Multipath parsing in the brain
Summary:
The study investigates how humans process syntactic ambiguities by correlating predictions from incremental generative dependency parsers with time-course data from people undergoing functional neuroimaging while listening to an audiobook. The study finds evidence for multipath parsing in both English and Chinese data, with brain regions associated with this multipath effect including bilateral superior temporal gyrus.
Major Findings:
- The study finds evidence for multipath parsing in both English and Chinese data.
- Brain regions associated with this multipath effect include bilateral superior temporal gyrus.
- The study compares competing hypotheses regarding the number of developing syntactic analyses in play during word-by-word comprehension and finds evidence for multipath parsing.
Analysis and Critique:
The study provides valuable insights into how humans process syntactic ambiguities during sentence comprehension. However, the study is limited by the particularities of the parsing system and the training data, which may affect the generalizability of the findings. Additionally, the study does not address the interaction between disambiguation and memory, which could be an important direction for future work. Further research is needed to confirm or refute the findings in other languages and genres. Additionally, using brain data with higher temporal resolution, such as MEG, may provide a benefit given the temporary nature of the syntactic ambiguities included in the model.
Appendix
| Model | gpt-3.5-turbo-1106 |
| Date Generated | 2024-02-26 |
| Abstract | https://arxiv.org/abs/2401.18046v1 |
| HTML | https://browse.arxiv.org/html/2401.18046v1 |
| Truncated | False |
| Word Count | 13665 |