Ruth Filik

Labeling of Medicines and Patient Safety: Evaluating Methods of Reducing Drug Name Confusion:

Objective: We report three experiments evaluating the proposal that highlighting sections of drug names using uppercase (“tall man”) lettering and/or color may reduce the confusability of similar drug names. Background: Medication errors commonly involve drug names that look or sound alike. One potential method of reducing these errors is to highlight sections of names on labels in order to emphasize the differences between similar products. Method: In Experiments 1 and 2, participants were timed as they decided whether similar name pairs were the same name or two different names. Experiment 3 was a recognition memory task. Results: Results from Experiments 1 and 2 showed that highlighting sections of words using tall man lettering can make similar names easier to distinguish if participants are aware that this is the purpose of the intervention. Results from Experiment 3 suggested that tall man lettering and/or color does not make names less confusable in memory but that tall man letters may increase attention. Conclusion: These findings offer some support for the use of tall man letters in order to reduce errors caused by confusion between drug products with look-alike names. Application: The use of tall man letters could be applied in a variety of visual presentations of drug names - for example, by manufacturers on packaging, labeling, and computer software, and in pharmacies on shelf labels. Additionally, this paper demonstrates two meaningful behavioral measures that can be used during product design to objectively assess confusability of packaging and labeling.

Processing pronouns without antecedents: Evidence from event-related brain potentials

Pronouns that do not have explicit antecedents typically cause processing problems. We investigate a specific example in which this may not be the case, as in At the interview, they asked really difficult questions, where the plural pronoun they has no explicit antecedent, yet is intuitively easy to process. Some unspecified but constrained set of individuals (the interview panel or the company) can be inferred as the referent, but it is not crucial to determine specifically which entities are being referred to. We propose that this contrasts with the processing of singular pronouns (he or she), for which it is necessary to determine a specific referent. We used event-related brain potentials to investigate how readers process the pronoun (they vs. he/she) in these cases. Sentences were placed in a context that either did or did not contain an explicit antecedent for the pronoun. There were two key findings. Firstly, when there was no explicit antecedent, a larger fronto-central positivity was observed 750 msec after pronoun onset for he/she than they, possibly reflecting the additional difficulty involved in establishing a referent for he/she than for they when no explicit referent is available. Secondly, there was a larger N400-like deflection evoked by he/she than they, regardless of whether there was an explicit antecedent for the pronoun. We suggest that this is due to the singular pronouns bringing about a greater integration effort than the plural pronoun. This observation adds to a growing body of research revealing fundamental differences in the way these pronouns are handled by the language processor.

The on-line processing of socio-emotional information in prototypical scenarios: inferences from brain potentials

Little is known about the time course of the mechanisms involved in the on-line processing of socio-emotional information. We used event-related brain potentials (ERPs) to investigate this issue using vignettes that described prototypical, social scenarios. An initial sentence established the social context and the following target sentence ended with a critical word that informed the reader of the characters socio-emotional response to the situation. Critical words that mismatched rather than matched with a characters expected feelings elicited a larger ERP negativity (N400) ~200-500 ms after word onset, followed by a larger frontal positivity. Dipole source modeling results indicated that an anterior temporal lobe source accounted for the N400-like effect, which we attribute to the increased demands of integrating general knowledge about social situations (e.g. scripts) with personal- and context-specific information. An additional mediofrontal source contributed to the later ERP effect and presumably reflects high-level mindreading functions. Together, these findings indicate that readers rapidly infer and evaluate on-line a characters likely socio-emotional response based on the prototypical information provided by the text.

Processing doubly quantified sentences: evidence from eye movements.

We investigated the processing of doubly quantified sentences, such asKelly showed a photo to every critic, that are ambiguous as to whether the indefinite (a photo) specifies single or multiple referents. Ambiguity resolution requires the computation of relative quantifier scope: Whether a or every takes wide scope, thereby determining how many entities or events are to be represented. In an eye-tracking experiment, we manipulated quantifier order and whether continuations were singular or plural, for constructions with the direct or the indirect object occurring first. We obtained effects consistent with the on-line processing of relative scope at the doubly quantified phrase and considered two possible explanations for a preference for singular continuations to the quantified sentence. We conclude that relative quantifier scope is computed on line during reading but may not be a prerequisite for the resolution of definite anaphors, unless required by secondary tasks.

