Structure Modulates Similarity-Based Interference in Sluicing: An Eye Tracking study

• Published in: Frontiers in psychology Vol. 6; p. 1839
• Main Author: Harris, Jesse A.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Switzerland Frontiers Media S.A 18.12.2015
• Subjects: ellipsis; eye tracking; Psychology; sentence processing; Similarity-based interference; working memory; similarity-based interference; working memory; sentence processing; eye tracking; ellipsis
• ISSN: 1664-1078; 1664-1078
• DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2015.01839

In cue-based content-addressable approaches to memory, a target and its competitors are retrieved in parallel from memory via a fast, associative cue-matching procedure under a severely limited focus of attention. Such a parallel matching procedure could in principle ignore the serial order or hierarchical structure characteristic of linguistic relations. I present an eye tracking while reading experiment that investigates whether the sentential position of a potential antecedent modulates the strength of similarity-based interference, a well-studied effect in which increased similarity in features between a target and its competitors results in slower and less accurate retrieval overall. The manipulation trades on an independently established Locality bias in sluiced structures to associate a wh-remnant (which ones) in clausal ellipsis with the most local correlate (some wines), as in The tourists enjoyed some wines, but I don't know which ones. The findings generally support cue-based parsing models of sentence processing that are subject to similarity-based interference in retrieval, and provide additional support to the growing body of evidence that retrieval is sensitive to both the structural position of a target antecedent and its competitors, and the specificity or diagnosticity of retrieval cues.