Under what circumstances do people agree that a kind-referring generic sentence (e.g., "Swans are beautiful") is true? We hypothesised that theory-based considerations are sufficient, independently of prevalence/frequency information, to lead to acceptance of a generic statement. To provide evidence for this general point, we focused on…

Superlative quantifiers ("at least 3", "at most 3") and comparative quantifiers ("more than 2", "fewer than 4") are traditionally taken to be interdefinable: the received view is that "at least n" and "at most n" are equivalent to "more than n-1" and "fewer than n+1",…

During language comprehension, information about the world is exchanged and processed. Two essential ingredients of everyday cognition that are employed during language comprehension are the ability to reason counterfactually, and the ability to understand and predict other peoples' behaviour by attributing independent mental states to them…

Masked affix priming effects have usually been obtained for words sharing the initial affix (e.g., "reaction"-"REFORM"). However, prior evidence on masked suffix priming effects (e.g., "baker"-"WALKER") is inconclusive. In the present series of masked priming lexical decision experiments, a target word was…

Manipulated shared knowledge and focus on specific entities, the verb in the sentence, and whether the description was definite or indefinite. Each factor influenced interpretation of the description. Confirmed that changing verbs alone affected reference choice. Indicated that both referentially and attributively introduced entities are…

Explored the effects of two variables in the picture-word interference paradigm: semantic relatedness and the level of categorization of distracts relative to pictures' names. Results suggest that the effect of semantically related distractors depends on the level of categorization at which the response has to be given. Semantically unrelated…

Category-specific disorders are frequently explained by suggesting that living and non-living things are processed in separate subsystems (e.g. Caramazza & Shelton, 1998). If subsystems exist, there should be benefits for normal processing, beyond the influence of structural similarity. However, no previous study has separated the relative…

Presents results of four experiments that show that verbs have family size effect independently of nominal conversion alternants, that this effect is a strict type frequency effect and not a token frequency effect, that the effect is co-determined by the morphological structure of the inflected verb, and that it occurs irrespective of the…

Two experiments and two questionnaire studies investigated the processing of sluiced sentences among college student participants. Results show that, because the interpretation of a sluiced constituent takes place at the representational level of logical form (LF), implicit arguments are not made explicit at LF, but focus is important in the…

ACT-R is a theory of cognition that is capable of learning the relative usefulness of alternative rules. A model using this implicit procedural learning mechanism is described that explains results from a concept formation task created by McDonald and MacWhinney (1991), a role assignment created by Blackwell (1995), and a new role assignment…

Investigated the role of context constraints on the course of predictive inferences during reading. Constraints were determined by manipulations of a context sentence that affected the extent to which an event was predictable. (Author/VWL)

Studied "pre-ambiguity" plausibility information, information about verb argument structure frequencies, and "post-ambiguity" constraints in undergraduates. All three types of constraints were helpful in the resolution of ambiguities. Ambiguity resolution becomes more difficult as the competitor interpretations becomes stronger. Study items are…

Through experimentation, concurrent articulation was demonstrated to impair native English subject's ability to compare the internal stress patterns of written words. It was determined that the articulators' movements specifically affected stress analysis of words and this reflected postlexical, off-line processing. (25 references) (JL)

Investigates the relationship between focusing and coherence relations in pronoun comprehension. Examines a function of connectives: that of signaling coherence relations between two clauses. In three studies, coherence relations between sentence fragments ending in pronouns and participants' continuations to the fragments were identified.…

Four visual lexical decision experiments using the masked priming paradigm tested for effects of prime word frequency and cumulative root frequency with primes varying in degree of morphological and orthographic overlap with free root targets in French. (Author/VWL)