Shravan Vasishth
Biographic Data
| ID | 744115 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Shravan Vasishth |
| GIVEN NAMES | Shravan |
| FAMILY NAME | Vasishth |
| SIGNATURE | VASISHTH S |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Potsdam |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-2027-1994 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 37 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 95 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 37 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1997 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 5 |
Context ameliorates but does not eliminate garden-pathing: Novel insights from latent-process modeling
A theoretically important claim in psycholinguistics is that in English, linguistic context largely eliminates garden-path effects in temporary complement clause/relative clause ambiguities (e.g., Altmann et al., 1992). However, this strong claim, based on comparing mean differences between groups of conditions in a factorial design, reduces the conclusion to an overly simplistic binary one: either context affects garden-pathing or it doesn’t. Me…
The time course of local coherence effects in German: Evidence from self-paced reading times and event-related potentials
In sentences like "The coach smiled at the player tossed a frisbee," the string "the player tossed a frisbee" cannot be an active subject-verb-object (SVO) clause given the preceding context; yet, comprehenders seem to entertain this incorrect parse, at least momentarily. Behaviorally, this momentary mis-parse is expressed as greater difficulty when the SVO chunk is read. This phenomenon, called a local coherence effect, has important implication…
Similarity-based interference in the processing of classifier-noun dependencies in Mandarin Chinese
Four studies tested interference effects in Mandarin classifier-noun dependencies. • Bayes factor analyses provided evidence for facilitatory interference but not for inhibitory interference. • Interference did not arise when the distractor noun linearly precedes the distractor noun. During the processing of linguistic dependencies, the presence of a non-dependent word—referred to as a distractor—can sometimes complicate the identification of the…
Do syntactic and semantic similarity lead to interference effects? Evidence from self-paced reading and event-related potentials using German
Cue-based retrieval accounts of sentence processing postulate that at a verb, retrieval cues are generated to complete a dependency with the verb’s argument(s); for example, the dependency between the subject and the verb must be completed. If these retrieval cues match with not only the subject but also with those on other nouns in the sentence, then processing difficulty arises at the verb. This difficulty in identifying the correct dependent i…
Do local coherence effects exist in English reduced relative clauses
For decades, a major underlying assumption behind theories of sentence comprehension has been that the parser only entertains analyses that are grammatically consistent with all words encountered in the sentence so far. A dramatic challenge to this self-consistency assumption came from two self-paced reading experiments in English (Tabor et al. 2004). Using a syntactic and a syntactic–semantic manipulation, Tabor et al. (2004) found that particip…
Seam: An integrated activation-coupled model of sentence processing and eye movements in reading
Models of eye-movement control during reading, developed largely within psychology, usually focus on visual, attentional, lexical, and motor processes but neglect post-lexical language processing; by contrast, models of sentence comprehension processes, developed largely within psycholinguistics, generally focus only on post-lexical language processes. We present a model that combines these two research threads, by integrating eye-movement contro…
Crosslinguistic evidence against interference from extra-sentential distractors
Cue-based retrieval theories of sentence processing posit that long-distance dependency formation is guided by a cue-based retrieval mechanism: dependents are retrieved via retrieval cues associated with a verb. When retrieval cues match multiple similar items in memory, this leads to cue-based retrieval interference. A landmark study by Van Dyke and McElree tested interference from sentence-external items: retrieval cues were manipulated to (mis…
Number feature distortion modulates cue-based retrieval in reading
In sentence comprehension, what are the cognitive constraints that determine number agreement computation? Two broad classes of theoretical proposals are: (i) Representation distortion accounts, which assume that the number feature on the subject noun gets overwritten probabilistically by the number feature on a non-subject noun, leading to a non-veridical memory trace of the subject noun; and (ii) The cue-based retrieval account, a general accou…
Individual Differences in Cue Weighting in Sentence Comprehension: An Evaluation Using Approximate Bayesian Computation
