The systems underlying incremental sentence comprehension are, in general, highly successful -- comprehenders typically understand sentences of their native language quickly and accurately. The occasional failure of the system to deliver an appropriate representation of a sentence is therefore potentially illuminating. There are many ways the…

This document includes 10 articles dealing with five specific areas of language development. Two articles and a commentary cover each area. Resumes of the articles have been assigned the following numbers: memory functions (PS 001 487 and PS 001 488), associations and verbal habits (PS 001 489 and PS 001 490), language perception and…

Evidence from 3 experiments reveals interference effects from structural relationships that are inconsistent with any grammatical parse of the perceived input. Processing disruption was observed when items occurring between a head and a dependent overlapped with either (or both) syntactic or semantic features of the dependent. Effects of syntactic…

Suggests that a factor underlying the complex analysis of prose is amount of elaboration. Reports findings of two experiments supporting this idea. (FL)

Examines the extent to which the structure of simple conversations influences the subsequent memorability of dialogues. (FL)

The degree to which native and non-native readers interpret English sentences incrementally was investigated by examining plausibility effects on reanalysis processes. Experiment 1 required participants to read sentences word by word and to make on-line plausibility judgements. The results showed that natives and non-natives immediately computed…