TY - JOUR
T1 - Convergent probabilistic cues do not trigger syntactic adaptation
T2 - Evidence from self-paced reading
AU - Dempsey, Jack
AU - Liu, Qiawen
AU - Christianson, Kiel
N1 - Funding Information:
The authors thank Carolyn Anderson for statistical consultation and Alex Fine for sharing his original data and code. This work was funded by a grant from the National Science Foundation (BCS-1628347; Kiel Chris-tianson) and a Campus Research Board Grant from the University of Illinois (Kiel Christianson, Jack Dempsey) and supported by the Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology, University of Illinois.
PY - 2020/10
Y1 - 2020/10
N2 - Previous work has ostensibly shown that readers rapidly adapt to less predictable ambiguity resolutions after repeated 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 (e.g. main verb) resolution after exposure (Fine, Jaeger, Farmer, & Qian, 2013). However, recent work has failed to replicate effects indicating a penalty for the a priori 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 test whether co-occurring cues (explicit comprehension questions, preceding semantic cues, and font color) help facilitate adaptation to reduced relative/main verb garden-path sentences. Results suggest that readers do not overcome preexisting expectation biases by rapidly adapting to statistically novel linguistic contexts even with convergent probabilistic cues. An emphasis is placed on the difference between syntactic satiation effects and expectation adaptation, the latter of which we argue can only be determined through a penalty for an a priori preferred resolution after repeated exposure to its a priori less-preferred counterpart.
AB - Previous work has ostensibly shown that readers rapidly adapt to less predictable ambiguity resolutions after repeated 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 (e.g. main verb) resolution after exposure (Fine, Jaeger, Farmer, & Qian, 2013). However, recent work has failed to replicate effects indicating a penalty for the a priori 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 test whether co-occurring cues (explicit comprehension questions, preceding semantic cues, and font color) help facilitate adaptation to reduced relative/main verb garden-path sentences. Results suggest that readers do not overcome preexisting expectation biases by rapidly adapting to statistically novel linguistic contexts even with convergent probabilistic cues. An emphasis is placed on the difference between syntactic satiation effects and expectation adaptation, the latter of which we argue can only be determined through a penalty for an a priori preferred resolution after repeated exposure to its a priori less-preferred counterpart.
KW - Probabilistic cues
KW - Satiation
KW - Sentence processing
KW - Syntactic adaptation
KW - Syntactic parsing
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U2 - 10.1037/xlm0000881
DO - 10.1037/xlm0000881
M3 - Article
C2 - 32551745
AN - SCOPUS:85086864389
VL - 46
SP - 1906
EP - 1921
JO - Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning Memory and Cognition
JF - Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning Memory and Cognition
SN - 0278-7393
IS - 10
ER -