Any leftovers from a discarded prediction? Evidence from eye-movements during sentence comprehension
View/ Open
Date
2019Author
Gussow, Arella E.
Kapnoula, Efthymia C.
Molinaro, Nicola
Metadata
Show full item record
Arella E. Gussow, Efthymia C. Kapnoula & Nicola Molinaro (2019) Any leftovers from a discarded prediction? Evidence from eye-movements during sentence comprehension, Language, Cognition and Neuroscience, 34:8, 1041-1058, DOI: 10.1080/23273798.2019.1617887
Abstract
We investigated how listeners use gender-marked adjectives to adjust lexical predictions during
sentence comprehension. Participants listened to sentence fragments in Spanish (e.g. “The witch
flew to the village on her…”) that created expectation for a specific noun (broomstickfem), and
were completed by an adjective and a noun. The adjective either agreed (newfem), disagreed
(newmasc), or was neutral (bigfem/masc) with respect to the expected noun’s gender. Using the
visual-world paradigm, we monitored looks toward images of the expected noun versus an
alternative of the opposite gender (helicoptermasc). While listening to the initial fragment,
participants looked more towards the expected noun. Once the adjective was heard, looks
shifted toward the noun that matched the adjective’s gender. Finally, upon hearing the noun,
looks were affected by both previous context and adjective gender. We conclude that
predictions are updated online based on gender cues, but sentence context still affects
integration of the expected noun.