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The Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology

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Good-enough linguistic representations and onlinecognitive equilibrium in language processing

Hossein Karimi & Fernanda Ferreira

To cite this article: Hossein Karimi & Fernanda Ferreira (2016) Good-enough linguisticrepresentations and online cognitive equilibrium in language processing, The Quarterly Journalof Experimental Psychology, 69:5, 1013-1040, DOI: 10.1080/17470218.2015.1053951

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/17470218.2015.1053951

Published online: 23 Jun 2015.

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Good-enough linguistic representations and onlinecognitive equilibrium in language processing

Hossein Karimi and Fernanda Ferreira

Department of Psychology, University of California at Davis, Davis, CA, USA

(Received 3 September 2014; accepted 8 May 2015; first published online 23 June 2015)

We review previous research showing that representations formed during language processing are some-times just “good enough” for the task at hand and propose the “online cognitive equilibrium” hypothesisas the driving force behind the formation of good-enough representations in language processing. Basedon this view, we assume that the language comprehension system by default prefers to achieve as early aspossible and remain as long as possible in a state of cognitive equilibrium where linguistic represen-tations are successfully incorporated with existing knowledge structures (i.e., schemata) so that a mean-ingful and coherent overall representation is formed, and uncertainty is resolved or at least minimized.We also argue that the online equilibrium hypothesis is consistent with current theories of languageprocessing, which maintain that linguistic representations are formed through a complex interplaybetween simple heuristics and deep syntactic algorithms and also theories that hold that linguistic rep-resentations are often incomplete and lacking in detail. We also propose a model of language processingthat makes use of both heuristic and algorithmic processing, is sensitive to online cognitive equilibrium,and, we argue, is capable of explaining the formation of underspecified representations. We review pre-vious findings providing evidence for underspecification in relation to this hypothesis and the associatedlanguage processing model and argue that most of these findings are compatible with them.

Keywords: Language processing; Heuristics; Underspecification; Online cognitive equilibrium.

When reading or hearing utterances in daily life, thelanguage comprehension system should build notonly intrasentential representations connecting theconstituents within each utterance, but also inter-sentential (i.e., discourse) representations connect-ing the different utterances so that a seamless andcoherent discourse representation is constructed.Based on classic theories of language processing,representations formed during language processingare accurate, precise, and detailed. However, recentevidence suggests that both intrasentential andintersentential representations can be sketchy andimprecise (e.g., Christianson, Hollingworth,

Halliwell, & Ferreira, 2001; Christianson,Williams, Zacks, & Ferreira, 2006; F. Ferreira,2003; F. Ferreira, Christianson, & Hollingworth,2001; Greene, McKoon, & Ratcliff, 1992; Klin,Guzman, Weingartner, & Ralano, 2006; Levine,Guzman, & Klin, 2000; Stewart, Holler, & Kidd,2007; Swets, Desmet, Clifton, & Ferreira, 2008).

For example, given the sentence the dog wasbitten by the man, people often fail to compute thecorrect event representation: one in whichthe man (and not the dog) does the biting(F. Ferreira, 2003). Similarly, evidence from refer-ence processing shows that the correct referents for

Correspondence should be addressed to Hossein Karimi, Department of Psychology, University of California at Davis, 135 Young

Hall, One Shields Avenue, Davis, CA 95616, USA. E-mail: karimi@ucdavis.edu

© 2015 The Experimental Psychology Society 1013

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referring expressions are not always found, resultingin shallow and imprecise intersentential represen-tations (e.g., Greene et al., 1992; Klin et al.,2006; Levine et al., 2000; Stewart et al., 2007).To capture the sometimes superficial nature ofthe linguistic representations, Ferreira,Christianson, and colleagues (Christianson et al.,2001; F. Ferreira, 2003; F. Ferreira, Ferraro, &Bailey, 2002; F. Ferreira & Patson, 2007, also seeSanford & Sturt, 2002) proposed the theory ofgood-enough language processing (henceforthGE). At its core, the idea behind this theory isthat linguistic representations built in the courseof language processing are only good enough totackle the task at hand and become elaboratedonly if mandated by the task at hand.

In this article, we first review evidence showingthat intrasentential linguistic representations areindeed sketchy and incomplete, and we discussthem in relation to the GE approach. Then, wewill explore how the GE approach can be appliedto intersentential processing in general and refer-ence processing in particular. Finally, we proposeour own hypothesis about underlying mechanismsfor shallow linguistic representations in relation toboth intra- and intersentential reference processing.This hypothesis is consistent with and provides apossible set of mechanisms for the GE approachto language processing. We also propose a modelof language processing that outlines a concreteand detailed architecture for the formation of lin-guistic representations, including those that areunderspecified.

Good-enough intrasentential processing

Traditional theories of language processingassume that the representations created duringthe processing of linguistic information are com-plete and veridical. Under this view, the languageprocessing system follows strict and clear syntacticalgorithms to compute precise representations forthe given linguistic input; words are accessedfrom the lexicon and then combined accordingto rules of syntax to arrive at the global sentencemeaning. However, Ferreira and colleagues(F. Ferreira et al., 2002; F. Ferreira & Patson,

2007; Swets et al., 2008) have argued that algo-rithmic procedures for sentence processing arenot only too costly but sometimes outrightunnecessary (see also Boudewyn, Long, &Swaab, 2013; Kuperberg, 2007). In other words,the representations only need to be “goodenough” to tackle the task at hand, and sinceoftentimes the task the listener needs toperform based on the linguistic input is quiteminimal (nodding, confirming, executing simplemotor actions, etc.), employing simple heuristicprocedures is sometimes enough to fulfil thetask of sustaining communication.

Heuristic processing is based on the applicationof simple rules that can output a quick overall rep-resentation of the information currently under pro-cessing and thus offer an economic advantage interms of cognitive effort. As such, heuristic proces-sing is consistent with the fundamental least effortprinciple, according to which human behaviour isdriven by the general underlying tendency to mini-mize the average rate of work over time (Jaeger,2010; Piantadosi, Tily, & Gibson, 2012; Zipft,1935, 1949). Heuristic processing saves effortfulprocessing by proceeding through “fast andfrugal” heuristics rather than slow-going andcomputationally costly algorithmic processing(F. Ferreira et al., 2002).

A direct consequence of heuristic processing,however, is that the constructed representationsmay not be accurate reflections of the associatedlinguistic input. As counterintuitive as such alanguage processing architecture may sound,recent psycholinguistic evidence provides ampleevidence that language processing sometimesleads to errors such that the correct meaning ofsome given linguistic input is not successfully com-puted. For example, it has been shown that whenasked How many of each type of animal did Mosestake on the ark? people often respond two, failingto realize that, according to biblical legend, it wasNoah who took animals on the ark rather thanMoses (Erickson & Matteson, 1981). Similarly,people also often fail to detect the anomaly in thequestion Where should the authorities bury the survi-vors? (i.e., they overlook the fact that survivors arenot to be buried, Barton & Sanford, 1993).

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Further evidence for underspecified represen-tations comes from the processing of garden-pathsentences such as While Mary bathed the babyplayed in the crib. As might be clear, the sentenceis difficult to process because the baby is initiallytaken to be the object of the verb bathe. However,the remainder of the sentence rules out this analysisand forces a subject interpretation of the baby (i.e.,the baby is doing the playing). Christianson et al.(2001) as well as F. Ferreira et al. (2001) providedevidence that the correct interpretation of this typeof sentences might not always be computed.Specifically, they asked comprehension questionssuch as Did Mary bathe the baby? and found thatpeople have the belief that Mary indeed bathedthe baby. Later, Patson, Swensen, Moon, andFerreira (2006) ruled out the possibility that theform of the question itself might have reinstatedthe initial wrong parse; instead of asking compre-hension questions, they simply asked participantsto recall the sentences. Their results showed thatpeople recalled an event in which Mary bathes thebaby, confirming the results of Christianson et al.(2001) and F. Ferreira et al. (2001).

