Temporal distance between the cause and the effect affects the reading of causality sentences -Eye-tracking evidence

摘要

Causal inference, a fundamental cognitive process with relatedness and temporal ordering of the events computed, can be reflected in language processing. Behavioral evidence has shown that the sentences in which the cause precedes the effect (i.e. consistent with the real temporal order) would be easier to read than those in which the effect precedes the cause, due to the coherence between the conceptual structure of the events and the narrative sequence. However, it is unclear whether the temporal distance between the cause and effect would affect the conceptual structure of the events. This eye-tracking study crossed the narrative sequence (cause-effect/effect-cause) and the temporal distance of the events (short-distance/long-distance) to investigate how reading of causality events would be affected by making causal inference based on the world knowledge. The results showed that, while readers launched less regression in reading cause-effect sentences than in reading effect-cause ones for short-distance events, this facilitation was absent for long-distance events. We suggest that the causality events may be conceptually represented not in terms of the temporal order but it may be structured on the basis of the reasoning order.