Evidence for Self-Organized Sentence Processing: Digging-In Effects.
- 1 January 2004
- journal article
- Published by American Psychological Association (APA) in Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition
- Vol. 30 (2), 431-450
- https://doi.org/10.1037/0278-7393.30.2.431
Abstract
Dynamical, self-organizing models of sentence processing predict "digging-in" effects: The more committed the parser becomes to a wrong syntactic choice, the harder it is to reanalyze. Experiment 1 replicates previous grammaticality judgment studies (F. Ferreira & J. M. Henderson, 1991b, 1993), revealing a deleterious effect of lengthening the ambiguous region of a garden-path sentence. The authors interpret this result as a digging-in effect. Experiment 2 finds a corresponding effect on reading times. Experiment 3 finds that making 2 wrong attachments is worse than making 1. Non-self-organizing models require multiple stipulations to predict both kinds of effects. The authors show that, under an appropriately formulated self-organizing account, both results stem from self-reinforcement of node and link activations, a feature that is needed independently. An implemented model is given.This publication has 35 references indexed in Scilit:
- Disfluencies affect the parsing of garden-path sentencesJournal of Memory and Language, 2003
- Modeling the Influence of Thematic Fit (and Other Constraints) in On-line Sentence ComprehensionJournal of Memory and Language, 1998
- Lexical Structure and Parsing ComplexityLanguage and Cognitive Processes, 1997
- Monotonic Syntactic Processing: A Cross-linguistic Study of Attachment and ReanalysisLanguage and Cognitive Processes, 1996
- Ca2+INFLUX INDUCED BY PHOTODYNAMIC ACTION IN HUMAN CEREBRAL GLIOMA (U-87 MG) CELLS: POSSIBLE INVOLVEMENT OF A CALCIUM CHANNELPhotochemistry and Photobiology, 1994
- The lexical nature of syntactic ambiguity resolution.Psychological Review, 1994
- PsyScope: An interactive graphic system for designing and controlling experiments in the psychology laboratory using Macintosh computersBehavior Research Methods, Instruments & Computers, 1993
- Reading processes during syntactic analysis and reanalysis.Canadian Journal of Experimental Psychology / Revue canadienne de psychologie expérimentale, 1993
- Parameters in the theory of sentence processing: Minimal Commitment theory goes eastJournal of Psycholinguistic Research, 1993
- Context and distance-to-disambiguation effects in ambiguity resolution: Evidence from grammaticality judgments of garden path sentencesJournal of Memory and Language, 1987