Judgments of Sentence Grammatically with Differentiation and Enrichment Strategies

Abstract

30 students rated the relative grammaticality of isolated sentences twice, with sentences presented repeatedly between the two judgments. Subjects were asked to adopt either a differentiation or an enrichment strategy during a repetition phase. The former strategy involved differentiation by structurally analyzing the sentences, while the latter involved enrichment by supplying situational contexts for the sentences. Analysis showed an interaction between a strategy adopted and the time of judgments such that the subjects instructed to adopt a differentiation strategy tended to use a more stringent criterion on judgments after than before repetition, whereas the subjects asked to adopt an enrichment strategy showed a slight tendency to use a more lenient criterion. These findings indicated that these two types of mental processes are involved in part in the change in criterion for judgments of grammaticality as shown in previous studies.