The verification of sentences: The effects of delay of evidence and sentence length
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Abstract
Two experiments were conducted to explore further the relationship between the syntactic stracture of a sentence and its verification. In Exp. I, the evidence confirming or disconfirming a sentence was delayed for 3 sec after the sentence. Active sentences were verified faster than passive and affirmative faster than negative, contrary to an hypothesis that the hearer immediately decodes a complex sentence by transforming it into its underlying structure. In Exp. II, passive sentences were made shorter than active by deleting their agent phrases. Active sentences were still verified faster, indicating that the relation of verification time to sentence structure is not an artifact of sentence length.