Representational complexity and memory retrieval in language comprehension

Abstract

Mental representations formed from words or phrases may vary considerably in their feature-based complexity. Modern theories of retrieval in sentence comprehension do not indicate how this variation and the role of encoding processes should influence memory performance. Here, memory retrieval in language comprehension is shown to be influenced by a target’s representational complexity in terms of syntactic and semantic features. Three self-paced reading experiments provide evidence that reading times at retrieval sites (but not earlier) decrease when more complex phrases occur as filler-phrases in filler-gap dependencies. The data also show that complexity-based effects are not dependent on string length, syntactic differences, or the amount of processing the stimuli elicit. Activation boosting and reduced similarity-based interference are implicated as likely sources of these complexity-based effects.

Does antecedent complexity affect ellipsis processing? An empirical investigation

“…The "complexity"-induced speedup would thus be a length or, equivalently, a linear position effect. Given our initial predictions, we found no evidence that increased antecedent complexity slowed down the processing of the ellipsis, as predicted by Murphy's (1985) account, or contrariwise led to speedier processing of the ellipsis, as predicted by the account of Hofmeister (2011). Rather, the Bayes factor analysis showed that the data are largely inconsistent with the assumption that increased complexity leads to faster processing.…”

“…Assuming that retrieval takes place in both the ellipsis and control conditions, the observed processing pattern would be more in line with the reasoning of Murphy (1985), where it takes more time to copy more information from the antecedent, than with that of Hofmeister (2011), where elaboration should lead to facilitation. Indeed, our analyses showed more evidence for the former view than the latter.…”

“…The first possibility would be consistent with the predictions of Murphy (1985), unless the increased distance between antecedent and ellipsis in comparison to Experiment 1 (see materials section) causes subjects to fall back on "discourse-based" processing. A decrease in ellipsis processing time for complex antecedents would support the notion of elaboration-based facilitation along the lines of Hofmeister's (2011) account. A null result, meanwhile, would lend credibility to approaches in which antecedent complexity is not expected to influence ellipsis processing at all (Frazier & Clifton 2001Martin & McElree 2008).…”

“…Note that both the Murphy (1985) and Hofmeister (2011) accounts predict an interaction between antecedent complexity and elision. This is important because antecedent complexity is completely confounded with the ellipsis site's position in the sentence.…”

“…First, however, yet another perspective on the possible effects of antecedent complexity on ellipsis processing will be introduced; it predicts that instead of slowing down the interpretation process, increased complexity of the antecedent should result in a speedup. Hofmeister (2011) investigated the processing of cleft sentences, which contain a fillergap dependency between the clefted constituent and the position it was extracted from. In (3), the phrase a (...) communist is the object of the verb banned, and thus has to be retrieved from memory when the verb is read to compute the meaning of the clause.…”