Study title

The implicit prosody hypothesis (Fodor, 1998, 2002) proposes that silent reading coincides with a default, implicit form of prosody to facilitate sentence processing. Recent research demonstrated that a more vivid form of implicit prosody is mentally simulated during silent reading of direct speech quotations (e.g., Mary said, “This dress is beautiful”), with neural and behavioural consequences (e.g., Yao, Belin, & Scheepers, 2011; Yao & Scheepers, 2011). In this study, we explored the relation between ‘default’ and ‘simulated’ implicit prosody in the context of relative-clause (RC) attachment in English. English RC-attachment structures were embedded in direct speech, indirect speech or narrative sentences. Participants either completed sentence fragments ending in incomplete RCs (Experiment 1) or rated the felicity of unambiguous low vs. high RC-attachments in silent reading (Experiment 2) and in oral reading (Experiment 3), respectively. In this data collection, you will find task instructions, data and R scripts for each of the three experiment.Written communication (e.g., emails, news reports, social media) is a major form of social information exchange in today's world. However, it is sometimes difficult to interpret the intended meaning of a written message without hearing prosody (rhythm, stress, and intonation of speech) that is instrumental in understanding the writer's feelings, attitudes, and intentions. For example, a prosody-less "thank you" email can be confusing as to whether the sender is being sincere or sarcastic (Kruger et al., 2005). Emails like these are often misinterpreted as being more negative or neutral than intended; such miscommunications can damage social cohesiveness and group identity within organisations and communities, thereby undermining economic performance and societal stability (Byron, 2008). Interestingly, written words may not be entirely "silent" after all. My recent research showed that we mentally (or covertly) simulate...