Schluroff M, Zimmermann T E, Freeman R B, Hofmeister K, Lorscheid T, Weber A
Brain Lang. 1986 Mar;27(2):322-44. doi: 10.1016/0093-934x(86)90023-4.
Pupillary responses have proven to be reliable physiological correlates of cognitive effort in a variety of tasks, including language processing. To investigate the relation between psychological and syntactic complexity 20 syntactically ambiguous sentences, balanced for bias, were presented to 16 subjects, while their pupil size was continuously measured. These sentences could be read as verb oriented (syntactically more complex) or object oriented (syntactically less complex). Principal components analysis of pupillary movements revealed that verb-oriented readings, resulted in greater pupillary dilations than object-oriented readings, indicating that syntactically more complex sentences, as determined via a formal grammar, require greater cognitive effort in processing. This is viewed as further evidence for the notion that syntactic and psychological complexity are related. High- and low-bias sentences did not induce comparable differences in pupillary movements, indicating that the "multiple meaning theory" may have to be modified.
瞳孔反应已被证明是包括语言处理在内的各种任务中认知努力的可靠生理关联指标。为了研究心理复杂性和句法复杂性之间的关系，向16名受试者呈现了20个句法歧义句，这些句子在偏向性上保持平衡，同时持续测量他们的瞳孔大小。这些句子既可以被解读为动词导向（句法更复杂），也可以被解读为宾语导向（句法较不复杂）。对瞳孔运动的主成分分析表明，动词导向的解读比宾语导向的解读会导致更大的瞳孔扩张，这表明通过形式语法确定的句法更复杂的句子在处理时需要更大的认知努力。这被视为句法和心理复杂性相关这一观点的进一步证据。高偏向性和低偏向性的句子在瞳孔运动上并未引发可比的差异，这表明“多重意义理论”可能需要修正。
