Investigating the foreign language effect as a mitigating influence on the ‘optimality bias’ in moral judgements Abstract Bilinguals often display reduced emotional resonance their second language (L2) and therefore tend to be less prone to decision-making biases in their L2 (e.g., Costa et al. in Cognition 130(2):236–254, 2014a, PLoS One 9(4):1–7, 2014b)—a phenomenon coined Foreign Language Effect (FLE). The present pre-registered experiments investigated whether FLE can mitigate a special case of cognitive bias, called optimality bias, which occurs when observers erroneously blame actors for making “suboptimal” choices, even when there was not sufficient information available for the actor to identify the best choice (De Freitas and Johnson in J Exp Soc Psychol 79:149–163, 2018. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jesp.2018.07.011). In Experiment 1, L1 English speakers (N = 63) were compared to L2 English speakers from various L1 backgrounds (N = 56). In Experiment 2, we compared Finnish bilinguals completing the study in either Finnish (L1, N = 103) or English (L2, N = 108). Participants read a vignette describing the same tragic outcome resulting from either an optimal or suboptimal choice made by a hypothetical actor with insufficient knowledge. Their blame attributions were measured using a 4-item scale. A strong optimality bias was observed; participants assigned significantly more blame in the suboptimal choice conditions, despite being told that the actor did not know which choice was best. However, no clear interaction with language was found. In Experiment 1, bilinguals gave reliably higher blame scores than natives. In Experiment 2, no clear influence of target language was found, but the results suggested that the FLE is actually more detrimental than helpful in the domain of blame attribution. Future research should investigate the benefits of emotional involvement in blame attribution, including factors such as empathy and perspective-taking.

Cultural model theory versus extensionist and radical extensionist theories of cognition Abstract In this paper I examine the strengths and weakness of both Radical Enactivist (i.e. anti-representational) theories of cognition and Cultural Model theory. I show that the two are not fundamentally incompatible if one adopts a prototype property to cultural models. The paper examines how prototype properties that encompass connotative meaning defuse the critique of Cultural Model theory as unable to deal with the contingencies and ever changing contexts that comprise everyday life. I also critique the concept of affordances, the concept most often used by enactivist theorists as an alternative to representational models of cognition and show how affordances can be embedded in cultural model theory.

Mongolian yos surtakhuun and WEIRD “morality” Abstract “Morality” is a Western term that brings to mind all sorts of associations. In contemporary Western moral psychology it is a commonplace to assume that people (presumably across all cultures and languages) will typically associate the term “moral” with actions that involve considerations of harm and/or fairness. But is it cross-culturally a valid claim? The current work provides some preliminary evidence from Mongolia to address this question. The word combination of yos surtakhuun is a Mongolian translation of the Western term “moral”. However, freelisting data indicates that Mongolians do not typically associate the term yos surtakhuun with actions that involve considerations of harm and/or fairness. Instead, the most cognitively salient category is respect (khündlekh). The lack of convergence between moral and yos surtakhuun suggests that the term “moral” does not refer to universal “moral” cognition that specifically deals with harm and/or fairness. On the contrary, I would argue that the term “moral” brings to mind exclusively WEIRD associations, and yos surtakhuun brings to mind specifically Mongolian associations. Thus, pointing to different historically shaped cultural models of “moral” behavior.

Semantic processing of adjectives and nouns in American Sign Language: effects of reference ambiguity and word order across development Abstract When processing spoken language sentences, listeners continuously make and revise predictions about the upcoming linguistic signal. In contrast, during comprehension of American Sign Language (ASL), signers must simultaneously attend to the unfolding linguistic signal and the surrounding scene via the visual modality. This may affect how signers activate potential lexical candidates and allocate visual attention as a sentence unfolds. To determine how signers resolve referential ambiguity during real-time comprehension of ASL adjectives and nouns, we presented deaf adults (n = 18, 19–61 years) and deaf children (n = 20, 4–8 years) with videos of ASL sentences in a visual world paradigm. Sentences had either an adjective-noun (e.g., “SEE YELLOW WHAT? FLOWER”) or a noun-adjective (e.g., “SEE FLOWER WHICH? YELLOW”) structure. The degree of ambiguity in the visual scene was manipulated at the adjective and noun levels (e.g., including one or more yellow items and one or more flowers in the visual array). We investigated effects of ambiguity and word order on target looking at early and late points in the sentence. Analysis revealed that adults and children made anticipatory looks to a target when it could be identified early in the sentence. Further, signers looked more to potential lexical candidates than to unrelated competitors in the early window, and more to matched than unrelated competitors in the late window. Children’s gaze patterns largely aligned with those of adults, although they made fewer anticipatory fixations to the target in the early window and were more susceptible to competitors in the late window. Together, these findings suggest that signers allocate referential attention strategically based on the amount and type of ambiguity at different points in the sentence when processing adjectives and nouns in ASL.

Language history attenuates syntactic prediction in L1 processing Abstract An eye-tracking experiment in the Visual World Paradigm was conducted to examine the effects of language history on the predictive parsing of sentences containing relative clauses in the first-learned language of fluent bilingual adults. We compared heritage speakers of Spanish (HSs)—who had spent most of their lives immersed in an English-dominant society—to Spanish–English late bilinguals (LBs), who did not begin immersion in an English-dominant society until adulthood. Consistent with studies of monolinguals, the LBs demonstrated a subject/object relative clause processing asymmetry, i.e. a processing advantage during subject relative clauses and a processing disadvantage during object relative clauses. This suggests that the LBs actively predicted the syntactic structure of subject relative clauses, consistent with the active filler hypothesis. The HSs, on the other hand, did not exhibit this processing asymmetry, suggesting less active prediction. We conclude, therefore, that decreased exposure to the first-learned language causes less active prediction in first-language processing, which causes both disadvantages, and interestingly, advantages, in processing speed.

