Chapter 5 The Role of Suppression in Sentence Comprehension

Abstract

This chapter focuses on the mechanism of suppression and the vital role that suppression plays in sentence comprehension. The chapter demonstrates how suppression fine-tunes the meanings of words and the vital role that suppression plays in sentence comprehension by documenting that less skilled readers/listeners suffer from less efficient suppression mechanisms. Less skilled readers/listeners are also less able to suppress the incorrect forms of homophones, and they are less able to suppress words while viewing pictures or suppress pictures while reading words. Anaphors differ in how much suppression and enhancement they trigger. The more explicit the anaphor, the more suppression and enhancement it triggers. The mechanisms of suppression and enhancement are also crucial to a process called cataphoric access.