Convergent probabilistic cues do not trigger syntactic adaptation in relative clause garden-path constructions

Previous work has ostensibly shown that readers rapidly adapt to a priori less predicted structures after exposure to unbalanced statistical input (e.g., a high number of reduced relative-clause garden path sentences) and that these readers grow to disfavor the a priori more frequent structure after exposure (Fine, Jaeger, Qian, & Farmer, 2013). However, recent work has failed to replicate effects indicating a penalty for the preferred, more frequent continuation, despite finding a speedup in syntactic repair times after initial exposure to the dispreferred, infrequent structure (Harrington-Stack, James, & Watson, 2018). The current study reports three self-paced reading experiments that tested whether co-occurring cues (explicit comprehension questions, preceding semantic cues, and font color) can help facilitate adaptation to reduced relative/main verb garden path sentences. Results suggest that readers do not overcome pre-existing predictive biases by rapidly adapting to statistically novel linguistic contexts. An emphasis is placed on the difference between task-specific syntactic satiation effects and actual expectation adaptation, the latter of which we argue can only be determined through a penalty for an a priori predicted structure after exposure to its counterpart in the case of garden path constructions.

Name thesis:degree_name

M.S.

Level thesis:degree_level

Thesis

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Educational Psychology

Grantor

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Year dc:date

2019

Author dc:creator

• Dempsey, Jack

Contributors dc:contributor

• Christianson, Kiel

• syntactic adaptation
• syntactic satiation
• probabilistic cues
• syntactic parsing
• sentence processing

Statement dc:rights

• Copyright 2019 Jack Dempsey

Language dc:language

en

Handle dc:identifier

http://hdl.handle.net/2142/105595

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:www.ideals.illinois.edu:2142/105595