An eye-tracking investigation into the role of contextual biases in the resolution of attachment ambiguities

Previous work in sentence processing has largely ignored influences from discourse-level information. Of the few exceptions to this trend, evidence is scarce as to how, when, and to what extent such information affects parsing decisions in real-time. The current dissertation seeks to fill this gap in the literature by first attempting to replicate an experiment ostensibly showing strongly dynamic and predictive influences on parsing behaviors, and then investigating the time course of any such influences during the reading of temporarily ambiguous attachment structures following discourses with biases for or against their eventual attachment. Experiment 1 revealed a failure to replicate the original finding, suggesting discourse-level information is not readily available for initial processing of unambiguous structures. Eye-tracking data from Experiment 2 revealed a pattern consistent with an account where readers first perform an algorithmic parse devoid of discourse-level biases and then check the resultant representation against the current discourse-model. Individual differences may also affect the extent to this later, integrative influence. Findings are considered in relation to major theories of sentence and discourse processing.

Name thesis:degree_name

Ph.D.

Level thesis:degree_level

Dissertation

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Educational Psychology

Grantor

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Year dc:date

2022

Author dc:creator

• Dempsey, Jack

Contributors dc:contributor

• Christianson, Kiel
• Federmeier, Kara
• Montag, Jessica
• Xia, Yan

• discourse processing
• sentence processing
• reading

Statement dc:rights

• Copyright 2022 Jack Dempsey

Language dc:language

en, eng

Handle dc:identifier

https://hdl.handle.net/2142/115360

OAI record oai:identifier

https://www.ideals.illinois.edu/oai-pmh?verb=GetRecord&metadataPrefix=etdms&identifier=oai%3Awww.ideals.illinois.edu%3A2142%2F115360