Chinese is a logographic writing system that drastically differs from alphabetic scripts in many important aspects. Thus, the nature of parafoveal processing in reading Chinese may be different from that in reading alphabetic languages. Here, four eye-tracking experiments using the boundary display change paradigm (Rayner, 1975) were conducted to explore the role of high level information, like semantic and plausibility information, in the parafovea for Chinese readers. Experiments 1 and 2 used two-character words that can have the order of their component characters reversed, and still be lexical units as target words. Readers received a parafoveal preview of a target word that was either (1) identical to the target word, (2) a reversed word that was the target word with the order of its characters reversed, or (3) a control word. The results indicated that fixation durations on the target words were comparable in the identical and the reverse preview condition when the reversed preview word was plausible; however, fixation durations were longer in the reverse than the identical preview condition when the reverse preview word was implausible. This plausibility preview effect was independent of whether the reverse preview word shared the meaning with the target word or not. Moreover, a plausible reverse preview word provided more facilitation to the processing of the target word than a plausible control preview word, since the former one had orthographic overlap with the target word. Experiment 3 tested whether plausible preview words would yield a semantic preview benefit. That is, the question was whether a semantically related & plausible preview word would provide more benefit than a semantically unrelated & plausible preview word to the processing of the target word. However, such semantic preview effect was only marginally significant by participants. In addition, a plausibility preview effect was revealed in Experiment 3. Furthermore, Experiment 4 found that contextual information could affect word recognition in the parafovea: Chinese readers were more likely to encode a plausible preview word than an implausible preview word. Collectively, these experiments indicated that the plausibility of a preview word has an important role in reading Chinese.

In this dissertation, I reconcile our knowledge of our own minds with philosophical naturalism. Philosophers traditionally hold that our knowledge of our own minds is especially direct and authoritative in comparison with other domains of knowledge. I introduce the subject in the first chapter. In the second and third chapters, I address the idea that we know our own minds directly. If self-knowledge is direct, it must not be grounded on anything more epistemically basic. This creates a puzzle for all epistemologists. For the naturalist, the puzzle is especially tricky. To say that self-knowledge has no epistemic ground threatens the naturalist’s ability to understand it as psychologically real. I argue that the idea that self-knowledge is direct is not well motivated and that models of direct self-knowledge have fundamental problems. In the fourth and fifth chapters, I examine first-person authority. I distinguish between epistemic authority, or being in a better position than others to know, and nonepistemic authority, or being immune to challenge according to some conventional norm. I argue that we have only limited epistemic authority over our own minds. I then consider whether there may be an interesting non-epistemic authority attached to the first-person perspective. This would locate first-person authority in connection with our responsibility for our own minds. I argue that this sort of authority may exist, but is unlikely to threaten naturalism without further anti-naturalist commitments in the philosophy of mind. In the final two chapters, I explore the possibility that the underlying disagreements between naturalists and anti-naturalists are about the nature of belief. I consider what failures of self-knowledge might demonstrate about the nature of belief. I show how, with the proper understanding of belief, a theory of self-knowledge can assuage some of these worries. Having adopted a conception of belief that makes sense for philosophy and empirical psychology, I outline a positive theory of self-knowledge and suggest directions for future research.

Temporally selective attention allows for the preferential processing of stimuli presented at particular times, and is reasoned to be important for processing rapidly presented information such as speech. Recent event-related potential (ERP) evidence demonstrates that listeners direct temporally selective attention to times that contain word onsets in speech. This may be an effective listening strategy since these moments provide critical information to the listener, but the mechanism that underlies this process remains unexplored. In three experiments, putative attention cues including word recognition and predictability were manipulated in both artificial and natural speech and ERP responses at various times were compared to determine how listeners selectively process word onsets in speech. The results demonstrate that listeners allocate attention to word-initial segments because they are less predictable than other times in the speech stream. Attending to unpredictable moments may improve spoken language comprehension by allowing listeners to glean the most relevant information from an otherwise overwhelming speech signal.

