title: Time-driven effects on parsing during reading.
abstract: The phonological trace of perceived words starts fading away in short-term memory after a few seconds. Spoken utterances are usually 2-3s long, possibly to allow the listener to parse the words into coherent prosodic phrases while they still have a clear representation. Results from this brain potential study suggest that even during silent reading, words are organized into 2-3s long 'implicit' prosodic phrases. Participants read the same sentences word by word at different presentation rates. Clause-final words occurring at multiples of 2-3s from sentence onset yielded increased positivity, irrespective of presentation rate. The effect was interpreted as a closure positive shift (CPS), reflecting insertion of implicit prosodic phrase boundaries every 2-3s. Additionally, in participants with low working memory span, clauses over 3s long produced a negativity, possibly indicating increased working memory load.
authors.affiliation: Department of Linguistics and Phonetics, Lund University, Lund, Sweden. mikael.roll@ling.lu.se
authors.forename: Mikael
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Roll
authors.forename: Magnus
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Lindgren
authors.forename: Kai
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Alter
authors.forename: Merle
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Horne
mesh_terms: D001921:Brain / Q000502:physiology*; D004569:Electroencephalography; D005071:Evoked Potentials; D006801:Humans; D008570:Memory, Short-Term / Q000502:physiology*; D011932:Reading; D013995:Time