Academic literature on the topic 'Shared Syntactic Integration Resource Hypothesis'

Does the processing of structural relations in music have anything in common with the syntactic processing of language? Important differences in the form, purpose, and use of syntactic structures in the two domains suggest that the answer should be "no." However, recent eventrelated brain potential (ERP) data suggest that some aspect of syntactic processing is shared between domains. These considerations lead to a novel hypothesis that linguistic and musical syntactic processing engage different cognitive operations, but rely on a common set of neural resources for processes of structural integration in working memory ("shared structural integration resource" hypothesis). This hypothesis yields a nonintuitive prediction about musical processing in aphasic persons, namely, that high-and low-comprehending agrammatic Broca's aphasics should differ in their musical syntactic processing abilities. This hypothesis suggests how comparison of linguistic and musical syntactic processing can be a useful tool for the study of processing specificity ("modularity") in cognitive neuroscience.

One question that has emerged from recent studies on sentence processing pertains to the nature of a specific cognitive mechanism implicated in maintenance of unintegrated syntactic information in ongoing sentence processing. In addition to evidence from language, recent research on musical syntax has suggested that processing of musical sequences may require a similar cognitive mechanism. In this paper evidence is discussed for the implication of syntactic working memory (SWM) in processing of language and musical syntax, arithmetic sequences, as well as in complex motor movements used with a specific expressive purpose. The idea is that an anticipatory structure-building component governs interpretation in each of these domains by processing relevant integrations within sequences of structurally dependent elements. The concept of SWM is anchored in representational modularity and the shared syntactic integration resources hypothesis, and empirically supported by neurophysiological and neuroimaging evidence.

This article explores structural integration between arithmetic and language by investigating whether the structure of an arithmetic equation influences the way children and adults interpret Chinese sentences in the form of NP1 + VP1 + NP2 + VP2, where VP2 can attach high as a predicate of NP1 or attach low as a predicate of NP2. Participants first solved an arithmetic problem where the last number was to be attached high (e.g., (5 + 1 + 2) × 3) or low (e.g., 5 + (1 + 2 × 3)) and then provided a completion to a preamble in the form of NP1 + VP1 + NP2 + HEN “very” . . . or decided on the meaning of an ambiguous sentence. The way the ambiguous sentences were completed and interpreted was primed by the structure of the preceding arithmetic problem (i.e., a high-attachment prime led to more high-attachment completions and interpretation) in both children and adults. This study found cross-domain priming from arithmetic equations to language, which offered empirical evidence for the shared syntactic integration resource hypothesis and the syntactic working memory theory. It was also found that children were more susceptible to such priming, which provided some tentative evidence for the Incremental Procedural Account proposed by Scheepers et al.

This study investigated correlates that might explain variance in beginning sight-singing achievement, including tonal discrimination, reading fluency, reading comprehension, and academic ability. Both curriculum-based and standardized tests were used, including the Intermediate Measures of Music Audiation, Otis-Lennon School Ability Test, and Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills. Sight-singing ability of second-grade students ( N = 170) was individually assessed for pitch accuracy only using four-note tonal patterns following a 16-week instructional period and again 8 weeks later following a period of no practice. A factor analysis explained 62% of the variance across 13 variables, revealing correlated factors of Music Ability, Reading Ability, and Academic Ability. Regression analyses with individual variables as predictors indicated that significant variance in sight-singing achievement beyond that explained by pitch matching ability could be explained by reading comprehension ability. Similar results were found with both sight-singing tests. Findings are discussed in relation to Patel’s shared syntactic integration resource hypothesis and the need to advocate for music education programs.

Objectives: This research aimed at examining the effectiveness of the working memory (WM) intervention using melodies by comparing two groups of elderly subjects with Dementia of Alzheimer’s Type (DAT).Methods: A total of 10 patients with DAT (Global Deterioration Scale degree 6) were divided into a WM+MIT (melodic intonation therapy) group (n= 5) and a WM ONLY group (n= 5). The WM intervention consisted of 12 sessions, twice a week, for 20 minutes per day. The protocol consisted of 10 steps. At each step, the WM+MIT group was treated using melodies. The melody was developed as an MIT that takes into account the characteristics of Korean language based on shared syntactic integration resource hypothesis (SSIRH). However, the WM ONLY group was treated without applying the melodies.Results: The results revealed first that there were no significant differences in the pre- and post- performance levels between the two groups for the tasks; both for those with interventions and those for which interventions were not used. Secondly, the differences between pre- and post-performance assessments of the tasks that have interventions were found to be statistically significant within the WM+MIT and the WM ONLY group. The results of the pre- and post- assessments of the tasks that did not have interventions were not statistically significant.Conclusion: Although the results of the pre- and post- assessments of tasks that did not have interventions were not statistically significant, the performances of both groups improved in the post-assessments in general, proving the efficacy of the intervention.

