Department of Psychology, University of Massachusetts, 430 Tobin Hall, Amherst, MA 01003, USA.
Cognition. 2010 Mar;114(3):447-54. doi: 10.1016/j.cognition.2009.11.003. Epub 2009 Dec 8.
Speakers are known to make subject-verb agreement errors both when a number-mismatching noun intervenes between the head of the subject phrase and the verb (e.g., *The key to the cabinets are on the table) and in configurations in which there is a number-mismatching noun that does not intervene (e.g., *The cabinets that the key open are on the second floor). Using a two-choice response time (RT) paradigm, Staub (2009) found that correct agreement decisions were also slowed in both cases. The present article reports a new experiment designed to explore whether these two RT effects are qualitatively similar or different. Fitting of the ex-Gaussian distribution (Ratcliff, 1979) to individual subjects' RT data, in each condition, demonstrated that the effect of an intervening number attractor on correct RT is due to both a shifting of the distribution to the right and to increased skewing, while the effect of a non-intervening attractor is almost entirely a skewing effect. A non-parametric vincentizing procedure supported these conclusions. These findings are taken to support the view that these two types of number attraction involve distinct processing mechanisms.
说话者在主语短语的头和动词之间有一个不匹配的名词（例如，“钥匙在桌子上”）和没有不匹配的名词介入的配置（例如，“钥匙打开的柜子在二楼”）时，都会出现主谓一致错误。Staub（2009）使用二选一反应时（RT）范式发现，这两种情况下正确的一致决策也会变慢。本文报道了一项新的实验，旨在探讨这两种 RT 效应是否在性质上相似或不同。对每个条件下个体被试 RT 数据的 Ex-Gaussian 分布拟合表明，介入的数吸引子对正确 RT 的影响既源于分布向右移动，也源于偏度增加，而非介入的吸引子的影响几乎完全是偏度效应。非参数 vincentizing 程序支持这些结论。这些发现支持了这两种类型的数吸引涉及不同的加工机制的观点。
