Modelos internos de apego e historia previa de los menores

kitzelt (transl.: ‘tickles’) and the following adverb vergnügt (transl.: ‘happily’), as these were our critical sentence regions (see Section 5.2.2).

Figure 6: The social Coordinated Interplay Account. The sCIA presents a possible extension of the CIA (Knoeferle & Crocker, 2007) and accommodates newly added listener characteristics (ProCom) such as the age of the comprehender as well as social information (ants) that can influence sentence processing in real-time.

10.8.1.1 The sCIA – an Example

Taking the results from the presented studies (Sections 6-9) into account, we have seen that the age of the comprehender modulated the use of the depicted action and of the positive emotional facial expression during real-time sentence processing.

Moreover, we have discussed that extra-linguistic real-world (social) knowledge, expectations and preferences, such as the emotional bias can depend on the age of the comprehender.

Hence, ProCom in our example is comprised of the age of the comprehender.

ProCom moreover influences and can modulate access to the working memory of the model, which comprises scene- (scenei’’-1) and utterance-based (inti) representations as well as the (non-) linguistic social expectations of the comprehender (antsi).

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The interpretation of kitzelt in step i of the sCIA is based on ProCom, the interpretation of previously encountered linguistic input (inti’’-1) and linguistic constraints. This yields inti. The generated expectations in step i are based on ProCom, i.e., the age of the comprehender. Additionally, they are based on the (non-) linguistic social expectations of the comprehender prior to encountering kitzelt, i.e., antsi’’-1 and on his / her linguistic and long-term knowledge. These expectations then yield antsi. Specifically in the case of the prime condition, this means that children and older adults in contrast to younger adults might set up expectations in line with their positivity bias, because they have encountered the positive prime face. Hence, their weighting factor for antsi regarding their expectations / preferences towards positive emotional context should be higher than younger adults weighting factor. The weighting factor regarding the age groups’ emotional biases should not change in the single-cue action condition, as their differing emotional biases would not come into play.

In step i’, a referential search based on kitzelt is performed. Crucially, the probabilistic value p of antsi is evaluated using ProCom and the scene information from scenei’’-1. Upon encountering the verb, p should not change regardless of age group and condition. All three age groups perform an anticipatory search, in this case for a potential object mediated by the verb based on antsi and merge the newly attended information in the scene with the old scene information to yield scenei’. Moreover, visual information that is no longer present in the scene decays based on ProCom. In all conditions the positive or incongruent facial expression has to be kept in memory since it is presented prior to encountering the target scene. In the single-cue action condition the incongruent prime face cannot be used to facilitate thematic role assignment. However, as participants do not know this, they still attend to the prime and hence arguably keep it in memory for later use if necessary.

In step i’ the scene is reconciled with the interpretation of the verb kitzelt based on ProCom. For the younger adults, this means that they coindex the verb with the depicted action in the action condition and hence fixate the target agent, i.e., the correct role filler. The interpretation of the verb is revised based on the scene events if necessary and the expectations in antsi’ are also reconciled with scenei’ based on ProCom. As our results have shown, older adults and children are one word region delayed when it comes to integrating the scene information, in this case the depicted

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action with the linguistic input, i.e., the verb. Hence based on the properties of the comprehender, step i’’ happens later compared to younger adults when an action is depicted. In the single-cue prime condition, no actions are depicted. Thus no coindexing of verbs with actions is possible.

In step i+1 the next word, i.e., the adverb, is encountered and the processing cycle starts anew taking the previously derived interpretation into account. Upon hearing the adverb, participant’s antsi+1 and its weighting factor should be evaluated and (re)set against the already interpreted linguistic input and the information stored in ProCom. Older adults’ and children’s p score for antsi+1 should increase due to their positivity bias. Yet, as older adults but not children were able to integrate the emotional prime face, the weighting factor might be even higher for older adults compared to children in the positive prime condition. Younger adults’ weighting factor should, however, not change or even slightly decrease, arguably due to the mismatching emotionality between their negativity bias and the positive emotional valence of the encountered adverb in addition to the positive prime face that is kept in WM in the positive prime condition. Yet, based on ProCom and antsi+1 the matching emotional valence between the positive prime face and the positive adverb led younger adults but not children and older adults to an anticipatory search for the correct role filler in the positive prime condition. As discussed in Section 8.1.4.1, older adults did not use the positive prime face to anticipate the correct role filler. Yet, they could integrate it into sentence processing as the correct role filler was named.

However, as our results from the depicted action condition show, older adults can indeed use visual information to initiate an anticipatory search for the target agent.

Hence, the finding that they, in contrast to younger adults, do not do so in the prime condition despite their positivity bias suggests that the failure to initiate an anticipatory search is due to the differences in ProCom (i.e., the age of the comprehender) and not solely due to the differences in weighting p in antsi+1 regarding older and younger adults’ emotional biases. This is especially the case when taking the assumption of older adults’ cognitive control regarding their positivity bias into account (see Sections 3.7.1.2 and 10.6.2).

In step i’’+1 younger adults reconcile the positive adverb vergnügt and their expectations from antsi’ + 1 with the scene. In addition, they coindex the adverb with the emotional representation of the speaker. This coindexing leads to the anticipation

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of the valence matching (smiling) target agent and they revise their linguistic interpretation based on the visual scene. While older adults seem to skip step i’’+1 and seem to reconcile the scene with the linguistic input one word region later compared to younger adults in the positive prime condition, children did not show any visual context effects of the positive prime at all. The properties of the comprehender seem to outweigh the social expectations / preferences and the associated weighting factor (antsi is nested within ProCom, see Figure 6). That is, although younger adults’

weighting factor for antsi should be lower than older adults’ and children’s p score, the younger adults are the only age group that could use the positive prime face to anticipate the correct role filler despite their negativity bias (note that this should not indicate that the emotional biases are not determined by age, it rather suggests that other factors, such as processing speed or executive functions might be a stronger influencing factor than the emotional bias).

Finally, in steps i+2 (der, transl.: ‘the’) and i+3 (Kater, transl.: ‘cat’) the correct role filler is mentioned in the sentence and hence fixated in the scene by all participants. The positively valenced OVS sentence has been processed and interpreted. Older adults (but not children and younger adults) however fixate the target agent more in the positive prime (vs. the depicted action) condition. The reason for this finding might, as just discussed (see also Section 10.6.2), be either their delay in integrating the positive prime together with the emotional valence of the adverb due to their age, i.e., ProCom, or the weighting factor of antsi is evaluated and reset in step i’+3 after the referential search for the depicted happy looking character (the subject of the sentence) has been performed. The positive prime face held in WM is reactivated due to the matching positive valence between the already processed adverb, the target agent’s happy facial expression and the prime face. Hence the p

score for antsi is increased and older adults fixate the correct role filler more in the positive prime condition (vs. the depicted action condition) due to their positivity bias. More so, as the nesting of antsi in ProCom shows, a combination of both age related differences in sentence processing realized in ProCom and older adults top-down positivity bias realized in ProCom and antsi might be a likely reason for the late visual context effect of the positive emotional prime face. To summarize, we have suggested that the extension of the Coordinated Interplay account with listener

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characteristics and visual social aspects can accommodate our findings from Sections 6-9.

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