The influence of text segmentation on garden path processing: evidence from self-paced reading and eye-tracking.
Line breaks are ubiquitous in continuous text, as in this article. Despite this prevalence, their effects on parsing and interpretation have been markedly understudied in previous research on written language processing. To shed light on these effects, we conducted a self-paced reading and an eye-tr...
| Published in: | Language & Cognition (Cambridge University Press) Vol. 17; pp. 1 - 27 |
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| Main Authors: | , , |
| Format: | Article |
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Cambridge University Press
Mar2025
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | View this record in EBSCOhost |
| fields | @attributes: recordID: 1 pdfLink: plink: https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=hlh&AN=190557463&site=ehost-live header: @attributes: shortDbName: hlh uiTerm: 190557463 longDbName: Humanities International Complete uiTag: AN controlInfo: bkinfo: jinfo: jid: 18669808 IQ1A jtl: Language & Cognition (Cambridge University Press) issn: 18669808 maglogo: N pubinfo: dt: Mar2025 vid: 17 pid: 15979 pub: Cambridge University Press artinfo: ui: 190557463 10.1017/langcog.2025.10009 ppf: 1 ppct: 26 formats: tig: atl: The influence of text segmentation on garden path processing: evidence from self-paced reading and eye-tracking. aug: au: Tsoukala, Andromachi Vogelzang, Margreet Tsimpli, Ianthi Maria affil: Institut für Niederlandistik, Carl von Ossietzky Universität Oldenburg, Oldenburg, Germany School of Psychology, Newcastle University, Newcastle upon Tyne, UK Department of Theoretical and Applied Linguistics, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK su: Parsing (Grammar) Reading comprehension Eye tracking Text processing (Computer science) Computational linguistics sug: subj: Parsing (Grammar) Reading comprehension Eye tracking Text processing (Computer science) Computational linguistics keyword: implicit prosody line breaks priming reading syntactic ambiguity text segmentation ab: Line breaks are ubiquitous in continuous text, as in this article. Despite this prevalence, their effects on parsing and interpretation have been markedly understudied in previous research on written language processing. To shed light on these effects, we conducted a self-paced reading and an eye-tracking study in which participants read multiline texts that contained direct object–subject ambiguity, a type of temporary clause boundary ambiguity. Within these texts, we manipulated the placement of line breaks so that they either regularly coincided or clashed with clause boundaries. We hypothesised that this manipulation would cause readers to adjust their parsing strategies and interpretative commitments. Results revealed that the way in which text is segmented through line breaks can significantly affect how readers parse syntactically ambiguous structures. While coinciding line breaks and clause boundaries helped readers arrive at the correct analysis of the ambiguous structures, cases of line break and clause boundary clash led readers down the garden path during online processing, and in some cases also impacted their comprehension. Findings are discussed in terms of their implications for the importance of text segmentation in real-world settings, such as books, educational material and digital content. pubtype: Academic Journal doctype: Article src: R language: English refInfo: copyright: @attributes: flag: Y dt: @attributes: year: 2025 holdings: @attributes: islocal: N |
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