Malsburg},
  author = {{von der Malsburg}, Titus and Angele, Bernhard},
  title = {False Positives and Other Statistical Errors in Standard Analyses of Eye Movements in Reading},
  journal = {Journal of Memory and Language},
  year = {2017},
  volume = {94},
  pages = {119--133},
  pdf = {MalsburgAngele2017.pdf},
  keywords = {statistics; false positives; null-hypothesis testing; eye-tracking; reading},
  doi = {10.1016/j.jml.2016.10.003},
  url = {https://tmalsburg.github.io/MalsburgAngele2017.pdf},
  abstract = {In research on eye movements in reading, it is common to analyze a number of canonical dependent measures to study how the effects of a manipulation unfold over time.  Although this gives rise to the well-known multiple comparisons problem, i.e.~an inflated probability that the null hypothesis is incorrectly rejected (Type I error), it is accepted standard practice not to apply any correction procedures.  Instead, there is a widespread belief that corrections are not necessary because the increase in false positives is too small to matter.  To our knowledge, no formal argument has ever been presented to justify this assumption.  Here, we report a computational investigation of this issue using Monte Carlo simulations.  Our results show that, contrary to conventional wisdom, false positives are increased to unacceptable levels when no corrections are applied.  Our simulations also show that counter-measures like the Bonferroni correction keep false positives in check while reducing statistical power only moderately.  Hence, there is little reason why such corrections should not be made a standard requirement.  Further, we discuss two statistical illusions that can arise when statistical power is too low, and we show how power can be improved to prevent these illusions.  In sum, our work renders a detailed picture of the various types of statistical errors than can occur in studies of reading behavior and we give concrete guidance about how these errors can be avoided.}
}
@article{MalsburgEtAl2015,
  sortname = {Malsburg},
  author = {{von der Malsburg}, Titus and Kliegl, Reinhold and Vasishth, Shravan},
  title = {Determinants of scanpath regularity in reading},
  journal = {Cognitive Science},
  year = {2015},
  volume = {39},
  number = {7},
  pages = {1675--1703},
  pdf = {MalsburgEtAl2015.pdf},
  keywords = {eyemovements, method, parsing, scanpaths, corpus},
  doi = {10.1111/cogs.12208},
  abstract = {Scanpaths have played an important role in classic research on reading behavior. Nevertheless, they have largely been neglected in later research—perhaps also due to a lack of suitable analytical tools. Recently, von der Malsburg and Vasishth (2011) proposed a new measure for quantifying differences between scanpaths and demonstrated that this measure can recover effects that were missed with the traditional eyetracking measures. However, the sentences used in that study were difficult to process and scanpath effects accordingly strong. The purpose of the present study was to test the validity, sensitivity, and scope of applicability of the scanpath measure using simple sentences that are typically read straight from left to right. We derived predictions for the regularity of scanpaths from the literature on oculomotor control, sentences processing, and cognitive aging and tested these predictions using the scanpath measure and a large database of eye movements (N=230). All predictions were confirmed: sentences with short words and syntactically more difficult sentences elicited more irregular scanpaths. Also, older readers produced more irregular scanpaths than younger readers. In addition, we found an effect that was not reported earlier: syntax had a smaller influence on the eye movements of older readers than on those of young readers. We discuss this interaction of syntactic parsing cost with age in terms of shifts in processing strategies and a decline of executive control as readers age. Overall, our results demonstrate the validity and sensitivity of the scanpath measure and thus establish it as a productive and versatile tool for reading research.}
}
@article{MalsburgEtAl2020,
  sortname = {Malsburg},
  author = {{von der Malsburg}, Titus and Poppels, Till and Levy, Roger P.},
  title = {Implicit Gender Bias in Linguistic Descriptions for Expected Events: {The} Cases of the 2016 {United States} and 2017 {United Kingdom} Elections},
  journal = {Psychological Science},
  year = {2020},
  volume = 31,
  number = 2,
  pages = {115-128},
  month = jan,
  day = {08},
  publisher = {SAGE Publications Inc},
  abstract = {Gender stereotypes influence subjective beliefs about the world, and this is reflected in our use of language. But do gender biases in language transparently reflect subjective beliefs? Or is the process of translating thought to language itself biased? During the 2016 United States (N = 24,863) and 2017 United Kingdom (N = 2,609) electoral campaigns, we compared participants? beliefs about the gender of the next head of government with their use and interpretation of pronouns referring to the next head of government. In the United States, even when the female candidate was expected to win, she pronouns were rarely produced and induced substantial comprehension disruption. In the United Kingdom, where the incumbent female candidate was heavily favored, she pronouns were preferred in production but yielded no comprehension advantage. These and other findings suggest that the language system itself is a source of implicit biases above and beyond previously known biases, such as those measured by the Implicit Association Test.},
