Individual Differences In Lexical And Syntactic Ambiguity Resolution
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Individual Differences in Lexical and Syntactic Ambiguity Resolution
Abstract: The use of two relevant sources of information--frequency and contextual plausibility--during on-line lexical and syntactic ambiguity resolution was examined as a function of verbal working memory capacity in four self-paced reading experiments. Experiment 1 demonstrated that lexical ambiguity resolution was more difficult when disambiguating sentences toward the less frequent homograph meaning. Experiment 2 showed that lexical ambiguity resolution was facilitated when homographs were preceded by strong contextual plausibility information. Experiment 3 found that syntactic ambiguity resolution was facilitated when verb bias information supported the syntactic parse, and experiment 4 demonstrated that contextual plausibility cues which disfavored the incorrect syntactic parse eased sentence comprehension. These results replicated previous research. Additionally, verbal working memory capacity did not mediate ambiguity effects in any of the four experiments. These data best support the working memory theory proposed by Caplan and Waters (1999), who hypothesize that on-line sentence comprehension is not mediated by verbal working memory resources, and these data provide evidence against other working memory theories that have been proposed by Just and Carpenter (1992) and Pearlmutter and MacDonald (1995). Ambiguity effects from each experiment were correlated with the other experiments. An individual's ability to use frequency information correlated with the ability to use contextual plausibility information within lexical ambiguities and within syntactic ambiguities. These results support a model of language in which frequency and contextual plausibility cues interact within each linguistic domain. An individual's ability to use homograph bias was not correlated with the ability to use verb bias, and an individual's ability to use contextual plausibility information was not correlated across lexical and syntactic ambiguities. These results support the autonomy theory, which posits that lexical and syntactic ambiguities are processed independently. These results are also discussed with respect to implications for the lexically-based constraint satisfaction theory, which hypothesizes that lexical and syntactic ambiguities are processed through a single mechanism by the same resources.
Handbook of Individual Differences in Reading
The central unifying theme of this state-of-the-art contribution to research on literacy is its rethinking and reconceptualization of individual differences in reading. Previous research, focused on cognitive components of reading, signaled the need for ongoing work to identify relevant individual differences in reading, to determine the relationship(s) of individual differences to reading development, and to account for interactions among individual differences. Addressing developments in each of these areas, this volume also describes affective individual differences, and the environments in which individual differences in reading may emerge, operate, interact, and change. The scant comprehensive accounting of individual differences in reading is reflected in the nature of reading instruction programs today, the outcomes that are expected from successful teaching and learning, and the manner in which reading development is assessed. An important contribution of this volume is to provide prima facie evidence of the benefits of broad conceptualization of the ways in which readers differ. The Handbook of Individual Differences in Reading moves the field forward by encompassing cognitive, non-cognitive, contextual, and methodological concerns. Its breadth of coverage serves as both a useful summary of the current state of knowledge and a guide for future work in this area.
Ambiguity in Psycholinguistics
Author: Joseph F. Kess
language: en
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing
Release Date: 1981-01-01
The authors present a comprehensive overview of past research in ambiguity in the field of psycholinguistics. Experimental results have often been equivocal in allowing a choice between the single-reading hypothesis and the multiple-reading hypothesis of processing of ambiguous sentences. This text reviews the arguments and experimental results in support of each of these views, and further investigates the contributions of context and thematic constraints in the process of ambiguity resolution. Commentary is also made on the possible hierarchical ordering of difficulty in the treatment of ambiguity, as well as critically related considerations like bias, individual differences, general cognitive strategies for dealing with multiphase representations, and the inherent differences between lexical and syntactic ambiguity.