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Recency and lexical preferences in Spanish.
E Gibson1, N J Pearlmutter, V Torrens
1Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge 02139, USA. gibson@psyche.mit.edu
Memory & Cognition
|September 10, 1999
Summary
Spanish speakers show a recency preference for attaching relative clauses, favoring recently encountered information. This finding supports recent attachment preferences over lexical biases in sentence processing.
Area of Science:
- Psycholinguistics
- Computational Linguistics
- Cognitive Science
Background:
- The attachment preference in sentence processing, specifically for relative clauses, is a key area of psycholinguistic research.
- Previous studies have yielded conflicting results regarding attachment preferences in Spanish, with Gibson et al. (1996) proposing a recency preference and Cuetos and Mitchell (1988) suggesting otherwise.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate the attachment preferences for Spanish relative clauses.
- To determine whether a recency preference influences attachment site selection.
- To assess the role of lexical biases in attachment preferences.
Main Methods:
- An experiment was conducted using Spanish speakers.
- Stimuli were designed with either two or three potential attachment sites.
- Lexical content was kept consistent across conditions, with structural configuration varying between two- and three-site conditions.
Main Results:
- When two attachment sites were present, high attachment was preferred over low attachment.
- With three attachment sites, a preference emerged for low attachment over high attachment, and high attachment over middle attachment.
- These results replicate earlier findings and indicate a recency preference.
Conclusions:
- Attachment preferences in Spanish are influenced by a preference for recent/low attachment.
- Lexical biases alone are insufficient to account for observed attachment preferences in Spanish relative clause processing.