  issn = {0956-7976},
  pdf = {MalsburgEtAl2020.pdf},
  doi = {10.1177/0956797619890619},
  url = {https://tmalsburg.github.io/MalsburgEtAl2020.pdf},
}
@article{MalsburgVasishth2011,
  sortname = {Malsburg},
  author = {{von der Malsburg}, Titus and Shravan Vasishth},
  title = {What is the scanpath signature of syntactic reanalysis?},
  journal = {Journal of Memory and Language},
  year = {2011},
  volume = {65},
  number = {2},
  pages = {109--127},
  pdf = {MalsburgVasishth2011.pdf},
  doi = {10.1016/j.jml.2011.02.004},
  url = {https://tmalsburg.github.io/MalsburgVasishth2011.pdf},
  abstract = {Which repair strategy does the language system deploy when it gets garden-pathed, and what can regressive eye movements in reading tell us about reanalysis strategies? Several influential eye-tracking studies on syntactic reanalysis (Frazier \& Rayner, 1982; Meseguer, Carreiras, \& Clifton, 2002; Mitchell, Shen, Green, \& Hodgson, 2008) have addressed this question by examining scanpaths, i.e., sequential patterns of eye fixations. However, in the absence of a suitable method for analyzing scanpaths, these studies relied on simplified dependent measures that are arguably ambiguous and hard to interpret. We address the theoretical question of repair strategy by developing a new method that quantifies scanpath similarity. Our method reveals several distinct fixation strategies associated with reanalysis that went undetected in a previously published data set (Meseguer et al., 2002).  One prevalent pattern suggests re-parsing of the sentence, a strategy that has been discussed in the literature (Frazier \& Rayner, 1982); however, readers differed tremendously in how they orchestrated the various fixation strategies. Our results suggest that the human parsing system non-deterministically adopts different strategies when confronted with the disambiguating material in garden-path sentences.},
  keywords = {eye movements, method, parsing, scanpaths, syntactic reanalysis},
}
@article{MalsburgVasishth2013,
  author = {{von der Malsburg}, Titus and Vasishth, Shravan},
  title = {Scanpaths reveal syntactic underspecification and reanalysis strategies},
  journal = {Language and Cognitive Processes},
  year = {2013},
  volume = {28},
  number = {10},
  pages = {1545--1578},
  sortname = {Malsburg},
  pdf = {MalsburgVasishth2013.pdf},
  url = {https://tmalsburg.github.io/MalsburgVasishth2013.pdf},
  keywords = {eye movements, method, parsing, scanpaths, syntactic reanalysis, working memory},
  abstract = {What theories best characterize the parsing processes triggered upon encountering ambiguity, and what effects do these processes have on eye movement patterns in reading?  The present eye-tracking study, which investigated processing of attachment ambiguities of an adjunct in Spanish, suggests that readers sometimes underspecify attachment to save memory resources, consistent with the good-enough account of parsing. Our results confirm a surprising prediction of the good-enough account: high-capacity readers commit to an attachment decision more often than low-capacity participants, leading to more errors and a greater need to reanalyze in garden-path sentences.  These results emerged only when we separated functionally different types of regressive eye movements using a scanpath analysis; conventional eye-tracking measures alone would have led to different conclusions.  The scanpath analysis also showed that rereading was the dominant strategy for recovering from garden-pathing.  Our results may also have broader implications for models of reading processes: reanalysis effects in eye movements occurred late, which suggests that the coupling of oculo-motor control and the parser may not always be as tight as assumed in current computational models of eye movements control in reading.},
  doi = {10.1080/01690965.2012.728232}
}
@article{MaruschEtAl2012,
  author = {Marusch, Tina and {von der Malsburg}, Titus and Bastiaanse, Roelien and Burchert, Frank},
  title = {Tense morphology in German agrammatism: {The} production of regular, irregular and mixed verbs},
  journal = {The Mental Lexicon},
  year = {2012},
  volume = {7},
  number = {3},
  pages = {351--380},
  month = nov,
  pdf = {MaruschEtAl2012.pdf},
  publishers = {John Benjamins Publishing Co.},
  doi = {10.1075/ml.7.3.05mar},
  keywords = {agrammatism, tense, regular and irregular verbs, mixed verbs, inflectional morphology, time reference},
