Attention and the Processing of Sentences

Abstract

This chapter is about how attentional mechanisms influence the processing of sentences during listening and reading. It asks the question if processing a sentence costs attention. This chapter shows that attention could modulate the processing of different aspects of a sentence. Sentences are comprehended through a range of interactions with other cognitive processes like memory and attention. Different cognitive processes like memory and attention interact with different sub-levels of language such as syntax and semantics constantly, updating mental representations during sentence processing. The notion of automaticity in syntax parsing is discussed as this issue is intimately linked with attention processing.