Esaulova Yulia, Penke Martina, Dolscheid Sarah
Department of Special Education and Rehabilitation, University of Cologne, Cologne, Germany.
Front Psychol. 2020 Aug 27;11:2111. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2020.02111. eCollection 2020.
Speakers' readiness to describe event scenes using active or passive constructions has previously been attributed-among other factors-to the accessibility of referents. While most research has highlighted the accessibility of agents, the present study examines whether patients' accessibility can be modulated by means of visual preview of the patient character (derived accessibility), as well as by manipulating the animacy status of patients (inherent accessibility). Crucially, we also examined whether effects of accessibility were amenable to the visuospatial position of the patient by presenting the patient character either to the left or to the right of the agent. German native speakers were asked to describe drawings depicting event scenes while their gaze and speech were recorded. Our results show that making patients more accessible using derived and inherent accessibility factors led to more produced passives, shorter speech onsets, and a reduction of fixations on patients. Complementing previous research on agent accessibility, our findings demonstrate that the accessibility of patients affected both sentence production and looking behavior. While effects were observed for both inherent and derived accessibility, they appeared to be more pronounced for the latter. Regarding character position, we observed a significant effect of position on participants' gaze patterns and structural choices, suggesting that position itself can be considered an accessibility-related factor. Importantly, the position of a patient also interacted with our manipulation of its accessibility via visual preview. Participants produced more passives after preview than no preview for left-positioned but not for right-positioned patients, demonstrating that effects of patient accessibility (i.e., visual preview) were susceptible to character position. A similar interaction was observed for participants' viewing patterns. These findings provide the first evidence that the position of a referent is a factor that interacts with other accessibility-related factors (i.e., cueing), emphasizing the need of controlling for position effects when testing referent accessibility.
此前，说话者使用主动或被动结构描述事件场景的意愿，在其他因素中，被归因于所指对象的可及性。虽然大多数研究都强调了施事的可及性，但本研究考察了患者的可及性是否可以通过对患者角色的视觉预览（派生可及性）以及操纵患者的有生性状态（固有可及性）来调节。至关重要的是，我们还通过将患者角色呈现给施事的左侧或右侧，考察了可及性的影响是否受患者视觉空间位置的影响。以德语为母语的人被要求描述描绘事件场景的图画，同时记录他们的目光和言语。我们的结果表明，利用派生和固有可及性因素使患者更易被关注，会导致更多的被动语态表达、更短的言语起始时间以及对患者注视的减少。作为对先前关于施事可及性研究的补充，我们的发现表明患者的可及性影响句子生成和注视行为。虽然固有可及性和派生可及性都观察到了影响，但后者似乎更明显。关于角色位置，我们观察到位置对参与者的注视模式和结构选择有显著影响，这表明位置本身可被视为一个与可及性相关的因素。重要的是，患者的位置也与我们通过视觉预览对其可及性的操纵相互作用。对于左侧位置的患者，预览后参与者产生的被动语态比未预览时更多，而右侧位置的患者则不然，这表明患者可及性（即视觉预览）的影响受角色位置的影响。在参与者的观看模式中也观察到了类似的相互作用。这些发现提供了首个证据，即所指对象的位置是一个与其他可及性相关因素（即提示）相互作用的因素，强调了在测试所指对象可及性时控制位置效应的必要性。
