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Ray Becker Bielefeld University Monica Gonzalez-Marquez Cornell University & Bielefeld University Todd Ferretti Wilfrid Laurier University Empirical Evidence for Evidentiality January 10, 2014

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Local organizer: Jan Edson Leite Linguistics Professor at UFPB Joo Pessoa, Paraba, Brazil

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Perceptual symbol systems (Barsalou, 1999) Simulation (Barsalou, 1999; Glenberg, 1997) She heard/saw the man speak at the school. Are there modality-specific differences?

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Pecher, Zeelenberg, and Barsalou, 2003 Property verification task leaves rustling then bird chirping leaves rustling then raspberry tart

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Pecher, Zeelenberg, and Barsalou, 2003 No main effect (visual-property verification was not slower than auditory-property verification) What about at the discourse level? Would the brains response differ?

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Federmeier, K.D. and Kutas, M. (1999) A rose by any other name: long-term memory structure and sentence processing. J. Mem. Lang.41, 469495

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Hagoort, P. & Brown, C. M. (1999). Gender electrified: ERP evidence on the syntactic nature of gender processing. Journal of Psycholinguistic Research, 28, (6) 715-728.

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Burkhardt, P. (2006) Context A: BRIDGED DP Tobias visited a concert in Berlin. Context B: GIVEN DP Tobias visited a conductor in Berlin. Context C: NEW DP Tobias talked to Nina. Target sentence (following Context AC) He said that the conductor was very impressive.

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The Late Positivity component (P600/LPC) 1.Reflects integration difficulty 2.Decay of the referent in memory leads to the concept needing to be re-instantiated into the current situation model.

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More positively-leading (P600/LPC) for referents that followed Bridged and New contexts than Given contexts

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Could modality-specific differences also effect brainwave patterns (N400 or P600) She saw the man speak at the school. (Complex) She heard the man speak at the school. (Less rich) If the simulation is complex then it should be more salient in the current situation model and be more available for later reference.

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Cecile was a high school student in Waterloo, Ontario. Yesterday a motivational speaker was coming to the auditorium. She went to class and then it was time for the speaker. She heard/saw the man speak at the school. The auditorium was packed. She thought about the man and how inspired she felt. After school she went to the soccer field for practice. The inspiration drove her to take some extra penalty shots. It felt good to get in some extra practice. The man was speaking at the school. (yes)

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52 WLU undergraduate participants read short stories. There were 20 experimental stories mixed in to another unrelated experiment. (124 stories total). EEG was recorded from 64 electrodes. Analysis was time locked to the onset of the target (e.g., man).

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Greater positive deflection (P600) for heard versus seen Seen Target Heard Target Mean Amplitude ( V) 8 V 1 s -4 V

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1. Descriptions of seen versus heard events has a quantitative effect on later reference. 2. Simulating the visual descriptions of an event may lead to greater saliency for that event in the current situation model than auditory descriptions.

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How could interdisciplinary collaboration further our understanding of evidentiality? Are there qualitative differences in eyewitness testimony depending on the sensory description?

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Compare sentences such as: I heard/saw the man speak at the school. I knew/guessed that the man

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Is this testimony more veridical than if the witness had heard the event?

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Compare the number of Google hits for I saw versus I felt.

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Now compare those numbers for I saw and I felt to I heard.

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I saw I saw the tail of a large airliner.... It plowed right into the Pentagon. Flight 77 (9/11) I saw many people being shot down as they were trying to run away. Nairobi mall and up the hill I saw a man running toward the monument and I started running over there. JFK assassination

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I heard Shortly after watching the second tragedy, I heard jet engines pass our building. Flight 77 (9/11) I heard a rain of hundreds of bullets in a span of less than a minute. Nairobi mall Just after the President's car passed, I heard three shots come from up toward Houston and Elm. JFK assassination

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I felt I was cutting the grass and it came in screaming over my head. I felt the impact. Flight 77 (9/11) I felt I'm almost going to lose consciousness. Syria alleged chemical attack My check was torn, I discovered as I felt it gingerly. Hiroshima (1945)

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Monica Gonzalez-Marquez Todd Ferretti Catherine Craven Alannah Guzak Jenna Harwood Rebecca McKerron