In addition to garden-path sentences, people alsoseem to have difficulty computing the correctmeaning of sentences that are both semanticallyand syntactically complex. For example, F. Ferreira(2003) manipulated the voice as well as the plausi-bility of experimental stimuli, producing active-plausible (e.g., “the dog bit the man”), active-implausible (e.g., “the man bit the dog”), passive-plausible (e.g., “the man was bitten by the dog”),and passive-implausible (e.g., “the dog was bittenby the man”) sentences. The participants’ task wasto determine the thematic roles of the event partici-pants—that is, who was the agent (doer) and whowas the patient (doee). The results showed thatpassive-implausible sentences were the most diffi-cult to process and led to the largest number of erro-neous interpretations. Importantly, this effect wasnot attributable to the low frequency of passivesbecause the meaning of rare cleft structures such asIt was the man who bit the dog was virtually alwaysidentified correctly. This finding suggests thatwhat is critical is not the frequency of the overallform but rather the extent to which thematic roles

are assigned canonically—agent before patient.Based on these results, F. Ferreira (2003) arguedthat sentence processing proceeds through a heuris-tic process in which a noun–verb–noun syntactictemplate is quickly mapped into an agent–verb–patient thematic structure.

Obviously, this is not to say that algorithmicprocessing has no role in language processing, butthat evidence seems to point to the conclusionthat heuristic processing may occur in parallelwith or even precede algorithmic processing.Recent evidence in favour of the priority of heuristicover algorithmic processing comes from the proces-sing of quantifier scope ambiguity. Sentences dis-playing quantifier scope ambiguity such as Everykid climbed a tree have two main possible interpret-ations: Either there were several trees (one for eachchild) that the children climbed, or there was onlyone tree that the children all climbed. The formerinterpretation has been argued to be the defaultinterpretation (e.g., Kurtzman & MacDonald,1993). In order to investigate heuristic and algo-rithmic processing and their relative time courses,Dwivedi (2013) manipulated scope ambiguity(ambiguous vs. unambiguous) resulting in stimulisuch as in (1).

1. a. Every kid climbed a tree. The tree was inthe park.

b. Every kid climbed that tree. The tree was inthe park.

In a moving window paradigm, the participantswere asked to perform a word-by-word, self-pacedreading task (Experiment 1) and also to answerscope-related comprehension questions such asHow many trees were climbed? (Experiments 2and 3). Consistent with previous findings, theyobserved that the plural context sentence (i.e., thefirst sentence in 1a) read faster than the singularcontext sentence (i.e., the first sentence in 1b),but there was no reading time differences betweencontinuation sentences (i.e., no differencebetween the second sentences in 1a and 1b). Thissuggests that the context and continuation sen-tences are processed in a shallow manner; werethey processed deeply, the second sentence insingular ambiguous stimuli (1a) should have taken

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longer to read than that with unambiguous stimuli(1b). However, question–response accuracy ratesrevealed lower accuracy for the singular ambiguoussentences than for unambiguous sentences,suggesting that algorithmic processing is invokedwhen task demands (comprehension questions)require it. Based on these results, Dwivedi (2013)argued that sentence processing primarily proceedswith heuristics and that deep, syntax-based, andalgorithmic processing is invoked only afterwardsand only if necessary.

However, there is also evidence showing thatheuristic and algorithmic processes are simul-taneously active during comprehension. Forexample, assuming that heuristic processing drawson semantic information and algorithmic proces-sing on syntactic information, Lim andChristianson (2013a) had non-native speakers ofEnglish read for comprehension as well as verballytranslate sentences from English to their ownnative language (Korean). Although the resultsshowed that non-native speakers rely more heavilyon semantic (plausibility) information than nativespeakers do during early stages of sentence proces-sing, the results from later stages of processing fromboth tasks suggested that non-native speakers areable to access both the semantic and the syntacticinformation in real time. In a separate study, Limand Christianson (2013b) found, in a translationtask, that non-native speakers of English preservedthe original syntactic structure of the to-be-trans-lated sentences but sometimes switched the the-matic roles of the event participants, suggestingthat syntactic as well as semantic information areboth available and used during sentence processing.Based on these results, Christianson and colleaguesargued that language processing proceeds throughtwo main routes operating in parallel—a semanticroute and a syntactic route (Kuperberg, 2007)—and that good-enough representations arisebecause the outputs of these two routes are not suc-cessfully integrated.

The results from Dwivedi (2013) and thosefrom Christianson and colleagues (Lim &Christianson, 2013a,b) run counter to each otherin that the former supports a heuristics-before-algorithms architecture whereas the latter is

consistent with the simultaneous operation ofboth heuristic and algorithmic routes. However,one possibility is that heuristic and algorithmic pro-cessing launch simultaneously but the former isfaster, creating the impression that it precedes algo-rithmic processing. We return to this possibilitywhen we propose our model below.

In sum, current psycholinguistic evidence showsthat intrasentential representations may be shallowand imprecise presumably because heuristic proces-sing is heavily involved in language processingalong with deeper, algorithmic processing. In thefollowing section, we outline evidence for shallowintersentential representations.

Good-enough intersentential (discourse)processing

Good-enough representations have also been shownto occur intersententially. One important case ofunderspecification in discourse is reference proces-sing. Previous research has shown that the referentsof ambiguous and even unambiguous pronominalreferring expressions might remain unresolvedduring discourse processing (Greene et al., 1992;Levine et al., 2000). For example, using bothprobe recognition and self-paced reading tasks,Levine et al. (2000) demonstrated that if there issubstantial backgrounding between the antecedent(tart) and the anaphor (dessert), and if a same-cat-egory and salient distractor (cake) intervenesbetween the antecedent and the anaphor, then refer-ence resolution fails to take place. Interestingly, intheir final experiment (Experiment 6), theyshowed that if participants were motivated todevote more attentional resources to the line con-taining the referring expression (by placing asterisksaround the line containing the referring expressionand explicitly informing them that comprehensionquestionswill address information on that line), suc-cessful reference resolution did occur. From theseresults, Levine et al. (2000) argued that referenceresolution is a function of two factors: first, thedegree of accessibility of the antecedent, with refer-ence resolution being more likely to take place if theantecedent is more accessible; and two, the extent to

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which the resolution is necessary to establish acoherent discourse representation.

Following up on the factors that increase theprobability of reference resolution, Klin,Weingartner, Guzman, and Levine (2004) investi-gated whether text factors (as opposed to instruc-tional manipulations) would also lead to fullreference resolution. To this end, they manipulatedthe perceived salience of the referring expression bymeans of syntactic focus (wh-clefts) and certainkinds of prenominal adjectives (sumptuous, good).They observed that reference resolution is influ-enced by perceived salience such that textuallysalient antecedents were more likely to be retrievedupon processing the associated referring expression,indicating that readers are efficient informationprocessors and that they are sensitive to subtle lin-guistic cues in discourse. Similarly, in a text changeparadigm, Sanford, Sanford, Molle, and Emmott(2006) showed that attentional capture devicessuch as italicization in written discourse andfocus-driven stress in spoken discourse increasedepth of processing.

