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.show moreshow less

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Metadaten
Author details:Marisa Ferrara Boston, John Hale, Reinhold KlieglORCiDGND, Umesh Patil, Shravan VasishthORCiDGND
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):License LogoKeine öffentliche Lizenz: Unter Urheberrechtsschutz
External remark:first published in:
Journal of eye movement research. 2 (2008), 1, S. 1-12
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