A resource-rational model of human processing of recursive linguistic structure.

ABSTRACT: A major goal of psycholinguistic theory is to account for the cognitive constraints limiting the speed and ease of language comprehension and production. Wide-ranging evidence demonstrates a key role for linguistic expectations: A word's predictability, as measured by the information-theoretic quantity of surprisal, is a major determinant of processing difficulty. But surprisal, under standard theories, fails to predict the difficulty profile of an important class of linguistic patterns: the nested hierarchical structures made possible by recursion in human language. These nested structures are better accounted for by psycholinguistic theories of constrained working memory capacity. However, progress on theory unifying expectation-based and memory-based accounts has been limited. Here we p

SUBMITTER: Hahn M 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC9618130 | biostudies-literature | 2022 Oct

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature