Using Cross-Modal Lexical Decision Tasks to Investigate Sentence Processing

Recent investigations of sentence processing have used the cross-modal lexical decision task to show that the antecedent of a phonologically empty noun phrase (specifically, WH-trace) is reactivated at the trace position. G. McKoon, R. Ratcliff, and G. Ward (1994) claimed that (a) a design feature c...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Journal of experimental psychology. Learning, memory, and cognition memory, and cognition, 1994-09, Vol.20 (5), p.1229-1238
Main Authors: Nicol, Janet L, Fodor, Janet Dean, Swinney, David
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Biological and medical sciences
Cognition
Decision Making
Fundamental and applied biological sciences. Psychology
Human
Humans
Language
Lexical Decision
Miscellaneous
Psychology. Psychoanalysis. Psychiatry
Psychology. Psychophysiology
Sentence Comprehension
Sentence Structure
Word Associations
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Summary:Recent investigations of sentence processing have used the cross-modal lexical decision task to show that the antecedent of a phonologically empty noun phrase (specifically, WH-trace) is reactivated at the trace position. G. McKoon, R. Ratcliff, and G. Ward (1994) claimed that (a) a design feature concerning the choice of related and unrelated targets is a possible confound in this work and (b) the conclusions drawn from this previous research are therefore called into question. These claims are considered in light of both McKoon et al.'s experimental findings and results of our own experiments in which we test their linguistic materials. We argue that their results may be due to the nature of their materials. Additionally, we argue that a follow-up experiment reported by G. McKoon and R. Ratcliff (1994) used a technique that is not comparable to the cross-modal lexical decision task. It is concluded that current evidence supports the claim that structural information is used during on-line sentence processing and that the cross-modal technique is sensitive to this.
ISSN:0278-7393
1939-1285
DOI:10.1037/0278-7393.20.5.1229