Underspecification and Anaphora: Theoretical Issues and Preliminary Evidence

Much experimental work in psycholinguistics suggests that fully specified syntactic and semantic interpretations are obtained incrementally. The finding that interpretation takes place incrementally is very robust and underlies our own view of sentence processing as well; however, most of this work tends to test very simple interpretive judgments using materials that have clean-cut interpretations, which makes the earlier-expressed view more questionable when applied to semantic interpretation. This article discusses a class of anaphoric expressions that do not appear to have a clear antecedent, referring to data from both corpus analysis and psycholinguistic experiments. We argue that these cases of anaphora are similar to cases of lexical polysemy and propose an explicit semantic representation for such cases.

Sarcasm in Written Communication: Emoticons are Efficient Markers of Intention

We present 2 studies that investigate the use of emoticons in clarifying message intent. We examine sarcasm in particular, which can be especially hard to interpret correctly in written communication. In both studies, participants were required to make the intentions of their messages clear. In the first, they clarified the meaning of existing sentences without altering the wording; in the second, they produced their own sentences. Results provided clear evidence that tongue and wink emoticons are the principal indicators of sarcastic intent, and that ellipsis is associated more with criticism, rather than with sarcasm. These findings highlight the significant role emoticons play in clarifying message intention, compensating for the absence of nonverbal cues in written communication.

The role of character-based knowledge in online narrative comprehension: Evidence from eye movements and ERPs

Little is known about the on-line evaluation of information relating to well-known story characters during text comprehension. For example, it is not clear in how much detail readers represent character-based information, and the time course over which this information is utilized during on-line language comprehension. We describe an event-related potential (ERP) study (Experiment 1) and an eye-tracking study (Experiment 2) investigating whether, and when, readers utilize their prior knowledge of a character in processing event information. Participants read materials in which an event was described that either did or did not fit with the characters typical behavior. ERPs elicited by the critical word revealed an N400 effect when the action described did not fit with the characters typical behavior. Results from early eye movement measures supported these findings, and later measures suggested that such violations were more easily accommodated for well-known fictional characters than real-world characters.

They're digging up the road again: The processing cost of Institutional They

It is commonplace to use the pronoun they to refer to agents in certain situations without ever providing a referent, as in On the train, they served really bad coffee. Such an example we call “Institutional They”, because such defaults typically represent the actions of some agent tied stereotypically to a situation. These cases represent an important subset of unheralded pronouns (Gerrig, 1986), pronouns without any explicit antecedent. While in many situations, the occurrence of referential pronouns without explicit antecedents entails a processing cost, an eye-tracking experiment revealed no reliable detectable costs associated with Institutional They. However, there were for singular pronouns without antecedents in the same situations. We argue that Institutional They cases result from properties of plural pronouns (they and them). These will accept underspecified type-referents, while singular pronouns require specified token-referents. Failure to identify token-referents results in disruption of processing in the case of singulars, but not in the case of the plurals.

Competition during the processing of quantifier scope ambiguities: evidence from eye movements during reading

We investigated the processing of sentences containing a quantifier scope ambiguity, such as Kelly showed a photo to each critic, which is ambiguous between the indefinite phrase (a photo) having one or many referents. Ambiguity resolution requires the computation of relative quantifier scope, with either a photo or each critic taking wide scope, thereby determining the number of referents. Using eye tracking, we established that multiple factors, including the grammatical function and surface linear order of quantified phrases, along with their lexical characteristics, interact during the processing of relative quantifier scope, with conflict between factors incurring a processing cost. We discuss the results in terms of theoretical accounts attributing sentence-processing difficulty to either reanalysis (e.g., Fodor, 1982) or competition between rival analyses (e.g., Kurtzman & MacDonald, 1993).

Focus identification during sentence comprehension : Evidence from eye movements

Three eye movement experiments investigated focus identification during sentence comprehension. Participants read dative or double-object sentences (i.e., either the direct or indirect object occurred first), and a replacive continuation supplied a contrast that was congruous with either the direct or the indirect object. Experiments 1 and 2 manipulated focus by locating only adjacent to either the direct or indirect object of dative (Experiment 1) or double-object (Experiment 2) sentences. Reading-time effects indicated that the surface position of the focus particle influenced processing. In addition, Experiment 1 reading times were longer when the replacive was incongruous with the constituent that only adjoined, and particle position modulated a similar effect in Experiment 2. Experiment 3 showed that this effect was absent when only was omitted. We conclude that the surface position of a focus particle modulates focus identification during on-line sentence comprehension.