World knowledge affects prediction as quickly as selectional restrictions: evidence from the visual world paradigm

There has been considerable debate regarding the question of whether linguistic knowledge and world knowledge are separable and used differently during processing or not (Hagoort et al, 2004 Hagoort, P., Hald, L., Bastiaansen, M., & Petersson, K. M. (2004). Integration of word meaning and world knowledge in language comprehension. Science, 304, 438–441. doi: 10.1126/science.1095455[Crossref], [PubMed], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]). Integration of word meaning and world knowledge in language comprehension (Matsuki et al, 2011 Matsuki, K., Chow, T., Hare, M., Elman, J. L., Scheepers, C., & McRae, K. (2011). Event-based plausibility immediately influences on-line language comprehension. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 37(4), 913–934. doi:10.1037/a0022964[Crossref], [PubMed], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]). Event-based plausibility immediately influences on-line language comprehension (Paczynski et al, 2012). Multiple influences of semantic memory on sentence processing: Distinct effects of semantic relatedness on violations of real-world event/state knowledge and animacy selection restrictions (Warren et al, 2007). Investigating effects of selectional restriction violations and plausibility violation severity on eye movements in reading. Previous investigations into this question have provided mixed evidence as to whether violations of selectional restrictions are detected earlier than violations of world knowledge. We report a visual world eye-tracking study comparing the timing of facilitation contributed by selectional restrictions vs. world knowledge. College-aged adults (n = 36) viewed photographs of natural scenes while listening to sentences. Participants anticipated upcoming direct objects similarly regardless of whether facilitation was provided by only world knowledge or a combination of selectional restrictions and world knowledge. These results suggest that selectional restrictions are not available earlier in comprehension than world knowledge.