Readers make targeted regressions to plausible errors in reanalysis of "noisy-channel garden-path" sentences
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Abstract (arXiv)
A key question in psycholinguistics is how inferences about the meaning of linguistic input unfold incrementally a comprehender's mind. In this work, we study reading dynamics for ``noisy-channel garden-path'' sentences, which temporarily appear well-formed but feature late-appearing violations of expectation that can be resolved not by inferring an alternative syntactic structure, but by inferring the presence of an error. We find evidence for targeted regressions -- eye movements towards regions that are promising loci of possible errors in light of later-arriving information, showing patterns consistent with the posterior inferences of a model of noisy-channel processing with reanalysis. We discuss the implications of these findings for theories of noisy-channel language comprehension and information-theoretic explanations of reading dynamics.
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References · 8
- 2022Why Does Surprisal From Larger Transformer-Based Language Models Provide a Poorer Fit to Human Reading Times?cited by 111
- 2023Sequential Monte Carlo Steering of Large Language Models using Probabilistic Programscited by 79
- 2018Sentence-Level Fluency Evaluation: References Help, But Can Be Spared!cited by 43
- 2017The Natural Stories Corpuscited by 40
- 2021Linguistic Dependencies and Statistical Dependencecited by 10
- 2024What Goes Into a LM Acceptability Judgment? Rethinking the Impact of Frequency and Lengthcited by 10
- 2024The Effect of Surprisal on Reading Times in Information Seeking and Repeated Readingcited by 8
- 2024An information-theoretic model of shallow and deep language comprehensioncited by 6
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