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Abstract

Two independent groups of subjects, under instruction orienting them towards understanding or towards memorizing sentences were timed to respond to a brief auditory signal which occurred at some point during the course of a sentence. Latency appeared to be primarily a function of the task, such that the deeper the semantic processing of the sentence the longer the reaction time. Together with other aspects of the data, it is argued that such tasks affect the extent to which a subject retrieves the meanings of the words in a sentence and integrates them at the end of it. Concrete and abstract sentences were processed in fundamentally the same way. The conclusion drawn is that speech comprehension is an integrative process, under voluntary control, which collates together different aspects of the speech signal.

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The Immediate Processing of Sentences

Abstract

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References