Individual Differences in the Resolution of Syntactic Ambiguities

• In Event: Poster Session 03
  In Poster Session: PS 03 Topic - Language, Communication

Abstract

Language is used by humans to communicate. However this communication is essentially ambiguous and notorious in certain situations and utterances. Ambiguity refers to situations in which the information available to make a decision is insufficient (Amarante, 2014).
There are several types of ambiguities. This study is focused on the syntactic ambiguities in relative clause sentences and the attachment of this to the first or second subject. An example of this type of sentences taken from Cuetos and Mitchell (1988): “Someone shot the servant of the actress who was on the balcony”. The ambiguity in the previous sentence regards the question about who was on the balcony, the actress or the servant?...
Several theories that explain how we make decisions about the interpretation that people give to what has been said. Some of these explanations refer to individual differences that go from language to executive functions that are in turn related with attention, temperament and personality traits (Cuetos and Mitchell, 1988; Cuetos, 1998; Macay, 1996; Foss, 1970; Traxler, 2007; Checa-García, 2016).
It is known that temperament and attention are key predictors in language development (Dixon Jr & Salley, 2006; Dixon Jr & Smith, 2000; Dixon, Salley, & Clements, 2006; Villarreal & Falcón, 2015) and this may have an influence on how it is understood or interpreted.
The objective of this work is to analyze how attention and temperament influence in the attachment preferences (relative clause with the first or second subject) of the participants.
To achieve this, a study with 100 children between 3rd and 4th grades of Elementary School will be carried out. Parents of participants will be asked to complete the “Temperament in Middle Childhood Questionnaire” (TMCQ) and a socioeconomic study. Participants will participate in two tests: ANT (Attentional Network Task), to measure their performance in Attention and a bank of ambiguous sentences that includes questions of attachment preferences of the relative clause to each of the subjects (first or second one). Due to SARS-CoV-2 pandemic, all the test will be applied in online platforms.
The results will allow a better explanation of how attention and temperament intervene in the processes of understanding and interpreting sentences. Eventually, studies like this will allow a more complete picture of how these variables (temperament and attention) influence the understanding of texts in the educational environment.

Authors

• Maria de la Luz Garcia Esquivel, Universidad Autónoma del Estado de Morelos
  Presenting Author

• Alberto Falcón, Universidad Autónoma del Estado de Morelos
  Non-Presenting Author

• Asela Reig Alamillo, Universidad Autónoma del Estado de Morelos
  Non-Presenting Author