Cozijn, R., Vonk, W., & Noordman, L. G. (2003). Afleidingen uit oogbewegingen: de invloed van het connectief 'omdat' op het maken van causale inferenties. Gramma/TTT, 9, 141-156.
Cozijn, R.; Vonk, W.; Noordman, L.
2003
Cozijn, R., Vonk, W., & Noordman, L. G. (2003). Afleidingen uit oogbewegingen: de invloed van het connectief 'omdat' op het maken van causale inferenties. Gramma/TTT, 9, 141-156.
Connectives structure discourse. They help readers build a coherent discourse representation. How they affect the reading process is studied in an eye movement reading experiment that investigates the influence of the connective 'because' on the making of causal inferences in sentences such as "Mr. Smith was delayed because there was a traffic jam on the highway". The results show that the connective calls upon the reader to make a causal inference as well as aids the reader in building a representation of the discourse. The causal inference, which is deduced at the cost of time, is implied by the connective and justifies the use of the connective in the sentence. The inference contributed to the richness of the discourse representation. The aid of the connective consists of facilitating the process of integrating the words of the sentence in the discourse representation by indicating that the second part of the sentence is to be interpreted as the cause of the consequence stated in the first. The two effects show up in different pasts of the causal relation sentence. The inference effect occurs late in the sentence and slows down the processing of the final words, whereas the integration effects occurs early in the sentence and speeds up the processing of the words immediately following the connective. The paper furthermore, brings up the issue of calculating reading times from eye movements. It presents an overview of the standard measures of reading time in eye movement reading research and discusses some of their shortcomings. The results of the eye movement experiment are analyzed with a new reading time measure, called forward reading time, that does nog suffer from these shortcomings.
The results show that the connective calls upon the reader to make a causal inference as well as aids the reader in building a representation of the discourse. The causal inference, which is deduced at the cost of time, is implied by the connective and justifies the use of the connective in the sentence. The inference contributed to the richness of the discourse representation. The aid of the connective consists of facilitating the process of integrating the words of the sentence in the discourse representation by indicating that the second part of the sentence is to be interpreted as the cause of the consequence stated in the first. The two effects show up in different pasts of the causal relation sentence. The inference effect occurs late in the sentence and slows down the processing of the final words, whereas the integration effects occurs early in the sentence and speeds up the processing of the words immediately following the connective.
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