  abstract = {This study investigates tense morphology in agrammatic aphasia and the predictions of two accounts on processing of regular and irregular verbs: the Dual Mechanism model, that is, for aphasic data, the Declarative/Procedural model, and the Single Mechanism approach. The production of regular, irregular and mixed verbs in the present, simple past and past participle (present perfect) was tested in German by means of a sentence completion task with a group of seven speakers with agrammatic aphasia. The results show a difference between regular verbs and irregular verbs. Mixed verbs were equally difficult as irregular verbs. A frequency effect was found for irregular verbs but not for regular and mixed verbs. A significant difference among the correctness scores for present tense and simple past forms was found. Simple past and past participle were significantly more difficult than present tense. Error types were characterized by pure infinitive responses and time reference errors. Neither of the above accounts is sufficient to explain these results. Correctness scores and error patterns for mixed verbs suggest that such minor lexical patterns can be useful in finding new evidence in the debate on morphological processing. The findings also highlight time reference as well as language specific characteristics need to be taken into consideration.}
}
@article{MetznerEtAl2015N400,
  author = {Metzner, Paul and {von der Malsburg}, Titus and Vasishth, Shravan and Rösler, Frank},
  title = {Brain responses to world-knowledge violations: {A} comparison of stimulus- and fixation-triggered event-related potentials and neural oscillations},
  journal = {Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience},
  year = {2015},
  volume = {27},
  number = {5},
  pages = {1017--1028},
  doi = {10.1162/jocn_a_00731},
  pdf = {MetznerEtAl2015N400.pdf},
  keywords = {ERP, eye movements, reading, coregistration, n400},
  abstract = {Recent research has shown that brain potentials time-locked to fixations in natural reading can be similar to brain potentials recorded during rapid serial visual presentation (RSVP). We attempted two replications of Hagoort, Hald, Bastiaansen, and Petersson [Hagoort, P., Hald, L., Bastiaansen, M., \& Petersson, K. M. Integration of word meaning and world knowledge in language comprehension. Science, 304, 438–441, 2004] to determine whether this correspondence also holds for oscillatory brain responses. Hagoort et al. reported an N400 effect and synchronization in the theta and gamma range following world knowledge violations. Our first experiment (n = 32) used RSVP and replicated both the N400 effect in the ERPs and the power increase in the theta range in the time–frequency domain. In the second experiment (n = 49), participants read the same materials freely while their eye movements and their EEG were monitored. First fixation durations, gaze durations, and regression rates were increased, and the ERP showed an N400 effect. An analysis of time–frequency representations showed synchronization in the delta range (1–3 Hz) and desynchronization in the upper alpha range (11–13 Hz) but no theta or gamma effects. The results suggest that oscillatory EEG changes elicited by world knowledge violations are different in natural reading and RSVP. This may reflect differences in how representations are constructed and retrieved from memory in the two presentation modes.}
}
@article{MetznerEtAl2016,
  author = {Metzner, Paul and {von der Malsburg}, Titus and Vasishth, Shravan and Rösler, Frank},
  title = {The importance of reading naturally: {Evidence} from combined recordings of eye movements and electric brain potentials},
  journal = {Cognitive Science},
  year = {2016},
  volume = {41},
  number = {S6},
  pages = {1232–1263},
  keywords = {ERP, eye movements, reading, coregistration, n400, p600},
  pdf = {MetznerEtAl2016.pdf},
  doi = {10.1111/cogs.12384},
  abstract = {How important is the ability to freely control eye movements for reading comprehension?  And how does the parser make use of this freedom?  We investigated these questions using coregistration of eye movements and event-related brain potentials (ERPs) while participants read either freely or in a computer-controlled word-by-word format (also known as RSVP).  Word-by-word presentation and natural reading both elicited qualitatively similar ERP effects in response to syntactic and semantic violations (N400 and P600 effects).  Comprehension was better in free reading but only in trials in which the eyes regressed to previous material upon encountering the anomaly.  A more fine-grained ERP analysis revealed that these regressions were strongly associated with the well-known P600 effect.  In trials without regressions, we instead found sustained centro-parietal negativities starting at around 320 ms post-onset, however, these negativities were only found when the violation occurred in sentence-final position.  Taken together, these results suggest that the sentence processing system engages in strategic choices: In response to words that don’t match built-up expectations, it can either explore alternative interpretations (reflected by regressions, P600 effects, and good comprehension) or pursue a "good-enough" processing strategy that tolerates a deficient interpretation (reflected by progressive saccades, sustained negativities, and relatively poor comprehension).}
}
@article{MorganEtAl2020,
  author = {Adam M. Morgan and {von der Malsburg}, Titus and Victor S. Ferreira and Eva Wittenberg},
  title = {Shared syntax between comprehension and production: {Multi-paradigm} evidence that resumptive pronouns hinder comprehension},
  journal = {Cognition},
