title: Canonical word order and interference-based integration costs during sentence comprehension: the case of Spanish subject- and object-relative clauses.
abstract: Object-relative clauses are generally harder to process than subject-relative clauses. Increased processing costs for object-relatives have been attributed either to working memory demands for the establishment of long-distance dependencies or to difficulties processing unexpected, noncanonical structures. The current study uses self-paced reading to contrast the impact of both kinds of factors in Spanish object-relative clauses, manipulating the interposition of the subject of the relative clause between object and verb. In addition, object-relatives were unambiguously marked at their onset with the Spanish preposition "a". Reading times increased at the onset and final regions of object-relative clauses, regardless of interference-based working memory costs, although interference costs may affect the processing of post-relative-clause regions. These results suggest that, beyond interference-related working memory costs, end-of-clause integration processes may be affected by a preference for canonical structures, thus increasing processing difficulties when confronted with a noncanonical form.
authors.affiliation: Department of Basic Psychology II (Cognitive Processes), Complutense University of Madrid, Madrid, Spain. driogran@pdi.ucm.es
authors.forename: David
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: del Río
authors.forename: Ramón
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: López-Higes
authors.forename: María Teresa
authors.initials: MT
authors.lastname: Martín-Aragoneses
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D032882:Comprehension / Q000502:physiology*; D005260:Female; D006630:Hispanic or Latino; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008570:Memory, Short-Term / Q000502:physiology*; D009769:Object Attachment; D011578:Psycholinguistics; D011930:Reaction Time / Q000502:physiology; D011932:Reading; D012660:Semantics; D014825:Vocabulary; D055815:Young Adult