Graph 19: Accuracy for the voice x prime interaction (exp. 4). The y-axis displays the percentage of correctly answered trials averaged across participants. The percentages are shown in the center of each bar.
Graph 20: Accuracy for the voice x prime x action interaction (exp. 4). The y-axis displays the percentage of correctly answered trials averaged across participants.
The percentages are shown in the center of each bar.
7.2.4.3 Cognitive Test Results
Children’s test scores were highest for the spatial memory and lowest for the digit span test (see Graph 21). In order to see if their cognitive abilities correlated with the accuracy for the comprehension question, we computed a two-tailed Spearman’s rho correlation coefficient17. The correlation between the K-ABC scores and the accuracy for the comprehension question was positive and significant (r= .456, p< .05).
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
17 !K-ABC scores were normally distributed, accuracy scores were not.!
58
!
However, as Graph 22 shows, although the plotted trend line and the positive correlation might lead to a different assumption, the relationship between the cognitive test scores and the accuracy for the comprehension question is not entirely positive and linear. As can be seen in Graph 22 a high score in the cognitive tests does not necessarily also imply that children were more accurate in answering the comprehension question.
However, in order to test whether those children who scored high in the cognitive tests and whose accuracy for the comprehension question was high also showed stronger effects of depicted actions than low scoring children, we calculated the median for both the accuracy data and the K-ABC data separately. We entered these medians (binary variables) as between-subjects factors (low vs. high) into repeated measure ANOVAs for the Adverb region. This region was chosen because it was the first region that showed a significant main effect of action. However, both the analysis with the K-ABC median and the analysis with the accuracy median as grouping variables did not reveal any significant interactions with children’s gaze patterns.
Thus children’s individual differences in cognitive abilities did not appear to modulate the accuracy and eye-tracking results of the experiment.
Graph 21: Cognitive test scores for the K-ABC test (exp. 4). The y-axis displays the percentage of correct answers averaged across participants. The percentages are shown in the center of each bar.!
!
61 76 85
0 20 40 60 80 100
Digit Span Word Order
Spatial Memory
percent correct
Cognitive Test Results
!
Graph 22: Correlation between K-ABC and accuracy scores (exp. 4). K-ABC scores are displayed on the y-axis, accuracy scores are displayed on the x-axis. The trend line shows the line of best fit.
7.2.5 Summary and Conclusion
To conclude, children could use the depicted action to improve OVS sentence comprehension and on-line thematic role assignment. Moreover, it seems as if they were using the depicted action in the same way as younger adults used the emotional prime, namely especially in the cases in which the structure of the comprehension question added difficulty to the task of understanding the OVS sentence. By contrast, the emotional prime in the form of a schematic smiley did not have an advantageous effect on children’s on-line sentence comprehension and on their accuracy scores. It even seems that they were confused or hindered by the emotional smiley, since they performed worse when it was present (vs. absent) on comprehension questions in the passive voice. Children’s confusion could also be the reason why we found a marginal main effect of prime going into the opposite-than-predicted direction in the NP1 region. Recall that the means of the agent-over-patient analysis showed that children’s looks were primed towards the happy looking patient when the emotional prime was available and the patient was named. However, children did not appear to have been able to connect the positive prime face to the positively valenced adverb and the happy facial expression of the target agent to anticipate this agent and facilitate OVS sentence processing. Moreover, these results did not appear to have been modulated by individual differences in cognitive abilities.
0 2 4 6 10 8 12 14 16
0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16
K-ABC scores
Accuracy scores Correlation between Accuracy and
Cognitive Test Results
!
7.3 Experiment 5
7.3.1 Participants
A further 40 children between 4 and 5 years of age (Mean: 4.37, SD: 0.49) participated in the experiment. All participants were monolingual native speakers of German and had normal or corrected-to-normal vision. Children were recruited and tested in German kindergartens. Children received a small toy and a certificate for participating; testing took approximately 30 to 45 minutes in total.
7.3.2 Materials and Cognitive Tests
Materials were identical to experiment 3 (i.e., only the depicted agent but not the distractor or patient had a positive facial expression). Cognitive tests administered prior to the eye-tracking part of the study were identical to experiment 4.
