TY  - GEN
A1  - Nicenboim, Bruno
A1  - Logacev, Pavel
A1  - Gattei, Carolina
A1  - Vasishth, Shravan
T1  - When High-Capacity Readers Slow Down and Low-Capacity Readers Speed Up
BT  - Working Memory and Locality Effects
N2  - We examined the effects of argument-head distance in SVO and SOV languages (Spanish and German), while taking into account readers' working memory capacity and controlling for expectation (Levy, 2008) and other factors. We predicted only locality effects, that is, a slowdown produced by increased dependency distance (Gibson, 2000; Lewis and Vasishth, 2005). Furthermore, we expected stronger locality effects for readers with low working memory capacity. Contrary to our predictions, low-capacity readers showed faster reading with increased distance, while high-capacity readers showed locality effects. We suggest that while the locality effects are compatible with memory-based explanations, the speedup of low-capacity readers can be explained by an increased probability of retrieval failure. We present a computational model based on ACT-R built under the previous assumptions, which is able to give a qualitative account for the present data and can be tested in future research. Our results suggest that in some cases, interpreting longer RTs as indexing increased processing difficulty and shorter RTs as facilitation may be too simplistic: The same increase in processing difficulty may lead to slowdowns in high-capacity readers and speedups in low-capacity ones. Ignoring individual level capacity differences when investigating locality effects may lead to misleading conclusions.
T3  - Zweitveröffentlichungen der Universität Potsdam : Humanwissenschaftliche Reihe - 288 
KW  - locality
KW  - working memory capacity
KW  - individual differences
KW  - Spanish
KW  - German
KW  - ACT-R
Y1  - 2016
U6  - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-90663
SP  - 1
EP  - 24
ER  - 
TY  - GEN
A1  - Safavi, Molood S.
A1  - Husain, Samar
A1  - Vasishth, Shravan
T1  - Dependency Resolution Difficulty Increases with Distance in Persian Separable Complex Predicates
BT  - Evidence for Expectation and Memory-Based Accounts
N2  - Delaying the appearance of a verb in a noun-verb dependency tends to increase processing difficulty at the verb; one explanation for this locality effect is decay and/or interference of the noun in working memory. Surprisal, an expectation-based account, predicts that delaying the appearance of a verb either renders it no more predictable or more predictable, leading respectively to a prediction of no effect of distance or a facilitation. Recently, Husain et al. (2014) suggested that when the exact identity of the upcoming verb is predictable (strong predictability), increasing argument-verb distance leads to facilitation effects, which is consistent with surprisal; but when the exact identity of the upcoming verb is not predictable (weak predictability), locality effects are seen. We investigated Husain et al.'s proposal using Persian complex predicates (CPs), which consist of a non-verbal element—a noun in the current study—and a verb. In CPs, once the noun has been read, the exact identity of the verb is highly predictable (strong predictability); this was confirmed using a sentence completion study. In two self-paced reading (SPR) and two eye-tracking (ET) experiments, we delayed the appearance of the verb by interposing a relative clause (Experiments 1 and 3) or a long PP (Experiments 2 and 4). We also included a simple Noun-Verb predicate configuration with the same distance manipulation; here, the exact identity of the verb was not predictable (weak predictability). Thus, the design crossed Predictability Strength and Distance. We found that, consistent with surprisal, the verb in the strong predictability conditions was read faster than in the weak predictability conditions. Furthermore, greater verb-argument distance led to slower reading times; strong predictability did not neutralize or attenuate the locality effects. As regards the effect of distance on dependency resolution difficulty, these four experiments present evidence in favor of working memory accounts of argument-verb dependency resolution, and against the surprisal-based expectation account of Levy (2008). However, another expectation-based measure, entropy, which was computed using the offline sentence completion data, predicts reading times in Experiment 1 but not in the other experiments. Because participants tend to produce more ungrammatical continuations in the long-distance condition in Experiment 1, we suggest that forgetting due to memory overload leads to greater entropy at the verb.
T3  - Zweitveröffentlichungen der Universität Potsdam : Humanwissenschaftliche Reihe - 290 
KW  - Persian
KW  - complex predicates
KW  - expectation
KW  - eye-tracking
KW  - locality
KW  - self-paced reading
KW  - surprisal
KW  - entropy
Y1  - 2016
U6  - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-90728
SP  - 1
EP  - 15
ER  -