Traditional ecological knowledge (TEK) has become a focus of increasing attention by natural resource managers over the past decade, particularly in the context of the shared management authority between resource users and government agencies (co-management). Little work has been done on how TEK can be successfully integrated with science and applied in contemporary science-based resource management institutions, and the efficacy and legitimacy of co-management and associated attempts to document TEK or integrate it with science have recently been questioned. The cooperative research programme of one co-management group, the Alaska Beluga Whale Committee (ABWC), was studied to describe how TEK and science are integrated and applied in the research process, document perceptions and attitudes of native hunters and scientists towards TEK and science, and identify organizational characteristics that facilitate knowledge integration. Hunters and TEK played a variety of roles in ABWC's research programme, including hypothesis generation, sample collection and data interpretation. Hunters and scientists defined TEK similarly, but differed in their views of science, which hunters often perceived as a tool of state control. Despite political undercurrents, the ABWC displayed several indicators of successful knowledge integration. Organizational characteristics that facilitated integration included a membership structure fostering genuine power-sharing and a range of opportunities for formal and informal interactions among hunters and scientists leading to long-term relationships and an organizational culture of open communication and transparency in decision-making. Given the importance of long-term relationships between scientists and hunters for successful knowledge integration, this study raises questions about (1) the potential for meaningful integration in short-term projects such as environmental impact assessment and (2) the use of TEK documentation studies in the absence of other forms of active participation by TEK- holders.

Modifications of primitive astogenetic patterns were central to the origin of bifoliate Peronopora. Outgroup comparison with Prasopora indicates that fundamental events in the former's origin included vertical growth of basal lamina skeleton to form the median lamina and heterochronic modifications of early and later-stage astogeny. Heterochronic modifications of early astogeny included acceleration of budding rates in the ancestrular disc, disc enlargement, and reduction of the basal expansion. Later-stage heterochronic modifications included reduction of zooecial length and width of “endozonal” growth and parallel orientation of cystiphragms about maculae. Also important were “2-D” budding in longitudinal ranges and a unique mode of secondary frond formation. Paedomorphosis resulted in constraints on zoarial form, autozooecial morphology, cystiphragm patterning, and increased colonial integration. Coordination of early and later-stage astogenetic events suggests developmental integration linked to median lamina formation. Heterochronic modifications are inferred to have been products of spatial competition in early astogeny and competitive avoidance and resource exploitation in later astogeny. Restricted biogeographic distribution and characteristics of the ancestrula suggest that the larvae of bifoliate Peronopora were nonplanktotrophic.A shared derived suite of characters including the median lamina unite the bifoliate Peronopora clade. Results of cladistic analyses indicate that bifoliate Peronopora comprise a cohesive, statistically significant clade. Character analysis, phylogenetic results, and the restricted biogeographic distribution of bifoliate species support the hypothesis of a monophyletic bifoliate Peronopora clade of generic rank. The generic concept of Peronopora is revised and limited to bifoliate species.

