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Interference patterns in subject-verb agreement and reflexives revisited: A large-sample study
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Description: Cue-based retrieval theories in sentence processing predict two classes of interference effect: (i) Inhibitory interference is predicted when multiple items match a retrieval cue: cue-overloading leads to a decrease in the probability of retrieving the correct target; and (ii) Facilitatory interference arises when a retrieval target as well as a distractor only partially match the retrieval cues; this partial matching leads to an overall speedup in retrieval time. Inhibitory interference effects are widely observed, but facilitatory interference apparently have an exception: reflexives have been claimed to show no facilitatory interference effects. Because the finding is based on underpowered studies, we conducted a large-sample experiment that investigated both facilitatory and inhibitory interference. In contrast to previous studies, we find facilitatory interference effects in reflexives. We also present a comprehensive quantitative evaluation of a cue-based retrieval model (Engelmann et al., 2019, available as a Shiny App: https://engelmann.shinyapps.io/inter-act/) with respect to the large-sample data.
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