Vasishth, S., & Lewis, R. L. (2006). Argument-head distance and processing complexity: Explaining both locality and antilocality effects. Language, 82(4), 767-794.

Vasishth, S.; Lewis, R.

2006

Vasishth, S., & Lewis, R. L. (2006). Argument-head distance and processing complexity: Explaining both locality and antilocality effects. Language, 82(4), 767-794.

1-2-3

Although proximity between arguments and verbs (locality) is a relatively robust determinant of sentence-processing difficulty (Hawkins 1998, 2001, Gibson 2000), increasing argument-verb distance can also facilitate processing (Konieczny 2000). We present two self-paced reading (SPR) experiments involving Hindi that provide further evidence of antilocality, and a third SPR experiment which suggests that similarity-based interference can attenuate this distance-based facilitation. A unified explanation of interference, locality, and antilocality effects is proposed via an independently motivated theory of activation decay and retrieval interference (Anderson et al. 2004).

In conclusion, although it’s clear that locality plays a critical role in sentence comprehension, the processing cost associated with increasing argument-head distance appears to be modulated by several factors, such as similarity-based interference and anticipation. We argue that locality, anticipation, and interference are best characterized in terms of very general constraints on activation of items in memory.

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