Martin Andrea E, McElree Brian
Department of Psychology, New York University, 6 Washington Place, 8th Floor, New York, NY 10003, USA.
J Exp Psychol Learn Mem Cogn. 2009 Sep;35(5):1231-9. doi: 10.1037/a0016271.
Comprehension of verb-phrase ellipsis (VPE) requires reevaluation of recently processed constituents, which often necessitates retrieval of information about the elided constituent from memory. A. E. Martin and B. McElree (2008) argued that representations formed during comprehension are content addressable and that VPE antecedents are retrieved from memory via a cue-dependent direct-access pointer rather than via a search process. This hypothesis was further tested by manipulating the location of interfering material-either before the onset of the antecedent (proactive interference; PI) or intervening between antecedent and ellipsis site (retroactive interference; RI). The speed-accuracy tradeoff procedure was used to measure the time course of VPE processing. The location of the interfering material affected VPE comprehension accuracy: RI conditions engendered lower accuracy than PI conditions. Crucially, location did not affect the speed of processing VPE, which is inconsistent with both forward and backward search mechanisms. The observed time-course profiles are consistent with the hypothesis that VPE antecedents are retrieved via a cue-dependent direct-access operation.
对动词短语省略（VPE）的理解需要重新评估最近处理的成分，这通常需要从记忆中检索有关省略成分的信息。A. E. 马丁和B. 麦克尔里（2008年）认为，理解过程中形成的表征是内容可寻址的，并且VPE先行词是通过依赖线索的直接访问指针从记忆中检索出来的，而不是通过搜索过程。通过操纵干扰材料的位置——要么在先行词出现之前（前摄干扰；PI），要么在先行词和省略位置之间（倒摄干扰；RI），对这一假设进行了进一步测试。速度-准确性权衡程序被用来测量VPE处理的时间进程。干扰材料的位置影响了VPE理解的准确性：RI条件下的准确性低于PI条件。至关重要的是，位置并不影响处理VPE的速度，这与向前和向后搜索机制均不一致。观察到的时间进程概况与VPE先行词通过依赖线索的直接访问操作进行检索的假设一致。