  year = {2020},
  volume = {205},
  pages = {104417},
  issn = {0010-0277},
  doi = {10.1016/j.cognition.2020.104417},
  url = {https://tmalsburg.github.io/MorganEtAl2020.pdf},
  keywords = {Syntax, Resumptive pronouns, Language comprehension, Language production, Eyetracking, Multi-paradigm self-replication},
  abstract = {Language comprehension and production are generally assumed to use the same representations, but resumption poses a problem for this view: This structure is regularly produced, but judged highly unacceptable. Production-based solutions to this paradox explain resumption in terms of processing pressures, whereas the Facilitation Hypothesis suggests resumption is produced to help listeners comprehend. Previous research purported to support the Facilitation Hypothesis did not test its keystone prediction: that resumption improves accuracy of interpretation. Here, we test this prediction directly, controlling for factors that previous work did not. Results show that resumption in fact hinders comprehension in the same sentences that native speakers produced, a finding which replicated across four high-powered experiments with varying paradigms: sentence-picture matching (N=300), self-paced reading (N=96), visual world eye-tracking (N=96), and multiple-choice comprehension question (N=150). These findings are consistent with production-based accounts, indicating that comprehension and production may indeed share representations, although our findings point toward a limit on the degree of overlap. Methodologically speaking, the findings highlight the importance of measuring interpretation when studying comprehension.}
}
@article{PaapeEtAl2020,
  author = {Paape, Dario and Vasishth, Shravan and {von der Malsburg}, Titus},
  title = {Quadruplex negatio invertit? {The} on-line processing of depth charge sentences},
  journal = {Journal of Semantics},
  year = {2020},
  volume = 37,
  number = 4,
  pages = {509-555},
  url = {https://academic.oup.com/jos/article/37/4/509/5924260},
  pdf = {PaapeEtAl2020.pdf},
  doi = {10.1093/jos/ffaa009},
  abstract = {So-called “depth charge” sentences (No head injury is too trivial to be ignored) are interpreted by the vast majority of speakers to mean the opposite of what their compositional semantics would dictate. The semantic inversion that is observed for sentences of this type is the strongest and most persistent linguistic illusion known to the field ( Wason & Reich, 1979). However, it has recently been argued that the preferred interpretation arises not because of a prevailing failure of the processing system, but rather because the non-compositional meaning is grammaticalized in the form of a stored construction ( Cook & Stevenson, 2010; Fortuin, 2014). In a series of five experiments, we investigate whether the depth charge effect is better explained by processing failure due to memory overload (the overloading hypothesis) or by the existence of an underlying grammaticalized construction with two available meanings (the ambiguity hypothesis). To our knowledge, our experiments are the first to explore the on-line processing profile of depth charge sentences. Overall, the data are consistent with specific variants of the ambiguity and overloading hypotheses while providing evidence against other variants. As an extension of the overloading hypothesis, we suggest two heuristic processes that may ultimately yield the incorrect reading when compositional processing is suspended for strategic reasons.}
}
@article{ParshinaEtAl2022,
  author = {Olga Parshina and Irina Sekerina and Anastasiya Lopukhina and {von der Malsburg}, Titus},
  title = {Monolingual and bilingual reading strategies in {Russian}: {An} exploratory scanpath analysis},
  journal = {Reading Research Quarterly},
  year = {2022},
  volume = 57,
  number = 2,
  pdf = {ParshinaEtAl2022.pdf},
  url = {https://ila.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/rrq.414},
  doi = {10.1002/rrq.414},
  abstract = {In the present study, we used a scanpath approach to investigate reading processes and factors that can shape them in monolingual Russian-speaking adults, 8-year-old children, and bilingual Russian-speaking readers. We found that monolingual adults’ eye movement patterns exhibited a fluent scanpath reading process, representing effortless processing of the written material: They read straight from left to right at a fast pace, skipped words, and regressed rarely. Both high-proficiency heritage-language speakers’ and second graders’ eye movement patterns exhibited an intermediate scanpath reading process, characterized by a slower pace, longer fixations, an absence of word skipping, and short regressive saccades. Second-language learners and low-proficiency heritage-language speakers exhibited a beginner reading process that involved the slowest pace, even longer fixations, no word skipping, and frequent rereading of the whole sentence and of particular words. We suggest that unlike intermediate readers who use the respective process to resolve local processing difficulties (e.g., word recognition failure), beginner readers, in addition, experience global-level challenges in semantic and morphosyntactic information integration. Proficiency in Russian for heritage-language speakers and comprehension scores for second-language learners were the only individual difference factors predictive of the scanpath reading process adopted by bilingual speakers. Overall, the scanpath analysis revealed qualitative differences in scanpath reading processes among various groups of readers and thus adds a qualitative dimension to the conventional quantitative evaluation of word-level eye-tracking measures.}
