Shallow processing

Question 1

What is shallow processing?

Answer 1

People don’t fully process the meaning of every word in a sentence, e.g. Sanford and Sturt (2002) asked participants “Can a man marry his widow’s sister?” and found that only 30% of people notice that the man must have to be dead and is not therefore in a position to remarry.

Question 2

Why is shallow processing sometimes useful?

Answer 2

Because in real life people are ambiguous and contradictory, so we need system tolerance in order to understand what people mean.

Question 3

What assumptions were made by traditional models?

Answer 3

Full lexical retrieval and integration into a fully specified syntactic structure, e.g. Just and Carpenter (1980) stated on incremental interpretation: “Readers interpret a word while they are fixating it, and they continue to fixate it until they have processed it as far as they can”, which implies an accurate and detailed understanding.

Question 4

What did McDonald, Pearlmutter and Seidenberg (1994) state?

Answer 4

They acknowledged that “the communicative goal of the listener can be achieved only with partial analysis of the sentence”, but viewed ‘these as degenerate cases’ rather than the norm.

Question 5

What evidence is there for shallow processing?

Answer 5

1. Incomplete semantic commitment
2. Garden path sentences
   - Lingering incorrect interpretations
3. Pragmatic normalisation
   - Misinterpretation of passive sentences
4. Failure to detect semantic anomalies
5. Failure to notice text changes

Question 6

What did Sanford and Sturt (2002) do?

Answer 6

Demonstrated incomplete semantic commitment, using sentences about buying a radio in which the word ‘it’ could have meant one of two things. The fact that such sentences are used often and that people are unconcerned with lack of specificity shows that shallow processing does occur.

Question 7

What did Christianson, Hollingworth, Halliwell and Ferreira (2001) do?

Answer 7

Used garden path sentences as evidence for shallow processing by examining people’s understanding of the sentence “While Anna dressed the baby played in the crib” by then asking participants:

• Did the baby play in the crib?
• Did Anna dress the baby?

Question 8

What did Christianson, Hollingworth, Halliwell and Ferreira (2001) find, and what does this suggest?

Answer 8

Some people still thought that Anna dressed the baby and therefore haven’t got rid of their initial interpretation of the sentence. This suggests that once interpretation is ‘good enough’, people don’t bother clearing up the details - shallow processing.

Question 9

What did Ferreira (2003) do?

Answer 9

Investigated pragmatic normalisation, whereby people misinterpret passive information (breakdown of local semantic interpretation) because of pragmatic override. Asked participants ‘Who is the do-er?’ in active and passive sentences in where one interpretation was more intuitive (the dog biting the man, rather than the other way around).

Question 10

What did Ferreira (2003) find?

Answer 10

Accuracy is significantly lower for passive sentences, especially for the counter-intuitive sentence, because passive sentences are syntactically more difficult. Rather than analysing complex sentences fully, we rely on practical knowledge - shallow processing.

Question 11

What did Barton and Sanford (1993) do?

Answer 11

Demonstrated people’s failure to detect semantic anomalies using the survivors problem. Asked participants where the “survivors” (/injured/wounded/maimed) should be buried.

Question 12

What did Barton and Sanford (1993) find?

Answer 12

The core meaning of the scenario-related words is related to the percentage detection - this suggests that core meaning may aid detection.
- To survive (i.e. be ALIVE) (70% detection)
- To be injured (~5% detection)
- To be wounded (~25% detection)
- To be maimed (~25% detection)
Words that fit the context may be processed less deeply, as shown by the influence of the scenario:
- Air crash (33% detection rate)
- Bicycle crash (80% detection rate)

Question 13

Give an example of an easy-to-detect semantic anomaly.

Answer 13

He spread the warm bread with socks (Kutas & Hillyard, 1980).

Question 14

Give an example of a hard-to-detect semantic anomaly.

Answer 14

How many animals of each kind did Moses take onto the Ark? (Erickson & Mattson, 1981)

Question 15

What theories are there regarding why people miss hard-to-detect semantic anomalies?

Answer 15

1. Shallow processing hypothesis
   - The full meanings of the anomalous words aren’t retrieved
   - And/or integrated with the representation of the discourse
2. Reduced awareness hypothesis
   - The comprehension system requires the meaning of the anomalies and attempts to integrate the semantics of the word in question with the rest of the text
   - However, for some reason, the fact of the anomaly may not reach conscious awareness

Question 16

What did Bohan and Sanford (2008) do?

