Paul E. Engelhardt’s research while affiliated with University of East Anglia and other places

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Publications (66)


Means and inferential tests for demographic variables, AQ scores, and repetitive behaviours.
Results of Kendall's Tau correlations, with p-values in parentheses following each correlation.
Multiple regression results and coefficients.
Means and inferential tests for demographic variables and AQ scores.
Linguistic Prediction in Autism Spectrum Disorder
  • Article
  • Full-text available

February 2025

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3 Reads

Brain Sciences

Aimee O’Shea

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Paul E. Engelhardt

Background: Autism spectrum disorder has been argued to involve impairments in domain-general predictive abilities. There is strong evidence that individuals with ASD have trouble navigating the dynamic world due to an inability to predict the outcomes of particular events. There is also evidence that this is apparent across the diagnostic criteria of ASD and common among correlates of ASD. However, the question remains as to whether this impairment in predictive abilities is domain-specific or domain-general, with little research investigating prediction in linguistic measures. Methods: The current study investigated whether individuals with ASD showed atypicalities in linguistic prediction using a cloze probability task. In Experiment 1, 33 individuals with ASD were compared to 64 typically developing individuals in an offline cloze task. Results: There was no significant effect of an ASD diagnosis on the cloze probability. However, individuals with higher levels of autistic traits were significantly more likely to produce lower-probability (non-modal) cloze responses. In Experiment 2, 19 individuals with ASD were compared to 22 typically developing individuals in a lab-based cloze task, in which we also measured the reaction times to begin speaking (i.e., voice onset time). The results showed that individuals with ASD had significantly slower reaction times (~200 ms) but, similarly to Experiment 1, did not show differences in the cloze probability of the responses produced. Conclusions: We conclude that individuals with ASD do show inefficiency in linguistic prediction, as well as indicating which ASD traits most strongly correlate with these inefficiencies.

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Novel metaphor processing in dyslexia: a visual world eye-tracking study

January 2025

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16 Reads

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3 Citations

Discourse Processes

Metaphor comprehension has been investigated in neurodevelopmental disorders, but studies devoted to adults with dyslexia are few and present inconsistent results. The present study sought to investigate how adults with dyslexia process novel metaphors. Individual differences in vocabulary, working memory, and Theory of Mind were also assessed. An online metaphor comprehension task based on the Visual World Paradigm was carried out with eye-tracking. Metaphors and corresponding literal sentences were aurally presented in isolation, and participants were asked to select a picture that best corresponded to the sentence they heard. Our results indicated that participants with dyslexia chose metaphor interpretations at a similar rate as did the control group. However, online processing data indicated generally slower response times, with a particular delay in processing metaphorical utterances. Eye movement analyses provided further insights into the underlying nature of the processing slowdowns, highlighting specific challenges encountered by individuals with dyslexia when interpreting figurative language.


Top panel shows example visual array: the metaphorical utterance was “the cup with the ears” and the literal utterance was “the cup with the handles”. Image (1) is the target picture, image (2) is the irrelevant picture, and image (3) is the distractor picture. Bottom panel shows the key time points for dividing the sentence into critical time periods
Upper left panel shows mean comprehension accuracy. Upper right panel shows mean reaction time for all trials. Bottom left panel shows mean reaction time for correct trials. Lower right panel shows the reaction time for incorrect trials. Note that there were very few literal trials that were incorrect. Error bars show the standard error of the mean
Mean fixation times. Upper panels show mean dwell times for the correct trials (left metaphorical and right literal). Lower left panel shows the mean dwell times for metaphor incorrect trials. Lower right panel shows the means for the picture by group interaction. Error bars show the standard error of the mean
Mean fixation times. Upper panels show mean dwell times for the correct trials (left metaphorical and right literal). Lower left panel shows the mean dwell times for metaphor incorrect trials. Lower right panel shows the means for the sentence type by group interaction. Error bars show the standard error of the mean
Online Metaphor Comprehension in Adults with Autism Spectrum Disorders: An Eye Tracking Study