Connections In Small Pieces Loosely Joined, David Weinberger identifies some of the obvious changes which the Web has brought to human relations. Social connections, he argues, used to be exclusively defined and constrained by the physics and physicality of the “real” world, or by geographical and material facts: it’s … true that we generally have to travel longer to get to places that are farther away; that to be heard at the back of the theater, you have to speak louder; that when a couple moves apart, their relationship changes; that if I give you something, I no longer have it. (xi) The Web, however, is a place (or many places) where the boundaries of space, time, and presence are being reworked. Further, since we built this virtual world ourselves and are constantly involved in its evolution, the Web can tell us much about who we are and how we relate to others. In Weinberger’s view, it demonstrates that “we are creatures who care about ourselves and the world we share with others”, and that “we live within a context of meaning” beyond what we had previously cared to imagine (xi-xii). Before the establishment of computer-mediated communication (CMC), we already had multiple means of connecting people commonly separated by space (Gitelman and Pingree). Yet the Web has allowed us to see each other whilst separated by great distances, to share stories, images and other media online, to co-construct or “produse” (Bruns) content and, importantly, to do so within groups, rather than merely between individuals (Weinberger 108). This optimistic evaluation of the Web and social relations is a response to some of the more cautious public voices that have accompanied recent technological developments. In the 1990s, Jan van Dijk raised concerns about what he anticipated as wide-reaching social consequences in the new “age of networks” (2). The network society, as van Dijk described it, was defined by new interconnections (chiefly via the World Wide Web), increased media convergence and narrowcasting, a spread of both social and media networks and the decline of traditional communities and forms of communication. Modern-day communities now consisted both of “organic” (physical) and “virtual” communities, with mediated communication seemingly beginning to replace, or at least supplement, face-to-face interaction (24). Recently, we have found ourselves on the verge of even more “interconnectedness” as the future seems determined by ubiquitous computing (ubicomp) and a new technological and cultural development known as the “Internet of Things” (Greenfield). Ubicomp refers to the integration of information technology into everyday objects and processes, to such an extent that the end-users are often unaware of the technology. According to Greenfield, ubicomp has significant potential to alter not only our relationship with technology, but the very fabric of our existence: A mobile phone … can be switched off or left at home. A computer … can be shut down, unplugged, walked away from. But the technology we're discussing here–ambient, ubiquitous, capable of insinuating itself into all the apertures everyday life affords it–will form our environment in a way neither of those technologies can. (6) Greenfield's ideas are neither hypothesis, nor hyperbole. Ubicomp is already a reality. Dodson notes, Ubicomp isn't just part of our ... future. Its devices and services are already here. Think of the use of prepaid smart cards for use of public transport or the tags displayed in our cars to help regulate congestion charge pricing or the way in which corporations track and move goods around the world. (7) The Internet of Things advances the ubicomp notion of objects embedded with the capacity to receive and transmit data and anticipates a move towards a society in which every device is “on” and in some way connected to the Internet; in other words, objects become networked. Information contained within and transmitted among networked objects becomes a “digital overlay” (Valhouli 2) over the physical world. Valhouli explains that objects, as well as geographical sites, become part of the Internet of Things in two ways. Information may become associated with a specific location using GPS coordinates or a street address. Alternatively, embedding sensors and transmitters into objects enables them to be addressed by Internet protocols, and to sense and react to their environments, as well as communicate with users or with other objects. (2) The Internet of Things is not a theoretical paradigm. It is a framework for describing contemporary technological processes, in which communication moves beyond the established realm of human interaction, to enable a whole range of potential communications: “person-to-device (e.g. scheduling, remote control, or status update), device-to-device, or device-to-grid” (Valhouli 2). Are these newer forms of communication in any sense meaningful? Currently, ubicomp's applications are largely functional, used in transport, security, and stock control. Yet, the possibilities afforded by the technology can be employed to enhance “connectedness” and “togetherness” in the broadest social sense. Most forms of technology have at least some social impact; this is particularly true of communication technology. How can that impact be made explicit? Here, we discuss one such potential application of ubicomp with reference to a new UK research project: TOTeM–Tales of Things and Electronic Memory. TOTeM aims to draw on personal narratives, digital media, and tagging to create an “Internet” of people, things, and object memories via Web 2.0 and mobile technologies. Communicating through Objects The TOTeM project, began in August 2009 and funded by Research Councils UK's Digital Economy Programme, is concerned with eliciting the memory and value