Answer 16

Investigated eye tracking anomaly detection. Monitored people’s eye movements as they read sentences containing hard-to-detect anomalies to see whether there’s system registration without conscious detection. Used the term ‘negotiated’ in reference to hostages.

Question 17

What did Bohan and Sanford (2008) find?

Answer 17

No effects in first-pass reading times and longer total reading times on hostages when anomaly was detected, but not when not detected.

Question 18

What did Bohan and Sanford (2008) conclude?

Answer 18

Detection isn’t immediate but slightly delayed (hence no effect on first pass reading times). Detection results in severe disruption, which is only observed when anomalies are consciously detected (no evidence for unconscious detection, which supports the shallow processing over the reduced awareness hypothesis).

Question 19

What is a problem with Bohan and Sanford (2008)’s findings?

Answer 19

Perhaps eye tracking just isn’t a sensitive enough measure.

Question 20

What did Sanford, Leuthold, Bohan & Sanford (2011) do?

Answer 20

Investigated anomaly detection using ERPs. Compared processing of hard- and easy-to-detect anomalies and whether the processing of missed anomalies is more consistent with the shallow processing hypothesis or the reduced awareness hypothesis.

Question 21

What did Sanford, Leuthold, Bohan & Sanford (2011) find?

Answer 21

• An N400 for easy-to-detect anomalies
• No N400 for hard-to-detect anomalies (this suggests that the words aren’t semantically difficult to integrate)
• Late positive potential (LPP) for hard-to-detect anomalies but ONLY when actually detected. This supports the shallow processing hypothesis.

Question 22

How does focus influence depth of processing?

Answer 22

1. Logical subordination
2. Linguistic focus (e.g. clefting)
   - It was John who was late for the party
3. Discourse focus (e.g. question set up by the text)
   - Everyone was wondering who had arrived late
4. Attention grabbing devices (e.g. bold, italics)

Question 23

What did Baker and Wagner (1987) do?

Answer 23

Investigated logical subordination (subordinate clauses) as a method of focus, as they clearly distinguish focal information from ‘extra’ information. Found that people are more likely to rate a sentence where the incorrect fact is subordinate as being true compared to if it is the superordinate. This shows that information can be ‘hidden’ in a subordinate clause.

Question 24

What did Bredart and Modolo (1988) do?

Answer 24

Studied the effect of linguistic focus on focalisation, using the Moses illusion with cleft constructions (“it was”) emphasising either Moses or the two animals in a sentence verification task. Found that misdirection of focus resulted in less people identifying the statement as false.

Question 25

What did Sturt, Stanford, Stuart & Dawydiak (2004) do and find in their Experiment 1?

Answer 25

Had two conditions - focused and unfocused (on the fact that it was the cider which Jamie liked), then changed cider to either ‘beer’ (related) or ‘music’ (unrelated) and asked participants whether the sentence had changed. Found that participants detected less change in the related meaning condition, especially for unfocused. This shows the importance of linguistic focus for depth of processing.

Question 26

What did Sturt et al. (2004) do and find in their Experiment 2?

Answer 26

Studied discourse focus (either focused on ‘hat’ or unfocused) in a similar design to Experiment 1, then changed ‘hat’ to either ‘cap’ (related) or ‘dog’ (unrelated). Found greatly reduced detection of change for related meaning condition, especially for unfocused. This pattern, very similar to their first experiment, shows that discourse focus influences depth of processing.

Question 27

How can text-change detection provide evidence for shallow processing?

Answer 27

Aims to discover when distinctions are NOT being made at some level of semantics, based on the ‘granularity hypothesis’, which refers to the fineness of detail there is in a representation. Focus increases the probability of detecting a change to a related word, which suggests that information in focus is represented at a finer level of detail. Also generally, the fact that text changes are often missed supports the idea of shallow processing.

Question 28

What evidence is there that depth of processing is affected by attention-grabbing devices?

Answer 28

Bredart and Doquier (1989) used anomaly detection in the Moses illusion, and found that when ‘Moses’ was capitalised and underlined, detection was 86.5%, compared to 68.3% if the word ‘two’ was focused on.
Also Sanford, Sanford, Molle & Emmott (2006) showed that text-change detection and auditory-change detection are both better when the critical word is either presented in italics or stressed vocally, respectively.

Question 29

How can anomaly and text-change detection tasks be criticised?

Answer 29

They don’t encourage normal reading, but the adoption of certain strategies. Also the materials used are not common in everyday life and are designed to trick people, as opposed to the usual purpose of being to convey information.