Abstract
In an eye movement experiment, we examined the use of reanalysis strategies during the reading of locally ambiguous but globally unambiguous Spanish sentences. Among other measures, we examined regressive eye movements made while readers were recovering in reading mild garden path sentences. The sentences had an adverbial clause that, depending on the mood (indicative vs. subjunctive) of the subordinate clause verb, could attachhigh (to the main verb of the sentence) orlow (to the verb in the subordinate clause). Although Spanish speakers favor low attachment, the high attachment version was quite easy to understand. Readers predominately used two alternative strategies to recover from the mild garden path in our sentences. In the more common reanalysis strategy, their eyes regressed from the last region (disambiguation+1) directly to the main verb in the sentence. Following this, they reread the rest of the sentence, fixating the next region and the adverb (the beginning of the ambiguous part of the sentence). Less frequently, readers regressed from the last region (disambiguation+1) directly to the adverb. We argue that both types of strategies are consistent with a selective reanalysis process as described by Frazier and Rayner (1982).
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This research was supported by Grants 1FD97-0927 and BSO2000-0862 from the FEDER and the Spanish Ministry of Science and Technology to theUniversity of La Laguna and byGrant HD-18708 fromthe National Institutes of Health to the University of Massachusetts.
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Meseguer, E., Carreiras, M. & Clifton, C. Overt reanalysis strategies and eye movements during the reading of mild garden path sentences. Memory & Cognition 30, 551–561 (2002). https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03194956
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03194956