of “old” artefacts, which are generally excluded from the discourse of the Internet of Things, which focuses on new and future objects produced with embedded sensors and transmitters. We focus instead on existing artefacts that hold significant personal resonance, not because they are particularly expensive or useful, but because they contain or “evoke” (Turkle) memories of people, places, times, events, or ideas. Objects across a mantelpiece can become conduits between events that happened in the past and people who will occupy the future (Miller 30). TOTeM will draw on user-generated content and innovative tagging technology to study the personal relationships between people and objects, and between people through objects. Our hypothesis is that the stories that are connected to particular objects can become binding ties between individuals, as they provide insights into personal histories and values that are usually not shared, not because they are somehow too personal or uninteresting, but because there is currently little systematic context for sharing them. Even in families, where objects routinely pass down through generations, the stories associated with these objects are generally either reduced to a vague anecdote or lost entirely. Beyond families, there are some objects whose stories are deemed culturally-significant: monuments, the possessions of historical figures, religious artefacts, and archaeological finds. The current value system which defines an object’s cultural significance appears to replicate Bourdieu's assessment of the hierarchies which define aesthetic concepts such as taste. In both cases, the popular, everyday, or otherwise mundane is deemed to possess less cultural capital than that which is less accessible or otherwise associated with the social elites. As a result, objects whose histories are well-known are mostly found in museums, untouchable and unused, whereas objects which are within reach, all around us, tend to travel from owner to owner without anyone considering what histories they might contain. TOTeM’s aim is to provide both a context and a mechanism for enabling individuals and community groups to share object-related stories and memories through digital media, via a custom-built platform of “tales of things”. Participants will be able to use real-life objects as conduits for memory, by producing “tales” about the object's personal significance, told through digital video, photographs, audio, or a mixture of media. These tales will be hosted on the TOTeM project's website. Through specifically-developed TOTeM technology, each object tale will generate a unique physical tag, initially in the form of RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) and QR (Quick Response) codes. TOTeM participants will be able to attach these tags/codes to their objects. When scanned with a mobile phone equipped with free TOTeM software or an RFID tag reader, each tag will access the individual object's tale online, playing the media files telling that object’s story on the mobile phone or computer. The object's user-created tale will be persistently accessible via both the Internet and 3G (third generation) mobile phones. The market share of 3G and 4G mobile networks is expanding, with some analysts predicting that they will account for 30% of the global mobile phone market by 2014 (Kawamoto). As the market for mobile phones with fast data transfer rates keeps growing, TOTeM will become accessible to an ever-growing number of mobile, as well as Internet, users. The TOTeM platform will serve two primary functions. It will become an archive for object memories and thus grow to become an “archaeology for the future”. We hope that future generations will be able to return to this repository and learn about the things that are meaningful to groups and individuals right now. The platform will also serve as an arena for contemporary communication. As the project develops, object memories will be directly accessible through tagged artefacts, as well as through browsing and keyword searches on the project website. Participants will be able to communicate via the TOTeM platform. On a practical level, the platform can bring together people who already share an interest in certain objects, times, or places (e.g. collectors, amateur historians, genealogists, as well as academics). In addition, we hope that the novelty of TOTeM’s approach to objects may encourage some of those individuals for whom non-participation in the digital world is not a question of access but one of apathy and perceived irrelevance (Ofcom 3). Tales of Things: Pilots Since the beginning of this research project, we have begun to construct the TOTeM platform and develop the associated tagging technology. While the TOTeM platform is being built, we have also used this time to conduct a pilot “tale-telling” phase, with the aim of exploring how people might choose to communicate object stories and how this might make them feel. In this initial phase, we focus on eliciting and constructing object tales, without the use of the TOTeM platform or the tagging technology, which will be tested in a future trial. Following Thomson and Holland’s autoethnographic approach, in the first instance, the TOTeM team and advisors shared their own tales with each other (some of these can be viewed on the TOTeM Website). Each of us chose an object that was personally significant to us, digitally recorded our object memories, and uploaded videos to a YouTube channel for discussion amongst the group. Team members in Edinburgh subsequently involved a group of undergraduate students in the pilot. Here, we offer some initial reflections on what we have learned from recording and sharing these early TOTeM tales. The objects the TOTeM team and advisors chose independently