Cue-based retrieval theories of sentence processing assume that syntactic dependencies are resolved through a content-addressable search process. An important recent claim is that in certain dependency types, the retrieval cues are weighted such that one cue dominates. This cue-weighting proposal aims to explain the observed average behavior, but here we show that there is systematic individual-level variation in cue weighting. Using the Lewis an…
Share the code, not just the data: A case study of the reproducibility of articles published in the Journal of Memory and Language under the open data policy
In 2019 the Journal of Memory and Language instituted an open data and code policy; this policy requires that, as a rule, code and data be released at the latest upon publication. How effective is this policy? We compared 59 papers published before, and 59 papers published after, the policy took effect. After the policy was in place, the rate of data sharing increased by more than 50%. We further looked at whether papers published under the open …
Can the resource reduction hypothesis explain sentence processing in aphasia? A visual world study in German
Resource limitation has often been invoked as a key driver of sentence comprehension difficulty, in both theories of language-unimpaired and language-impaired populations. In the field of aphasia, one such influential theory is Caplan's resource reduction hypothesis (RRH). In this large investigation of online processing in aphasia in German, we evaluated three key predictions of the RRH in 21 individuals with aphasia and 22 control pparticipants…
Some Right Ways to Analyze (Psycho)Linguistic Data
Much has been written on the abuse and misuse of statistical methods, including p values, statistical significance, and so forth. I present some of the best practices in statistics using a running example data analysis. Focusing primarily on frequentist and Bayesian linear mixed models, I illustrate some defensible ways in which statistical inference—specifically, hypothesis testing using Bayes factors versus estimation or uncertainty quantificat…
Does Local Coherence Lead to Targeted Regressions and Illusions of Grammaticality
Local coherence effects arise when the human sentence processor is temporarily misled by a locally grammatical but globally ungrammatical analysis (The coach smiled at the player tossed a frisbee by the opposing team). It has been suggested that such effects occur either because sentence processing occurs in a bottom-up, self-organized manner rather than under constant grammatical supervision, or because local coherence can disrupt processing due…
The benefits of preregistration for hypothesis-driven bilingualism research
Preregistration is an open science practice that requires the specification of research hypotheses and analysis plans before the data are inspected. Here, we discuss the benefits of preregistration for hypothesis-driven, confirmatory bilingualism research. Using examples from psycholinguistics and bilingualism, we illustrate how non-peer reviewed preregistrations can serve to implement a clean distinction between hypothesis testing and data explo…
Variability in sentence comprehension in aphasia in German
An important aspect of aphasia is the observation of behavioral variability between and within individual participants. Our study addresses variability in sentence comprehension in German, by testing 21 individuals with aphasia and a control group and involving (a) several constructions (declarative sentences, relative clauses and control structures with an overt pronoun or PRO), (b) three response tasks (object manipulation, sentence-picture mat…
How to embrace variation and accept uncertainty in linguistic and psycholinguistic data analysis
The use of statistical inference in linguistics and related areas like psychology typically involves a binary decision: either reject or accept some null hypothesis using statistical significance testing. When statistical power is low, this frequentist data-analytic approach breaks down: null results are uninformative, and effect size estimates associated with significant results are overestimated. Using an example from psycholinguistics, several…
Quadruplex Negatio Invertit? The On-Line Processing of Depth Charge Sentences
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 n…
What did we learn from forty years of research on semantic interference? A Bayesian meta-analysis
When participants in an experiment have to name pictures while ignoring distractor words superimposed on the picture or presented auditorily (i.e., picture-word interference paradigm), they take more time when the word to be named (or target) and distractor words are from the same semantic category (e.g., cat-dog). This experimental effect is known as the semantic interference effect, and is probably one of the most studied in the language produc…
Interference patterns in subject-verb agreement and reflexives revisited: A large-sample study
Cue-based retrieval theories in sentence processing predict two classes of interference effect: (i) Inhibitory interference is predicted when multiple items match a retrieval cue: cue-overloading leads to an overall slowdown in reading time; and (ii) Facilitatory interference arises when a retrieval target as well as a distractor only partially match the retrieval cues; this partial matching leads to an overall speedup in retrieval time. Inhibito…
