Subject: judgment fatigue : summary , part i

summary of responses to request for information on judgment fatigue ( also called syntactic satiation ) original post : linguist list : vol-6 - 974 . mon jul 17 1995 . issn : 1068-4875 . special thanks to the following respondents : kimberly barskaitiki , tim beasley , elizabeth bergman , michael bernstein , vivian cook , joseph davis , rianne doeleman , karen emmorey , suzette haden elgin , ted harding , stephen helmreich , erika l . konrad , john e . limber , bruce nevin , john robert ross , carson t schutze , linda shockey , william snyder , karin stromswold , joyce tang boyland , anyone i may have missed , and anyone who thought about responding but has n't yet . karin stromswold and william snyder have actually investigated this phenomenon . i have not read either of their papers yet , but i look forward to doing so . william snyder ( snyder @ psyche . mit . edu ) presented a poster on this topic at lsa 1994 , which was mentioned in rick hudson 's summary post of july 29 , 1994 . individual 's interested in dr . snyder 's poster should contact him directly . hudson 's post ( linguist list : vol-5 - 855 . fri 29 jul 1994 . issn : 1068-4875 . ) summarized the literature available which addresses the difference between linguists ' and non-linguists ' intuitions . hudson also mentions ( but does not cite ) four references provided by joyce tang boyland regarding satiation effects ( both syntactic and semantic ) . hudson 's original post is available from linguist list archives . joyce tang boyland 's response is included below ( in part ii of post , following ) . karin stromswold 's response ( karin @ muddle . rutgers . edu ) was my connection to snyder , hudson , and boyland . her post is most relevant to my original query and is included in its entirety below ( in part ii of post , following ) . most responses mentioned the influence of continual or repeated exposure over a period of time , either mentioning examples similar to perceptual or semantic satiation such as a word-repetition effect . ( bergman , cook , davis , doeleman , haden elgin , harding , helmreich , limber , schutze , snyder , stromswold , tang boyland ) . there are many differences , however , between the effects of semantic satiation and " syntactic satiation " or judgment fatigue : first , semantic satiation is the detachment of form and meaning which occurs as you continuously repeat some lexical item ( see also stromswold 's post below ) . judgment fatigue , in contrast , cannot be induced by the repeated presentation of any sentence . in fact , published experiments by nagata show that raters ' intuitions only become more stringent on repeated presentation . second , the loss of the meaning of a sentence is not an effect of judgment fatigue . the meaning of the sentence may be quite lucid to the individual reading it , but that individual 's attention is focused upon some aspect of the grammatical acceptability of the sentence , and it is the ability to judge grammatical acceptability which is lost , not the ability to make sense of the utterance . third , while the particular characteristics of the stimuli which induce judgment fatigue are not yet fully established , it appears that different types of sentences induce the effect to different degrees ( stromswold , snyder as cited in hudson 's post ) . this is not the case for semantic satiation , where the repetition of any lexical item can induce the effect . fourth , the " scanting out " effect as noted by haj ross points out that the loss of intuition can be triggered by one single stimuli , not necessarily the repeated presentation of numerous stimuli ( relevant quote posted below ) . conversely , subjects can rate hundreds of stimuli on the basis of grammaticality , with no fatigue effect ( beyond boredom ) , even if the stimuli contain permutation of the same lexical items , be they open or closed class items . note that point four is definitely true in the case that the stimuli are all dichotomously " great - - grammatical " or " horrible - - ungrammatical " . there is a definite influence of marginality , an effect which , to date , i believe no one has explained . fifth , semantic satiation ( as well as perceptual fatigue effects ) is often attributed to some type of neurological fatigue at the cortical level . this could not be the ( only ) reason for judgment fatigue , however , because there may not be any single word or syntactic structure which is repeated in all of the stimuli ( such as could be the case for judgment fatigue induced by the scope of negation or negative polarity items ) . for this reason , it would be quite implausible to claim that judgment fatigue is the result of some type of physiological / chemical / neurological saturation which has occurred at the cortical level . at this point , i do not believe judgment fatigue and semantic satiation have much in common as behavioral disturbances . ( incidently , while i am not an expert on semantic satiation , i have not yet been forced by the evidence to believe that semantic satiation is the result of a low-level neurological fatigue . perceptual fatigue is a neurological phenomenon , but i attribute semantic satiation to other conceptual strategies . ) many linguists ( beasley , nevin , konrad , and one anonymous ) also observed ' that the longer you stay in linguistics , the less you speak english . ' to quote from bruce nevin 's response : < < a student was once asked , in my hearing , if a certain famous linguist was a native speaker of english . the reply : ' i think he used to be . ' > > hudson 's previous summation further confirms that linguists and non-linguists do demonstrate significantly different abilities in discriminating grammatical and ungrammatical sentences . this type of long-term " drift " of linguists ' judgments may be of interest in its own regard , but this type of " judgment drift " is not identical to the temporary loss of linguistic intuition which i intended to address . as noted by beasley and konrad , it may indeed be the case that exposure to second languages , exposure to dialects different from ones native dialect , or exposure to a large number of perhaps marginal sentences which occur rarely in natural spoken or written contexts ( such as sentences demonstrating violations of theoretical principals such as " weak crossover " or " island constraints " , for example ) may actually alter an individual 's criteria for grammatical acceptability . if one understands judgments of grammatical acceptability to be metalinguistic type-categorizations , then one may expect that an individual 's discriminative ability will be altered based upon that individual 's personal experiences with exemplars of the categories . others commented that judgment fatigue does not happen if the stimuli are contextualized ( davis , nevin ) or if the referential situation is more concrete rather than abstract ( davis , doeleman , nevin ) . this is not the case . a loss of linguistic intuition of grammatical acceptability definitely can happen spontaneously , such as while one is listening to a conversation or reading texts , regardless of the concreteness of the topic , with the following qualifications : judgment fatigue is inspired only by particular types of stimuli ( which have not yet been clearly defined , but see part ii of post , following ) and by the listener 's / reader 's focus upon the grammar of the utterance or sentence . other individuals related hard-to - comprehend sentences as examples inducing judgment fatigue . some such sentences , notably sentences involving scope ambiguity , may induce confusion , but confusion is not synonymous with the loss of ones own linguistic intuitions . for ambiguous or confusing stimuli , we say , " someone should rewrite this sentence . it is ambiguous ( or anomalous ) . " when we have judgment fatigue , we say , " i ' m a monoglot , but damned if i can decide whether this sentence is grammatical . i sure do n't feel like a native english speaker ! " lastly , some responses or general expressions of empathy or encouragement , and actual examples ( barskaitiki , emmorey , shockey ) . thank you again to all who responded . if you are interested in the current proposal for my experiments , or if you would like to hear more about the results and conclusions from the experiments when i am finished running them , please contact me . please see part ii ( posted separately ) for selected quotes from respondents .