Taken together and consistent with the GEapproach to language processing, the resultsreviewed in this section show that discourse proces-sing is sometimes superficial and fails to lead to suc-cessful reference resolution. However, when thetask requires or at least encourages comprehension,the referent of the referring expression seems to beidentified. In addition, when language users areimplicitly motivated to allocate more attentionalresources to reference processing (such as throughlinguistic attention capturing tools, text-based sal-ience, or increased engagement), reference resol-ution is more likely to occur.

The online equilibrium hypothesis

So far, we have discussed evidence showing thatboth intra- and intersentential language processingis subject to good-enough processing such that theresulting representations may not be very detailedand accurate. We have also discussed workshowing that task demands such as comprehensionquestions, textual perceived salience such as italici-zation, and enhanced engagement encourage

greater depth of processing. However, the criticalquestion is: What is the general underlying forcethat influences depth of processing? Borrowinginsight and terminology from the theory of cogni-tive development proposed by Jean Piaget (Piaget,1952, 1977, 1985), we suggest that whenever thelanguage processing system is presented with a sen-tence or a piece of discourse, it is in fact presentedwith a cognitive challenge that disturbs “cognitiveequilibrium” and that the language processingsystem is sensitive to online states of cognitive equi-librium and disequilibrium. Once the sentence orset of sentences is successfully processed or isbelieved to have been successfully processed, cogni-tive equilibrium is restored. Before going into thedetails of our online cognitive equilibrium hypoth-esis, let us briefly review Piaget’s original notion ofcognitive equilibrium.

Piaget’s theory is primarily concerned with cog-nitive development and assumes that people learnto adapt to their environment. This adaption takesplace through two different processes: assimilationand accommodation. Assimilation involves trans-forming information from the environment so thatit fits preexisting cognitive structures called sche-mata, and accommodation refers to the alterationof existing cognitive structures so that new infor-mation can be incorporated within the current cog-nitive structure. Accommodation necessarily resultsin changes to existing schemata. According toPiaget, cognitive development reaches its idealwhen a balance is struck between assimilation andaccommodation—that is, between the current cog-nitive structure and the environment. He termedthis state of balance “cognitive equilibrium”. Whenequilibrium is achieved, the child has the schematicknowledge required to learn new information on herown. Disequilibrium occurs whenever childrenencounter new information that does not fit existingcognitive structures. For this new information to beprocessed, either it should be transformed or exist-ing schemata should change to accommodate it sothat equilibrium can be restored (Piaget, 1952,1977, 1985).

We posit that language processing similarlyreflects states of online cognitive equilibrium anddisequilibrium and that equilibrium is the default

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and desired cognitive state. As mentioned above,we propose that when the language processingsystem encounters the first words in a sentence, itenters a state of disequilibrium. This is becausethe sentence contains unprocessed informationthat poses uncertainty and must therefore be pro-cessed and integrated with the existing schematato achieve a more certain and stable cognitivestate (this idea is similar in many ways toGibson’s proposal that dependencies in languageprocessing lead to processing costs; Gibson,1998). In other words, a presented sentencecreates online disequilibrium or cognitive challengethat needs to be resolved so that cognitive equili-brium can be restored. Importantly, achieving equi-librium is dependent on computing the generalmeaning of the sentence and successfully incorpor-ating it in existing schemata. Since linguistic infor-mation unfolds over time, it necessarily takes sometime for all relevant constituents to be delivered sothat the general meaning becomes clear, and thedisequilibrium can be resolved. As a result, proces-sing a sentence(s) can be viewed as entering a stateof disequilibrium and then moving towards a stateof equilibrium.

It is well established that the language proces-sing system processes input incrementally until itsmeaning is understood. Our proposal is relatedbut different: We suggest that language processingis incrementally sensitive to changing states of equi-librium in real time and that many psycholinguisticfindings can be explained by appeal to this sensi-tivity. We also propose two general principles forthe online cognitive equilibrium hypothesis (hence-forth OCE) that specify this sensitivity:

1. The cognitive system attempts to maximizeequilibrium at the earliest opportunity.

2. Once at equilibrium, the language processingsystem prefers to stay in that state as long aspossible and as long as there is no strongreason for abandoning that state.

It is important to highlight the relationshipbetween these two principles of OCE and theGE approach to language processing, and to thedistinction between heuristic versus algorithmicprocessing. We believe that the OCE approach

provides a possible underlying mechanism forgood-enough processing. Specifically, the reasonwhy sometimes only fast and frugal heuristicsrather than deep and time-consuming algorithmsare applied during comprehension could bebecause heuristics offer a faster route to equilibrium(Principle 1). Similarly, the reason why the systemis sometimes satisfied with a good-enough rep-resentation and does not exert the extra effort toengage in deeper processing could be because heur-istics often provides enough equilibrium for thesystem, causing it to stay in that state for as longas possible, which prevents allocation of the fullresources necessary for deeper processing(Principle 2).

It is also important to specify the relative timingof the heuristic and the algorithmic routes and howit relates to achieving equilibrium and the for-mation of good-enough representations. Figure 1provides a graphical representation of a model ofsentence processing that operates based on cogni-tive equilibrium. As can be seen in this figure, webelieve that heuristics and algorithms launch atthe same time. However, because heuristic proces-sing is based on the implementation of simple rules(perhaps “rules of thumb”), it usually delivers anoutput before the algorithmic route. This way, thesystem reaches equilibrium faster by reaching an“interim” output, so to speak (Principle 1). Notethat this output is perhaps not the best represen-tation that the system could possibly build out ofthe linguistic input because it has been constructedusing simple, error-prone heuristics. Crucially,when the output of heuristic processing becomesavailable, the algorithmic route is still not finished,and therefore the interim output of the heuristicroute influences the ongoing algorithmic proces-sing. We propose that it is this influence thatresults in the formation of good-enough linguisticrepresentations: When the output of heuristic pro-cessing is available, the system reaches a state ofequilibrium and therefore prefers to stay in thatstate, causing the system not to allocate furtherresources for algorithmic processing (Principle 2).In other words, the formation of an interimoutput by heuristic route causes the algorithmicroute to become confirmatory in nature, leading

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to good-enough final representations (for a similarapproach, see also Townsend & Bever, 2001).

Although some studies have identified a fewpotential heuristics (e.g., F. Ferreira, 2003), thenature of the simple rules that guide heuristic pro-cessing is unclear. However, we believe that thisprocessing relies more heavily on top-down infor-mation from semantic memory, whereas algorith-mic processing seems to rely more heavily onlinguistic knowledge to derive meaning in abottom-up way, by organizing and combining theunfolding input using well-defined, successive lin-guistic rules. It is also not the case that the oper-ation of the heuristic route and the formation ofthe interim output lead to a simple binary resultwhereby full equilibrium is either achieved or not.Instead, the interim output produces degrees ofequilibrium. Crucially, the more certainty there isabout the accuracy of the interim output, thegreater the equilibrium and the more the systemwill rely on the interim output, which will, inturn, lead to more confirmatory/shallow algorith-mic processing. The degree of certainty and there-fore reliance on the interim output may depend ona number of factors such as how relevant and com-pelling the retrieved schemata and the memory-based representations are. Importantly, however,

one influential factor could be task demands, suchthat when the task explicitly encourages deeper pro-cessing, the system will rely less on the interimoutput and more on the bottom-up, algorithmicroute (e.g., F. Ferreira, Foucart, & Engelhardt,2013; Swets et al., 2008).