from each other included a birth tag, a box of slides, a tile, a block of surf wax, a sweet jar from Japan, a mobile phone, a concert ticket, a wrist band, a cricket bat, a watch, an iPhone, a piece of the Berlin Wall, an antique pocket sundial, and a daughter’s childhood toy. The sheer variety of the objects we selected as being personally significant was intriguing, as were the varying reasons for choosing the objects. Even there was some overlap in object choice, for instance between the mobile and the iPhone, the two items (one (relatively) old, one new) told conspicuously different stories. The mobile held the memory of a lost friend via an old text message; the iPhone was valued not only for its practical uses, but because it symbolised the incarnation of two childhood sci-fi fantasies: a James Bond-inspired tracking device (GPS) and the “Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy”. While the memories and stories linked to these objects were in many ways idiosyncratic, some patterns have emerged even at this early stage. Stories broadly differed in terms of whether they related to an individual’s personal experience (e.g. memorable moments or times in one’s life) or to their connection with other people. They could also relate to the memory of particular events, from football matches, concerts and festivals on a relatively local basis, to globally significant milestones, such as the fall of the Berlin Wall. In many cases, objects had been kept as tokens and reminders of particularly “colourful” and happy times. One student presented a wooden stick which he had picked up from a beach on his first parent-free “lads’ holiday”. Engraved on the stick were the names of the friends who had accompanied him on this memorable trip. Objects could also mark the beginning or end of a personal life stretch: for one student, his Dub Child vinyl record symbolised the moment he discovered and began to understand experimental music; it also constituted a reminder of the influence his brother had had on his musical taste. At other times, objects were significant because they served as mementos for people who had been “lost” in one way or another, either because they had moved to different places, or because they had gone missing or passed away. With some, there was a sense that the very nature of the object enabled the act of holding on to a memory in a particular way. The aforementioned mobile phone, though usually out of use, was actively recharged for the purposes of remembering. Similarly, an unused wind-up watch was kept going to simultaneously keep alive the memory of its former owner. It is commonly understood that the sharing of insights into one’s personal life provides one way of building and maintaining social relationships (Greene et al.). Self-disclosure, as it is known in psychological terms, carries some negative connotations, such as making oneself vulnerable to the judgement of others or giving away “too much too soon”. Often its achievement is dependent on timing and context. We were surprised by the extent to which some of us chose to disclose quite sensitive information with full knowledge of eventually making these stories public online. At the same time, as both researchers and, in a sense, as an audience, we found it a humbling experience to be allowed into people’s and objects’ meaningful pasts and presents. It is obvious that the invitation to talk about meaningful objects also results in stories about things and people we deeply care about. We have yet to see what shape the TOTeM platform will take as more people share their stories and learn about those of others. We don’t know whether it will be taken up as a fully-fledged communication platform or merely as an archive for object memories, whether people will continue to share what seem like deep insights into personal life stories, or if they choose to make more subversive (no less meaningful) contributions. Likewise, it is yet to be seen how the linking of objects with personal stories through tagging could impact people’s relationships with both the objects and the stories they contain. To us, this initial trial phase, while small in scale, has re-emphasised the potential of sharing object memories in the emerging network of symbolic meaning (Weinberger’s “context of meaning”). Seemingly everyday objects did turn out to contain stories behind them, personal stories which people were willing to share. Returning to Weinberger’s quote with which we began this article, TOTeM will enable the traces of material experiences and relationships to become persistently accessible: giving something away would no longer mean entirely not having it, as the narrative of the object’s significance would persist, and can be added to by future participants. Indeed, TOTeM would enable participants to “give away” more than just the object, while retaining access to the tale which would augment the object. Greenfield ends his discussion of the potential of ubicomp by listing multiple experiences which he does not believe would benefit from any technological augmentation: Going for a long run in the warm gentle rain, gratefully and carefully easing my body into the swelter of a hot springs, listening to the first snowfall of winter, savouring the texture of my wife’s lips … these are all things that require little or no added value by virtue of being networked, relational, correlated to my other activities. They’re already perfect, just as they stand. (258) It is a resonant set of images, and most people would be able to produce a similar list of meaningful personal experiences. Yet, as we have already suggested, technology and meaning need not be mutually exclusive. Indeed, as the discussion of TOTeM begins to illustrate, the use of new technologies in new contexts can augment the commercial applications of ubiquoutous computing with meaningful human communication. At the time of writing, the TOTeM platform is in the later stages of development. We envisage the website taking shape and its content becoming more and more meaningful over time. However, some initial object memories should be available from April 2010, and the TOTeM platform and mobile tagging applications will be fully operational in the summer of 2010. Our progress can be followed on www.youtotem.com and http://twitter.com/talesofthings. TOTeM looks forward to receiving “tales of things” from across the world. References Bourdieu, Pierre. Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste. London: Routledge, 1984.Bruns, Axel. “The Future is User-Led: The Path towards Widespread Produsage.” fibreculture 11 (2008). 20 Mar. 2010 ‹http://www.journal.fibreculture.org/issue11/issue11_bruns_print.html›. Dodson, Sean. “Forward: A Tale of Two Cities.” Rob van Kranenburg. The Internet of Things: A Critique of Ambient Technology and the All-Seeing Network of RFID. Amsterdam: Institute of Network Cultures, Network Notebooks 02, 2008. 5-9. 20 Mar. 2010 ‹http://www.networkcultures.org/_uploads/notebook2_theinternetofthings.pdf›. Gitelman, Lisa, and Geoffrey B. Pingree. Eds. New Media: 1740-1915. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2003. Greene, Kathryn, Valerian Derlega, and Alicia Mathews. “Self-Disclosure in Personal Relationships.” Ed. Anita L. Vangelisti and Daniel Perlman. Cambridge Handbook of Personal Relationships. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2006. 409-28. Greenfield, Adam. Everyware: The Dawning Age of Ubiquitous Computing. Berkeley, CA: New Riders, 2006. Kawamoto, Dawn. “Report: 3G and 4G Market Share on the Rise.” CNET News 2009. 20 Mar. 2010 ‹http://news.cnet.com/8301-1035_3-10199185-94.html›. Kwint, Marius, Christopher Breward, and Jeremy Aynsley. Material Memories: Design and Evocation. Oxford: Berg, 1999. Miller, Daniel. The Comfort of Things. Cambridge: Polity Press, 2008. Ofcom. ”Accessing the Internet at Home”. 2009. 20 Mar. 2010 ‹http://www.ofcom.org.uk/research/telecoms/reports/bbresearch/bbathome.pdf›. Thomson, Rachel, and Janet Holland. “‘Thanks for the Memory’: Memory Books as a Methodological Resource in Biographical Research.” Qualitative Research 5.2 (2005): 201-19. Turkle, Sherry. Evocative Objects: Things We Think With. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2007. Valhouli, Constantine A. The Internet of Things: Networked Objects and Smart Devices. The Hammersmith Group Research Report, 2010. 20 Mar. 2010 ‹http://thehammersmithgroup.com/images/reports/networked_objects.pdf›. Van Dijk, Jan. The Network Society: Social Aspects of New Media. London: SAGE, 1999. Weinberger, David. Small Pieces Loosely Joined: How the Web Shows Us Who We Really Are. Oxford: Perseus Press, 2002.

The interference between language and music has become a matter of study since the formulation of Patel’s hypothesis (2003), that is the Shared Syntactic Integration Resource Hypothesis (SSIRH). According to this framework, the processing of the syntax of both language and music requires the same neural resources, located in the frontal areas of the brain, whereas the representations associated to musical syntax are distinct from those associated to linguistic syntax, and involve distinct neural resources. In the last decades, both behavioral and neuroimaging works tested whether there is actually an interaction between language and music. From a purely syntactic perspective, some authors (Fedorenko et al. 2009, Slevc et al. 2009, Fiveash and Pammer, 2014, Hoch et al. 2011, Koelsch et al. 2005, Steinbeis and Koelsch, 2008a) confirmed SSIRH’s predictions, while there is no general agreement on the results of the investigation of linguistic semantic processing interacting with simultaneously presented harmonic incongruities (see Besson et al. 1998, Bonnel et al. 2001, Poulin-Charronat et al. 2005). Until now, as far as we know, the relationship between pragmatic knowledge in language and musical grammar has not been tested, yet. In this thesis, I take up the following questions: Does implicit musical processing interfere with the computation of scalar implicatures? Is there any difference between musicians and non-musicians regarding the music/pragmatics potential interference? In providing an answer to my research questions, I will also test Relevance Theory predictions on the computation of scalar implicatures (implicatures are expected to be cognitively costly) by evaluating and assessing many previous studies in the field of experimental pragmatics. Study 1 is a statement evaluation task whose accuracy results show a worse performance of both groups (musicians and non-musicians) while processing scalar implicatures in the presence of music. Particularly, in RTs analysis, I found that non-musicians are slower compared to musicians when computing infelicitous sentences. My study generally confirms that pragmatically infelicitous sentences are more difficult to be computed than pragmatically felicitous sentences, according to the predictions made by Relevance Theory. As for the interaction between language and music a significant interaction of music in the infelicitous context has been found. However, I deepen the analysis by adding more musical conditions in the following study. Study 2, a sentence picture verification task, implements Study 1 because it tests the music/pragmatics interaction with respect to more musical conditions (no music condition, music in tune condition, out-of-key chord condition and loudness manipulation condition). Relevance Theory’s predictions, according to which pragmatically infelicitous sentences are more difficult to process than pragmatically felicitous sentences, are