Representing object state change during sentence comprehension
Boundary conditions and language-specific constraints
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 21565237 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Channing E Hambric (0000-0002-0198-1889), Jon Sides, Khiela J Holmes (0000-0003-1373-0881), Kevin J Holmes, Abhilasha Ashok Kumar (0000-0001-7322-1267) |
| Year | 2026 |
| Volume | 149 |
| Pages | 104764 |
| Publication date | 2026-08-01 |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Journal of Memory and Language (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0749-596X • E-ISSN: 1096-0821 |
| Publisher | Elsevier BV (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1016/j.jml.2026.104764 |
| OpenAlex | W4411051567 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 37 |
Language comprehension entails forming contextually appropriate representations of described entities and events. Previous work suggests that non-visual object properties like weight are automatically integrated into event models during comprehension. Horchak and Garrido (2021) found that Portuguese speakers’ response times were faster when the state of a presented object (e.g., a smashed tomato) matched the event implied by the preceding sentence (e.g., You drop a bowling ball on a tomato ). In a pre-registered replication in English (Experiment 1), we failed to replicate this sentence-picture match effect. To explore the reasons for this non-replication, we designed three pre-registered extensions to examine the effects of another type of state change (slicing, Experiment 2), the role of implicit target object properties (squashability, Experiment 3), and the role of syntactic structure (sentence focus, Experiment 4). Contrary to previous work, we observed a match effect on both accuracy and response times in Experiment 4, but the effect on response times was only present when the target object was the focus (i.e., subject) of sentences with a relatively weak causal structure. Follow-up surveys comparing readers’ interpretation of the original Portuguese stimuli and their English translations indicated that the syntactic structure of Portuguese amplified the relative salience of the objects described in the state change event. Overall, these findings suggest that the representation of object state changes during language comprehension depends on the interaction of causal structure, object properties, and language-specific syntactic constraints
Boundary object · Cartography · Comprehension · Geography · Language change · Linguistics · Mathematical analysis · Natural language processing · Programming language · Sentence · Computer Science · Language, Metaphor, and Cognition · Mathematics · Philosophy · Artificial Intelligence
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| Highly cited | No |
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