This article reports on four experiments aiming to examine immediate post-sentential recall of core sentence information (conveyed by direct objects), and optional/additional information (conveyed by temporal or locative adjuncts). Participants read simple and unambiguous Czech sentences such as Starší důchodce velmi pečlivě pročetl noviny v neděli v knihovně: "An older retiree read the newspaper very carefully on Sunday in the library." Sentences always appeared as a whole after pressing a space bar. Immediately after the sentence disappeared, an open-ended (free response) question was presented targeting either the direct object (e.g., newspaper), temporal adjunct (e.g., on Sunday), or locative adjunct (e.g., in the library). Altogether, it was found that the core information (conveyed by the direct object) was recalled almost perfectly, whereas additional information, conveyed by temporal and locative adjuncts, was recalled with significantly lower accuracy rates. Information structure also played a role: if the temporal or locative adjunct was focused, it was recalled better than if it was unfocused. The present article thus shows systematic differences in recall success for different pieces of information. These findings suggest the presence of selective attention mechanisms during early stages of sentence processing. Factors such as syntactic function or information structure influence the degree of attention to different pieces of information conveyed by a sentence. In turn, certain pieces of information may not be consciously accessible already after the sentence is processed.

• Keywords
• Recall, attention, comprehension, information structure, memory, sentence processing,
• MeSH
• Reading MeSH
• Language * MeSH
• Memory, Short-Term physiology   MeSH
• Humans MeSH
• Comprehension physiology   MeSH
• Mental Recall * physiology   MeSH
• Check Tag
• Humans MeSH
• Publication type
• Journal Article MeSH

Previous studies have reliably shown that the initial misanalysis of garden-path sentences lingers even after the whole sentence is processed. However, other aspects of the resulting representation of these sentences are far from being clear. Some authors argue that comprehenders form a full analysis of the sentence which is faithful to the input and that the fact that the misanalysis lingers is due to an inhibition failure. Recently, it has been shown that comprehenders might not manage to create a coherent representation at all, at least in the case of more demanding garden-path structures. The aim of the current paper is to examine resulting representations of garden-path sentences in more detail. To do this, four self-paced reading experiments in Czech were conducted, which differed in the presentation mode (word-by-word and sentence-at-once) and comprehension question format (yes-no questions and open-ended questions). The experiments replicated effects typical for the lingering initial misanalysis, but provided mixed evidence for other aspects of resulting representations. In most cases, participants managed to build a coherent representation that was faithful to the input. However, both the quantitative and qualitative analysis of the results showed that comprehenders sometimes maintained multiple local interpretations at once or even failed to build a coherent representation of a garden-path sentence. Thus, we argue that resulting representations of garden-path sentences are in fact not uniform, but rather diverse, and they vary both in their faithfulness to the presented input and in their internal coherence.

• MeSH
• Reading MeSH
• Inhibition, Psychological MeSH
• Language * MeSH
• Humans MeSH
• Comprehension physiology   MeSH
• Semantics * MeSH
• Check Tag
• Humans MeSH
• Publication type
• Journal Article MeSH
• Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't MeSH