This dissertation investigates how knowledge of phonological generalizations influences speech perception, with a particular focus on evidence that phonological processing is autonomous from (rather than interactive with) auditory processing. A model is proposed in which auditory cue constraints and markedness constraints interact to determine a surface representation, which is taken to be isomorphic to the listener's perceptual response under some psychophysical conditions. Constraint ranking is argued to be stochastic in this model on the basis that the probability of computing the least marked surface representation (and perceptual response) is greater when the input auditory representation is ambiguous between two alternative categories than when it strongly favors a category that completes a more marked surface representation (and perceptual response). Experimental evidence is presented to demonstrate that (1) native listeners of languages with assimilation processes confuse unassimilated and assimilated sequences when discrimination is category-based (but not when discrimination is based on auditory representations), (2) German listeners use phonological context to anticipate the presence of a following allophone iff it is the allophone with broader distribution, and (3) that non-rhotic English listeners perceptually epenthesize and delete /r/ and they also may perceptually undo /r/ deletion. (1) suggests that knowledge of a phonological generalization may be applied only after auditory processing, which is a result consistent with the predictions of 'autonomous theory' and inconsistent with the predictions of 'interactive theory'. (2) and (3) show that phonological effects in speech perception go beyond biases against illicit sequences and lead to the novel proposals that positive constraints (2) and opposite faithfulness constraints (3) exist in the perceptual grammar.

In this dissertation, two exemplar-based models of categorization, the General Context Model (GCM) and the Exemplar Based Random Walk model (EBRW), were used to describe between-group categorization differences in artificial and natural language categories. Prior research has shown that political Conservatives in avoidance mode are more exclusive categorizers of natural language category members than Conservatives in approach mode, but this effect was absent for Liberals (Rock & Janoff-Bulman, 2010). In Experiment 1, experimenter-generated stimuli were used to show that the EBRW could account for between-group differences in categorization decisions. In Experiment 2, the data collected by Rock and Janoff-Bulman were used to develop techniques allowing the GCM to account for between-group differences in natural language categorization decisions. Experiment 3 extends these methods to allow the EBRW to account for between-group differences in natural language categorization decisions. Across these experiments, the models identify between-group differences in determining similarity, bias to give an "in-the-category" decision, and the amount of information required to make a categorization decision. Techniques for modeling natural language categorization decisions are discussed.

This dissertation examines comparative constructions, both in terms of their representation in syntax and semantics and in terms of the way these representations are built and interpreted incrementally during sentence processing. While there has been extensive investigation of comparatives in the syntax and semantics literature (see Bresnan, 1973; von Stechow, 1984; Heim, 1985; Kennedy, 1999, among others), there has been little work on how comparatives are processed (although see Fults and Phillips, 2004; Wellwood et al., 2009 for work on so-called comparative illusions). In the first half of the dissertation, I address issues that are primarily syntactic in nature; in the second half, I address issues that are primarily at the semantic and pragmatic levels. In Chapter 2, I examine the basic syntax of English comparatives and readers' expectations for the structure of comparatives during parsing. I present evidence from eye movements during reading to argue that a curious pattern of acceptability in comparatives (observed by Osborne, 2009) arises from processing factors rather than the grammar. Chapter 3 provides evidence from self-paced reading that, in contrast to what has been shown for other more widely studied structures, in comparative clauses subject gaps are more difficult to process than object gaps. Some potential accounts for this asymmetry between comparatives and other structures are discussed, and in Chapter 4, I argue for a grammar-based account of the subject gap penalty. Chapters 5 and 6 investigate questions in the semantics/pragmatics and semantic processing of comparatives. In Chapter 5, I introduce a previously unstudied type of comparative, which I call subset comparatives, and investigate their appropriate formal representation. In addition to their theoretical interest, subset comparatives can provide insight into comprehenders' expectations regarding the relationship between the two sets of entities involved in comparatives. Evidence from eye movement studies suggests that readers have an initial preference for contrast, or disjointness, between sets in comparatives. Chapter 6 investigates issues in the comparison of pluralities during on-line sentence processing, again as studied through eye movements during reading. This chapter provides evidence that, when comparing sets, comparisons that involve degrees along an adjectival scale involve complexity beyond that involved in comparing sets in terms of their cardinalities. The results of my experimental studies on comparatives are related to broader issues in linguistics and psycholinguistics, such as the sources of well-formedness (or ill-formedness) in language, the representation of linguistically described sets in language processing, and the interaction between levels of information (syntactic, semantic, and conceptual/world knowledge) in comprehension.

