Because there was a cause for concern: an investigation into a word-specific prediction account of the implicit-causality effect.
In Koornneef and Van Berkum's (2006) eye-tracking study of implicit causality (Caramazza, Grober, Garvey, & Yates, 1977), midsentence delays were observed in the processing of sentences such as "David blamed Linda because she((bias-congruent))/he((bias-incongruent)) . . . " when the pronoun following because was incongruent with the bias of the implicit-causality verb. The authors suggested that these immediate delays could be attributed to participants predicting a bias-congruent pronoun after because. According to this explanation, any other word placed after because should cause processing delays. The present investigation aimed to test this explanation by using sentences of the form "David blamed Linda because she((bias-congruent))/he((bias-incongruent))/there((bias-neutral)) . . . ". Since significant immediate delays were observed in sentences containing a bias-incongruent pronoun (relative to a bias-congruent pronoun) but not in sentences containing there, the results of this study support an immediate integration effect but pose a problem to the word-specific prediction account of the implicit causality effect.
Featherstone
Cara R
CR
Institute of Psychological Sciences, University of Leeds, Leeds, UK. c.r.featherstone03@leeds.ac.uk
Sturt
Patrick
P
D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D001245:Association Learning / Q000502:physiology; D015982:Bias; D016009:Chi-Square Distribution; D032882:Comprehension / Q000502:physiology*; D005133:Eye Movements / Q000502:physiology; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D010775:Photic Stimulation / Q000379:methods; D011237:Predictive Value of Tests; D011930:Reaction Time / Q000502:physiology; D011932:Reading; D012044:Regression Analysis; D012660:Semantics; D014705:Verbal Behavior / Q000502:physiology*; D014825:Vocabulary; D055815:Young Adult