At the same time, the interim output of theheuristic route is also influenced by ongoing algo-rithmic processing. That is, this output is refinedby algorithmic processing if there is strongbottom-up evidence supporting a modification inthe interim output. In other words, if there isenough evidence from the output of the algorithmsto revise the heuristics-based interim output, thesystem will fall back to disequilibrium and willtherefore allocate more processing resources torestore equilibrium. Thus, the interim outputcreated from heuristics gets refined if necessary,and once the algorithmic processing is over, thefinal output is produced. Obviously, if the algorith-mic-based evidence confirms the heuristics-basedoutput, that output will not be modified.

This model of sentence processing is similar torecent multistream models of language processing(e.g., Hagoort, Baggio, & Willems, 2009;Jackendoff, 2007; Kuperberg, 2007; van Herten,Chwilla, & Kolk, 2006; van Herten, Kolk, &

Figure 1. The model of language processing according to the online equilibrium hypothesis.

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Chwilla, 2005) and runs counter to models thatassume a single stream to meaning construction(e.g., Boland & Tanenhaus, 1991; F. Ferreira &Clifton, 1986; Frazier & Rayner, 1982; Trueswell& Tanenhaus, 1994; see Brouwer, Fitz, & Hoeks,2012, for a detailed discussion). A well-knownexample of a multistream model is the dual-routemodel of Kuperberg (2007), according to whichcomprehension is performed through two indepen-dent but highly interacting routes: a semanticallydriven heuristic route and a syntactically drivenalgorithmic route. Importantly, in Kuperberg’s(2007) model, the syntactic route can be influencedby the semantic information that becomes availablevia the heuristic route. Our model depicted abovealso makes use of two independent but highly inter-acting routes. However, there are two main differ-ences between our model and that of Kuperberg(2007). First, unlike Kuperberg’s model in whichthe heuristic route is responsible only for creatingsemantic relations between individual contentwords but not for creating global representations,the heuristic route in our model is capable of gen-erating a global sentence meaning. In fact, one ofthe fundamental assumptions of our model is thatan early global meaning (i.e., interim output) isformed by the heuristic route before algorithmicprocessing is completed (see also Townsend &Bever, 2001). Second, unlike Kuperberg’s model,ours specifies that heuristic and algorithmic routeslaunch simultaneously, but heuristic processingreaches completion earlier because it proceedsthrough simpler rules and makes use of lessinformation.

Let us now apply the equilibrium hypothesis andits associated model to intrasentence and intersen-tence processing. We focus somewhat more heavilyon reference processing (intersentence processing)as this topic has not received enough attention inthe literature researching into good-enoughlanguage processing.

Online cognitive equilibrium andintrasentential underspecification

Under the online cognitive equilibrium hypothesis,intrasentential good-enough representations might

be formed because the amount of equilibrium in theinterim, heuristics-based output is sometimes sohigh that it preempts algorithmic processing.More specifically, if the amount of disequilibriumthat a word or structure causes through the heuristicroute is small, the algorithmic route will not allocateenough resources to processing the bottom-upinput, resulting in the formation of less-than-veri-dical representations.

For example, based on OCE, the Moses illusionmight be assumed to occur because the high degreeof semantic overlap between the right and thewrong agents (Moses and Noah) creates little dise-quilibrium, resulting in heavy reliance on theinterim output and causing the ongoing algorith-mic processing to become rather confirmatory,which, in turn, may result in failure to detect theanomaly. Similarly, the burying-the-survivorsexample could be caused by the high amount ofsemantic overlap between survivors and other poss-ible words that could replace it (e.g., casualties,victims, etc.), which may have led to small disequi-librium at heuristic processing, resulting in aheavier influence of its output on algorithmic pro-cessing, which in turn might have led to failure todetect the anomaly. Finally, for the sentence thedog was bitten by the man, our proposal is thatwhen the concepts associated with dog and bitingare activated, a compelling schema containing theinformation that dogs bite people leads to the for-mation of an interim event representation inwhich such is the case, creating strong equilibrium.This output then influences the ongoing algorith-mic processing so heavily that the accurate syntacticparse of the sentence is contaminated, as it were, bythis output, creating an erroneous sentencerepresentation.

This possibility is strengthened by the fact that,in the correct event representation, the dog is theagent of the action of biting. Because syntactic sub-jects and thematic agent roles often coincide(Christianson & Ferreira, 2005; F. Ferreira, 1994;Osgood & Bock, 1977; Reinhart, 1982; Tomlin,1995), the mapping of a noun–verb–noun syntactictemplate to an agent–verb–patient template is validup until the verb (dog plus bite). As such, littleinitial disequilibrium is produced, leading to an

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interim output with a high degree of equilibriumand shallow subsequent algorithmic processing.

It is important to note that although influencedby the output of the heuristic route, the algorithmicroute still independently processes the unfoldinginformation in a bottom-up manner and often suc-cessfully detects any anomalies, as evidenced by thefact that implausible passive sentences are usuallyinterpreted correctly (74% of the time inF. Ferreira’s, 2003, study). Moreover, it has beenshown that manipulations of the linguistic inputthrough cleft constructions result in increaseddetection rates in the Moses illusion (Bredart &Modolo, 1988).

Our model of sentence processing is also compa-tible with studies that have found evidence for thesimultaneous availability of syntactic as well assemantic information even in underspecified rep-resentations. For example, in a follow-up study toF. Ferreira (2003), Christianson, Luke, andFerreira (2010) examined the potential influenceof syntactic and semantic complexity on languageproduction using a picture description task.Interestingly, they observed that the syntactic struc-tures of the productions were influenced not onlyby the syntactic form of the primes (e.g.,Pickering & Ferreira, 2008), but also by theirplausibility. Specifically, both plausible passivesand implausible actives primed passive productions.These results were taken to suggest that bothsemantic and syntactic information are availablein real time and that neither source of informationin abandoned in favour of the other (see also, vanHerten et al., 2006). Good-enough represen-tations, according to the authors, are the result ofa compromise designed to reconcile the outputsof syntactic and semantic routes.

Similar to the explanation of Christianson et al.(2010), under our model, these results can beexplained by the interaction between the heuristicand the algorithmic routes. Specifically, it is possiblethat when processing an anomalous active sentence(“man biting dog”), the plausible representation(i.e., “dog biting man”) has also been activatedthrough the heuristic (top-down) route. Since theman is the syntactic subject in the given sentence,but is the patient in the correct event representation,

the combination of the syntactic role from the actualoutput (i.e., subject) and the thematic role from theactivated correct event representation (i.e., patient),might have led to the production of the passivestructure in the picture description task. Similarly,the reason why passive-implausible sentences (“thedog was bitten by the man”) did not prime passivevoice productions in that study could be becausethe activation of the correct event representationmight have resulted in the activation of an agentconcept for dog. However, in the actual input, dogis the syntactic subject of the sentence. The combi-nation of the correct thematic role from the correctevent representation (i.e., agent) and the syntacticrole from the actual linguistic input (i.e., subject)might have led to more active than passive pro-ductions. However, in the case of plausible passives(“the man was bitten by the dog”), the plausible(correct) event representation has probably notbeen activated through the heuristic, top-downroute, resulting in more reliance on surface structureand leading to more passive productions.

Online cognitive equilibrium andintersentential processing andunderspecification

How would the online equilibrium hypothesisapply to intersentential (discourse) in general andreference processing in particular? It seems reason-able to assume that in the case of reference proces-sing, when a sentence containing potentialantecedents is processed, a new semantic represen-tation is established. The following sentence con-taining the referring expressions now has to beincorporated with this newly built schema (i.e.,the initial sentence) for equilibrium to be achieved.Therefore, when the referring expression isencountered, it needs to be resolved for equilibriumto take place.

