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Abstract:
We describe a novel experimental technique, the sentence
congruency(SC) task. This task offers advantages over other
measures of sentence comprehension, such as plausibility judgment.
It allows the use of semantically reversible sentences, the study
of syntactic priming, and does not require the use of unnatural
ungrammatical sentences. In the SC task, subjects view two short
sentences and then decide whether the meaning of a third sentence
is congruent with the previous sentences. Using a self-paced moving
window paradigm, as well as rapid serial visual presentation(RSVP),
we compared semantically reversible and irreversible sentences with
center embedded and right-branching relative clauses. Confirming
earlier studies, subjects responded more slowly and less accurately
to center-embedded sentences. Reversible sentences took longer to
process, which may indicate the increased difficulty of assigning
each object a thematic role. Further studies are underway to test
this hypothesis. In the RSVP task, accuracy in judging the
incongruent irreversible center-embedded sentences was at chance.
This result was surprising since the presentation rate was much
slower than the speed previously reported to produce accuracy
decrements in normals (Miyake, Carpenter, & Just, 1994). A
closer examination of individual subjects showed that some perform
below chance on congruency judgments about center-embedded
implausible sentences. This may be an indication of the
unnaturalness of using such sentences, which are required in the
plausibility task, but not in the SC task.
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