Does case marking affect agreement attraction in comprehension
Previous studies have suggested that distinctive case marking on noun phrases reduces attraction effects in production, i.e., the tendency to produce a verb that agrees with a nonsubject noun. An important open question is whether attraction effects are modulated by case information in sentence comprehension. To address this question, we conducted three attraction experiments in Armenian, a language with a rich and productive case system. The exp…
How to capitalize on a priori contrasts in linear (mixed) models: A tutorial
Factorial experiments in research on memory, language, and in other areas are often analyzed using analysis of variance (ANOVA). However, for effects with more than one numerator degrees of freedom, e.g., for experimental factors with more than two levels, the ANOVA omnibus F-test is not informative about the source of a main effect or interaction. Because researchers typically have specific hypotheses about which condition means differ from each…
Using meta-analysis for evidence synthesis: The case of incomplete neutralization in German
Bayesian data analysis in the phonetic sciences: A tutorial introduction
The cave of shadows: Addressing the human factor with generalized additive mixed models
Similarity-based interference in sentence comprehension: Literature review and Bayesian meta-analysis
Bayesian data analysis in the phonetic sciences: A tutorial introduction
Statistical methods for linguistic research: Foundational Ideas-Part II
We provide an introductory review of Bayesian data analytical methods, with a focus on applications for linguistics, psychology, psycholinguistics, and cognitive science. The empirically oriented researcher will benefit from making Bayesian methods part of their statistical toolkit due to the many advantages of this framework, among them easier interpretation of results relative to research hypotheses and flexible model specification. We present …
Argument-Head Distance and Processing Complexity: Explaining both Locality and Antilocality Effects
Although proximity between arguments and verbs (locality) is a relatively robust determinant of sentence-processing difficulty (Hawkins 1998, 2001, Gibson 2000), increasing argument-verb distance can also facilitate processing (Konieczny 2000). We present two self-paced reading (SPR) experiments involving Hindi that provide further evidence of antilocality, and a third SPR experiment which suggests that similarity-based interference can attenuate…
Statistical Methods for Linguistic Research: Foundational Ideas - Part I
We present the fundamental ideas underlying statistical hypothesis testing using the frequentist framework. We start with a simple example that builds up the one-samplet-test from the beginning, explaining important concepts such as the sampling distribution of the sample mean, and the iid assumption. Then, we examine the meaning of thep-value in detail and discuss several important misconceptions about what ap-value does and does not tell us. Th…
Using meta-analysis for evidence synthesis: The case of incomplete neutralization in German
How to embrace variation and accept uncertainty in linguistic and psycholinguistic data analysis
The use of statistical inference in linguistics and related areas like psychology typically involves a binary decision: either reject or accept some null hypothesis using statistical significance testing. When statistical power is low, this frequentist data-analytic approach breaks down: null results are uninformative, and effect size estimates associated with significant results are overestimated. Using an example from psycholinguistics, several…
Some Right Ways to Analyze (Psycho)Linguistic Data
Much has been written on the abuse and misuse of statistical methods, including p values, statistical significance, and so forth. I present some of the best practices in statistics using a running example data analysis. Focusing primarily on frequentist and Bayesian linear mixed models, I illustrate some defensible ways in which statistical inference—specifically, hypothesis testing using Bayes factors versus estimation or uncertainty quantificat…
Local Coherence and Preemptive Digging-in Effects in German
SOPARSE predicts so-called local coherence effects: locally plausible but globally impossible parses of substrings can exert a distracting influence during sentence processing. Additionally, it predicts digging-in effects: the longer the parser stays committed to a particular analysis, the harder it becomes to inhibit that analysis. We investigated the interaction of these two predictions using German sentences. Results from a self-paced reading …
Do syntactic and semantic similarity lead to interference effects? Evidence from self-paced reading and event-related potentials using German
