People with schizophrenia spectrum disorders (SSD) show anomalies in language processing with respect to "who is doing what" in an action. This linguistic behavior is suggestive of an atypical representation of the formal concepts of "Agent" in the lexical representation of a verb, i.e., its thematic grid. To test this…

Some theories of sentence processing make a distinction between two kinds of meaning: a linguistic meaning encoded at the lexicon (i.e., selectional restrictions), and an extralinguistic knowledge derived from our everyday experiences (i.e., world knowledge). According to such theories, the former meaning is privileged over the latter in terms of…

It has been well documented that formulaic language (such as collocations; e.g., "provide information") enjoys a processing advantage over novel language (e.g., "compare information"). In natural language use, however, many formulaic sequences are often inserted with words intervening in between the individual constituents…

Pronouns can sometimes covary with a non c-commanding quantifier phrase (QP). To obtain such 'telescoping' readings, a semantic representation must be computed in which the QP's semantic scope extends beyond its surface scope. Non-native speakers have been claimed to have more difficulty than native speakers deriving such non-isomorphic…

Many studies have shown the double processing of negation, suggesting that negation integration into sentence meaning is delayed. This contrasts with some researches that have found that such integration is rather immediate. The present study contributes to this debate. Affirmative and negative compound sentences (e.g., "because he was…

Although the linguistic properties of polar questions have been extensively studied, comparatively little is known about how polar questions are processed in real time. In this paper, we report on three eye-tracking experiments on the processing of positive and negative polar questions in English and French. Our results show that in the early…

The present study focuses on the development of Spanish pronominal processing. We investigate whether the "pronoun interpretation problem" (i.e., reflexive pronouns comprehension is resolved at an earlier age than that of personal pronouns, also known as the "Delay of the Principle B Effect"), which has been documented in other…

Previous research has shown that during cataphoric pronoun resolution, the predictive search for an antecedent is restricted by a structure-sensitive constraint known as 'Condition C', such that an antecedent is only considered when the constraint does not apply. Evidence has mainly come from self-paced reading (SPR), a method which may not be…

This study used an eye-tracking method to examine whether Chinese translation equivalents activated by English prime words can continue to activate their Chinese homophones. With 30 English prime words, and 60 Chinese target words as materials, the experiment used a Tobii eye-tracking device to collect data from 30 university students while…

Sentence comprehension relies on the abilities to rapidly integrate different types of linguistic and non-linguistic information. The present study investigated whether Mandarin-speaking preschool children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) are able to use verb information predictively to anticipate the upcoming linguistic input during real-time…

The association between a word and typical location (e.g., cloud-up) appears to modulate healthy individuals' response times and visual attention. This study examined whether similar effects can be observed in a clinical population characterized by difficulties in both spatial representation and lexical processing. In an eye-tracking experiment,…

To investigate the grammatical constraints of code-switching (CS hereafter) under the disputes of "the constraint-based account" versus "the constraint-free account," the effects of functional category on CS have long been investigated in the existing studies. Thus, the present study, by asking 47 participants to take part in…

The present study investigated whether and how fast young children can use information encoded in morphological markers during real-time event representation. Using the visual world paradigm, we tested 35 adults, 34 5-year-olds and 33 3-year-olds. The results showed that the adults, the 5-year-olds and the 3-year-olds all exhibited eye gaze…

Children with reading difficulties (RD) share challenges in executive functions (EF). Neurobiological correlates provide evidence for EF challenges during reading among these readers, but an online cognitive load detection mechanism has yet to be developed. Nevertheless, eye-movement tracking can provide online data of reading patterns (pupil…

The current study tackles a long standing question of whether comprehenders perform structural revision when it is not forced by grammar or not. Using an eye-tracking reading paradigm, we addressed this issue by making use of global structural ambiguity in Japanese. Our results show that comprehenders initially associate a relative clause with the…