To relate this back to our model, we argue thatwhen the referring expression is encountered, thefast-going heuristic route sets out to quickly estab-lish the correct referent for the referring expressionto achieve equilibrium as soon as possible(Principle 1). Once the referential problem issolved, the system reaches and prefers to stay in

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interim equilibrium, and therefore slow-going algo-rithmic processing is influenced by the output ofreferential processing (Principle 2). Again, theamount of influence from the heuristic-basedinterim output is contingent on the amount of equi-librium it produces: The more equilibrium is pro-duced by the interim output, the more it willinfluence algorithmic processing and vice versa. Assuch, the depth of processing of a referringexpression is a function of the amount of disequili-brium induced by the referring expression: Themore disequilibrium is created by the referringexpression, the smaller the effect of the interimoutput will be on the algorithmic processing, result-ing in deeper processing of that referring expression.The flip side of this is that the more equilibriumthere is at the time of processing the referringexpression, the more influential the output of theheuristic processing will be on the ongoing algorith-mic processing, resulting in shallower processing ofthe referring expression.

Recent research on anaphora lends support to anOCE approach towards reference processing.Specifically, recent evidence shows that the initialstages of reference processing are based on quicksemantic fit between the referring expression andthe potential referents but that later stages aremore bottom-up in nature. For instance, Cook(2014) investigated the effect of goodness-of-fitbetween an anaphor and the referent.Unambiguous anaphors were correct, incorrectbut semantically highly related, or incorrect butunrelated to preceding referents. The resultsshowed that incorrect but semantically related ana-phors were read faster than incorrect and semanti-cally less related anaphors, suggesting thatgoodness-of-fit is a driving force underlying refer-ence resolution. However, less related anaphorscontinued to cause processing difficulty in the spil-lover region whereas highly-related anaphors didnot produce such an effect, suggesting, accordingto the authors, that referring expressions might bechecked against the context for referential (asopposed to semantic) analysis in a later stage.

Cook’s (2014) findings are consistent withOCE, because based on this model, it could beargued that upon encountering the referring

expression, the heuristic route attempts to quicklyestablish reference. When there is enough semanticoverlap between the referring expression and apotential referent, the heuristic route simply linksthe two (although it might be wrong), producingearly equilibrium. In the case of semantically lessrelated referring expressions, disequilibrium wouldbe greater, which reduces the amount of influencefrom the interim output on the algorithmic proces-sing, leading to more processing difficulty forsemantically less related referring expressions.

A question now arises as to what determinesthe degree of disequilibrium that a referringexpression induces? We propose that the magni-tude of disequilibrium incurred by a referringexpression is inversely related to its efficiency insuccessfully distinguishing the referent fromother competing antecedents. In other words,the more efficient the referring expression is atdistinguishing the referent from competing ante-cedents, the less disequilibrium it will induce,and vice versa. This is because the system needsto resolve the referring expression before and inorder to arrive at equilibrium. As such, the effi-ciency of the referring expression in establishingreference will influence cognitive equilibrium.Importantly, the distinguishing efficiency of thereferring expression is dependent not only onthe linguistic features of the referring expressionitself such as gender or number, but also onhow conceptually confusable the potential antece-dents (including the referent) are as well. If theantecedents are highly confusable (for instance,if they are two human noun phrases of the samegender), then the referring expression should bemore discriminating towards the correct referentfor equilibrium to be achieved as early as possible,but when the antecedents are not confusable, thediscriminating efficiency of the referringexpression need not be very high.

As an example, given the sequence The cowboytalked to the sheriff. He was very jokey, reference toeither of the antecedents with just the pronoun hewould not be efficient because it prevents a quickidentification of the correct referent; a (repeated)noun phrase referring expression (e.g., the cowboy)would be better. However, if sheriff is replaced

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with cowgirl, then a pronoun would suffice to singleout the correct referent. As such, an ambiguousreferring expression would produce more disequili-brium than an unambiguous referring expressionbecause the former would make it difficult to pickout the correct referent and thereby establish coher-ence (and therefore equilibrium) by incorporatingthe sentence containing the referring expressionwith the preceding sentence containing the antece-dents. However, an unambiguous pronoun wouldallow quick and efficient resolution of the referringexpression, which would lead to early equilibrium.This view of reference resolution is consistentwith theories maintaining that language has pri-marily evolved as a means of communication, andtherefore efficiency in conveying messages is acentral principle guiding language processing(e.g., Fine & Jaeger, 2013; Jaeger & Snider,2013; Piantadosi, Tily, & Gibson, 2011, 2012;Qian, & Jaeger, 2012; Smith & Levy, 2008).

The online cognitive equilibrium view of refer-ence resolution can explain a wide range of estab-lished findings in the reference processingliterature. For example, it has been found that refer-ential ambiguity results in processing difficulty,whereas unambiguous referring expressionsproduce no such difficulty. In other words, previousfindings show that the resolution of unambiguouspronouns is rapid and automatic, whereas ambigu-ous pronouns lead to difficulty. For example,Rigalleau and Caplan (2000) measured naminglatencies for pronouns following an antecedent.The results showed a clear effect of gender congru-ence between the pronoun and the antecedent, withcongruent pronoun-antecedent pairs resulting inshorter naming latencies and incongruentpronoun–antecedent pairs producing longernaming tendencies. Based on these results, theauthors argued for an immediate and automaticprocess of gender matching between a pronounand the referent. Similarly, employing a reading-time paradigm, Rigalleau, Caplan, and Baudiffier(2004) confirmed that a gender mismatchbetween the antecedent and the pronoun resultedin increased reading times, suggesting that gendercoindexation between a pronoun and its associatedantecedent is nonstrategic and automatic.

Moreover, in an eye-tracking visual worldstudy, Arnold, Eisenband, Brown-Schmidt, andTrueswell (2000) found evidence for rapid use ofgender information in pronominal anaphora pro-cessing, with quick looks to the image associatedwith the gender-matching pronoun. Similarly,Sanford and Filik (2006) showed that there is aprocessing cost associated with the gender-unspeci-fied, singular they due to number incompatibility insentences such as I was looking for the railwaystation when I saw someone on the other side of thestreet. I asked them if they knew where it was.

These results can be explained by arguing thatwhen the referring expression contains enoughinformation to efficiently distinguish between thereferent and the competing antecedents, the heuris-tic route quickly resolves the referential problemthrough a simple coindexation process and producesearly equilibrium. In other words, the processing ofunambiguous referring expressions is facilitatedbecause the comprehension system quickly reachesequilibrium by establishing the referential linkbetween the referring expression and the antecedentthrough a simple, quick, and heuristics-based coin-dexation process, leading to little if any processingdifficulty. In fact, because there is enough infor-mation in the linguistic input itself for referentialresolution, it is highly likely that in the case of unam-biguous pronoun resolution, the algorithmic routereaches completion almost as early as the heuristicroute does, leading to no apparent asynchrony intheir respective outputs.

In contrast to unambiguous pronouns, ambiguouspronouns have been shown to lead to processing dif-ficulty. For example, in a probe recognition task,MacDonald and MacWhinney (1990) presentedparticipants with sentences containing two antece-dents and found that reaction times to referents areshorter, and reaction times to nonreferents arelonger, following a referring pronoun, suggestingthat pronouns facilitate retrieval of the referent butinhibit that of the nonreferent. Moreover, and moreimportantly, they also found that this facilitationeffect is substantially delayed when the pronoun isambiguous than when it is unambiguous. Researchusing the visual world paradigm has also demon-strated that people distribute their gaze almost

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evenly on all antecedents when processing referen-tially ambiguous anaphoric expressions (Chambers,Tanenhaus, Eberhard, Filip, & Carlson, 2002;Sedivy, Tanenhaus, Chambers, & Carlson, 1999;Spivey, Tanenhaus, Eberhard, & Sedivy, 2002).

