Presents a computational model of sentence processing that is grounded in decades of research in cognitive psychology and AI.

What are the psychological processes involved in comprehending sentences? How do we process the structure of sentences and how do we understand their meaning? Do children, bilinguals and people with language impairments process sentences in the same way as healthy monolingual adults? These are just some of the many questions that sentence processing researchers have tried to answer by conducting ever more sophisticated experiments, making this one of the most productive and exciting areas in experimental language research in recent years. This book is the first to provide a comprehensive, state-of-the-art overview of this important field. It contains 10 chapters written by world-leading experts, which discuss influential theories of sentence processing and important experimental evidence, with a focus on recent developments in the area. The chapters also analyse research that has investigated how people process the structure and meaning of sentences, and how sentences are understood within their context. This comprehensive and authoritative work will appeal to students and researchers in the field of sentence processing, as well anyone with an interest in psychology and linguistics.

Bilingual Sentence Processing

On the basis of a decade's work on syntactic-comprehension disorders, primarily inthe Neurolinguistics Laboratory of the Montreal Neurological Hospital, David Caplan and NancyHildebrandt present an original theory of these disturbances of language function. They suggest inthis wide-ranging study that syntactic structure breaks down after damage to the brain because ofspecific impairments in the parsing processes and a general decrease in the amount of computationalspace that can be devoted to that function.Disorders of Syntactic Comprehension includes detailedsingle-case analyses and large-group studies, as well as a broad review of the literature onaphasia. It also provides introductions to syntactic structures and parsing for the readerunfamiliar with these subjects. It develops a general framework for viewing disorders in this areaand for identifying a number of specific aspects of the breakdown of syntactic comprehension.Theauthors' richly detailed empirical linguistic database and their careful use of experimentalmaterials enable them to bring the results of their research to bear on several aspects of theoriesof syntactic structure (Chomsky's theory) and parsing (the Berwick-Weinberg parser) and to use thesetheories to describe and explain aphasic phenomena. Moreover, the combination of population andgroup studies allows them to investigate the neurological basis of syntactic disorders in additionto the psychological and linguistic aspects.David N. Caplan is Associate Professor of Neurology andLinguistics at McGill University. Nancy Hildebrandt is in the Neurolinguistics Laboratory at theMassachusetts General Hospital. Disorders of Syntactic Comprehension is included in the seriesIssues in the Biology of Language and Cognition, edited by John C. Marshall.

This book addresses important findings, assumptions, problems, hopes, and future guidelines on the use of advanced research techniques to study the moment-by-moment mental processes that occur while a reader or listener is understanding language. The core techniques are eye tracking and ERPs, with some extensions to others such as fMRI. The On-line Study ofSentence Comprehension has been written by top researchers in the field of psycholinguistics, who are also leading experts in the use of eye tracking and ERPs. This book combines comprehensive overviews of the state of the art on theoretical progress, the latest on assumptions behind the use of eye movements (reading and visual world) and ERPs methods with papers that address specific research questions. This work covers not only methodological issues but also discusses the theoretical progress in understanding language processing using temporally fine-grained methods.

As our society ages, the topic of cognitive aging is becoming increasingly important. This volume provides an accessible overview of how the cognitive system changes as a function of normal aging. Building on the successful first edition, this volume provide an even more comprehensive coverage of the major issues affecting memory, attention, language, speech and other aspects of cognitive functioning. The essential chapters from the first edition have been thoroughly revised and updated and new chapters have been introduced which draw in neuroscience studies and more applied topics. In addition, contributors were encouraged to ensure their chapters are accessible to students studying the topic for the first time. This therefore makes the volume appealing as a textbook on senior undergraduate and graduate courses.