September 2024

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75 Reads

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1 Citation

Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders

The aim of this study was to investigate novel metaphor comprehension in adults with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Previous literature is conflicting about whether individuals with ASD have impairment in this particular type of figurative language. Participants in the study completed a visual world paradigm eye-tracking task, which involved selecting an interpretation of an auditorily presented sentence (i.e. a picture-sentence matching task), where images corresponded to literal and metaphorical interpretations. Thus, the study also investigated online processing, via reaction times and eye movements. Forty adults participated in the study (18 with ASD and 22 typically-developing controls). Each participant completed the AQ questionnaire and had their vocabulary assessed. Results showed that participants with ASD comprehended metaphorical utterances with the same accuracy as controls. However, they had significantly slower reaction times, and specifically, were approximately 800 ms slower. Analysis of eye movements revealed that participants with ASD showed significantly longer fixation times on both the target and distractor image, the latter of which suggests difficulty overcoming the literal interpretation. Consistent with some prior studies, we showed that adults with ASD are not impaired in novel metaphor comprehension, but they were clearly less efficient. Verbal abilities did not significantly relate to performance. Finally, our online processing measure (eye tracking) provided us with insights into the nature of the ASD inefficiency (i.e. a literality bias).


Introduction: Setting Out for New Shores

August 2024

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22 Reads

Stephan Kornmesser

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[...]

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“Experimental philosophy is philosophy with a little something extra” (Sytsma et al., 2023, 9). This “little something extra” is the fact that experimental philosophers conduct their own experimental studies to provide empirical insights to address philosophical issues. They use qualitative and quantitative research methods such as interactive experiments, reaction time studies, corpus analysis, vignette studies, interviews, and so forth.


Psycholinguistic Experiments: A Case Study on Default Inferences in Philosophical Arguments—Analysing the Argument from Illusion

August 2024

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20 Reads

Experimental methods from psycholinguistics allow experimental philosophers to study important automatic inferences, with a view to explaining and assessing philosophically relevant intuitions and arguments. Philosophical thought is shaped by verbal reasoning in natural language. Such reasoning is driven by automatic comprehension inferences. Such inferences shape, e.g., intuitions about verbally described cases, in philosophical thought experiments; more generally, they shape moves from premises to conclusions in philosophical arguments. These inferences can be examined with questionnaire-based and eye-tracking methods from psycholinguistics. We explain how these methods can be adapted for use in experimental philosophy. We demonstrate their application by presenting a new eye-tracking study that helps assess the influential philosophical ``argument from illusion.'' The study examines whether stereotypical inferences from polysemous words (viz., appearance verbs) are automatically triggered even when prefaced by contexts that defeat the inferences. We use this worked example to explain the key conceptual steps involved in designing behavioural experiments, step by step. Going beyond the worked example, we also explain methods that require no laboratory facilities.


Disfluency across the lifespan: an individual differences investigation

May 2024

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38 Reads

Aging Neuropsychology and Cognition

This study had two research objectives. The first was to examine age-related differences in the fluency of speech outputs, as prior research contains conflicting findings concerning whether older adults produce more disfluency than younger adults. The second was to examine cognitive individual differences, and their relationship with the production of disfluency. One hundred and fifty-four adults completed a story re-telling task, and a battery of cognitive measures. Results showed that younger adults produced more um's and fewer repetitions. For individual differences, results showed that inhibition and set shifting were related to the production of repetitions, and inhibition and working memory were related to uh production. Our results provide clarification about mixed findings with respect age and disfluency production. The individual differences provide clarification on theoretical arguments for disfluent speech in aging (e.g. Inhibition Deficit Hypothesis), and also sheds light on the role of executive functions in models of language production.



