Effects of response requirements on the location of clicks superimposed on sentences

Two methods of identifying the location of clicks superimposed on sentences were compared. When Ss first wrote out the entire sentence and then marked the location of the clicks, the perceived clicks tended to migrate toward the major constituent breaks of the sentences. This trend was not observed when Ss responded by marking the position of clicks on prepared scripts of the stimulus sentence. In addition, both response procedures resulted in a significant trend for the perceived clicks to be located before the actual click locations. The findings of this study resolved the conflicting results obtained from previous investigations in this area.