The Effects of Language Experience on Syntactic Processing

Abstract

Decades of sentence processing research suggest that readers are sensitive to the statistics of the language they read and rely on this information to predict upcoming syntactic structures. A prediction of such experience-based accounts of language processing is that individual differences in syntactic processing should reflect individual differences in experience with language. We investigated the nature of the relationship between adult reading habits and how time spent reading predicts individual differences in sentence processing. In a language experience survey, participants (N=200) reported the number of hours per week they spend reading various types of texts. Sentence processing was measured using a self-paced moving- windows reading task. In the reading task, participants read sentences with subject and object relative clauses (SRCs/ORCs), which are known to elicit different reading times. Hours spent reading significantly predicted self-paced reading of relative clauses. Linear mixed effects models revealed that total hours spent reading significantly predicted response times, with participants who reported a greater number of hours reading both types of relative clauses faster. We also observed a total hours by condition interaction such that participants who spent more hours reading per week had a significant advantage reading ORCs. These results are consistent with predictions based on language experience accounts, as well as broader constraint-based theories of language processing.