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Related Experiment Video

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Using Eye Movements Recorded in the Visual World Paradigm to Explore the Online Processing of Spoken Language
09:27

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Published on: October 13, 2018

How do people construct logical form during language comprehension?

Claudine N Raffray1, Martin J Pickering

  • 1Department of Psychology, University of Edinburgh, 7 George Square, Edinburgh EH8 9JZ, United Kingdom. claudine.raffray@gmail.com

Psychological Science
|July 1, 2010
PubMed
Summary
This summary is machine-generated.

People construct logical-form representations when interpreting sentences with multiple quantifiers. This meaning construction occurs after initial processing of quantifiers and thematic roles.

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Area of Science:

  • Psycholinguistics
  • Cognitive Science
  • Linguistics

Background:

  • Ambiguous sentences with multiple quantifiers pose interpretation challenges.
  • Understanding sentence processing requires investigating how logical forms are constructed.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To investigate whether comprehenders construct logical-form representations during sentence processing.
  • To examine the role of quantifiers and thematic roles in sentence interpretation.

Main Methods:

  • Four sentence-picture matching experiments were conducted.
  • Priming techniques were used to assess representation construction.
  • Varied sentence structures, voices, and quantifier types were employed.

Main Results:

  • Priming effects were observed for quantifier-scope relations in active and passive voice sentences.
  • No priming effects were found with specific quantifier combinations or sentences lacking quantifiers.
  • Results challenge purely visual-priming accounts.

Conclusions:

  • Comprehenders construct logical-form representations during sentence processing.
  • Meaning-based representations involving quantifiers and thematic roles precede logical-form construction.