Cue-based retrieval accounts of sentence processing postulate that at a verb, retrieval cues are generated to complete a dependency with the verb’s argument(s); for example, the dependency between the subject and the verb must be completed. If these retrieval cues match with not only the subject but also with those on other nouns in the sentence, then processing difficulty arises at the verb. This difficulty in identifying the correct dependent i…
Do local coherence effects exist in English reduced relative clauses
For decades, a major underlying assumption behind theories of sentence comprehension has been that the parser only entertains analyses that are grammatically consistent with all words encountered in the sentence so far. A dramatic challenge to this self-consistency assumption came from two self-paced reading experiments in English (Tabor et al. 2004). Using a syntactic and a syntactic–semantic manipulation, Tabor et al. (2004) found that particip…
English Language Teaching in India: Issues and Innovations
Introduction - R K Agnihotri and A L Khanna PART ONE: PROBLEMATIZING ELT IN INDIA English Teaching in India - N Krishnaswamy and T Sriraman Past, Present and Future Subjecting English - Rajeshwari Sunder Rajan Resisting Industriality - Probal Dasgupta PART TWO: NATURE OF ELT MATERIALS Teaching Language through Language - Usha Nagpal Literature Bias in Teaching of English as a Second Language - Raja Ram Mehrotra Use of Indian Culture and Myths in …
Absolute and Relative Scalar Particles in Spanish and Hindi
Proceedings of the Twenty-Sixth Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society: General Session and Parasession on Aspect (2000)
Type-Logical Semantics
Geoffrey Sampson , Empirical linguistics . London & New York: Continuum, 2001. Pp. viii+226
An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content
An Activation‐Based Model of Sentence Processing as Skilled Memory Retrieval
We present a detailed process theory of the moment‐by‐moment working‐memory retrievals and associated control structure that subserve sentence comprehension. The theory is derived from the application of independently motivated principles of memory and cognitive skill to the specialized task of sentence parsing. The resulting theory construes sentence processing as a series of skilled associative memory retrievals modulated by similarity‐based in…
Computational principles of working memory in sentence comprehension
Argument-Head Distance and Processing Complexity: Explaining both Locality and Antilocality Effects
Although proximity between arguments and verbs (locality) is a relatively robust determinant of sentence-processing difficulty (Hawkins 1998, 2001, Gibson 2000), increasing argument-verb distance can also facilitate processing (Konieczny 2000). We present two self-paced reading (SPR) experiments involving Hindi that provide further evidence of antilocality, and a third SPR experiment which suggests that similarity-based interference can attenuate…
Multiple Focus
This paper presents the results of an experimental study on multiple focus configurations, that is, structures containing two nested focus-sensitive operators plus two foci supposed to associate with those operators. There has been controversial discussion in the semantic literature regarding whether or not an interpretation is acceptable that corresponds to this association. While the data are unclear, the issue is of considerable theoretical si…
Local Coherence and Preemptive Digging-in Effects in German
SOPARSE predicts so-called local coherence effects: locally plausible but globally impossible parses of substrings can exert a distracting influence during sentence processing. Additionally, it predicts digging-in effects: the longer the parser stays committed to a particular analysis, the harder it becomes to inhibit that analysis. We investigated the interaction of these two predictions using German sentences. Results from a self-paced reading …
Statistical methods for linguistic research: Foundational Ideas-Part II
We provide an introductory review of Bayesian data analytical methods, with a focus on applications for linguistics, psychology, psycholinguistics, and cognitive science. The empirically oriented researcher will benefit from making Bayesian methods part of their statistical toolkit due to the many advantages of this framework, among them easier interpretation of results relative to research hypotheses and flexible model specification. We present …
Statistical Methods for Linguistic Research: Foundational Ideas - Part I
We present the fundamental ideas underlying statistical hypothesis testing using the frequentist framework. We start with a simple example that builds up the one-samplet-test from the beginning, explaining important concepts such as the sampling distribution of the sample mean, and the iid assumption. Then, we examine the meaning of thep-value in detail and discuss several important misconceptions about what ap-value does and does not tell us. Th…
The cave of shadows: Addressing the human factor with generalized additive mixed models
Similarity-based interference in sentence comprehension: Literature review and Bayesian meta-analysis
Balancing Type I error and power in linear mixed models
