This paper investigates the role of resource allocation as a source of processing difficulty in
human sentence comprehension. The paper proposes a simple information-theoretic …

Natural languages contain probabilistic constraints that influence the resolution of
ambiguities. Current models of sentence processing agree that probabilistic constraints …

The process of comprehending sentences involves the integration of a variety of different
information sources, constrained by the available computational resources. This paper …

Publisher Summary This chapter focuses on two types of ambiguity: lexical and syntactic
ambiguity. The two kinds of ambiguity can interact—for example, adopting noun vs. verb …

Abstract Language comprehension, as with all other cases of the extraction of meaningful
structure from perceptual input, takes places under noisy conditions. If human language …

Expectation-based theories of language processing, such as Surprisal theory, are supported
by evidence of anticipation effects in both behavioural and neurophysiological measures …

Predictive processing is a critical component of language comprehension, but exactly how
and why comprehenders generate lexical predictions remains to be determined. Here, we …

This thesis gives a theory of sentence comprehension that attempts to explain a number of
linguistic performance effects, including garden-path effects, preferred readings for …

Two hypotheses concerning the nature of lexical access, the exhaustive access and the
terminating ordered search hypotheses, were examined in two separate studies using a …

In human sentence processing, cognitive load can be defined many ways. This report
considers a definition of cognitive load in terms of the total probability of structural options …