Joris Van de Cavey

Is there a domain-general cognitive structuring system? Evidence from structural priming across music, math, action descriptions, and language

Cognitive processing in many domains (e.g., sentence comprehension, music listening, and math solving) requires sequential information to be organized into an integrational structure. There appears to be some overlap in integrational processing across domains, as shown by cross-domain interference effects when for example linguistic and musical stimuli are jointly presented (Koelsch, Gunter, Wittfoth, & Sammler, 2005; Slevc, Rosenberg, & Patel, 2009). These findings support theories of overlapping resources for integrational processing across domains (cfr. SSIRH Patel, 2003; SWM, Kljajevic, 2010). However, there are some limitations to the studies mentioned above, such as the frequent use of unnaturalistic integrational difficulties. In recent years, the idea has risen that evidence for domain-generality in structural processing might also be yielded though priming paradigms (cfr. Scheepers, 2003). The rationale behind this is that integrational processing across domains regularly requires the processing of dependencies across short or long distances in the sequence, involving respectively less or more syntactic working memory resources (cfr. SWM, Kljajevic, 2010), and such processing decisions might persist over time. However, whereas recent studies have shown suggestive priming of integrational structure between language and arithmetics (though often dependent on arithmetic performance, cfr. Scheepers et al., 2011; Scheepers & Sturt, 2014), it remains to be investigated to what extent we can also find evidence for priming in other domains, such as music and action (cfr. SWM, Kljajevic, 2010). Experiment 1a showed structural priming from the processing of musical sequences onto the position in the sentence structure (early or late) to which a relative clause was attached in subsequent sentence completion. Importantly, Experiment 1b showed that a similar structural manipulation based on non-hierarchically ordered color sequences did not yield any priming effect, suggesting that the priming effect is not based on linear order, but integrational dependency. Finally, Experiment 2 presented primes in four domains (relative clause sentences, music, mathematics, and structured descriptions of actions), and consistently showed priming within and across domains. These findings provide clear evidence for domain-general structural processing mechanisms.

Interference in Joint Picture Naming.

In 4 experiments we showed that picture naming latencies are affected by beliefs about the task concurrently performed by another speaker. Participants took longer to name pictures when they believed that their partner concurrently named pictures than when they believed their partner was silent (Experiments 1 and 4) or concurrently categorized the pictures as being from the same or from different semantic categories (Experiment 2). However, picture naming latencies were not affected by beliefs about what ones partner said, as it did not matter whether participants believed their partner produced the same utterance, or an utterance that differed by ordering (Experiments 1 and 2) or lexical content (Experiments 3 and 4). These findings are consistent with the proposal that speakers represent whether another speaker is preparing to speak but not what they are preparing to say.

Shared structuring resources across domains: double task effects from linguistic processing on the structural integration of pitch sequences

Many studies have reported evidence suggesting that resources involved in linguistic structural processing might be domain-general by demonstrating interference from simultaneously presented non-linguistic stimuli on the processing of sentences (Slevc, Rosenberg, & Patel, 2009). However, the complexity of the analysed linguistic processes often precludes the interpretation of such interference as being based on structural—rather than more general—processing resources (Perruchet & Poulin-Charronnat, 2013). We therefore used linguistic structure as a source of interference for another structural processing task, by asking participants to read sentences while processing experimentally manipulated pitch sequences. Half of the sentences contained a segment with either an “out-of-context” sentential violation or a “garden path” unexpectancy. Furthermore, the pitch sequences contained a cluster shift, which did or did not align with the sentential unexpectancies. A two-tone recognition task followed each pitch sequence, providing an index of the strength with which this structural boundary was processed. When a “garden path” unexpectancy (requiring structural reintegration) accompanied the cluster shift, the structural boundary induced by this shift was processed more shallowly. No such effect occurred with non-reintegratable “out-of-context” sentential violations. Furthermore, the discussed interference effect can be isolated from general pitch recognition performance, supporting the interpretation of such interference as being based on overlapping structural processing resources (Kljajevic, 2010; Patel, 2003).