An anaphoric reference to the complement-set is a reference to the set that does not fulfil the predicate of the preceding sentence. Preferred reference to the complement-set has been found in eye movements when a character's implicit desire for a high amount has been denied using a negative emotion. We recorded event-related potentials to examine…

This lexical decision eye-tracking study investigated whether horizontal and vertical readings elicit comparable behavioral patterns and whether reading directions modulate lexical processes. Response times and eye movements were recorded during a lexical decision task with Japanese bimorphemic compound words presented vertically. The data were…

This study examines whether lexical features and textual properties along with individual differences on the part of readers influence word processing times during second language (L2) reading comprehension. Forty-eight Spanish-speaking adolescent and adult learners of English read nine English passages in a self-paced word-by-word reading…

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…

Stimuli that are fluently processed are more likely to be called "old" on a recognition memory test compared with less fluently processed stimuli. The goal of the current study was to investigate how the perceived diagnostic value of fluency is affected by a match between encoding and test conditions. During the encoding phase,…

In 2 experiments, eye tracking methodology was used to assess on-line lexical, syntactic and semantic processing in autism spectrum disorder (ASD). In Experiment 1, lexical identification was examined by manipulating the frequency of target words. Both typically developed (TD) and ASD readers showed normal frequency effects, suggesting that the…

Previous research has shown that information referring to a named character or to information in the main clause of a sentence is more accessible and facilitates the processing of anaphoric references. We investigated whether the use of such cues are maintained in healthy aging. We present two experiments investigating whether information…

In garden path (GP) jokes, a first dominant interpretation is detected as incoherent and subsequently substituted by a hidden joke interpretation. Two important factors for the processing of GP jokes are salience of the initial interpretation and accessibility of the hidden interpretation. Both factors are assumed to be affected by contextual…

The current study looks at whether bilinguals varying in language dominance show a processing advantage for idiomatic over non-idiomatic phrases and to what extent this effect is modulated by idiom transparency (i.e., the degree to which the idiom's figurative meaning can be inferred from its literal analysis) and cross-language similarity (i.e.,…

Frequency and contingency are two primary statistical factors that drive the acquisition and processing of language. This study explores the role of phrasal frequency and contingency (the co-occurrence probability/statistical association of the constituent words in multiword sequences) during online processing of multiword sequences. Meanwhile, it…

Two experiments examine how men and women interpret pronouns in discourse. Adults are known to show a strong "first-mention bias": When two characters are mentioned ("Michael played with William…"), comprehenders tend to interpret subsequent pronouns as coreferential with the first of the two characters and to find pronouns…

The present response time study investigated how a hypothesized time-based working memory constraint of 2-3 s affects the resolution of grammatical and semantic dependencies. Congruent and incongruent object relative (OR) and subject relative sentences were read at different presentation rates so that the distance between dependent words was…

Negated words take longer to recognize than non-negated words following sentences with negation, suggesting that negated concepts are less active. The present experiments tested the possibility that this reduced activation would not persist beyond immediate testing. Experiment 1 used a probe task and materials similar to those used in previous…

In this study, we report the results of two self-paced reading experiments that investigated working memory capacity effects on the processing of globally ambiguous relative clauses by advanced Korean second language (L2) learners of English. Consistent with previous monolingual literature on the processing of temporary ambiguity, we found that…

Three experiments examined the role of phonology in the activation of word meanings in Grade 5 students. In Experiment 1, homophone and spelling control errors were embedded in a story context and participants performed a proofreading task as they read for meaning. For both good and poor readers, more homophone errors went undetected than spelling…