7.3.3 Hypotheses
Although experiment 4 demonstrated that children could not use the positive emotional prime in the form of a schematic smiley, this does not mean that they cannot use emotional facial expressions for thematic role assignment and OVS sentence processing at all. Perhaps the schematic nature of the emotional prime made it more difficult (vs. easier) for children to link the emotional valence of the prime to the matching happy facial expression of the agent and the positively valenced adverb of the sentence. Given the results for experiments 1, 2 and 3, we have seen that younger adults made stronger use of the positive prime if this prime was natural rather than schematic in nature. Hence, we hypothesized that even though natural facial expressions are more complex than a schematic smiley, children might be better able to use this natural emotional prime compared to the smiley, maybe precisely because it is more ecologically valid (see Section 3.7.2 and e.g., Bassili, 1979). Just like younger adults, children do interact with natural faces every day and they do so presumably more than with a schematic depiction of an emotional facial expression.
As a result, their natural interaction experience might enable them to use natural positive emotional facial expressions to facilitate OVS sentence processing.
!
7.3.4 Results and Discussion
7.3.4.1 Eye-movement Results
As can be seen in the time course graph (Graph 23) by looking at the deviating red and blue lines, we replicated the significant main effect of action in the Adverb (F1(1,39)= 4.964, p< .05, F2(1,15)= 9.159, p< .05, see also Graph 24), the Verb-Adverb (F1(1,39)= 12.437, p< .05, F2(1,15)= 29.667, p< .05) and in the Long region (F1(1,39)= 15.544, p< .05, F2(1,15)= 16.759, p< .05).
Graph 23: Time course for the eye-movement results by condition (exp. 5).
Graph 24: Mean log ratio of looks for the main effect of action in the Adverb region (F1, exp. 5). Error bars show the standard error.
However, similar to experiment 4 we did not find a main effect of emotional
!
observed a marginal prime effect in the opposite-than-expected direction in the NP1 region in experiment 4. We had interpreted this pattern as suggesting that children were primed by the positive smiley towards the patient; if so, more attention to the patient might have reduced anticipatory looks towards the target agent. Since we did not find this effect in experiment 5, we consider the change in materials successful (i.e., having the agent as the only smiling character likely focused effects of the positive prime on the agent).
In summary, children (unlike younger adults) could not make use of the positive emotional prime face in real-time for thematic role assignment, regardless of whether it was natural (experiment 5) or schematic (experiment 4).
7.3.4.2 Accuracy Results
The accuracy analysis underlines the real-time data. The results showed a main effect of action (F1(1,39)= 15.714, p< .05, F2(1,15)= 8.247, p< .05), indicating that children answered significantly more comprehension questions correctly when an action was (vs. was not) depicted (Graph 25).
However, we did not find any effects for the emotional prime, nor any significant interactions. The absence of an emotional prime effect can moreover also not be due to participants not paying attention to, or not remembering, the facial expression since they answered 82.5 % of all face-recall questions correctly.
Note also that the percentages of correct answers were lower compared to the percentages from experiment 4 (see Graph 17). The reason for this is likely due to the fact that in experiment 4 the comprehension questions were asked in the active and in the passive voice, whereas they were only asked in the passive voice in this study (see also exp. 3). As the passive comprehension questions were more difficult to answer than the active questions (see Graph 17), accuracy decreased when all of the comprehension questions following a critical trial were asked in the passive voice (in contrast to both active and passive questions).
!
Graph 25: Accuracy for the main effect of action (exp. 5). The y-axis displays the percentage of correctly answered trials averaged across participants. The percentages are shown in the center of each bar.
7.3.4.3 Cognitive Test Results
Children’s test scores were again (see exp. 4) lowest for the digit span test. However, they scored equally well in the word order and spatial memory test (Graph 26).
Graph 26: Cognitive test scores for the K-ABC test (exp. 5). The y-axis displays the percentage of correct answers averaged across participants. The percentages are shown in the center of each bar.
There was no reliable correlation18 between accuracy and cognitive test scores; hence no further analyses were performed.
!
7.3.5 Summary and Conclusion
To conclude, children, just like younger adults, made extensive use of the direct action cue for anticipatory thematic role assignment. However, compared to adults they seemed to be one word region delayed in integrating the depicted action cue into real-time sentence processing. While adults showed effects of action depiction already at the Verb region – the first word region in which it was possible to unambiguously discriminate the agent of the action in the scene, if an action was depicted – children only showed the first significant effects in the Adverb and Verb-Adverb region in both study 4 and in study 5. These on-line effects were underlined by the accuracy results (a 13-16 percent boost in studies 4 and 5).
Crucially though, in contrast to younger adults, 4-5-year old children did not yet seem to use the positive emotional facial prime to facilitate OVS sentence processing.
That children did not use the positive prime was interestingly the case regardless of the prime’s naturalness. Moreover, how, if and when the visual context affects language processing does not seem to depend on the children’s individual cognitive abilities.
!