Papers by Martin Pickering
Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 2014
Syntactic priming occurs when structural information from one sentence influences processing of a... more Syntactic priming occurs when structural information from one sentence influences processing of a subsequently encountered sentence (Bock, 1986; Ledoux et al., 2007). This article reports two eye-tracking experiments investigating the effects of a prime sentence on the processing of a target sentence that shared aspects of syntactic form. The experiments were designed to determine the degree to which lexical overlap between prime and target sentences produced larger effects, comparable to the widely observed 'lexical boost' in production experiments (Pickering & Branigan, 1998; Pickering & Ferreira, 2008). The current experiments showed that priming effects during on-line comprehension were in fact larger when a verb was repeated across the prime and target sentences (see also Tooley et al., 2009). The finding of larger priming effects with lexical repetition supports accounts under which syntactic form representations are connected to individual lexical items (e.g.
Journal of Memory and Language, 1998
Three eye-tracking experiments investigated ambiguity resolution in sentences containing adjunct ... more Three eye-tracking experiments investigated ambiguity resolution in sentences containing adjunct modifiers. The experiments tested readers' response to sentences that began with a noun phrase complex containing two nouns and a preposition (of or with). A prepositional phrase or relative clause modified one of the noun phrases. The sentences were either temporarily or fully ambiguous as to which noun phrase was modified. The first and third experiments used semantic plausibility to disambiguate attachment (when disambiguation was possible). The second experiment used gender agreement to disambiguate attachment. The type of modifier, prepositional phrase versus relative clause, affected processing of the modifier as did the type of preposition in the noun phrase complex, theta-assigning versus non-theta-assigning. The data challenge the idea that syntactic ambiguity resolution is a form of lexical ambiguity resolution achieved via
The Quarterly Journal of …, Jan 1, 1997
An eye-tracking experiment investigated whether incremental interpretation applies to interclausa... more An eye-tracking experiment investigated whether incremental interpretation applies to interclausal relationships. According to delayed-integration hypothesis, interclausal relationships are not computed until the end of the second clause, because the processor needs to have two full propositions before integration can occur. We investigated the processing of causal and diagnostic sentences ) that contained the connective because. Previous research has demonstrated that readers have greater dif® culty processing diagnostic sentences than causal sentences. Our results indicated that dif® culty processing diagnostic sentences occurred well before the end of the second clause. Thus comprehenders appear to compute interclausal relationships incrementally.
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Papers by Martin Pickering