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Time-driven effects on parsing during reading

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Author

Summary, in English

The phonological trace of perceived words starts fading away in short-term memory after a few seconds. Spoken utterances are usually 2–3 s long, possibly to allow the listener to parse the words into coherent prosodic phrases while they still have a clear representation. Results from this brain potential study suggest that even during silent reading, words are organized into 2–3 s long ‘implicit’ prosodic phrases. Participants read the same sentences word by word at different presentation rates. Clause-final words occurring at multiples of 2–3 s from sentence onset yielded increased positivity, irrespective of presentation rate. The effect was interpreted as a closure positive shift (CPS), reflecting insertion of implicit prosodic phrase boundaries every 2–3 s. Additionally, in participants with low working memory span, clauses over 3 s long produced a negativity, possibly indicating increased working memory load.

Publishing year

2012

Language

English

Pages

267-272

Publication/Series

Brain and Language

Volume

121

Issue

3

Document type

Journal article

Publisher

Elsevier

Topic

  • General Language Studies and Linguistics
  • Psychology

Keywords

  • Language
  • Short-term memory
  • Time-driven constant
  • Event-related potentials
  • Reading
  • Prosodic phrase
  • Implicit prosody
  • CPS
  • Working memory

Status

Published

Project

  • Grammar, Prosody, Discourse and the Brain. ERP-studies of Language Processing
  • Thinking in Time: Cognition, Communication and Learning

ISBN/ISSN/Other

  • ISSN: 1090-2155