The goal of this proposal is to examine the impact of semantics on syntactic analysis. The experiments described use both behavioral measures and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to examine the interaction between semantic and syntactic processing during sentence comprehension. There are two major aims of the proposal. The first is to obtain a better understanding of how highly familiar, world knowledge influences sentence comprehension processes.
The second aim i s to determine what aspects of syntactic processing are influenced by semantics. Recently, it has been proposed that syntactic processing occurs in at least two stages and it may be that semantic information has an impact on only one stage. Taken together, the proposed studies are designed to uncover some of the key aspects of semantic and syntactic processing as well as provide a greater understanding of the collaborative nature of these two essential language processes. The proposed experiments use novel experimental designs in order to provide not only a clearer depiction of the behavioral processing but also the underlying neural architecture that supports language. ? ? ?

Agency
National Institute of Health (NIH)
Institute
Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health & Human Development (NICHD)
Type
Small Research Grants (R03)
Project #
5R03HD051579-02
Application #
7383203
Study Section
Pediatrics Subcommittee (CHHD)
Program Officer
Mccardle, Peggy D
Project Start
2007-03-01
Project End
2010-02-28
Budget Start
2008-03-01
Budget End
2010-02-28
Support Year
2
Fiscal Year
2008
Total Cost
$70,910
Indirect Cost
Name
Indiana University Bloomington
Department
Psychology
Type
Schools of Arts and Sciences
DUNS #
006046700
City
Bloomington
State
IN
Country
United States
Zip Code
47401
Newman, Sharlene; Malaia, Evie; Seo, Roy (2014) Does degree of handedness in a group of right-handed individuals affect language comprehension? Brain Cogn 86:98-103
Lee, Donghoon; Pruce, Benjamin; Newman, Sharlene D (2014) The neural bases of argument structure processing revealed by primed lexical decision. Cortex 57:198-211
Newman, Sharlene D; Malaia, Evie; Seo, Roy et al. (2013) The effect of individual differences in working memory capacity on sentence comprehension: an FMRI study. Brain Topogr 26:458-67
Newman, Sharlene D; Ikuta, Toshikazu; Burns Jr, Thomas (2010) The effect of semantic relatedness on syntactic analysis: An fMRI study. Brain Lang 113:51-8