In this dissertation, I examine the nature and structure of consciousness. Conscious experience is often said to be phenomenally unified, and subjects of consciousness are often self-conscious. I ask whether these features necessarily accompanyconscious experience. Is it necessarily the case, for instance, that all of a conscious subject's experiences at a time are phenomenally unified? And is it necessarily the case that subjects of consciousness are self-conscious whenever they are conscious? I argue that the answer to the former is affirmative and the latter negative. In the first chapter, I set the stage by distinguishing phenomenal unity from other species of conscious unity. A pair of conscious states is phenomenally unified if they are experienced together as part of a single experience that encompasses them both. The Unity Thesis is formulated using the notion of a maximal state of consciousness. In the second chapter, I attempt to precisify this notion in a way that does not pre-emptively decide the debate over the Unity Thesis. In informal terms, a maximal state of consciousness is a sum of conscious states that are i) simultaneous, ii) have the same subject, and iii) all have a conjoint phenomenology. I call this the Consensus View. In chapter three, I consider a recent attempt by Bayne to account for the split-brain data in a way that does not attribute two streams of consciousness to them. I close the chapter by presenting the rough outline of an interpretation of the split-brain data that is consistent with both the Unity Thesis and the split-brain data. In chapter four, I turn from defending the Unity Thesis to examining an attempt to account for conscious unity. Rosenthal has offered a theory of conscious unity as an extension of his higher-order theory of consciousness. I consider his account of conscious unity in light of a well-known objection to his theory: the (Representational) Mismatch Objection. In chapter five, the discussion turns from the unity of consciousness to self-consciousness. The question that is considered in this and the last chapter is the question whether conscious experience is necessarily accompanied by self-consciousness. The affirmative answer to this question I call the Ubiquity Thesis. I spend some time distinguishing robust conceptions of self-consciousness from minimal conceptions of self-consciousness. In the sixth and final chapter, I take up a contemporary defence of the Ubiquity Thesis. Kriegel, a higher-order theorist like Rosenthal, has argued that every conscious state is conscious in virtue of the fact that it represents itself. This self-representation is understood as a kind of self-consciousness and, thus, his theory can be seen as affirming the Ubiquity Thesis. (Abstract shortened by UMI.)

Dynamic Attending Theory predicts that attention is allocated hierarchically across time during processing of hierarchically structured rhythms. Event-related potential (ERP) research demonstrates that attention to a moment in time modulates early auditory processing as evidenced by the amplitude of the first negative peak (N1) approximately 100 ms after sound onset. Four experiments were designed to test the hypothesis that hierarchically structured rhythms result in a hierarchical allocation of attention across time by comparing behavioral responses and N1 amplitudes for sounds presented at times of varying hierarchical strength. Specifically, ERPs elicited by tones presented at times of high and low strength were compared in short melodies (Experiment 2) of salient metric structure (Experiment 1), and in subjective metric hierarchies (Experiments 3 and 4). Experiment 4 also added a level of medium strength in a subjective metric hierarchy. A more negative N1 was observed for metrically strong beats compared to metrically weak beats under nearly all conditions in Experiments 2, 3 and 4, providing strong evidence that attention is allocated preferentially to hierarchically strong times and supporting the central hypothesis. This effect was evident for both stimulus-inherent and listener-imposed metric structure, suggesting it represents ongoing direction of attention to metrically strong times rather than establishment of a metric percept. A patterned distribution of N1 amplitude was evident among metrically weaker times, demonstrating that attention is not allocated to the strongest times in an all-or-none manner. However, this pattern was not fully hierarchical, suggesting that hierarchical rhythmic structure does not modulate early auditory processing in a one-to-one manner. Additionally, a late negativity and late positivity were associated with metric strength under some conditions, indicating that multiple cognitive processes are associated with metric perception. Interestingly, the primary finding of a more negative N1 for sounds presented at hierarchically strong times in musical and pseudomusical stimuli was not modulated by musical expertise, suggesting that it indexes the use of a more general cognitive process that may also be employed to efficiently process other complex auditory streams including speech.

