# Readers make targeted regressions to plausible errors in reanalysis of "noisy-channel garden-path" sentences

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2605.18563 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.18563/

## Key facts

- No citing papers in the map yet (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 8 of its 53 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 18 May 2026.

## Builds on (most cited first, 8 of 8)

- [Why Does Surprisal From Larger Transformer-Based Language Models Provide a Poorer Fit to Human Reading Times?](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2212.12131/) (2022)
- [Sequential Monte Carlo Steering of Large Language Models using Probabilistic Programs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2306.03081/) (2023)
- [Sentence-Level Fluency Evaluation: References Help, But Can Be Spared!](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1809.08731/) (2018)
- [The Natural Stories Corpus](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1708.05763/) (2017)
- [Linguistic Dependencies and Statistical Dependence](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2104.08685/) (2021)
- [What Goes Into a LM Acceptability Judgment? Rethinking the Impact of Frequency and Length](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2411.02528/) (2024)
- [The Effect of Surprisal on Reading Times in Information Seeking and Repeated Reading](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.08162/) (2024)
- [An information-theoretic model of shallow and deep language comprehension](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2405.08223/) (2024)

## 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.