EFFECT OF A DIFFICULT WORD ON TRANSITIONAL ERROR PROBABILITIES WITHIN A SENTENCE

A model has been proposed to account for the way Ss produce or recall sentences during learning (Johnson, 1966a; 1966b). One implication of the model is that the phrase structure of a sentence should determine the points within the sentence where an S would terminate his recall attempt if he did not know the entire sentence. The probability of terminating at each word-to-word transition in the sentence (stop TEP) was computed and the data supported the model. A second aspect of the model was tested also. It was hypothesized that if a difficult word were to be introduced into a sentence there would be an increase in the stop TEP on all, and only, transitions which also represented transitions to immediate constituents which contained the difficult item. The data supported that hypothesis as well. © 1969 Academic Press Inc. All rights reserved.