Jove
Visualize
Contact Us
JoVE
x logofacebook logolinkedin logoyoutube logo
ABOUT JoVE
OverviewLeadershipBlogJoVE Help Center
AUTHORS
Publishing ProcessEditorial BoardScope & PoliciesPeer ReviewFAQSubmit
LIBRARIANS
TestimonialsSubscriptionsAccessResourcesLibrary Advisory BoardFAQ
RESEARCH
JoVE JournalMethods CollectionsJoVE Encyclopedia of ExperimentsArchive
EDUCATION
JoVE CoreJoVE BusinessJoVE Science EducationJoVE Lab ManualFaculty Resource CenterFaculty Site
Terms & Conditions of Use
Privacy Policy
Policies

Related Concept Videos

Fundamental Attribution Error01:14

Fundamental Attribution Error

13.7K
According to some social psychologists, people tend to overemphasize internal factors as explanations—or attributions—for the behavior of other people. They tend to assume that the behavior of another person is a trait of that person, and to underestimate the power of the situation on the behavior of others. They tend to fail to recognize when the behavior of another is due to situational variables, and thus to the person’s state. This erroneous assumption is...
13.7K
Stereotype Threat and Self-fulfilling Prophecies02:09

Stereotype Threat and Self-fulfilling Prophecies

41.9K
When we hold a stereotype about a person, we have expectations that he or she will fulfill that stereotype. A self-fulfilling prophecy is an expectation held by a person that alters his or her behavior in a way that tends to make it true. When we hold stereotypes about a person, we tend to treat the person according to our expectations. This treatment can influence the person to act according to our stereotypic expectations, thus confirming our stereotypic beliefs. Research by Rosenthal and...
41.9K
Framing Effects03:26

Framing Effects

7.8K
Information is everywhere and its presentation—such as how and when items are presented—can impact our perceptions and decisions surrounding the info. This broad concept umbrellas framing effects—influences that occur due to the way information is framed in its appearance, whether it’s purely the order or the specific wording of a message. Let’s take a look at numerous ways in which two versions of something can objectively say the same thing, yet we respond in...
7.8K
The Anchoring-and-Adjustment Heuristic01:25

The Anchoring-and-Adjustment Heuristic

7.7K
In order to make good decisions, we use our knowledge and our reasoning. Often, this knowledge and reasoning is sound and solid. However, sometimes, we are swayed by biases or by others manipulating a situation. For example, let’s say you and three friends wanted to rent a house and had a combined target budget of $1,600. The realtor shows you only very run-down houses for $1,600 and then shows you a very nice house for $2,000. Might you ask each person to pay more in rent to get the...
7.7K
Confirmation Biases01:31

Confirmation Biases

7.6K
The confirmation bias is the tendency to focus on information that confirms our existing beliefs and ignore information that is inconsistent with our expectations. For example, if you think that your professor is not very nice, you notice all of the instances of rude behavior exhibited by the professor while ignoring the countless pleasant interactions he is involved in on a daily basis. Have you ever fallen prey to the confirmation bias, either as the source or target of such bias?
7.6K
Serial Position Effect01:03

Serial Position Effect

488
The serial position effect is a cognitive phenomenon where individuals are more likely to recall the first and last items in a list compared to those in the middle. This effect is divided into the primacy effect and the recency effect. The primacy effect is observed when the initial items in a list are remembered better. This occurs because these items are rehearsed more frequently or receive more elaborative processing, allowing them to be encoded into long-term memory more effectively. For...
488

You might also read

Related Articles

Articles linked to this work by shared authors, journal, and citation graph.

Sort by
Same author

On the impact of adjacency on transposed-word effects under serial presentation.

Journal of experimental psychology. Learning, memory, and cognition·2026
Same author

The impact of social interaction on abstract concepts.

Psychonomic bulletin & review·2026
Same author

Effects of flanker size and flanker eccentricity on the spatial integration of orthographic information.

Attention, perception & psychophysics·2026
Same author

The impact of case changes on transposed-word effects.

Attention, perception & psychophysics·2026
Same author

Reexamining Transposed-Word Effects in the Grammatical Decision Task.

