Effects of syntax in human sentence parsing: Evidence against a structure-based proposal mechanism.

In 1992, D. C. Mitchell et al (see record 1992-18602-001) presented new evidence to suggest that contextual information does not influence the parser's initial decisions. It was suggested, however, that if sufficient material separates the choice point from the point of syntactic disambiguation, the processor may have sufficient time to revoke an initial structure-based decision in favor of a more contextually compatible analysis, and so avoid the garden path. Mitchell et al described a reading time experiment that they claim is incompatible with an initial context-based decision. In the present article the authors argue that the Mitchell et al contexts were in fact ineffective. An experiment based on a subset of the Mitchell et al design, but with differently structured contexts is described, and eye movement data that are compatible with the claim that contextual information can influence the parser's initial decisions are presented. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)