Sensitivity to salience: linguistic vs. visual cues affect sentence processing and pronoun resolution

Figures & data

Figure 1. Experimental design of Exp. 1 (linguistic Modality) and 2 (visual Modality) with approximate English translation written in grey. First, participants read the lead-in sentence (1). Subsequently, the salient or neutral Cue context (2) was presented followed by the SO or OS Word order target sentence (3). In the salient cue condition, the SO or OS sentence mentioned the salient referent (i.e., green fish) first (i.e., as DP1). Afterwards, the pronoun sentence (4) was presented. In the choice question phase (5), either an antecedent choice question or a comprehension probe had to be answered.

Abbreviations: SO = subject-verb-object, OS = object-verb-subject, DP = determiner phrase.

Table 1. Linear mixed effects model output for log reading times across sentence positions of the word order sentence.

FIXED EFFECTS	DP1			verb			DP2
	b	SE	t	b	SE	t	b	SE	t
intercept	6.668	0.034	196.51*	6.426	0.037	173.90*	6.610	0.045	147.04*
Modality	−0.108	0.068	−1.59	−0.033	0.073	−0.45	−0.184	0.089	−2.05*
Cue	0.066	0.013	5.09*	0.013	0.008	1.60	0.034	0.010	3.51*
Word order	−0.060	0.010	−5.93*	−0.036	0.010	−3.49*	−0.112	0.019	−6.02*
Modality × Cue	0.042	0.026	1.60	−0.008	0.016	−0.48	−0.021	0.019	−1.10
Modality × Word order	0.012	0.020	0.58	0.018	0.020	0.90	0.074	0.037	1.98*
Cue × Word order	−0.018	0.015	−1.19	−0.005	0.016	−0.34	−0.011	0.019	−0.56
Modality × Cue × Word order	−0.011	0.030	−0.35	−0.014	0.031	−0.44	−0.005	0.038	−0.13
Formula of final model with random slope adjustments for Participants (P) and Items (I)	DP1 ∼ Modality * Cue * Word order * Theta role * Orientation * + (1+ Cue + Word order + Theta role | P) + (1 | I)			verb ∼ Modality * Cue * Word order * Theta role * Orientation * + (1+ Word order | P) + (1+ Theta role | I)			DP2 ∼ Modality * Cue * Word order * Theta role * Orientation * + (1+ Word order | P) + (1+ Theta role | I)

Abbreviations: * = statistically significant effects with |t| > 1.96, b = estimate, SE = standard error, DP = determiner phrase.

Table 2. Linear mixed effects model output for log reading times across sentence positions of the pronoun sentence.

FIXED EFFECTS	pronoun			verb			prepositional phrase
	b	SE	t	b	SE	t	b	SE	t
intercept	6.317	0.040	159.30*	6.306	0.040	157.98*	6.458	0.036	180.74*
Modality	0.101	0.079	1.28	−0.098	0.080	1.23	0.008	0.071	0.11
Cue	−0.005	0.013	−0.35	0.010	0.008	1.23	0.0003	0.009	0.03
Word order	−0.016	0.010	−1.66	−0.029	0.008	−3.54*	−0.027	0.009	−3.06*
Modality × Cue	−0.017	0.016	−1.08	0.002	0.016	0.12	0.007	0.018	0.42
Modality × Word order	−0.041	0.016	−2.56*	−0.009	0.016	−0.57	−0.012	0.018	−0.69
Cue × Word order	−0.015	0.016	−0.93	−0.009	0.016	−0.53	−0.011	0.018	0.64
Modality × Cue × Word order	−0.043	0.032	−1.32	−0.013	0.033	−0.38	−0.053	0.036	−0.48
Formula of final model with random slope adjustments for Participants (P) and Items (I)	pronoun ∼ Modality * Cue * Word order * Theta role * Orientation * + (1 | P) + (1+ Cue + Word order * Theta role | I)			verb ∼ Modality * Cue * Word order * Theta role * Orientation * + (1 | P) + (1 | I)			prepositional_phrase ∼ Modality * Cue * Word order * Theta role * Orientation * + (1 | P) + (1 | I)

Abbreviations: * = statistically significant effects with |t| > 1.96, b = estimate, SE = standard error.

Table 3. Logit mixed effects model output for subject antecedent choices.

FIXED EFFECTS	subject antecedent choices
	b	SE	z
intercept	2.173	0.237	9.15***
Modality	−0.709	0.470	−1.51
Cue	0.249	0.106	2.35*
Word order	1.391	0.329	4.22***
Modality × Cue	0.078	0.212	0.37
Modality × Word order	1.649	0.643	2.56*
Cue × Word order	−0.629	0.212	−2.97**
Modality × Cue × Word order	−1.278	0.424	−3.02**
Formula of final model with random slope adjustments for Participants (P) and Items (I)	subject antecedent ∼ Modality * Cue * Word order * Theta role * Orientation *+ (1+ Word order | P) + (1 | I)

Abbreviations: Significance levels: *p < .05, **p < .01, ***p < .001, b = estimate, SE = standard error.

Figure 2. Mean (M) log reading times across relevant sentence positions during processing the word order sentence (DP1, verb, DP2) and the pronoun sentence (pronoun, verb, PP) for the linguistic (Exp. 1: upper panel) and visual Modality (Exp. 2: lower panel). Statistically significant effects with |t| > 1.96 are marked with an asterisk. Error bars indicate 95% confidence intervals (CIs). For the within-subject factors (Cue, Word order) the CIs exclude the between-participant variance (Cousineau, 2005) and were corrected according to Morey (2008).

Note: Significant effects of Modality are not indicated in the figure but are only discussed in the main text (see section 3.1). Abbreviations: SO = subject-verb-object, OS = object-verb-subject, DP = determiner phrase, PP = prepositional phrase.

Figure 3. Mean (M) proportion of subject antecedent choices for the pronoun “He” for the linguistic (Exp. 1: left panel) and visual Modality (Exp. 2: right panel). Statistically significant effects with |z| > 1.96 are marked with an asterisk. Error bars indicate 95% confidence intervals (CIs). For the within-subject factors (Cue, Word order) the CIs exclude the between-participant variance (Cousineau, 2005) and were corrected according to Morey (2008).

Abbreviations: SO = subject-verb-object, OS = object-verb-subject.

Cousineau, D. (2005). Confidence intervals in within-subject designs: A simpler solution to Loftus and Masson’s method. Tutorials in Quantitative Methods for Psychology, 1(1), 42–45.

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