Experimental psychology·2026
Same author

Correlational analysis of distinct contributions and overlaps between visual, visual attention, and perceptual spans.

Scientific reports·2026

Related Experiment Video

Updated: Jan 8, 2026

Dissociation of the Confounding Influences of Expectancy and Integrative Difficulty Residing in Anomalous Sentences in Event-related Potential Studies
05:22

Dissociation of the Confounding Influences of Expectancy and Integrative Difficulty Residing in Anomalous Sentences in Event-related Potential Studies

Published on: May 9, 2019

5.7K

Does predictability modulate the sentence superiority effect? Perhaps - but not as one might predict!

Stéphanie Massol1, Jonathan Mirault2, Stéphane Dufau3,4

  • 1Université Lumière Lyon 2, Laboratoire d'Étude Des Mécanismes Cognitifs, Lyon, France. stephanie.massol@univ-lyon2.fr.

Psychonomic Bulletin & Review
|December 19, 2025
PubMed
Summary
This summary is machine-generated.

The sentence superiority effect, where words in correct sentences are recognized better than in jumbled ones, is not significantly influenced by word predictability. Syntactic and semantic factors, not predictability, drive this effect.

Keywords:
Cloze probabilityPredictabilityReadingSentence superiority effect

More Related Videos

Examining Online Syntactic Processing of Spoken Complex Sentences in Chinese Using Dual-Modal Interference Tasks
08:32

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

Published on: September 5, 2019

5.9K
Experimental Paradigm for Measuring the Effect of Induced Emotion on Grammar Learning
05:33

Experimental Paradigm for Measuring the Effect of Induced Emotion on Grammar Learning

Published on: January 29, 2020

6.4K

Related Experiment Videos

Last Updated: Jan 8, 2026

Dissociation of the Confounding Influences of Expectancy and Integrative Difficulty Residing in Anomalous Sentences in Event-related Potential Studies
05:22

Dissociation of the Confounding Influences of Expectancy and Integrative Difficulty Residing in Anomalous Sentences in Event-related Potential Studies

Published on: May 9, 2019

5.7K
Examining Online Syntactic Processing of Spoken Complex Sentences in Chinese Using Dual-Modal Interference Tasks
08:32

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

Published on: September 5, 2019

5.9K
Experimental Paradigm for Measuring the Effect of Induced Emotion on Grammar Learning
05:33

Experimental Paradigm for Measuring the Effect of Induced Emotion on Grammar Learning

Published on: January 29, 2020

6.4K

Area of Science:

  • Cognitive Psychology
  • Psycholinguistics
  • Computational Linguistics

Background:

  • The sentence superiority effect (SSE) demonstrates that words are identified more accurately in grammatical sequences than in ungrammatical ones.
  • The role of word predictability within sentence context on the SSE remains incompletely understood.
  • Previous research suggests predictability might influence word recognition, but its specific impact on the SSE requires further investigation.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To investigate whether the predictability of a target word modulates the sentence superiority effect (SSE).
  • To differentiate the contributions of grammaticality and predictability to word identification within sequences.
  • To test the hypothesis that predictability, rather than syntactic and semantic constraints, might be the primary driver of the SSE.

Main Methods:

  • Participants identified target words at specific positions in five-word sequences, which were either grammatical or ungrammatical.
  • Target words were selected based on high or low cloze probabilities, assessed via a cloze test and Large Language Model (LLM) probabilities.
  • Two analyses were conducted: one for grammatical sequences and one examining the interaction between grammaticality and predictability.

Main Results:

  • The study successfully replicated the sentence superiority effect, confirming the impact of grammaticality on word identification.
  • A small effect of predictability was observed for grammatical sequences, but it did not interact with grammaticality.
  • Crucially, no significant modulation of the SSE magnitude was found based on word predictability, regardless of whether it was measured by cloze probability or LLM statistics.

Conclusions:

  • The findings indicate that syntactic and semantic constraints are the primary contributors to the sentence superiority effect.
  • Word predictability, as measured by traditional methods or LLM probabilities, does not significantly modulate the SSE.
  • This research provides evidence against 'guessing accounts' of the SSE, which posit that predictability plays a central role.