Table 1.
The Oldenburg Linguistically and Audiologically Controlled Sentences (OLACS).
Figure 1.
Example picture set for a sentence of the ambOVS sentence structure: Die nasse Ente tadelt der treue Hund. (The wet duck (acc.) reprimands the loyal dog (nom.), which means, “It is the wet duck that is reprimanded by the loyal dog”). A picture set consists of two single pictures. The dashed lines indicate the three regions of interest (ROI) and are not visible for the participants. ROI1 is the target picture and can be located on the left or right side of the picture set. ROI2 is the competitor picture. ROI3 is the background.
Table 2.
Time segments used for time alignment across sentences.
Figure 2.
Schematic diagram for the analysis of the recorded eye fixation data.
The first two stages of the calculation of the target detection amplitude (TDA) are depicted, namely the sentence-based processing and the sentence-structure-based processing stages.
Figure 3.
Post-processing stage of the analysis of the recorded eye-fixation data.
Post processing of the target detection amplitude (TDA), including the bootstrap method and Gaussian smoothing.
Figure 4.
Mean target detection amplitude (TDA) for the verb-second structures.
Mean target detection amplitude (TDA) averaged over all participants for the verb-second structures, i.e. the subject-verb-object (SVO), object-verb-subject (OVS), and the ambiguous object-verb-subject (ambOVS) structures. The shaded areas illustrate the 95% confidence intervals for each individual curve. The + signs at 2045 ms, 2715 ms, and 3315 ms denote the decision moments (DM) where the TDA first exceeded the threshold (15% of the TDA). The circles denote the point of target disambiguation (PTD): at 1745 ms for the SVO and OVS sentences and at 2650 ms for the ambOVS sentences. The horizontal lines denote the disambiguation to decision delay (DDD), which is the distance between the PTD and the DM.
Figure 5.
Mean target detection amplitude (TDA) for the relative-clause structures.
Mean target detection amplitude (TDA) averaged over all participants for the relative-clause structures of the OLACS. The shaded areas illustrate the 95% confidence intervals for each curve. Left panel: unambiguous subject-relative clause (SR) vs. unambiguous object-relative clause (OR) sentences; DMs (+) at 2615 ms and 2625 ms, respectively. Right panel: ambiguous subject-relative clause (ambSR) vs. ambiguous object-relative clause (ambOR) sentences; DMs (+) at 3600 ms and 3510 ms, respectively. Circles denote the points of target disambiguation (PTD): at 1885 ms for the SR and OR sentences and at 2755 ms for the ambSR and ambOR sentences.
Table 3.
Picture recognition rates and reaction times.