Mean cloze probability averaged across items. The left panel shows results from high-constraint items and the right panel shows results from low-constraint items. Error bars show the standard error of the mean.
Prediction in SVO and SOV languages: processing and typological considerations

December 2023

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288 Reads

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1 Citation

Linguistics

In this study, we tested the possibility that different word orders engender different processing preferences. Our key hypothesis was that a head-initial language like English (SVO) allows more prediction compared to a head-final language like Japanese (SOV). In Experiment 1, English and Japanese native speakers completed a cloze task in which they heard a sentence fragment (SV_ in English and SO_ in Japanese) and had to complete it with the word they thought best. We assessed cloze probability of the words produced and voice onset times. Experiment 2 examined written completions in English, in which we compared the cloze probabilities in SV_ fragments versus OS_ fragments. Following the central hypothesis, this experiment allowed us to determine (within language) whether there is more prediction from a noun and verb compared to two nouns. Finally, in Experiment 3, we compared written completions in English and Japanese, in which the stimuli given to participants were identical (SV_ in English and S_V in Japanese). Results across all three experiments were consistent with greater prediction in English. We argue that prediction is one important factor in processing, that it is relied on more in English than in Japanese, and that prediction will be especially favored in languages like English in which the verb regularly precedes its direct object.


Does the Timing of Visual Support Affect Sentence Comprehension? An Eye-Tracking Study

November 2023

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47 Reads

The Journal of Experimental Education

Purpose: Recent research suggests that visual elements improve sentence processing for students, even at the university level. However, few studies have systematically examined the timing of visual support in reading. Method: We examined the impact of visual support and its timing on sentence comprehension in a sample of 40 typically developing university students. Across 60 sentences, half with images and half without, participants either viewed images simultaneously with sentences or before sentences. Word frequency was also manipulated. Results: Results showed that visual support facilitated sentence processing and that participants who viewed images before sentences exhibited a lower probability of regressions. Conclusion: In conclusion, incorporating images with text can benefit language comprehension. Moreover, the results suggest implications regarding the timing of visual support.


Evidential meanings in native and learner Japanese and English: Implications for the assessment of speaker certainty

May 2023

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39 Reads

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1 Citation

Pragmatics and Society

Evidentiality is a linguistic category that comprises forms and meanings related to the source of information in utterances, the use of which may impact judgments about the degree of certainty expressed by a speaker. The main dichotomy is first-hand (direct) vs. second-hand (indirect) evidence. This distinction is grammaticalised in Japanese only, though certain related meanings can be expressed in English lexically or constructionally. The relevant forms in both languages also function as indirectness-for-politeness markers. We used a judgments elicitation task and found that statements with Japanese evidentials (both first- and second-hand) and with English markers of uncertainty lead to judgments of lower certainty than the statements without the evidential forms and meanings for the majority, but not for all speakers. In addition, monolingual and bilingual usage in both languages has parallels such that these two typologically distinct languages appear closer and certainty judgments by their speakers similar.


Citations (54)


... We included a section in the results, in which we consider two demographic variables and vocabulary scores. In an earlier study that focused on metaphor comprehension in dyslexia, we also did not find that vocabulary scores correlated with metaphor comprehension (r = − 0.13) or metaphor reaction time (r = − 0.04) (Cersosimo et al., 2024). The direction of the comprehension effect was not in the expected direction (i.e. higher vocabulary scores corresponded with worse comprehension). ...

Reference:

Online Metaphor Comprehension in Adults with Autism Spectrum Disorders: An Eye Tracking Study
Novel metaphor processing in dyslexia: a visual world eye-tracking study
  • Citing Article
  • January 2025

Discourse Processes

... Metaphoric language intervention (MLI) has garnered considerable recognition for its significant impact on communicative interaction. It plays a crucial role in enhancing linguistic abilities and facilitating psychological perceptions, particularly in the bilingual learning of children with autism (Ruesch, 1995;Olson, 1971;Heimlich, 1983;Uslu, 2019;Cakmak et al., 2022;O'Shea et al., 2024). Within the realm of language therapy, MLI is acknowledged as a key approach for addressing social disorders such as autism, as emphasized by numerous researchers (Highnam et al., Xiaozhen Zhou 2679398609@qq.com ...

