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This study sets to test agreement attraction in the comprehension of reflexive pronouns. We aim to contrast an existing account of these attraction effects with a new one (both described below) through manipulation of the reflexive’s predictability.

This experiment will examine how intermediate agreement cues modulate the processing of non-local agreement dependencies. We will use a two-alternative forced choice sentence completion task to assess agreement attraction errors in Hebrew, and specifically attraction in gender features, while using coordinated verb phrases to manipulate the availability of such features in the intermediate region.

This experiment will examine how intermediate agreement cues modulate the processing of non-local agreement dependencies. We will use a two-alternative forced choice sentence completion task to assess agreement attraction errors in English, and specifically attraction in number features, while using coordinated verb phrases to manipulate the availability of such features in the intermediate region.

This experiment will examine how intermediate agreement cues modulate the processing of non-local agreement dependencies. We will use eye-tracking-while-reading to monitor processing times associated with number agreement in English while using coordinated verb phrases to manipulate the characteristics of the intermediate region.

Communication depends in part on the hope that people will tell us things we’re interested in with language providing a channel by which speakers can convey, among other things, newsworthy and informative messages. Despite this, research often emphasises the role of predictability, showing that comprehenders make fast and sophisticated use of knowledge about typical situations to shape their expectations about upcoming words in fine-grained and context-driven ways. This new study contrasts these two dimensions, distinguishing knowledge about situation plausibility from knowledge about what people actually choose to talk about.