}
@article{SchotterEtAl2018,
  author = {Schotter, Elizabeth and {von der Malsburg}, Titus and Leinenger, Mallorie},
  title = {Forced Fixations, Trans-saccadic Integration, and Word Recognition: {Evidence} for a Hybrid Mechanism of Saccade Triggering in Reading},
  journal = {Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition},
  year = {2018},
  volume = 45,
  number = 5,
  pages = {677-688},
  abstract = {Recent studies using the gaze-contingent boundary paradigm reported a reversed preview benefit – shorter fixations on a target word when an unrelated preview was easier to process than the fixated target (Schotter \& Leinenger, 2016). This is explained via forced fixations – short fixations on words that would ideally be skipped (because lexical processing has progressed enough) but could not be because saccade planning reached a point of no return. This contrasts with accounts of preview effects via trans-saccadic integration – shorter fixations on a target word when the preview is more similar to it (see Cutter, Drieghe, \& Liversedge, 2015). Additionally, if the previewed word – not the fixated target – determines subsequent eye movements, is it also this word that enters the linguistic processing stream?  We tested these accounts by having 24 subjects read 150 sentences in the boundary paradigm in which both the preview and target were initially plausible but later one, both, or neither became implausible, providing an opportunity to probe which one was linguistically encoded. In an intervening buffer region, both words were plausible, providing an opportunity to investigate trans-saccadic integration. The frequency of the previewed word affected progressive saccades (i.e., forced fixations) as well as when trans-saccadic integration failure increased regressions, but, only the implausibility of the target word affected semantic encoding. These data support a hybrid account of saccadic control (Reingold, Reichle, Glaholt, \& Sheridan, 2012) driven by incomplete (often parafoveal) word recognition, which occurs prior to complete (often foveal) word recognition.},
  doi = {10.1037/xlm0000617},
  url = {https://osf.io/c5bmd/},
  pdf = {SchotterEtAl2018.pdf}
}
@article{SchotterEtAl2018b,
  author = {Schotter, Elizabeth and Leinenger, Mallorie and {von der Malsburg}, Titus},
  title = {When Your Mind Ignores What Your Eyes See: {How} Forced Fixations Lead to Comprehension Illusions in Reading},
  journal = {Psychonomic Bulletin \& Review},
  year = {2018},
  volume = {25},
  number = {5},
  pages = {1884--1890},
  pdf = {SchotterEtAl2018b.pdf},
  abstract = {The phenomenon of forced fixations suggests that readers sometimes fixate a word (due to oculomotor constraints) even though they intended to skip it (due to parafoveal cognitive-linguistic processing). We investigate whether this leads readers to look directly at a word but not pay attention to it. We used a gaze-contingent boundary paradigm to dissociate parafoveal and foveal information (e.g., the word phone changed to scarf once the reader's eyes moved to it) and asked questions about the sentence to determine which one the reader encoded. When the word was skipped or fixated only briefly (i.e., up to 100 ms) readers were more likely to report reading the parafoveal than the fixated word, suggesting that there are cases in which readers look directly at a word but their minds ignore it, leading to the illusion of reading something they did not fixate.},
  doi = {10.3758/s13423-017-1356-y},
}
@article{StoneEtAl2020,
  author = {Kate Stone and {von der Malsburg}, Titus and Shravan Vasishth},
  title = {The effect of decay and lexical uncertainty on processing long-distance dependencies},
  journal = {PeerJ},
  year = {2020},
  pages = {8:e10438},
  doi = {10.31219/osf.io/xrm43},
  url = {https://peerj.com/articles/10438/},
  abstract = {To make sense of a sentence, a reader must keep track of dependent relationships between words, such as between a verb and its particle (e.g. turn the music down). In languages such as German, verb-particle dependencies often span long distances, with the particle only appearing at the end of the clause. This means that it may be necessary to process a large amount of intervening sentence material before the full verb of the sentence is known. To facilitate processing, previous studies have shown that readers can preactivate the lexical information of neighbouring upcoming words, but less is known about whether such preactivation can be sustained over longer distances. We asked the question, do readers preactivate lexical information about long-distance verb particles? In one self-paced reading and one eye tracking experiment, we delayed the appearance of an obligatory verb particle that varied only in the predictability of its lexical identity. We