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Uncertainty reduction as a measure of cognitive load in sentence comprehension.

Frank, SL; (2013) Uncertainty reduction as a measure of cognitive load in sentence comprehension. Top Cogn Sci , 5 (3) 475 - 494. 10.1111/tops.12025. Green open access

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Abstract

The entropy-reduction hypothesis claims that the cognitive processing difficulty on a word in sentence context is determined by the word's effect on the uncertainty about the sentence. Here, this hypothesis is tested more thoroughly than has been done before, using a recurrent neural network for estimating entropy and self-paced reading for obtaining measures of cognitive processing load. Results show a positive relation between reading time on a word and the reduction in entropy due to processing that word, supporting the entropy-reduction hypothesis. Although this effect is independent from the effect of word surprisal, we find no evidence that these two measures correspond to cognitively distinct processes.

Type: Article
Title: Uncertainty reduction as a measure of cognitive load in sentence comprehension.
Location: United States
Open access status: An open access version is available from UCL Discovery
DOI: 10.1111/tops.12025
Publisher version: http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/tops.12025
Language: English
Additional information: © 2013 Cognitive Science Society, Inc.Full text made available to UCL Discovery by kind permission of Wiley.
Keywords: Cognitive load, Entropy reduction, Recurrent neural network, Self-paced reading, Sentence comprehension, Surprisal, Word information, Comprehension, Humans, Language, Reading, Time Factors, Uncertainty
UCL classification: UCL
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Brain Sciences
URI: https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/1356806
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