Children’s and Adolescents’ Processing of Temporary Syntactic Ambiguity : An Eye Movement Study
Author
Source
Issue
Vol. 2014, Issue 2014 (31 Dec. 2014), pp.1-13, 13 p.
Publisher
Hindawi Publishing Corporation
Publication Date
2014-08-19
Country of Publication
Egypt
No. of Pages
13
Main Subjects
Social Sciences (Multidisciplinary)
Abstract EN
This study examined the eye movements of 24 children and adolescents as they read sentences containing temporary syntactic ambiguities.
Prior research suggested that children primarily use grammatical information when making initial parsing decisions, and they tend to disregard semantic and contextual information.
On each trial, participants read a garden path sentence (e.g., While the storm blew the boat sat in the shed), and, afterwards, they answered a comprehension question (e.g., Did the storm blow the boat?).
The design was 2 × 2 (verb type × ambiguity) repeated measures.
Verb type was optionally transitive or reflexive, and sentences were ambiguous or unambiguous.
Results showed no differences in first pass reading times at the disambiguating verb (e.g., sat).
However, regressions did show a significant interaction.
The unambiguous-reflexive condition had approximately half the number of regressions, suggesting less processing difficulty in this condition.
Developmentally, we found that adolescents had significantly better comprehension, which seemed to be linked to the increased tendency to regress from the disambiguating word.
Findings are consistent with the assumption that the processing architecture is more restricted in children compared to adolescents.
In addition, results indicated that variance in ambiguity resolution was associated with interference control but not working memory.
American Psychological Association (APA)
Engelhardt, Paul E.. 2014. Children’s and Adolescents’ Processing of Temporary Syntactic Ambiguity : An Eye Movement Study. Child Development Research،Vol. 2014, no. 2014, pp.1-13.
https://search.emarefa.net/detail/BIM-474516
Modern Language Association (MLA)
Engelhardt, Paul E.. Children’s and Adolescents’ Processing of Temporary Syntactic Ambiguity : An Eye Movement Study. Child Development Research No. 2014 (2014), pp.1-13.
https://search.emarefa.net/detail/BIM-474516
American Medical Association (AMA)
Engelhardt, Paul E.. Children’s and Adolescents’ Processing of Temporary Syntactic Ambiguity : An Eye Movement Study. Child Development Research. 2014. Vol. 2014, no. 2014, pp.1-13.
https://search.emarefa.net/detail/BIM-474516
Data Type
Journal Articles
Language
English
Notes
Includes bibliographical references
Record ID
BIM-474516