The Effect of Visual Noise on Good-enough Language Processing in Reading: an Eye-tracking Study

Good-enough language processing is a theory in psycholinguistics that says that people are more likely to rely on lexical-semantic heuristics and language experience than algorithmic syntax processing in situations of bigger cognitive load. Unlike deep algorithmic processing, this mechanism can lead to incomplete or erroneous understanding of the sense of a phrase, such as interpretation of the word “dog” as a subject in a phrase “The dog was bitten by a man”. Despite the fact, that there are many works on GE-processing and this research topic is attracting increasingly more attention, the reasons why people rely on GE-processing to such an extent are still not studied. My work is concerned with studying the linguistic noise as a factor capable of increasing the degree of reliance on GE-processing. In order to understand how much this factor influences GE-processing, I have conducted two experiments (with and without noise) on the material of syntactically complex unambiguous sentences that contain an adjunct that is attached to a complex noun group and is expressed by a participle clause (in Russian). These sentences are divided into “plausible” and “implausible” depending on their meaning. The rightness of interpretation of their meaning enables me to assess the degree of reliance on GE-processing. The testees were neurologically healthy people, Russian native speakers aged 18-40. In my research, I applied eye-tracking method as ecologically valid and the most precise. My research enables me to reveal the role of noise in the engagement of GE-processing. In the future, the comparison of my results and the results obtained when examining other age groups will enable me to draw conclusions on how different age groups use GE-processing in different environment. Later, this will allow me to develop successful strategies of using written and oral speech.