Predictors for the Garden-path Effect Do Not Always Predict the Lingering Effect

We investigated the mechanism of the lingering effect in relation to the garden-path effect based on self-paced reading and comprehension experiments in Japanese. The lingering effect refers to a phenomenon in which an initial misinterpretation persists in a final comprehension even after disambiguation, which occurs after reading a garden-path sentence. Throughself-paced reading (Experiment 1) and comprehension tasks (Experiments 2 and 3), we explored how the length and head position of ambiguous regions influence the garden-path and lingering effects. Our results indicated that the length and the head position influenced the garden-path and lingering effects in different ways. Consequently, a longer initial misparsestrengthened the garden-path effect but weakened the lingering effect. Additionally, Surprisal affected the garden-path effect but not the lingering effect. These results support the notion that the garden-path and lingering effects are correlated but operate through different underlying processes. Specifically, the garden-path effect pertains to parsing, while the lingering effect relates to short-term memory.