Sentence comprehension

Question 1

What are the levels of syntactic structure?

Answer 1

Grammar categories e.g. determiner, noun, verb

Rules e.g. noun-phrase and verb-phrase –> sentence

Question 2

What is “syntax”?

Answer 2

The rules governing permissible word ordering (which we have an implicit understanding of)
Word meaning is not involved at this stage of processing

Question 3

Why is syntax crucial to understanding meaning?

Answer 3

It encodes the information of who did what

Surface syntactic structures can differ while a deep syntactic structure coveys the same meaning

Question 4

What is parsing and what are the 3 possibilities for how readers do this?

Answer 4

The process of computing syntactic structure:

1) Readers don’t compute syntactic structure
2) Readers wait until the end of the sentence before assigning syntactic structure (reliant on memory, wasteful of resources)
3) Make decisions about structure on word-by-word basis

Question 5

What is the “stops making sense” task for analysis of parsing?

Answer 5

Sentence such as “the man stood by the window…” –> this is ambiguous as to whether it is describing the man or his action
We make an incremental decision here
When the word “waved” is added we go back to the ambiguous part of the sentence and fix the interpretative mistake
Suggests that we are making decisions on word by word basis

Question 6

What is meant by the Garden Path Effect?

Answer 6

Sentences are very frequently structurally ambiguous and lead to reading difficulty - when a word seems incongruent with current syntactic structure
We are “led down the garden path” in analysis of the ambiguity and have to backtrack to fix the error when we obtain more information

Question 7

How does “the horse raced past the stables” illustrates the garden path effect?

Answer 7

The word “stumbled” is added
There is ambiguity between that main clause and this relative clause which provides modifying information specifying which horse is under consideration
We have a preference for main clause analysis which is what leads to processing difficulty (structurally simpler and more frequently encountered)

Question 8

What other preferences do we show which lead to processing ambiguities?

Answer 8

Preferences for adjective nouns e.g. “the old man” as opposed to noun verb analyses
Preferences for verb argument analyses e.g. “jogs a mile”

Question 9

How do we process the sentence “the boy ate the broccoli naked”?

Answer 9

In this scenario, upon reaching the end of the sentence, we have to backtrack and use contextual knowledge to resolve the ambiguity

Question 10

How can parsing and the Garden Path effect be investigated?

Answer 10

By comparing reading times for portions of ambiguous sentences and portions of unambiguous counterparts e.g. compare “the man stood by the window waved” and “the man who stood by the window waved”
This is a GRAMMATICALITY DECISION TASK - the sentence is viewed one word/phrase at a time and the participant judges grammatical acceptability and point at which the sentence stops making sense

Question 11

What is a potential issue with grammaticality decision tasks?

Answer 11

Don’t reflect naturalistic behaviour - when we read we don’t normally make explicit grammatical decisions, we don’t normally read in chunks of words/phrases at a time, and we don’t have to read with the aim of decision making through button pressing

Question 12

Why is self-paced reading a slightly better technique than decision tasks?

Answer 12

Sentences are still viewed one word at a time but the participant themselves indicates transition to next word and is not asked to indicate when the sentence stops making sense
Instead inferences are made based on how long it takes to indicate need for next word, no explicit decision making involved

Question 13

Why are self-paced reading tasks criticised?

Answer 13

Self-paced judgements slow reading rate and the presentation of text is still not naturalistic

Question 14

What is done in eye-tracking experiments?

Answer 14

Eye movement are recorded as participants read sentences
Length of fixations reflect difficult processing words, and this differs between ambiguities
May also see regressions (back tracking) when fixing interpretation errors

Question 15

What are 2 advantages of the eye tracking technique?

Answer 15

Allows experimenter to examine real-time processes in reading without including a secondary task e.g. button pressing
Participant doesn’t have to be aware of exact experimental purpose –> more naturalistic behaviour

Question 16

How can we supplement eye tracking using EEGs?

Answer 16

Eye movements activate the brain

Wave forms will differ in key areas for ambiguous and non-ambiguous sentences

Question 17

What is Frazier and Rayner’s GARDEN PATH THEORY?

Answer 17

Suggests initial parsing decisions depend on two things:
1) Syntactic knowledge (implicit in brain)
2) Two parsing principles (heuristics, rules of thumb)
Suggests that semantics and context don’t influence initial parsing decisions - far more simple system, rapid (context is an unnecessary complication)

Question 18

What are the 2 parsing principles in the garden path theory?

Answer 18

Minimal attachment - We construct the simplest possible syntactic structure (i.e. looking to create smallest syntactic tree)
Late closure - Incorporate new text as part of the current phrase i.e. don’t close structure until have to, keep looking for the argument for the verb –> this is what will lead to the garden path effect where we have to backtrack

Question 19

What evidence supports the Garden Path theory?

Answer 19

Readers often have more difficulty with ambiguous garden path sentences than unambiguous ones

Question 20

What is meant by Referential Theory?

Answer 20

Factors such as context and semantics also have an influence on parsing

Question 21

What does the constrained satisfaction account suggest?

Answer 21

All the different sources of information are used rapidly and simultaneously in parallel
The system converges on a solution using this information
However, this theory is hideously complicated and difficult to test