Further Investigations of Reaction Time to Clicks in Sentences: Linguistic Structures Emerge with Extended Processing

Abstract

This study reports an experimental and theoretical resolution to two seemingly contradictory findings in the literature of attentional strategies of sentence processing. Abrams and Bever (1969) reported that reaction time (RT) to brief tones located at the linguistic boundary between major sentence constituents was slower than reaction time to tones near the major break within major constituents. Holmes and Forster (1970), using different sentences and different tone locations within constituents found that RT to tones between constituents was relatively fast. The present study used practiced subjects and a frequency balancing technique that equalized the conditional probability of a tone occurring in each of four locations given that a tone had not occurred previously in the sentence. In Condition I, the instructions emphasized fast reaction time and the results looked like the findings of Abrams and Bever. In Condition II, the instructions stressed written recall accuracy and the results replicated the Holmes and Forster findings.