Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society

This study investigates the representation of garden-path sentences and its interaction with memory retrieval. Garden-path sentences are initially misanalysed, and the initial misrepresentations tend to affect language comprehension, even after revision. Memory retrieval targets items in memory based on their representations. Our main research question investigates whether memory retrieval targets initial misrepresentations or revised representations in garden-path sentences. Using the cue-based memory retrieval model, we generated predictions for potential processing patterns stemming from this research question. The experiments used lexicality maze, self-paced reading, and offline comprehension questions. The results showed largely similar processing patterns between garden-path and non-garden-path sentences, suggesting that initial misrepresentations do not affect memory retrieval.