Abstract
A linguistic ambiguity experiment using a sentence-verification procedure was performed to determine whether and how subject awareness of ambiguity affects response latency and error. Results showed a decline first in errors and then in latencies for the one sentence pair type most likely to fool subjects (the “ambiguous-unexpected” type), thus supporting the hypothesis that subjects who are aware of ambiguity attempt to jointly minimize latency and error (Pachella, 1974). The findings suggest that research in this area, instead of revealing “basic” information-processing mechanisms, may instead reflect conscious subject strategies adapted to an idiosyncratic context.
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Cairns, H. S. Ambiguous sentence processing. Paper presented at the meeting of the Midwestern Psychological Association, Detroit, May, 1971.
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Reardon, R., Katz, S. Comprehending ambiguity in the sentence-verification paradigm: Basic process or problem solving?. Bull. Psychon. Soc. 21, 373–376 (1983). https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03329984
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03329984