Vertical and Horizontal Constraints in the Context Reading of Sentences

Abstract

Horizontal constraints such as the word class of a word deleted from a passage and vertical constraints, which operate over the distribution of words that can occur at a particular word class deletion, affect the word a subject will supply from his repertoire. Forty upper division college women were administered ten sentences; in each sentence a lexical word was deleted. The subjects were asked to supply all the words they could think of that made sense in each deletion. The study seems to indicate that a skilled reader does receive information from the constraints of the sentences that he reads and that the responses are in some way constrained by the responses he makes while reading. Probably horizontal and vertical constraints are important in the comprehension of competent readers.