Parsing costs as predictors of reading difficulty: An evaluation using the Potsdam Sentence Corpus
- The surprisal of a word on a probabilistic grammar constitutes a promising complexity metric for human sentence comprehension difficulty. Using two different grammar types, surprisal is shown to have an effect on fixation durations and regression probabilities in a sample of German readers’ eye movements, the Potsdam Sentence Corpus. A linear mixed-effects model was used to quantify the effect of surprisal while taking into account unigram and bigram frequency, word length, and empirically-derived word predictability; the so-called “early” and “late” measures of processing difficulty both showed an effect of surprisal. Surprisal is also shown to have a small but statistically non-significant effect on empirically-derived predictability itself. This work thus demonstrates the importance of including parsing costs as a predictor of comprehension difficulty in models of reading, and suggests that a simple identification of syntactic parsing costs with early measures and late measures with durations of post-syntactic events may beThe surprisal of a word on a probabilistic grammar constitutes a promising complexity metric for human sentence comprehension difficulty. Using two different grammar types, surprisal is shown to have an effect on fixation durations and regression probabilities in a sample of German readers’ eye movements, the Potsdam Sentence Corpus. A linear mixed-effects model was used to quantify the effect of surprisal while taking into account unigram and bigram frequency, word length, and empirically-derived word predictability; the so-called “early” and “late” measures of processing difficulty both showed an effect of surprisal. Surprisal is also shown to have a small but statistically non-significant effect on empirically-derived predictability itself. This work thus demonstrates the importance of including parsing costs as a predictor of comprehension difficulty in models of reading, and suggests that a simple identification of syntactic parsing costs with early measures and late measures with durations of post-syntactic events may be difficult to uphold.…
Author details: | Marisa Ferrara Boston, John Hale, Reinhold KlieglORCiDGND, Umesh Patil, Shravan VasishthORCiDGND |
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URN: | urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus-57139 |
Publication series (Volume number): | Zweitveröffentlichungen der Universität Potsdam : Humanwissenschaftliche Reihe (paper 253) |
Publication type: | Postprint |
Language: | English |
Publication year: | 2008 |
Publishing institution: | Universität Potsdam |
Release date: | 2011/12/13 |
Source: | Journal of Eye Movement Research. - ISSN 1995-8692. - 2 (2008), 1, S. 1-12 |
Organizational units: | Extern / Extern |
Humanwissenschaftliche Fakultät / Strukturbereich Kognitionswissenschaften / Department Psychologie | |
DDC classification: | 4 Sprache / 40 Sprache / 400 Sprache |
Institution name at the time of the publication: | Humanwissenschaftliche Fakultät / Institut für Psychologie |
License (German): | Keine öffentliche Lizenz: Unter Urheberrechtsschutz |
External remark: | first published in: Journal of eye movement research. 2 (2008), 1, S. 1-12 |