additionally manipulated the length of the delay in order to test two contrasting accounts of dependency processing: that increased distance between dependent elements may sharpen expectation of the distant word and facilitate its processing (an antilocality effect), or that it may slow processing via temporal activation decay (a locality effect). We isolated decay by delaying the particle with a neutral noun modifier containing no information about the identity of the upcoming particle, and no known sources of interference or working memory load. Under the assumption that readers would preactivate the lexical representations of plausible verb particles, we hypothesised that a smaller number of plausible particles would lead to stronger preactivation of each particle, and thus higher predictability of the target. This in turn should have made predictable target particles more resistant to the effects of decay than less predictable target particles. The eye tracking experiment provided evidence that higher predictability did facilitate reading times, but found evidence against any effect of decay or its interaction with predictability. The self-paced reading study provided evidence against any effect of predictability or temporal decay, or their interaction. In sum, we provide evidence from eye movements that readers preactivate long-distance lexical content and that adding neutral sentence information does not induce detectable decay of this activation. The findings are consistent with accounts suggesting that delaying dependency resolution may only affect processing if the intervening information either confirms expectations or adds to working memory load, and that temporal activation decay alone may not be a major predictor of processing time.}
}
@article{VasishthEtAl2013,
  author = {Vasishth, Shravan and {von der Malsburg}, Titus and Engelmann, Felix},
  title = {What eye movements can tell us about sentence comprehension},
  journal = {Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Cognitive Science},
  year = {2013},
  volume = {4},
  number = {2},
  pages = {125--134},
  publisher = {John Wiley \& Sons, Inc.},
  issn = {1939-5086},
  doi = {10.1002/wcs.1209},
  pdf = {VasishthEtAl2013.pdf},
  keywords = {eye movements, method, parsing, scanpaths, corpus},
  abstract = {Eye movement data have proven to be very useful for investigating human sentence processing. Eyetracking research has addressed a wide range of questions, such as recovery mechanisms following garden-pathing, the timing of processes driving comprehension, the role of anticipation and expectation in parsing, the role of semantic, pragmatic, and prosodic information, and so on. However, there are some limitations regarding the inferences that can be made on the basis of eye movements. One relates to the nontrivial interaction between parsing and the eye movement control system which complicates the interpretation of eye movement data. Detailed computational models that integrate parsing with eye movement control theories have the potential to unpack the complexity of eye movement data and can therefore aid in the interpretation of eye movements. Another limitation is the difficulty of capturing spatiotemporal patterns in eye movements using the traditional word-based eyetracking measures. Recent research has demonstrated the relevance of these patterns and has shown how they can be analyzed. In this review, we focus on reading, and present examples demonstrating how eye movement data reveal what events unfold when the parser runs into difficulty, and how the parsing system interacts with eye movement control. WIREs Cogn Sci 2013, 4:125–134. doi: 10.1002/wcs.1209For further resources related to this article, please visit the WIREs website.}
}
@article{WehbeEtAl2021,
  author = {Wehbe, Leila and Blank, Idan A and Shain, Cory and Futrell, Richard and Levy, Roger and {von der Malsburg}, Titus and Smith, Nathaniel and Gibson, Edward and Fedorenko, Evelina},
  title = {Incremental language comprehension difficulty predicts activity in the language network but not the multiple demand network},
  journal = {Cerebral Cortex},
  year = {2021},
  doi = {10.1093/cercor/bhab065},
  url = {https://www.biorxiv.org/content/early/2020/04/17/2020.04.15.043844},
  abstract = {What role do domain-general executive functions play in human language comprehension? To address this question, we examine the relationship between behavioral measures of comprehension and neural activity in the domain-general “multiple demand” (MD) network, which has been linked to constructs like attention, working memory, inhibitory control, and selection, and implicated in diverse goal-directed behaviors. Specifically, fMRI data collected during naturalistic story listening are compared to theory-neutral measures of online comprehension difficulty and incremental processing load (reading times and eye-fixation durations). Critically, to ensure that variance in these measures is driven by features of the linguistic stimulus rather than reflecting participant-or trial-level variability, the neuroimaging and behavioral datasets were collected in non-overlapping samples. We find no behavioral-neural link in functionally localized MD regions; instead, this link is found in the domain-specific, fronto-temporal “core language network”, in both left hemispheric areas and their right hemispheric homologues. These results argue against strong involvement of domain-general executive circuits in language comprehension.}
