An investigation into the online processing of counterfactual and indicative conditionals.
An investigation into the online processing of counterfactual and indicative conditionals.
复制标题
对反事实和指示性条件的在线处理的调查。
DOI：
10.1080/17470210902973106
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发表时间：
2009
期刊：
影响因子：
--
通讯作者：
Stewart AJ
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Stewart AJ
表示条件信息的能力是人类认知的核心。在两个自定节奏阅读实验中，我们调查了读者如何处理反事实条件句（例如，如果达伦是运动员，他可能是橄榄球队的队员）和指示性条件句（例如，如果达伦是运动员，他可能是橄榄球队的队员）。在实验1中，我们关注读者如何加工反事实条件句。我们发现，反事实条件句的前词处理很快受到先前语境的限制（即，知道达伦是否运动）。当先行词中的信息与之前的语境不匹配时，由先行词的最后一个词和后一个词组成的关键区域的阅读时间会减少。在实验2中，我们对比了反事实条件句和指示性条件句。对于反事实条件句，我们发现了与实验1中相同的关键区域效应。然而，我们发现没有证据表明指示性条件句的前句加工受到先前语境的限制。对于指示性条件句（而不是反事实条件句），我们报告的结果与条件句的假设解释一致。我们建议当前的条件句理论需要能够解释指示性条件句和反事实条件句之间的在线处理差异。
The ability to represent conditional information is central to human cognition. In two self-paced reading experiments we investigated how readers process counterfactual conditionals (e.g.,If Darren had been athletic, he could probably have played on the rugby team) and indicative conditionals (e.g.,If Darren is athletic, he probably plays on the rugby team). In Experiment 1 we focused on how readers process counterfactual conditional sentences. We found that processing of the antecedent of counterfactual conditionals was rapidly constrained by prior context (i.e., knowing whether Darren was or was not athletic). A reading-time penalty was observed for the critical region of text comprising the last word of the antecedent and the first word of the consequent when the information in the antecedent did not fit with prior context. In Experiment 2 we contrasted counterfactual conditionals with indicative conditionals. For counterfactual conditionals we found the same effect on the critical region as we found in Experiment 1. In contrast, however, we found no evidence that processing of the antecedent of indicative conditionals was constrained by prior context. For indicative conditionals (but not for counterfactual conditionals), the results we report are consistent with the suppositional account of conditionals. We propose that current theories of conditionals need to be able to account for online processing differences between indicative and counterfactual conditionals.