World knowledge affects prediction as quickly as selectional restrictions: Evidence from the visual world paradigm

There has been considerable debate regarding the question of whether linguistic knowledge and world knowledge are separable and used differently during processing or not (Hagoort, Hald, Bastiaansen, & Petersson, 2004; Matsuki et al., 2011; Paczynski & Kuperberg, 2012; Warren & McConnell, 2007; Warren, McConnell, & Rayner, 2008). Previous investigations into this question have provided mixed evidence as to whether violations of selectional restrictions are detected earlier than violations of world knowledge. We report a visual-world eye-tracking study comparing the timing of facilitation contributed by selectional restrictions versus world knowledge. College-aged adults (n=36) viewed photographs of natural scenes while listening to sentences. Participants anticipated upcoming direct objects similarly regardless of whether facilitation was provided by only world knowledge or a combination of selectional restrictions and world knowledge. These results suggest that selectional restrictions are not available earlier in comprehension than world knowledge.