TY - JOUR
T1 - The on-line study of sentence comprehension
T2 - An examination of dual task paradigms
AU - Nicol, Janet
AU - Swinney, David
AU - Love, Tracy
AU - Hald, Lea
N1 - Funding Information:
Acknowledgments The authors gratefully acknowledge NIH DC 02984, NIH DC04494, DC 03885 and NIH DC01409 for support of the research and writing in this paper and to two anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments. We also express our appreciation to Cori Finsted for her aid in conducting some of the research reported herein.
PY - 2006/5
Y1 - 2006/5
N2 - This paper presents three studies which examine the susceptibility of sentence comprehension to intrusion by extra-sentential probe words in two on-line dual-task techniques commonly used to study sentence processing: the cross-modal lexical priming paradigm and the unimodal all-visual lexical priming paradigm. It provides both a general review and a direct empirical examination of the effects of task-demand in the on-line study of sentence comprehension. In all three studies, sentential materials were presented to participants together with a target probe word which constituted either a better or a worse continuation of the sentence at a point at which it was presented. Materials were identical for all three studies. The manner of presentation of the sentence materials was, however, manipulated; presentation was either visual, auditory (normal rate) or auditory (slow rate). The results demonstrate that a technique in which a visual target probe interrupts ongoing sentence processing (such as occurs in unimodal visual presentation and in very slow auditory sentence presentation) encourages the integration of the probe word into the on-going sentence. Thus, when using such 'sentence interrupting' techniques, additional care to equate probes is necessary. Importantly, however, the results provide strong evidence that the standard use of fluent cross-modality sentence investigation methods are immune from such external probe word intrusions into ongoing sentence processing and are thus accurately reflect underlying comprehension processes.
AB - This paper presents three studies which examine the susceptibility of sentence comprehension to intrusion by extra-sentential probe words in two on-line dual-task techniques commonly used to study sentence processing: the cross-modal lexical priming paradigm and the unimodal all-visual lexical priming paradigm. It provides both a general review and a direct empirical examination of the effects of task-demand in the on-line study of sentence comprehension. In all three studies, sentential materials were presented to participants together with a target probe word which constituted either a better or a worse continuation of the sentence at a point at which it was presented. Materials were identical for all three studies. The manner of presentation of the sentence materials was, however, manipulated; presentation was either visual, auditory (normal rate) or auditory (slow rate). The results demonstrate that a technique in which a visual target probe interrupts ongoing sentence processing (such as occurs in unimodal visual presentation and in very slow auditory sentence presentation) encourages the integration of the probe word into the on-going sentence. Thus, when using such 'sentence interrupting' techniques, additional care to equate probes is necessary. Importantly, however, the results provide strong evidence that the standard use of fluent cross-modality sentence investigation methods are immune from such external probe word intrusions into ongoing sentence processing and are thus accurately reflect underlying comprehension processes.
KW - Cross-modal lexical priming
KW - Dual task
KW - Sentence comprehension
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U2 - 10.1007/s10936-006-9012-0
DO - 10.1007/s10936-006-9012-0
M3 - Article
C2 - 16708287
AN - SCOPUS:33745854154
SN - 0090-6905
VL - 35
SP - 215
EP - 231
JO - Journal of psycholinguistic research
JF - Journal of psycholinguistic research
IS - 3
ER -