In Search of On-Line Locality Effects in Sentence Comprehension

Autor/inn/en	Bartek, Brian; Lewis, Richard L.; Vasishth, Shravan; Smith, Mason R.
Titel	In Search of On-Line Locality Effects in Sentence Comprehension
Quelle	In: Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 37 (2011) 5, S.1178-1198 (21 Seiten) PDF als Volltext Verfügbarkeit
Sprache	englisch
Dokumenttyp	gedruckt; online; Zeitschriftenaufsatz
ISSN	0278-7393
DOI	10.1037/a0024194
Schlagwörter	Evidence; Sentences; Verbs; Eye Movements; Nouns; Short Term Memory; Human Body; Language Processing; Theories; Electronic Learning; Experiments; Reading Comprehension; Cues; Evaluation Methods + Suchen Sie Ihr Suchwort? Evidenz; Sentence analysis; Satzanalyse; Augenbewegung; Kurzzeitgedächtnis; Menschlicher Körper; Sprachverarbeitung; Theory; Theorie; Erprobung; Leseverstehen; Stichwort
Abstract	Many comprehension theories assert that increasing the distance between elements participating in a linguistic relation (e.g., a verb and a noun phrase argument) increases the difficulty of establishing that relation during on-line comprehension. Such "locality effects" are expected to increase reading times and are thought to reveal properties and limitations of the short-term memory system that supports comprehension. Despite their theoretical importance and putative ubiquity, however, evidence for on-line locality effects is quite narrow linguistically and methodologically: It is restricted almost exclusively to self-paced reading of complex structures involving a particular class of syntactic relation. We present 4 experiments (2 self-paced reading and 2 eyetracking experiments) that demonstrate locality effects in the course of establishing subject-verb dependencies; locality effects are seen even in materials that can be read quickly and easily. These locality effects are observable in the earliest possible eye-movement measures and are of much shorter duration than previously reported effects. To account for the observed empirical patterns, we outline a processing model of the "adaptive control" of button pressing and eye movements. This model makes progress toward the goal of eliminating linking assumptions between memory constructs and empirical measures in favor of explicit theories of the coordinated control of motor responses and parsing. (Contains 7 figures, 7 tables and 12 footnotes.) (As Provided).
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Erfasst von	ERIC (Education Resources Information Center), Washington, DC
Update	2017/4/10