title: World knowledge affects prediction as quickly as selectional restrictions: Evidence from the visual world paradigm.
abstract: There has been considerable debate regarding the question of whether linguistic knowledge and world knowledge are separable and used differently during processing or not (Hagoort, Hald, Bastiaansen, & Petersson, 2004; Matsuki et al., 2011; Paczynski & Kuperberg, 2012; Warren & McConnell, 2007; Warren, McConnell, & Rayner, 2008). Previous investigations into this question have provided mixed evidence as to whether violations of selectional restrictions are detected earlier than violations of world knowledge. We report a visual-world eye-tracking study comparing the timing of facilitation contributed by selectional restrictions versus world knowledge. College-aged adults (n=36) viewed photographs of natural scenes while listening to sentences. Participants anticipated upcoming direct objects similarly regardless of whether facilitation was provided by only world knowledge or a combination of selectional restrictions and world knowledge. These results suggest that selectional restrictions are not available earlier in comprehension than world knowledge.
authors.forename: Evelyn
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Milburn
authors.forename: Tessa
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Warren
authors.forename: Michael Walsh
authors.initials: MW
authors.lastname: Dickey
keywords: eye tracking; language comprehension; plausibility; prediction; sentence processing