Processing causal relations

My DPhil project focuses the causal inference and expectations in discourse processing. I am investigating questions: What are discourse segments, and how are they linked to underlying event representations? How do readers establish causal relationships between discourse segments? What cues and factors guide causal inferences and expectations in discourse, and what factors constrain them?

Here are some findings of this project:

Publication

• Yao, R, Husband, E.M. and Altshuler, D. (forthcoming). Topichood and temporal interpretation of DPs guide clause-internal, causal coherence. Poster presented at the 28th annual Sinn und Bedeutung Proceedings. [ LingBuzz ]

Conference Presentations

• Yao, R., Husband, E.M. and Altshuler, D. (2024). Implicit questions-under-discussion raise expectations only in at-issue main clause. Poster presented at the 37th annual conference on Human Sentence Processing, Ann Arbor, MI. [ abstract ] [ poster ]
• Yao, R., Husband, E.M. and Altshuler, D. (2023). Topichood and temporal interpretation of DPs guide clause-internal, causal coherence. Poster presented at the 28th annual Sinn und Bedeutung Conference, Bochum, Germany and the 10th biannual XPrag Conference, Paris, France.  [abstract][poster][ slides ]
• Yao, R., Sasaki, K., Altshuler, D. and Husband, E.M. (2023). Asymmetric processing effects of intra-sentential explanation coherence. Poster presented at the 29th annual Architectures and Mechanisms for Language Processing Conference, San Sebastian, Spain. [abstract][ poster ]
• Yao, R., Sasaki, K., Altshuler, D. and Husband, E.M. (2023). Explanation coherence inside sentences, but only offline. Poster given at the 36th Human Sentence Processing Conference, Pittsburgh, PA. [ abstract ] [ poster ]

 

Prediction update

I have a longstanding interest in Chinese classifiers, which are obligatory grammatical morphemes that accompany nouns and provide information about the semantic class or individuation of the referent. When studying how Chinese readers use classifiers as prediction cues during sentence processing, I've noticed that classifiers can also signal prediction failures. I'm particularly interested in questions such as: Are prediction failures costly? Can people rapidly update their predictions after encountering disconfirming evidence? 

For instance, see:

• Yao, R., Fan. Y., and Husband, E.M (2024) Rapid prediction updating driven by Mandarin classifiers in Maze Reading. Poster presented at the 3rd Architectures and Mechanisms for Language Processing Asia, Singapore. [ abstract ] [poster]

While our work and that of others has found that Mandarin readers can use subsequent semantic information to update their predictions after failures, this contradicts results from similar studies in other languages like Italian. So I'm also curious to explore why there might be cross-linguistic differences in how people handle disruptions to their predictive processes.

Question-under-Discussion

I started learning the Question-under-Discussion (QUD) framework when studying implicit causality verbs - a class of verbs that implicitly suggest a cause for an event. I've found the QUD framework to be a convenient theoretical framework for psycholinguistic investigation of discourse-level phenomena. Some of my research aims to explain certain discourse-level effects through the QUD framework, comparing it to alternative theories of discourse coherence like Segmented Discourse Representation Theory (SDRT). I'm also interested in further formalizing and refining the QUD framework itself. My ongoing work with Dr. Katja Jasinskaja is investigating the role of QUDs in terms of discourse attachment and anaphora resolution, comparing the predictions of the QUD framework to the Right Frontier Constraint.