Linear mixed-effects models have increasingly replaced mixed-model analyses of variance for statistical inference in factorial psycholinguistic experiments. Although LMMs have many advantages over ANOVA, like ANOVAs, setting them up for data analysis also requires some care. One simple option, when numerically possible, is to fit the full variance-covariance structure of random effects (the maximal model; Barr, Levy, Scheepers & Tily, 2013), pres…
Using meta-analysis for evidence synthesis: The case of incomplete neutralization in German
Bayesian data analysis in the phonetic sciences: A tutorial introduction
Quadruplex Negatio Invertit? The On-Line Processing of Depth Charge Sentences
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 n…
What did we learn from forty years of research on semantic interference? A Bayesian meta-analysis
When participants in an experiment have to name pictures while ignoring distractor words superimposed on the picture or presented auditorily (i.e., picture-word interference paradigm), they take more time when the word to be named (or target) and distractor words are from the same semantic category (e.g., cat-dog). This experimental effect is known as the semantic interference effect, and is probably one of the most studied in the language produc…
Interference patterns in subject-verb agreement and reflexives revisited: A large-sample study
Cue-based retrieval theories in sentence processing predict two classes of interference effect: (i) Inhibitory interference is predicted when multiple items match a retrieval cue: cue-overloading leads to an overall slowdown in reading time; and (ii) Facilitatory interference arises when a retrieval target as well as a distractor only partially match the retrieval cues; this partial matching leads to an overall speedup in retrieval time. Inhibito…
Does case marking affect agreement attraction in comprehension
Previous studies have suggested that distinctive case marking on noun phrases reduces attraction effects in production, i.e., the tendency to produce a verb that agrees with a nonsubject noun. An important open question is whether attraction effects are modulated by case information in sentence comprehension. To address this question, we conducted three attraction experiments in Armenian, a language with a rich and productive case system. The exp…
How to capitalize on a priori contrasts in linear (mixed) models: A tutorial
Factorial experiments in research on memory, language, and in other areas are often analyzed using analysis of variance (ANOVA). However, for effects with more than one numerator degrees of freedom, e.g., for experimental factors with more than two levels, the ANOVA omnibus F-test is not informative about the source of a main effect or interaction. Because researchers typically have specific hypotheses about which condition means differ from each…
Does Local Coherence Lead to Targeted Regressions and Illusions of Grammaticality
Local coherence effects arise when the human sentence processor is temporarily misled by a locally grammatical but globally ungrammatical analysis (The coach smiled at the player tossed a frisbee by the opposing team). It has been suggested that such effects occur either because sentence processing occurs in a bottom-up, self-organized manner rather than under constant grammatical supervision, or because local coherence can disrupt processing due…
The benefits of preregistration for hypothesis-driven bilingualism research
Preregistration is an open science practice that requires the specification of research hypotheses and analysis plans before the data are inspected. Here, we discuss the benefits of preregistration for hypothesis-driven, confirmatory bilingualism research. Using examples from psycholinguistics and bilingualism, we illustrate how non-peer reviewed preregistrations can serve to implement a clean distinction between hypothesis testing and data explo…
Variability in sentence comprehension in aphasia in German
An important aspect of aphasia is the observation of behavioral variability between and within individual participants. Our study addresses variability in sentence comprehension in German, by testing 21 individuals with aphasia and a control group and involving (a) several constructions (declarative sentences, relative clauses and control structures with an overt pronoun or PRO), (b) three response tasks (object manipulation, sentence-picture mat…
How to embrace variation and accept uncertainty in linguistic and psycholinguistic data analysis
The use of statistical inference in linguistics and related areas like psychology typically involves a binary decision: either reject or accept some null hypothesis using statistical significance testing. When statistical power is low, this frequentist data-analytic approach breaks down: null results are uninformative, and effect size estimates associated with significant results are overestimated. Using an example from psycholinguistics, several…
Computer Science (28 works) · Linguistics (26 works) · Psychology (24 works) · Neurobiology of Language and Bilingualism (22 works) · Cognitive psychology (18 works) · Artificial Intelligence (16 works) · Natural language processing (14 works) · Sentence (14 works) · Reading and Literacy Development (13 works) · Philosophy (11 works)