Easy solutions for a hard problem? The computational complexity of reciprocals with quantificational antecedents

The PTIME-Cognition Hypothesis states that cognitive capacities are limited to those functions that are computationally tractable (Frixione 2001). We applied this hypothesis to semantic processing and investigated whether computational complexity affects interpretation preferences of reciprocal sentences with quantificational antecedents, that is sentences of the form Q dots are (directly) connected to each other. Depending on the quantifier, some of their interpretations are computationally tractable whereas others are not. We conducted a picture completion experiment and two picture verification experiments and tested whether comprehenders shift from an intractable meaning to a tractable interpretation which would have been dispreferred otherwise. The results suggest that intractable readings are possible, but their verification rapidly exceeds cognitive capacities if it cannot be solved using simple heuristics.