There are different theories on the nature of sentence processing. Early research argued for implementation of old material into a known structure, but more recent theories argue that the language...Show moreThere are different theories on the nature of sentence processing. Early research argued for implementation of old material into a known structure, but more recent theories argue that the language processing facility is predictive and tries to construct sentences before completely receiving the input. This study investigates two different predictive accounts to language processing, the Hyper-active Gap Filling account and the Garden Path model, by presenting native English participants with an online self-paced reading task containing sentences with differing degrees of ambiguity. Analyses of reading time data in key regions were carried out to assess whether the parsing difficulty predicted by these theories could be elicited. The Garden Path analysis was further complemented by questions testing for a lingering reanalysis. The experiment showed significant results for the Hyper-active Gap Filling account as well as for the Garden Path model.Show less