Real-time social reasoning: the effect of disfluency on the meaning of some Abstract The scalar quantifier some is locally ambiguous between pragmatic (some-but-not-all) and literal (some-and-possibly-all) meanings. Although comprehenders typically favour an eventual pragmatic interpretation, debate persists regarding what factors influence interpretation, the time course of comprehension, and whether literal meaning takes precedence. We investigate how the interpretation of some depends on social reasoning derived from a speaker’s manner of delivery. Specifically, we test the effect of disfluency on the derivation of meaning in a context where hesitation may signal speaker embarrassment due to potential face-loss associated with the literal meaning of “some”. Participants \((n=24)\) viewed displays comprising two different snack quantities while hearing a recorded utterance describing how much a speaker had eaten. Critical utterances \((n=16)\) contained the quantifier some, half with a filled pause disfluency (“I ate <uh>, some oreos”). Participants’ eye and mouse movements showed (via empirical logit regressions) that fluent utterances yielded a bias toward a pragmatic interpretation, while disfluency attenuated this bias in favour of the literal meaning (where the speaker ate all the oreos). Crucially, this difference emerged rapidly post-onset of some. Taken together, our findings do not support a literal-first account of scalar comprehension, but rather, suggest that some is interpreted rapidly in a context-dependent manner.

Predicting (variability of) context effects in language comprehension Abstract Predicting variability in context effects is a timely enterprise considering that psycho- and neurolinguistic research has assessed how language processing depends on the perceived context, the body, and long-term linguistic knowledge of the language user. The current evidence suggests that some context effects may be systematically more robust than others and that language user characteristics are an influential modulator of context-sensitive comprehension. Reviewing psycholinguistic evidence, I argue for constrained contextual variability. Variability in context effects is predicted by characteristics of the language user and world-language relations. But extant findings also suggest generalizability beyond such variation, thus imposing constraint on theoretical prediction of context effects via relative (not absolute) processing preferences.

The interpretation and prediction of event participants in Mandarin verb-final active and passive sentences Abstract The role of the markers bèi and bǎ for thematic role assignment in Chinese NP1-marker-NP2-V sentences was investigated in adult native speakers. While word order is identical, thematic roles are distributed reversely in these structures [patient-bèi-agent, (passive); agent-bǎ-patient, (active)]. If Mandarin speakers interpret NP1 as the agent of an event, viewing behavior was expected to differ between conditions for NP1-objects, indicating the revision of initial role assignment in the case of bèi. Given reliability differences between markers for role assignment, differences in anticipatory eye movements to NP2-objects were expected. 16 visual stimuli were combined with 16 sets of sentence pairs; one pair partner featuring a bèi-, the other a bǎ-structure. Growth curve analysis of 28 participants’ eye movements revealed no attention differences for NP1-objects. However, anticipatory eye movements to NP2-objects differed. This suggests that a stable event representation is constructed only after NP1 and the marker have been processed, but before NP2. As a control variable, syntactic/semantic complexity of NP1 was manipulated. The differences obtained indicate that the visual world paradigm is in principle sensitive to detect language-induced processing costs, which was taken to validate the null-finding for NP1. Interestingly, NP1 complexity also modulated predictive processing. Findings are discussed with respect to a differentiation between interpretative and predictive aspects incremental processing.

Rational over-specification in visually-situated comprehension and production Abstract Contrary to the Gricean maxims of quantity (Grice, in: Cole, Morgan (eds) Syntax and semantics: speech acts, vol III, pp 41–58, Academic Press, New York, 1975), it has been repeatedly shown that speakers often include redundant information in their utterances (over-specifications). Previous research on referential communication has long debated whether this redundancy is the result of speaker-internal or addressee-oriented processes, while it is also unclear whether referential redundancy hinders or facilitates comprehension. We present an information-theoretic explanation for the use of over-specification in visually-situated communication, which quantifies the amount of uncertainty regarding the referent as entropy (Shannon in Bell Syst Tech J 5:10, https://doi.org/10.1002/j.1538-7305.1948.tb01338.x, 1948). Examining both the comprehension and production of over-specifications, we present evidence that (a) listeners’ processing is facilitated by the use of redundancy as well as by a greater reduction of uncertainty early on in the utterance, and (b) that at least for some speakers, listeners’ processing concerns influence their encoding of over-specifications: Speakers were more likely to use redundant adjectives when these adjectives reduced entropy to a higher degree than adjectives necessary for target identification.

Fixations in the visual world paradigm: where, when, why? Abstract Over the last 25 years, the visual world paradigm has enabled discoveries and theoretical advances in spoken language processing. However, the intuitive interpretation of fixations in the visual world paradigm—that fixations directly reflect over-time processes of activation and competition governing cognitive and language processing—deserves scrutiny. This paper provides a selective review of studies that suggest that the relations between fixations and ongoing processing are more complex than suggested by the intuitive interpretation. A particular challenge is explaining why context sometimes appears to have deep effects on language processing, while other times fixations appear to violate strong contextual constraints. I discuss implications of these seemingly contradictory patterns for theories of real-world language processing, and practical implications for using the visual world paradigm. Along the way, I review four possible linking hypotheses for connecting measures in the paradigm to theories of language and cognition. This review leads to the conclusion that implemented computational models will be needed to assess to what degree different linking hypotheses generate distinguishable predictions.