Sentence comprehension assessment in Russian

Chernova, Daria; Novozhilov, Artem; Slioussar, Natalia · 2021 · Crossref

DOI: 10.36505/exling-2021/12/0012/000485

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Summary

This paper addresses the lack of standardized sentence comprehension tests for healthy adult native speakers of Russian, a gap caused by the prevalence of ceiling effects in existing assessments. While syntactic processing tests are common for neurologically impaired populations, developing valid tools for healthy adults is challenging because they typically perform near-perfectly on simple tasks. The authors aimed to create a Sentence Comprehension Test that effectively measures syntactic competence and individual variability in Russian, a language for which such tools had not previously been developed. The researchers constructed a test comprising 60 grammatically complex, semantically reversible target sentences across six syntactic types: object relative clauses, spatial constructions, temporal constructions, high and low adjunct attachment in complex noun phrases, and comparative constructions. Each sentence was paired with a binary-choice question requiring syntactic analysis to answer correctly, as distractors were always nouns mentioned in the text. Additionally, 40 simpler filler sentences were included. The study involved 42 native Russian speakers (aged 19–32) who completed the test using a word-by-word self-paced reading methodology. This method was chosen to increase task difficulty and capture processing effort. Participants’ verbal working memory span was also measured using a Russian adaptation of the Daneman and Carpenter test. Data collected included accuracy, word-by-word reading times, and response times. The results demonstrated the test’s validity, as target sentences were significantly more difficult than fillers in terms of accuracy (80.6% vs. 92.6%) and processing time. Crucially, the test avoided ceiling effects, with participants making between 1 and 24 errors on target sentences. A significant positive correlation (r=0.59, p<0.01) was found between test accuracy and verbal working memory span, confirming that syntactic processing efficiency is linked to working memory capacity. Analysis of specific sentence types revealed distinct processing profiles: high/low attachment and comparative constructions elicited longer reading times, while spatial and comparative constructions resulted in longer response times. High and low attachment sentences yielded the highest error rates (74.3% and 62.6% accuracy, respectively). Notably, the data indicated a dissociation between processing time and error rates, suggesting that some constructions are difficult to interpret correctly, while others allow for easy but incorrect interpretations. The study concludes that the developed test is a valid tool for assessing syntactic processing efficiency in Russian, as it captures significant individual differences and correlates with working memory. The findings highlight distinct aspects of syntactic complexity, differentiating between difficulty in arriving at any interpretation versus difficulty in arriving at the correct one. This instrument can now be utilized in further psycholinguistic research to investigate individual differences in sentence processing.

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• cognitive capacity variation