Chapter 4 A Perspective on Sentence Context Research

Abstract

Publisher Summary This chapter establishes a perspective on sentence-context research, primarily in terms of a contrast between a target-centered information-processing approach and a context-centered linguistics-based approach. In principle, and perhaps in the long historical perspective, all the fractions are identified as contributing to the scientific effort. The sentence context occupies an uncomfortable position between the information processing approach that attempts to deal with context effects in terms of general cognitive processes, and the psycholinguistic approach that focusses on the nature of the representation of the context more than on the processes involved in responding to targets. The chapter reviews the implications of the tension between information processing and psycholinguistic approaches, and argues some of the theoretical problems of the area.