Discourse lecture Flashcards
Describe a study which demonstrated the role of the overall discourse in understanding a sentence
Researchers manipulated one word in a sentence so that it either fit the wider discourse or did not but regardless it would make sense as a standalone sentence i.e “Marte gives us copious amounts of work. She mocks us when we ask what we should focus on and then expects us to independently research stuff that we haven’t been taught for the exam. We should tell marte (go fuck yourself/ that she’s doing a great job.)”
ERPs were then examined to see if there was any differences in evoked activity between GFY (locally congruent, globally not) and GB (congruent). A difference here would indicate a difference in the global congruency and people taking into account the wider discourse. A larger N400 would be expected, sensitive to semantic incongruencies/ context level expectencies at the sentence level.
What results were found for the study which demonstrated the role of the overall discourse in understanding a sentence
Words that are only incongruent to the discourse still evoke a very large N400
Describe a study and the results investigating discourse integration
Either a paragraph describing people doing normal things or that person was replaced by an inanimate object (sailor/yacht.) EEG was recorded. (animacy violation).
This evoked a large N400 as expected (all words evoke even a lil N400, incongruent is just larger.) However about three sentences into the paragraph, this effects ‘fade’ as people apparently accept this yacht getting therapy and integrate it into their model. Good for him.
What have following studies by Van Berhum and Nieuwland revealed about the model for discourse?
Every incoming word is not only integrated into the sentence, but also into the discourse and your model of the discourse in updates continuously.
Describe the thoughts behind and method of the Meta-analysis carried out by Ferstle et al. in 2008
Reviewed fMRI and PET studies at that time that compared incoherent and coherent sentences. If you have a coherent study, the one thing that you cannot do is integrate it into the wider discourse because there is no coherence. Therefore you are analyzing words, grammatical structures etc but you are not integrating it into the wider discourse because there is not integration between sentences. So the areas that light up should be the ones involved in integration.
Describe the results of the Meta-analysis carried out by Ferstle et al. in 2008
Activation was shown in the bilateral anterior temporal lobe (ATL) and seems to be involved in semantic integration. This is coherent with the finding of the inferior temporal lobes being involved in speech processing in the ventral pathway.
Activation in the medial parietal areas was also shown, thought to be involved in generating a ‘situation model.’
Activation was also shown in the dorsomedial PFC and the temporal parietal junction
What is meant by a situation model?
Mental model of the situation conveyed by the text (time, space, causation, motivation, protagonist). The medial parietal cortex updates this mental model based on incoming text.
Describe a study and the results which further investigated the roles of the medial parietal cortex in healthy participants
Subjects listen to a story in the fMRI scanner. Indicate (outside of the scanner) how they would divide the story in scenes (where are the scene shifts.) They asked for big divisions and fine divisions, this was an effort to target the construction of a mental model, changed structure. They compared when people were listening to a story but there was no important scene change happening, and when there was a scene change occurring.
Both both conditions the medial parietal areas were activated. However an increase in activation was found, the bigger the change (coarse) the bigger the change.
Describe a study and the results which further investigated the roles of the medial parietal cortex in a patient population
Irish et al used patients with alzheimers disease and required them to do a scene construction task to compare to healthy controls. Participants simply had to tell a story and as vividly as they can.
Some participants would tell something that is less detailed and not very ‘vivid’ some participants would maybe have boring stories but very vivid and detailed. They rated these stories according to what they call and experiential index- a number indicating the vividness in each scene.
Alzheimers patients produced less vivid/ detailed stories than healthy participants. If you correlate the density of the gray matter with the ability to construct vivid scenes. The brain region which correlated with density and ability to construct vivid scenes was the medial parietal areas. Very neat overlap in the ares of the previous fMRI study and this strucural MRI study.
What functions are associated with the activation of the dorsomedial PFC and the temporal parietal junction shown in the meta analysis
Drawing inferences- our ability to draw conclusions on stuff that we do not have knowledge on or has not been made explicit based on the situation (kids and paint.)
What is involved in making inferences?
Causes, effects (fall from building), consequences, intentions, feelings, motives
Describe methods and results from a study investigating making these inferences
Presented people with stories which either had this implicit information that made it possible to draw an inference (had no money, loved the ring, was seen running out the store) or they were very explicit (explicitly says he stole the ring) while keeping the story as similar as possible. There was also the intentional texts (examples before) and the physical texts conditions where a inference text (stood on glass, had to wear a bandage), or a control text (the glass cut her foot.)
In the first two sentences where the basic information is conveyed, the activity in the dorso-medial prefrontal cortex becomes pretty active but the temporo-parietal junction does not really. In the last sentence where we are forced to draw the inference, the temporo-parietal junction shows a big spike in activation.
What conclusions were drawn from the study investigating making these inferences
Dorsal-medial prefrontal cortex is involved in scene construction and potentially also inferencing.
temporo-parietal junction is sensitive to inferences, especially those which are intentional and physical.
Describe a study which investigated the properties of this inference for certain regions
Participants were given either coherent joined sentences which lead to inference or incoherent joined sentences which didn’t have an obvious inference. They were either based on theory of mind (Mary’s exam was about to begin. Her palm’s were sweaty) or logic (sometimes a trucks drives by the home. Thats when the dishes start to rattle.)
Only the logic stimuli showed this pattern of coherent and incoherent. The dmPFC shows more activation when there is coherence compared to incoherence. Seems to indicate that the inferences about the physical world, not about the internal/ mental world of other people
Describe 2 further studies and results which further investigated this division of theory of mind images in inferencing
Study gave participants either a theory of mind inference story (paper strips thrown away) or a mechanical inference story (take a detour because of a crane). If these are contrasted and examine the temporal parietal junction shows a higher activation for the theory of mind stories but not the mechanical stories.
Another story gave false belief (FB) stories (told her a ford was a porsche) false photograph (FP) stories (apple fell off hook while photo was developing), desire sample stories (wanted to have her birthday outside), non-human description sample stories (solar system has 4/9 planets) or physical people sample story (Emily was a tall ass bih).
FB and FP conditions could be contrasted assuming that FB just involved theory of mine. A higher activation of the TPJ was again found in the FB condition.