Online Metaphor Comprehension in Adults with Autism Spectrum Disorders: An Eye Tracking Study

Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders

... In the current study, we investigated more nuanced hypotheses for filled pauses, and those hypotheses were based on something called the um-uh ratio (for a review, see Engelhardt, 2020). The um-uh ratio has become increasing prominent in disfluency research, and it essentially predicts differential roles for um and uh (Horton et al., 2010;Horváth, 2010). ...

Speaker Versus Listener-Oriented Disfluency
  • Citing Chapter
  • March 2021

... Thus far, the studies investigating filler usage in the language of individuals with ASD support Clark and Fox Tree's (2002) view that fillers are intentionally used by the speaker to benefit the listener (Engelhardt, 2019;Engelhardt et al., 2017;Gorman et al., 2016;Irvine et al., 2016;Lake, 2008;Lake et al., 2011;Lunsford et al., 2010;Parish-Morris et al., 2017). These studies hypothesize that because ASD is characterized by deficits in conversational reciprocity and social communication, individuals with this disorder would be less likely to exhibit language and behavior that benefits their conversational partner, such as "um" and "uh". ...

Speaker Versus Listener-Oriented Disfluency
  • Citing Chapter
  • January 2020

... Extending this research, a recent study examined Indirect Realist beliefs about vision (when viewing [e.g.] an apple, we see a mental image of the apple, caused by that apple) and Direct Realist beliefs that reject them (when looking at an apple, we see only the apple and no mental or other image of it) (Fischer, Allen, & Engelhardt, 2023). Agreement ratings and open-text questions elicited inter-and intrapersonal conflicts at the level of explicit beliefs: While over half of lay participants endorsed verbal statements of folk Direct Realism, over 40% endorsed folk Indirect Realism, and about 70% endorsed pictorial illustrations of it. ...

Fragmented and conflicted: folk beliefs about vision

Synthese

... These results and conclusions correspond with previous studies on questionnaires developed for parental self-report (Illum & Gradel, 2017;O'Shea et al., 2023;Zieff et al., 2023;McCormack et al., 2010). All these researchers emphasize the importance of parents, as the "child experts," who should be partners in the assessment and intervention processes: "No one is better qualified than parents to assess disabilities in their own children" [40, p.1]. ...

A Parental-Report Questionnaire for Language Abilities and Pragmatics in Children and Adolescents with Autism Spectrum Disorders

Brain Sciences

... This finding was consistent with the view that passives are more complex than actives to perceive because of an additional syntactic movement (e.g., Johns & Jones, 2015;Kiparsky, 2013). This may be due to the less frequency of use (Stella & Engelhardt, 2022); However, the findings contradict Paolazzi et al. (2019Paolazzi et al. ( , 2022 who investigated the comprehension of passive action and state predicates and reported that passive sentences are processed faster than actives. They continued that passives with action verbs that result in change of state seem to be acquired earlier than passives of other predicates types. ...

Use of Parsing Heuristics in the Comprehension of Passive Sentences: Evidence from Dyslexia and Individual Differences

Brain Sciences

... Beberapa penelitian sebelumnya telah membahas hubungan antara filsafat dan pembelajaran bahasa. Pertama, penelitian oleh Fischer et al (2022) mengkaji filsafat bahasa sebagai salah satu cabang dari filsafat. Penelitian ini menunjukkan bahwa perkembangan ilmu bahasa dan berbagai aspek linguistik dipengaruhi oleh filsafat bahasa. ...

Philosophers’ linguistic expertise: A psycholinguistic approach to the expertise objection against experimental philosophy

Synthese