Information integration theory (IIT) is a cognitive psychology theory that is primarily concerned with understanding rater judgments and deriving quantitative values from rater expertise. Since standard setting is a process by which subject matter experts are asked to make expert judgment about test content, it is an ideal context for the application of information integration theory. Information integration theory (IIT) was proposed by Norman H. Anderson, a cognitive psychologist. It is a cognitive theory that is primarily concerned with how an individual integrates information from two or more stimuli to derive a quantitative value. The theory focuses on evaluating the unobservable psychological processes involved in making complex judgments. IIT is developed around four interlocking psychological concepts: stimulus integration, stimulus valuation, cognitive algebra, and functional measurement (Anderson, 1981). The current study evaluates how IIT performs in an actual operational standard workshop across three different exams: HP storage solutions, Excelsior College nursing exam and the Trends for International Math and Science (TIMSS) exam. Each exam has cut scores set using both the modified Angoff method and the IIT method. Cut scores are evaluated based on Kane's (2001) framework for evaluating the validity of a cut score by evaluating procedural, internal and external sources of validity evidence. The procedural validity for both methods was relatively comparable. Both methods took approximately about the same amount of time to complete. Raters for both methods felt comfortable with the rating systems and expressed confidence in their ratings. Internal validity evidence was evaluated through the calculation of reliability coefficients. The inter-rater reliabilities for both methods were similar. However, the IIT method provided data to calculate intra-rater reliability as well. Finally, external validity evidence was collected on the TIMSS exam by comparing cut score classifications based on the Angoff and IIT methods to other performance criteria such as teacher expectations of the student. In each case, the IIT method was either equal or outperformed the Angoff method. Overall, the current study emphasizes the potential benefits IIT could produce by incorporating the theory into standard setting practice. It provided industry standard procedural, internal and external validity data as well provided additional information to evaluate raters. The study concludes that IIT should be investigated in future research as a potential improvement to current standard setting methods.

Speakers frequently make subject-verb number agreement errors in the presence of a number-mismatching local noun (e.g., *The key to the rusty old cabinets are on the table). A series of two-choice response time (RT) experiments was used to test an account of these errors according to which a number attractor generally makes the speaker's representation of subject number less definitive, with errors arising probabilistically from a competitive decision process. As predicted by this account, the presence of a number attractor reliably slowed responding when the correct response was issued. Analysis of RT distributions showed that this slowing was not due to pronounced difficulty on a minority of trials, but instead was manifested on most trials. Error responses were not slowed compared to correct responses, suggesting that errors and correct responses emerged from a single decision process. The data patterns were modeled using the Ratcliff diffusion model (Ratcliff, 1978), which explicitly assumes that variability in response output is due to random trial-to-trial variability in a range of decision parameters. Exceptions to these data patterns were observed in the case of non-intervening attraction, suggesting that this phenomenon may have a distinct cause. The results are taken to argue against standard accounts of number attraction, according to which errors occur in specific instances in which the speaker's representation of subject number is defective.