Sentential context and on-line lexical decision

J. L. Nicol and D. Swinney (1989) reported that lexical decision response times to a test word that was related to the implicit object of a verb were faster, when tested immediately after the verb, than response times to a control test word. They concluded from this result that the relation between the implicit object and the verb was understood during comprehension. In G. McKoon, R. Ratcliff, and G. Ward (1994), another interpretation was suggested, that the faster lexical decision response times were due to the better semantic-pragmatic fit of the related test words to the sentential contexts, and experimental data were presented to support this interpretation. In response, J.L. Nicol, J. D. Fodor, and D. Swinney (1994) pointed out some possible problems with these experiments. The experiment presented in this article undermines their arguments. By using sentences in which there was no implicit object, exactly the same pattern of results was found as originally reported by J. L. Nicol and D. Swinney, thereby implicating some factor other than syntactic processing of an implicit object as an explanation of their finding.