Predictability of the Retrieval Site Does Not Modulate Interference: Evidence From Reflexive Attraction

Syntactic dependency formation in comprehension is subject to retrieval interference that occurs when comprehenders need to activate stored information in memory to form and interpret a linguistic dependency. For example, retrieving a subject phrase to attach it to the verb might result in agreement attraction errors. It remains unclear whether this interference arises as part of routine dependency formation or as part of a repair mechanism that is activated when predictive dependency formation fails (e.g., Wagers et al., 2009). For example, it has been argued that reflexive anaphors resist attraction in comprehension because number/gender features of unpredictable elements are not associated with a strong ‘prediction error’ signal that might trigger retrieval-based and error-prone repair processes (Parker & Phillips, 2017). We test a version of the “Error-driven Retrieval” hypothesis by examining the interaction between reflexive attraction and the predictability of the anaphor. In two reading time experiments and one offline interpretation experiment, we find that the predictability of a reflexive dependency does not modulate its susceptibility to interference effects in comprehension. We propose that attraction is better captured as part of routine retrieval processes and that the (in)sensitivity of reflexives to structurally irrelevant distractors should be explained through other mechanisms.