The processing difficulty induced by ambiguousreferring expressions has also been demonstratedusing methods from cognitive neuroscience suchas the recording of event-related potentials(ERPs). For instance, building on the discoverythat referential ambiguity has its own unique ERPsignature (van Berkum, Brown, & Hagoort, 1999;van Berkum, Brown, Hagoort, & Zwitserlood,2003), which is the same for both noun phrase andpronominal anaphoric expressions (van Berkum,Zwitserlood, Bastiaansen, Brown, & Hagoort,2004), Nieuwland and van Berkum (2006) showedthat ambiguous pronouns elicit a sustained frontalnegative shift reflecting their processing difficulty,but unambiguous pronouns produced no such shiftin the ERP signal. Interestingly, the magnitude ofthis referential ambiguity effect was significantlyinfluenced by contextual bias such that when thetwo antecedents were more balanced in terms ofprobability of being the referent of the ambiguouspronoun, the ERP effect was stronger, but whenthe context biased the interpretation of thepronoun towards one of the antecedents, the effectwas weaker. This pattern of results further suggeststhat the more ambiguous the referent of thepronoun, the more processing difficulty the systemexperiences.

Under the online equilibrium hypothesis, thesefindings can be explained by arguing that theamount of disequilibrium caused by ambiguousreferring expressions (such as ambiguous pronouns)is higher than that produced by unambiguous refer-ring expressions. In fact, the heuristic route cannoteasily establish reference in the case of ambiguousreferring expressions, and as a result, no early equi-librium can be achieved. Thus, finding the correctreferent is automatically pursued by algorithmicroute. Moreover, since heuristics cannot reallyoperate, algorithmic processing of reference ispursued with little influence from the heuristicroute. Since algorithmic processing is more depen-dent on bottom-up input, pronominal ambiguity

takes longer to complete (because enough contex-tual information for reference resolution shouldbe found in the linguistic output before the ambi-guity could be resolved). As such, the systemremains in disequilibrium for a longer time, creat-ing processing difficulty.

Consistent with this explanation, there is evi-dence that the resolution of ambiguous pronounsis delayed (e.g., MacDonald & MacWhinney,1990; Stewart et al., 2007). For example, employ-ing self-paced reading-time paradigm, Stewartet al. (2007) showed that the resolution of ambigu-ous pronouns is delayed whereas the processing ofunambiguous pronouns is not. Specifically, theyprovided evidence that the processing systemmakes an initial but shallow commitment withregard to the referent of the ambiguous pronounand waits for later additional disambiguating infor-mation before fully resolving the referential ambi-guity. As such, there appears to be no initial andautomatic commitment to a certain interpretationof a pronoun upon encountering it.

However, one of the most interesting and chal-lenging paradoxes about referential ambiguity isthat it has been shown to inhibit referential proces-sing (as discussed above) as well as to facilitate it.Evidence for the facilitative effect of referentialambiguity comes from studies conducted on rela-tive clause attachment resolved by reflexive pro-nouns (Traxler, Pickering, & Clifton, 1998; vanGompel, Pickering, Pearson, & Liversedge, 2005;van Gompel, Pickering, & Traxler, 2001). Forinstance, using stimuli such as (2), Traxler et al.(1998) showed that the reflexive pronoun andimmediately following regions of the sentencewere read faster when the pronoun was ambiguous(2c) and more slowly when it was unambiguous (2aand 2b).

2. a. The daughteri of the colonelj who shotherselfi/*j on the balcony had been verydepressed.

b. The daughteri of the colonelj who shothimself*i/j on the balcony had been verydepressed.

c. The soni of the colonelj who shot himselfi/jon the balcony had been very depressed.

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The paradoxical effect of referential ambiguitycould be explained by the online equilibriumhypothesis. Specifically, a closer scrutiny ofTraxler et al.’s (1998) results reveals that the twopotential antecedents are ontologically one singleentity, not two. That is, the daughter of the colonelrefers to just one person in the outside world, nottwo, despite the fact that there are two differentnouns in this complex noun phrase. As such, it isplausible that this noun phrase is stored and rep-resented in working memory as a single complexentity encompassing both antecedents, resultingin a single, merged referent. In other words, therepresentation of the daughter of the colonel is oneentity that merges the singular representations ofdaughter as well as colonel. If this is the case, thenan unambiguous reflexive referring to the daughterof the colonel would disrupt equilibrium, because itwould force the processing system to distinguishthe antecedent representations in the merged rep-resentation—in this case, the feminine entityfrom the one that is masculine. This requirementto distinguish the antecedents that have beenstored as a merged representation would producedisequilibrium because a referential link is forcedbetween only one of the antecedents and the refer-ring expression. That is, when the unambiguousreflexive pronoun is encountered, the heuristicroute cannot establish reference and produce earlyequilibrium, which leads to algorithmic processingassuming a more prominent role in establishingreference, which manifests in longer reading times.

Note that as shown by previous research, thecomplex representation is eventually distinguished,resulting in the resolution of attachment ambiguity(see Swets, Desmet, Hambrick, & Ferreira, 2007),but the resolution is more difficult than the resol-ution of ambiguous antecedents.When the referringexpression is ambiguous, there is no requirement forthe referring expression to distinguish between theindividual antecedents in the merged representationof the complex noun phrase referent. In other words,the referring expression is allowed to refer to themerged entity as a whole. As such, little, if any, dis-equilibrium is induced by the ambiguous reflexivepronoun because the heuristic route can operatequickly, producing enough equilibrium to reduce

the depth of processing of the algorithmic routeand to eventually result in faster reading of ambigu-ous reflexive pronouns than of unambiguous reflex-ive pronouns.

Recent evidence supports the idea that compre-henders sometimes form merged representations.Specifically, Poesio, Sturt, Artstein, and Filik(2006) showed that underspecified anaphoricexpressions are special representations that coverall the potential preceding referents. Their work isbased on Frazier and Rayner’s (1990) finding thathomonymous words (i.e., ambiguous words thathave two unrelated meanings, such as pitcher)result in garden-pathing when an unexpectedmeaning must be instantiated, but polysemouswords (i.e., ambiguous words with two or moreclosely related meanings, such as newspaper) donot produce that same garden-path or surprisaleffect. From this, Frazier and Rayner (1990)argued that because the different meanings of poly-semous words are closely related, an initial prelimi-nary/partial interpretation would be activatedcovering all the meanings of the polysemous word,and weakening the requirement that words need tobe immediately and fully interpreted (e.g.,F. Ferreira & Clifton, 1986; F. Ferreira &Henderson, 1991; Fodor & Inoue, 1998, 2000;Frazier & Fodor, 1978; Pickering & Frisson, 2001).

Extending Frazier and Rayner’s (1990) work toanaphora, Poesio et al. (2006), focused on what isknown as mereological pronouns: Pronouns thathave no specific antecedent. For example, in (3),it is unclear whether the pronoun it refers to theengine, to the boxcar, or to both.

