Previous studies have reported that temporarily ambiguous sentences sometimes cause reading disruption (garden-path effects). These studies have interpreted their finding as indicating that the human sentence processing device (the processor) initially assigns incorrect structures and subsequently attempts revision. That is a logical interpretation. However, no previous studies have demonstrated evidence of a causal relationship between garden-path effects and initial misanalysis. Besides, there is currently limited evidence regarding whether the processor conducts revision. The present study reports two self-paced reading experiments that investigated these fundamental issues about garden-path effects. Experiment 1 demonstrated that the processor initially misanalyses temporarily ambiguous sentences and consequently encounters garden-path effects and persists with initial misinterpretations. Experiment 2 similarly observed garden-path effects. Additionally, there was evidence that the processor constructs globally correct structures during revision. These findings provide evidence that garden-path effects result from initial misanalysis, and the processor conducts revision upon disambiguation.

We report two offline and two eye-movement experiments examining non-native (L2) sentence processing during and after reanalysis of temporarily ambiguous sentences like “While Mary dressed the baby laughed happily”. Such sentences cause reanalysis at the main clause verb (“laughed”), as the temporarily ambiguous noun phrase (“the baby”) may initially be misanalysed as the direct object of the subordinate clause verb (“dressed”). The offline experiments revealed that L2ers have difficulty reanalysing temporarily ambiguous sentences with a greater persistence of the initially assigned misinterpretation than native (L1) speakers. In the eye-movement experiments, we found that L2ers complete reanalysis similarly to L1ers but fail to fully erase the memory trace of the initially assigned interpretation. Our results suggested that the source of L2 reanalysis difficulty is a failure to erase the initially assigned misinterpretation from memory rather than a failure to conduct syntactic reanalysis.

Research on temporarily ambiguous "garden path" sentences (e.g., After Mary dressed the baby laughed) has shown that initially assigned misinterpretations linger after reanalysis of the temporarily ambiguous phrase in both native (L1) and non-native (L2) readers. L2 speakers have particular difficulty with reanalysis, but the source of this L1/L2 difference is debated.Furthermore, how lingering misinterpretation may influence other aspects of language processing has not been systematically examined. We report three offline and two online experiments investigating reanalysis and misinterpretation of filler-gap dependences (e.g., Elisa noticed the truck which the policeman watched the car from). Our results showed that L1 and L2 speakers are prone to lingering misinterpretation during dependency resolution. L1/L2differences were observed such that L2 speakers had increased difficulty reanalysing some filler-gap dependencies, however this was dependent on how the dependency was disambiguated. These results are compatible with the "good enough" approach to language processing, and suggest that L1/L2 differences are more likely when reanalysis is particularly difficult.

Native (L1) and nonnative (L2) speakers sometimes misinterpret temporarily ambiguous sentences like “When Mary dressed the baby laughed happily.” Recent studies suggest that the initially assigned misinterpretation (“Mary dressed the baby”) may persist even after disambiguation, and that L2 speakers may have particular difficulty discarding initial misinterpretations. The present study investigated whether L2 speakers are more persistent with misinterpretation compared with L1 speakers during sentence processing, using the structural priming and eye tracking while reading tasks. In the experiment, participants read prime followed by target sentences. Reading times revealed that unambiguous but not ambiguous prime sentences facilitated processing of the globally correct interpretation of ambiguous target sentences. However, this priming effect was only observed when the prime and target sentence shared the same verb. Comprehension accuracy rates were not significantly influenced by priming effects but did provide evidence of lingering misinterpretation. We did not find significant L1/L2 differences in either priming effects or persistence of misinterpretation. Together, these results suggest that initially assigned misinterpretations linger in both L1 and L2 readers during sentence processing and that L1 and L2 comprehension priming is strongly lexically mediated.

The mechanisms underlying native (L1) and non-native (L2) sentence processing have been widely debated. One account of potential L1/L2 differences is that L2 sentence processing underuses syntactic information and relies heavily on semantic and surface cues. Recently, an alternative account has been proposed, which argues that the source of L1/L2 differences lies in how susceptible L1 and L2 speakers are to interference during memory retrieval operations. The present study tested these two accounts by investigating filler-gap dependency formation and susceptibility to similarity-based interference in L1 and L2 language comprehension. The results demonstrated that L1 and L2 speakers recover the information of the filler upon encountering a gap and are susceptible to similarity-based interference during filler-gap dependency formation. However, there was no significant evidence of L1/L2 differences. These findings suggest that L1 and L2 speakers similarly engage in cue-based memory retrieval operations during filler-gap dependency formation.