Eye-movements during reading and noisy-channel inference making

Cutter, Michael G.; Paterson, Kevin B.; Filik, Ruth

Abstract

This novel experiment investigates the relationship between readers’ eye movements and their use of “noisy channel” inferences when reading implausible sentences, and how this might be affected by cognitive aging. Young (18-26 years) and older (65-87 years) adult participants read sentences which were either plausible or implausible. Crucially, readers could assign a plausible interpretation to the implausible sentences by inferring that a preposition (i.e., to) had been unintentionally omitted or included. Our results reveal that readers’ fixation locations within such sentences are associated with the likelihood of them inferring the presence or absence of this critical preposition to reach a plausible interpretation. Moreover, our older adults were more likely to make these noisy-channel inferences than the younger adults, potentially because their poorer visual processing and greater linguistic experience promote such inference-making. We propose that the present findings provide novel experimental evidence for a perceptual contribution to noisy-channel inference-making during reading.

Citation

Cutter, M. G., Paterson, K. B., & Filik, R. (2024). Eye-movements during reading and noisy-channel inference making. Journal of Memory and Language, 137, Article 104513. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jml.2024.104513

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: Feb 16, 2024
• Online Publication Date: Feb 28, 2024
• Publication Date: 2024-08
• Deposit Date: Feb 19, 2024
• Publicly Available Date: Feb 19, 2024
• Journal: Journal of Memory and Language
• Print ISSN: 0749-596X
• Electronic ISSN: 1096-0821
• Publisher: Elsevier
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 137
• Article Number: 104513
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jml.2024.104513
• Keywords: Eye-movements during reading; oculomotor control; sentence processing; noisy-channel language processing
• Public URL: https://nottingham-repository.worktribe.com/output/31605172
• Publisher URL: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0749596X24000160?dgcid=rss_sd_all
• Additional Information: This article is maintained by: Elsevier; Article Title: Eye-movements during reading and noisy-channel inference making; Journal Title: Journal of Memory and Language; CrossRef DOI link to publisher maintained version: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jml.2024.104513; Content Type: article; Copyright: © 2024 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier Inc.