Prior research has shown that various types of conventional multiword chunks are processed faster than matched novel strings, but it is unclear whether this processing advantage extends to variant multiword chunks that are less formulaic. To determine whether the processing advantage of multiword chunks accommodates variations in the canonical…

We examined whether the position of modifiers in English influences how words are encoded and subsequently retrieved from memory. Compared with premodifiers, postmodifiers might confer more perceptual significance to the associated head nouns, are more consistent with the "given-before-new" information structure, and might also be easier…

Two experiments explored the hypothesis that anaphors and demonstratives signal different procedural instructions: Whereas the anaphor "it" brings a concrete entity into a reader's focus, the demonstrative "this" directs the focus to a predicate proposition in a discourse representation. The findings from an online eye-tracking…

Speakers often include extra information when producing referring expressions, which is inconsistent with the Maxim of Quantity (Grice, 1975). In this study, we investigated how comprehension is affected by unnecessary information. The literature is mixed: some studies have found that extra information facilitates comprehension and others reported…

In three experiments, readers were presented with garden-path sentences containing reciprocal verbs, and their eye movements were monitored. Results demonstrate that information from the reciprocal verb influenced the earliest stages of syntactic processing. (29 references) (Author/CK)