3. Hook up engine 2 to the boxcar and send it toCorning.

Mereological pronouns are similar to the case ofpolysemous words because they too can receive aninitial preliminary interpretation that covers all thepossible interpretations (in this case, antecedents).As such, they also provide a useful situation forinvestigating the nature of good-enough represen-tations in relation to referring expressions. This isbecause once the two separate entities (e.g., theengine and the boxcar) are merged, they becomeone new entity, and therefore from the point of

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view of the listener, all that matters is that thepronoun interpretation restricts the potential refer-ents to the entity obtained through the merger.After confirming that mereological pronouns arefairly common in corpora, Poesio et al. (2006) pro-vided offline (acceptability judgement) and online(eye-tracking) evidence supporting the view thatmereological pronouns invoke a good-enough rep-resentation. Specifically, sentences such as (4a),which contain a verb that gives rise to amereologicalpronoun (hook up), were judged to be more accepta-ble than sentences with a preceding context that didnot permit a mereological pronoun (4b).

4. a. The engineer hooked up the engine to theboxcar and sent it to London.

b. The engineer separated the engine to theboxcar and sent it to London.

In addition, in an eye-tracking experiment, theyshowed that sentence regions containing mereolo-gical pronouns are read faster than control sen-tences containing a normal plural pronoun,suggesting that the referent associated with thesingular pronoun might indeed have received anunderspecified interpretation.

Thus, similar to mereological pronouns thatresult in formation of a representation that rep-resents all the preceding antecedents, syntacticallycomplex noun phrases such as the daughter of thecolonel might also result in a representation thatmerges both individual entities in the complexnoun phrase. The reason for forming such amerged representation could be that the entirenoun phrase refers to just a single entity in theworld, or the merger might occur simply becausethe noun phrase is syntactically complex, and there-fore it is easier andmore efficient to underspecify therepresentation by forming a merged and sketchyrepresentation. Whatever the reason, the bottomline is that such a merged representation would beeasier to process when referred to by an ambiguousreflexive pronoun than with an unambiguous onebecause an ambiguous referring expression wouldfacilitate establishing reference between thepronoun and the merged representation, whereasan unambiguous referring expression wouldrequire conceptually breaking apart the merged

representation, which would in turn result in dise-quilibrium and therefore processing difficulty.

Online cognitive equilibrium and theproduction of referring expressions

The online equilibrium approach to reference pro-cessing can also explain several established findingsregarding the production (as opposed to the com-prehension) of referring expressions. One relevantphenomenon is that the presence of a competingantecedent as well as the semantic similaritybetween the antecedents results in greater use ofnoun phrase anaphora overall (i.e., regardless ofwhich antecedent is referred to), whereas theabsence of a competitor or lack of semantic simi-larity between antecedents results in greater use ofpronouns.

For example, Arnold and Griffin (2007) pre-sented their participants with two-panel cartoons.Participants saw the first panel and simultaneouslyheard the first sentence of a story, and then theywere asked to generate the next sentence based onthe second panel of the cartoon. The manipulationswere whether a second character was present in thecartoons and also whether the second character, ifpresent, was of the same or a different gender tothe main character [Mickey went for a walk (withDonald/Daisy) in the hills one day]. Since in all criticalitems the target character was the subject of the firstsentence, no difference in pronominalization ratesin the one-character versus two-character con-ditions was expected. Nonetheless, the resultsshowed that speakers tended to use fewer pronounsto realize an entity when a second entity was alsopresent in the scene than when there was nosecond entity. Additionally, they found a robust sig-nificant difference between same-gender and differ-ent-gender conditions, with significantly morerepeated noun referring expressions in the same-gender condition. They attributed this effect to thesemantic interference resulting from having twocharacters of the same gender available as potentialreferents. Note that since there was a significantdifference between the one- and two-character con-ditions, the gender effect could not be attributed toambiguity avoidance.

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More recently, Fukumura, van Gompel, andPickering (2010) replicated the effect of the pres-ence of competing antecedents, and Fukumuraand van Gompel (2011) also found the samesemantic interference effect with animacy ratherthan gender: They observed that participants usedmore repeated nouns when two antecedents wereboth animate than when one was animate and theother inanimate.

According to OCE, in order for the referringexpression to result in equilibrium, it should effi-ciently distinguish between the referent and othercompeting antecedents so that incorporation of thetwo sentences could be achieved as quickly as poss-ible. As such, when there are two antecedentsinstead of just one, there will necessarily be somedegree of confusability between them, which wouldthen require that the referring expression be morediscriminating towards its referent. Thus, the effectof having a competing antecedent in the precedingdiscourse could be because repeated nouns aremore distinguishing than pronouns (because theypick out their referents with more certainty).

Similarly, the semantic similarity effect could beexplained by arguing that similarity necessarily pro-duces confusability, requiring that the referringexpression be more discriminating towards its refer-ent, which in turn results in the use of more nounphrase referring expressions. Notice too that ourexplanation is agnostic between speaker-based(e.g., Arnold & Griffin, 2007; V. S. Ferreira, Slevc,& Rogers, 2005; Fukumura & van Gompel, 2012)and audience-design (e.g., Brennan & Clark, 1996;Brown-Schmidt & Tanenhaus, 2006; Horton &Gerrig, 2002, 2005) accounts of referent formu-lation; that is, speakersmight try to reduce confusionin their own representations to facilitate their pro-duction of utterances, or they might attempt toreduce listener confusion (or both). Our account iscompatible with any of these views.

Challenges to referential processing underOCE

Earlier we discussed research showing that some-times referring expressions are not given specificreferents. For example, Levine et al. (2000)

suggest a model of anaphor resolution in whichreferring expressions may be left unresolved (seeabove). Further evidence for this model comesfrom Greene et al. (1992), who presented partici-pants with stories such as (5) via rapid serialvisual presentation (RSVP) and asked them torespond “Yes” to a probe if it had appeared in thetext and “No” if it had not.

5. Mary and John were doing the dishes afterdinner.One of them was washing while the otherdried.Mary accidentally scratched John with a knifeand then she dropped it on the counter.

The probe words were the two human charactersintroduced in the story (Mary or John), or a nonre-ferent control (dishes). The probes appearedimmediately before the pronoun in the last line(she), after the word following the pronoun(dropped), or at the end of the last line. Theyfound no difference in reaction times to the referentand the nonreferent probes (i.e., Mary vs. John),suggesting that the correct referent of thepronoun was not accessed following the processingof the pronoun.

Their results were later replicated by Love andMcKoon (2011). However, Love and McKoonshowed that when extra text is added between thereferents and the pronoun, automatic resolutionof the pronoun does take place. Specifically, Loveand McKoon lengthened Greene et al.’s (1992)stories from four to eight lines, creating storiessuch as (6), and observed a reaction time advantagefor the referent compared with the nonreferent.Interestingly, this effect of lengthening the storiesdid not depend on whether the extra lines remen-tioned the referents. Based on these results, Loveand McKoon argued that automatic pronoun resol-ution in longer stories is due to the greater engage-ment of participants in the stories, whichpresumably led to greater attentional resourcesbeing allocated to processing and consequently tothe resolution of the pronoun. In other words,mental effort is required to bind a referent to apronoun, and readers do not expend that effortunless the task is interesting or significant to them.

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6. Rita and Walter were writing an article for amagazine.They had to get it done before next Tuesday.Rita didn’t trust Walter to get the facts right.Once, he’d written a piece about aliens landingin Chicago.“I’m going to get dragged down with you,”Rita said at the time.However, neither of them had been fired.Rita edited the section Walter had writtenand then she smoked a cigarette to relax.