further confirmed. Moreover, though an interference between language and music has clearly emerged, the interference emerging in my study manifested itself independently of the nature of the relevant musical condition, and more specifically, independently of whether the interfering music was in tune or with a dissonant target chord, differently from what emerged from a variety of studies testing the interference with strictly syntactic processing. In these studies, manipulating the musical condition, i.e. making musical processing more difficult by means of a dissonant target chord, has the effect of subtracting resources to syntactic processing of linguistic stimuli. Thus, it is possible to claim that as far as scalar implicature computations are involved, language interferes with music only at a general cognitive level (i.e. at the level of the general cognitive burden presupposed by some complex dual task) and not because musical syntax and scalar implicature processing consume the very same neural resources in the brain. As for the differences between musicians and non-musicians, in Study 2 no differences have been found concerning the performance of the two groups with respect to the different musical conditions. Interestingly, however, non-musicians had a worse performance than musicians while processing the infelicitous sentences. Overall, the results show that the computation of scalar implicatures is more difficult in the pragmatically infelicitous context than in the pragmatically felicitous context, as predicted by the Relevance Theory approach. Moreover, music interferes with pragmatic processing of linguistic stimuli. This happens only at a general cognitive level, in accordance with the relative complexity of a dual task involving both linguistic and musical stimuli, while the data do not support the hypothesis that the musical and the pragmatic computation revolve around the same network of neural resources in the brain. This can be straightforwardly interpreted as an important class of evidence for the SSIRH. Regarding the differences between musicians and non-musicians, I found that non-musicians have a worse performance both in terms of RT (Study 1) and of accuracy (Study 2), in the pragmatically infelicitous condition, with respect to musicians. This can be due to an experimental artefact but it might also be related to the cognitive benefits of musical training on the execution of the complex set of computations required by processing infelicitous sentences containing scalar terms.

Since last decade, advances in the Information and Communication Technology (ICT) are increasingly enabling the voluntary sharing of user generated contents. Among different emerging digital resources, georeferenced multimedia data publicly shared through social media platforms, or Social Media Geographic Information is starting to stand out in quantity and value as data resource. In spatial planning, where the majority of information required to support analysis, design, and decision-making is inherently spatial in nature, SMGI may foster notable innovations in methodologies and practices, allowing the integration of both experiential and professional knowledge on places, events and ambient. However, this hypothesis should be carefully tested. With the above premises, this chapter more specifically concerns the concept of Social Media Geographic Information, arguing that it may represent an unprecedented resource for expressing pluralism in such domains as spatial planning where it may convey the community collective preferences contributing to enrich knowledge for decision-making.

Since last decade, advances in the Information and Communication Technology (ICT) are increasingly enabling the voluntary sharing of user generated contents. Among different emerging digital resources, georeferenced multimedia data publicly shared through social media platforms, or Social Media Geographic Information is starting to stand out in quantity and value as data resource. In spatial planning, where the majority of information required to support analysis, design, and decision-making is inherently spatial in nature, SMGI may foster notable innovations in methodologies and practices, allowing the integration of both experiential and professional knowledge on places, events and ambient. However, this hypothesis should be carefully tested. With the above premises, this chapter more specifically concerns the concept of Social Media Geographic Information, arguing that it may represent an unprecedented resource for expressing pluralism in such domains as spatial planning where it may convey the community collective preferences contributing to enrich knowledge for decision-making.

Since last decade, advances in the Information and Communication Technology (ICT) are increasingly enabling the voluntary sharing of user generated contents. Among different emerging digital resources, georeferenced multimedia data publicly shared through social media platforms, or Social Media Geographic Information is starting to stand out in quantity and value as data resource. In spatial planning, where the majority of information required to support analysis, design, and decision-making is inherently spatial in nature, SMGI may foster notable innovations in methodologies and practices, allowing the integration of both experiential and professional knowledge on places, events and ambient. However, this hypothesis should be carefully tested. With the above premises, this chapter more specifically concerns the concept of Social Media Geographic Information, arguing that it may represent an unprecedented resource for expressing pluralism in such domains as spatial planning where it may convey the community collective preferences contributing to enrich knowledge for decision-making.