Comprehending the impossible: what role do selectional restriction violations play?

Abstract

To elucidate how different kinds of knowledge are used during comprehension, readers’ eye movements were monitored as they read sentences that were: plausible, impossible because of a selectional restriction violation (SRV) or impossible because of a violation of general world knowledge. Eye movements on the pre-critical, critical, and post-critical words evidenced disruption in the SRV condition compared to the other two conditions. These findings suggest that disruption associated with reading about impossible events is not directly determined by how impossible the event seems. Rather, the relationship between the verb and arguments in the sentence seems to matter. These findings are the strongest evidence to date that processing effects associated with selectional restrictions can dissociate from those associated with general world knowledge about events.