The time-course of processing syntactic dependencies: Evidence from eye movements

The current study used headmounted eyetracking to examine the time course and nature of processing filler-gap relations in WH-questions, and the role of verb argument frame information. Subjects listened to a short narrative while viewing pictures of entities mentioned in the story. At the end of the story, they were required to answer an auditorily presented question; eye movements in response to these questions were recorded. Subjects heard WH-questions such as ‘‘What did Jody squash the spider with?’’ contrasted with yes/no question questions with no gap (e.g., ‘‘Did Jody squash a spider with her shoe?’’). Results showed that subjects anticipate a gap site at the verb only for Wh-questions. These results provide converging evidence for active on-line resolution of syntactic dependencies and introduce an important methodological tool for investigating processes that underlie syntactic dependencies.