}
@article{StoneEtAl2022,
  author = {Kate Stone and Shravan Vasishth and {von der Malsburg}, Titus},
  title = {Does entropy modulate the prediction of {German} long-distance verb particles?},
  journal = {PLOS ONE},
  year = {2022},
  month = aug,
  url = {https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0267813},
  doi = {10.1371/journal.pone.0267813},
  abstract = {In this paper we examine the effect of uncertainty on readers’ predictions about meaning. In particular, we were interested in how uncertainty might influence the likelihood of committing to a specific sentence meaning. We conducted two event-related potential (ERP) experiments using particle verbs such as turn down and manipulated uncertainty by constraining the context such that readers could be either highly certain about the identity of a distant verb particle, such as turn the bed […] down, or less certain due to competing particles, such as turn the music […] up/down. The study was conducted in German, where verb particles appear clause-finally and may be separated from the verb by a large amount of material. We hypothesised that this separation would encourage readers to predict the particle, and that high certainty would make prediction of a specific particle more likely than lower certainty. If a specific particle was predicted, this would reflect a strong commitment to sentence meaning that should incur a higher processing cost if the prediction is wrong. If a specific particle was less likely to be predicted, commitment should be weaker and the processing cost of a wrong prediction lower. If true, this could suggest that uncertainty discourages predictions via an unacceptable cost-benefit ratio. However, given the clear predictions made by the literature, it was surprisingly unclear whether the uncertainty manipulation affected the two ERP components studied, the N400 and the PNP. Bayes factor analyses showed that evidence for our a priori hypothesised effect sizes was inconclusive, although there was decisive evidence against a priori hypothesised effect sizes larger than 1 V for the N400 and larger than 3 V for the PNP. We attribute the inconclusive finding to the properties of verb-particle dependencies that differ from the verb-noun dependencies in which the N400 and PNP are often studied.}
}
@article{MeziereEtAl2023,
  author = {Mézière, Diane C. and Lili Yu and Reichle, Erik D. and {von der Malsburg}, Titus and Genevieve McArthur},
  title = {Using eye-tracking measures to predict reading comprehension},
  journal = {Reading Research Quarterly},
  year = {2023},
  volume = {58},
  number = {3},
  pages = {425-449},
  doi = {10.1002/rrq.498},
  url = {https://ila.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/rrq.498},
  abstract = {This study examined the potential of eye-tracking as a tool for assessing reading comprehension. We administered three widely used reading comprehension tests with varying task demands to 79 typical adult readers while monitoring their eye movements. In the York Assessment of Reading for Comprehension (YARC), participants were given passages of text to read silently, followed by comprehension questions. In the Gray Oral Reading Test (GORT-5), participants were given passages of text to read aloud, followed by comprehension questions. In the sentence comprehension subtest of the Wide Range Achievement Test (WRAT-4), participants were asked to provide a missing word in sentences that they read silently (i.e., a cloze task). Linear models predicting comprehension scores from eye-tracking measures yielded different results for the three tests. Eye-tracking measures explained significantly more variance than reading-speed data for the YARC (four times better), GORT (three times better), and the WRAT (1.3 time better). Importantly, there was no common strong predictor for all three tests. These results support growing recognition that reading comprehension tests do not measure the same cognitive processes, and that participants adapt their reading strategies to the tests' varying task demands. This study also suggests that eye-tracking may provide a useful alternative for measuring reading comprehension.}
}
@article{BianchiEtAl2023,
  author = {Bruno Bianchi and Rodrigo Loredo and María da Fonseca and Julia Carden and Virginia Jaichenco and {von der Malsburg}, Titus and Diego E. Shalom and Juan Kamienkowski},
  title = {Neural Bases of Predictions During Natural Reading of Known Statements: An Electroencephalography and Eye Movements Co-registration Study},
  journal = {Neuroscience},
  year = 2023,
  volume = {519},
  pages = {131--146},
  month = may,
  doi = {10.1016/j.neuroscience.2023.03.024},
  publisher = {Elsevier {BV}},
