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Related Experiment Video

Updated: May 15, 2026

Examining Online Syntactic Processing of Spoken Complex Sentences in Chinese Using Dual-Modal Interference Tasks

Examining Online Syntactic Processing of Spoken Complex Sentences in Chinese Using Dual-Modal Interference Tasks

Published on: September 5, 2019

Lexical availability and grammatical encoding scope during spoken sentence production.

Linda Wheeldon¹, Natalie Ohlson, Aimee Ashby

¹School of Psychology, University of Birmingham, Edgbaston, UK. l.r.wheeldon@bham.ac.uk

Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology (2006)

|January 5, 2013

Summary

Speakers plan sentence structure in phrases, influencing word access. Previewing words benefits production only when predictable and within the initial phrase, showing flexible lexical scope within structural planning.

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Area of Science:

Psycholinguistics
Cognitive Science
Computational Linguistics

Background:

Understanding sentence production involves how speakers plan grammatical structures and access words.
The interplay between structural constraints and lexical processing scope is not fully understood.

Purpose of the Study:

To investigate the relationship between the scope of structural planning and lexical processing during sentence production.
To determine how phrase structure and predictability influence word access benefits.

Main Methods:

Three production experiments using visual displays and sentence generation tasks.
Manipulated phrase structure complexity and the predictability of a previewed picture's position.
Measured speech production latencies to assess processing scope.

Main Results:

Preview benefits for the second noun were limited by phrase position when unpredictable, but not when predictable.
No preview benefits were found for the third noun, regardless of predictability.
Sentence production latencies increased with initial phrase length across all experiments.

Conclusions:

Speakers utilize a phrasal scope for structural planning in sentence production.
The scope of lexical access can vary within this phrasal planning scope.
Phrase structure significantly impacts sentence production efficiency.