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Related Experiment Videos

Expectation-based syntactic comprehension.

Roger Levy1

  • 1Department of Linguistics, University of California at San Diego, 9500 Gilman Drive, La Jolla, CA 92093-0108, USA. rlevy@ling.ucsd.edu

Cognition
|July 31, 2007
PubMed
Summary
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Processing difficulty in sentence comprehension arises from resource reallocation, equivalent to surprisal (negative log-probability). This information-theoretic model explains how context influences word processing and predicts effects of expectation in syntax.

Area of Science:

  • Psycholinguistics
  • Computational Linguistics
  • Cognitive Science

Background:

  • Human sentence comprehension involves complex processing, with difficulty often linked to resource allocation.
  • Existing models explore factors influencing processing load, but a unified information-theoretic approach is developing.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To propose and investigate an information-theoretic characterization of processing difficulty in sentence comprehension.
  • To demonstrate the equivalence of this characterization to surprisal theory and its implications for psycholinguistic models.

Main Methods:

  • Developed an information-theoretic model defining processing difficulty as work incurred by resource reallocation.
  • Demonstrated mathematical equivalence to Hale's (2001) probabilistic Earley parser model, where difficulty is word surprisal.

Related Experiment Videos

  • Analyzed established psycholinguistic findings in light of the proposed surprisal theory.

    • Main Results:

    • Processing difficulty is characterized as the work of resource reallocation during parallel, incremental, probabilistic disambiguation.
    • This model is equivalent to surprisal (negative log-probability), unifying findings on context effects in lexical processing.
    • The theory predicts and is consistent with reversed locality effects and facilitation by ambiguity in constrained contexts.

    Conclusions:

    • Resource allocation during sentence comprehension can be understood through an information-theoretic lens, specifically surprisal.
    • The surprisal theory provides a unified framework for understanding processing difficulty, context effects, and expectation in syntax.
    • This approach aligns with and clarifies existing findings in parallel constraint-based comprehension models.