  abstract = {Predictions of incoming words performed during reading have an impact on how the reader moves their eyes and on the electrical brain potentials. Eye tracking (ET) experiments show that less predictable words are fixated for longer periods of times. Electroencephalography (EEG) experiments show that these words elicit a more negative potential around 400 ms (N400) after the word onset when reading one word at a time (foveated reading). Nevertheless, there was no N400 potential during the foveated reading of previously known sentences (memory-encoded), which suggests that the prediction of words from memory-encoded sentences is based on different mechanisms than predictions performed on common sentences. Here, we performed an ET-EEG co-registration experiment where participants read common and memory-encoded sentences. Our results show that the N400 potential disappear when the reader recognises the sentence. Furthermore, time–frequency analyses show a larger alpha lateralisation and a beta power increase for memory-encoded sentences. This suggests a more distributed attention and an active maintenance of the cognitive set, in concordance to the predictive coding framework.}
}
@article{MeziereEtAl2023b,
  author = {Diane C. Mézière and Lili Yu and Genevieve McArthur and Erik D. Reichle and {von der Malsburg}, Titus},
  title = {Scanpath Regularity as an Index of Reading Comprehension},
  journal = {Scientific Studies of Reading},
  year = {2023},
  volume = {0},
  number = {0},
  pages = {1-22},
  publisher = {Routledge},
  url = {https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/10888438.2023.2232063},
  doi = {10.1080/10888438.2023.2232063},
  abstract = {Purpose: Recent research on the potential of using eye-tracking to measure reading comprehension ability suggests that the relationship between standard eye-tracking measures and reading comprehension is influenced by differences in task demands between comprehension assessments. We compared standard eye-tracking measures and scanpath regularity as predictors of reading comprehension scores.

Method: We used a dataset in which 79 participants (mean age: 22 years, 82\% females, 76\% monolingual English speakers) were administered three widely-used reading comprehension assessments with varying task demands while their eye movements were monitored: the York Assessment of Reading for Comprehension; (YARC), the Gray Oral Reading Test; (GORT-5), and the sentence comprehension subtest of the Wide Range Achievement Test; (WRAT-4).

Results: Results showed that scanpath regularity measures, similarly to standard eye-tracking measures, were influenced by differences in task demands between the three tests. Nevertheless, both types of eye-tracking measures made unique contributions as predictors of comprehension and the best set of predictors included both standard eye-tracking measures and at least one scanpath measure across tests.

Conclusion: The results provide evidence that scanpaths capture differences in eye-movement patterns missed by standard eye-tracking measures. Overall, the results highlight the effect of task demands on eye-movement behavior and suggest that reading goals and task demands need to be considered when interpreting eye-tracking data.}
}
@article{LaurinavichyuteMalsburg2024,
  author = {Laurinavichyute, Anna and {von der Malsburg}, Titus},
  title = {Agreement attraction in grammatical sentences and the role of the task},
  journal = {Journal of Memory and Language},
  year = {2024},
  volume = {137},
  pages = {104525},
  month = aug,
  keywords = {Sentence comprehension; Agreement attraction; Illusion of ungrammaticality; Similarity-based interference; Adaptation; Task effects; Grammaticality bias},
  abstract = {This study evaluates two broad classes of language processing accounts that make predictions for sentences like ``The admirer of the singer(s) apparently thinks...''. Feature distortion accounts predict increased processing difficulty at the verb in sentences with a plural distractor noun (singers) while similarity-based interference accounts predict the opposite: increased difficulty in sentences with a singular distractor noun (singer). Neither of these effects was reliably observed in earlier research, and the Bayesian meta-analysis of 31 published studies reported here is almost perfectly inconclusive. An explanation may be that both effects occur simultaneously and therefore mask each other. To test this idea, we conducted three single-trial self-paced reading experiments (N1=4,296, N2=3,920, N3=3,559) which orthogonally manipulated agreement attraction and inhibitory interference. Surprisingly, all three experiments produced evidence for agreement attraction but none for inhibitory interference, which supports feature distortion but not similarity-based interference accounts. Experiment 4 (N4=3,535) tested the role of the expected task by preparing participants for a comprehension question (vs. acceptability judgment in Experiments 1--3). It showed neither agreement attraction nor inhibitory interference effects. Our findings demonstrate that agreement attraction effects can arise in grammatical sentences -- contra earlier research -- but also that these effects crucially depend on the task. This explains inconsistent results in prior research and supports feature distortion as the driving force behind attraction effects in grammatical sentences.},
  doi = {10.1016/j.jml.2024.104525},
  url = {https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0749596X24000287}
}