Obviously, nonresolution of referring expressionsis inconsistent with the online equilibrium hypoth-esis, according to which referring expressionsshould be resolved so that equilibrium is achieved.However, more recent evidence suggests that if theprocessing measures are sensitive enough and/or ifthe manipulations are strong enough, evidence foranaphora resolution can be detected (e.g., Cook,2014; Klin et al., 2006). Specifically, note that bothLevine et al. (2000) and Greene et al. (1992)employed the probe recognition task for investigatingthe encoding of the antecedents, which has beenargued to be sensitive mainly to a surface encodingof words and not to the formation of abstract concep-tual representations (Fincher-Kiefer, 1993; Gordon,Hendrick, & Foster, 2000). As such, if the antece-dent had been partially encoded in Levine et al.’s(2000) and Greene et al.’s (1992) studies such thatonly an abstract level of representation associatedwith the antecedent was reinstated upon processingof the anaphor, the probe recognition task wouldnot be sensitive to that effect.

To increase the probability of detecting pro-cesses related to the resolution of referringexpressions (assuming such resolution is indeedtaking place), Klin et al. (2006) employed alexical decision task, which has been argued to bemore sensitive to subtle and abstract represen-tations (Fincher-Kiefer, 1993; Lucas, Tanenhaus,& Carlson, 1990). They also manipulated the pres-ence of antecedents and distractors to examine pro-cessing of referring expressions. Their resultsshowed a null effect of the presence of a distractorin the preceding text when a lexical decision taskwas used (Experiment 2). However, when they

employed an even more sensitive measure (i.e.,reading time) and manipulated the very presenceof the antecedent by comparing conditions inwhich there was an antecedent in the precedingtext with conditions in which there was no antece-dent, they found clear evidence for partial encod-ing: Reading times for the line including thereferring expression were faster in the antecedent-present condition than in the antecedent-absentcondition, suggesting that at least a subset of infor-mation associated with the antecedent was retrievedupon processing of the pronoun (Experiment 3).

Thus, at best, referring expressions were onlyunderspecified and not left completely unresolvedin Levine et al.’s (2000) and Greene et al.’s(1992) studies. But why did these two studiesobtain the results they did? That is, why did theyfind evidence for nonresolution? In addition tothe use of a task thought to be an insensitivemeasure of sentence integration, some otherfactors might have contributed to their results.Specifically, Levine et al.’s (2000) results couldhave been obtained because, unlike pronouns thatare void of semantic meaning and therefore onlypose a referential problem, noun phrase referringexpressions do contain semantic meaning of theirown. Since previous research has shown that thecomputation of semantic meaning precedes refer-ential processing (Nieuwland & van Berkum,2008), it could have been the case that the highsemantic overlap between the referring expression(dessert) and the antecedents (tart and cake) hascreated a temporary semantic coindexation basedon a simple and heuristics-based semantic fitassessment between the anaphor and both of theantecedents, resulting in high interim equilibriumand shallow subsequent bottom-up/algorithmicprocessing. In fact, there is recent evidenceshowing that the initial stages of resolving nounphrase anaphors could be based on quick semanticmatching (Cook, 2014; see above).

Another possible reason for the undespecifica-tion observed in Levine et al. (2000) could bethat the antecedents were inanimate entities, andinanimate entities have been shown not to resultin semantic confusability compared with animateentities. Specifically, Fukumura and van Gompel

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(2011) showed that congruence in terms of animacyreduces pronoun use, suggesting that semantic con-fusability exists between the two animate entities.However, interestingly, the animacy congruenceeffect was not observed for inanimate–inanimatepairs. Fukumura and van Gompel (2011) arguedthat this could be because inanimate entitiesreceive overall less activation in memory due toless enhanced processing (a levels of processingeffect; Craik & Tulving, 1975), leading to lesssemantic confusability. Similarly, in Levine et al.’s(2000) study, because the two antecedents wereboth inanimate entities (cake and tart), the magni-tude of semantic confusability produced by the twoantecedents might have been so low that a nondis-criminating anaphor (dessert) could not possiblycause much disequilibrium, which could have inturn led to shallow processing. Interestingly, Klinet al. (2006) found evidence for reference resolutiononly when they compared reading times on refer-ring expressions with and without an antecedent,where semantic congruence was obviously not anissue. This analysis also offers another explanationof the Greene et al. (1992) results suggesting thatpronouns are not resolved during normal compre-hension: It might be that their materials encour-aged formation of merged representations for thetwo antecedents (Poesio et al., 2006). Specifically,recall that in their stimuli, the two human charac-ters were conjoined in the first sentence and thata collective pronoun was used in the second sen-tence: See (5). As such, the two antecedentsmight have been merged together in single rep-resentations, and, as a result of this, unambiguouspronouns might have rendered pronoun resolutiondifficult, leading to nonresolution.

We also argue that the observation by Love andMcKoon (2011) that adding text to the precedingdiscourse increased the likelihood of anaphoric res-olution is compatible with the online equilibriumhypothesis (recall that Love & McKoon, 2011,used the same stimuli as those used in Greeneet al., 1992, but lengthened the stories). This isbecause the additional text might have allowedthe formation of a richer representation for the sen-tence containing the antecedents, which might inturn have increased the probability of reference

resolution. More specifically, a richer precedingrepresentation might have allowed for richer sche-mata, facilitating the integration of the referringexpression with the representation of the precedingsentence and therefore achieving equilibrium. Infact, our own previous studies show that lengthplays a role in pronoun resolution by increasingthe “semantic richness” of the associated antece-dent. Specifically, we showed that longer antece-dents are more likely to be later realized withpronouns rather than with repeated noun phrases(Karimi, Fukumura, Ferreira, & Pickering, 2014)and also that longer antecedents are more likelyto interpreted as referents of ambiguous pronounsthan shorter antecedents (Karimi & Ferreira,2015). Similarly, a richer representation mightfacilitate retrieval of any antecedents contained inthat representation for establishing reference andtherefore achieving equilibrium. Moreover, suchrich representation might have aided the separationof individual antecedents contained in any mergedrepresentation.

Another important psycholinguistic finding thatalso may seem to pose a serious challenge for theOCE approach to reference processing is the so-called “repeated-name penalty” (Gordon, Grosz,& Gilliom, 1993). The repeated-name penalty isthe phenomenon wherein the subsequent referenceto a subject antecedent produces processing diffi-culty if reference is made through a repeatednoun as opposed to a pronoun. For example,given Bruno was the bully of the neighbourhood.Bruno chased Tommy all the way home from schoolone day, it takes people significantly longer to readBruno watched Tommy hide behind a big tree andstart to cry than to read He watched Tommy hidebehind a big tree and start to cry. Based on theonline equilibrium hypothesis, the most effectiveway of distinguishing between two preceding ante-cedents would be to use a repeated noun to elimin-ate ambiguity altogether. Thus, the fact that arepeated name causes difficulty rather than ease ofprocessing runs counter to the predictions of theonline equilibrium hypothesis.

Interestingly, however, there is evidenceshowing that the repeated name realization of asyntactic subject produces no processing difficulty

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at the initial stages of processing. In one study,Almor and Nair (2007) found that the repeatedname penalty was not observed when the text waspresented word by word, but only when it was pre-sented as larger chunks or whole sentences, indicat-ing, according to the authors, that initial stages ofreferential processing (where the representation ofthe antecedents and that of the referring expressionis merely activated, but no binding occurs) are notaffected by the presence of a repeated name, butonly later, integrative stages are (when the referringexpression is integrated with the preceding dis-course, and binding takes place). Almor andEimas (2008) also reported similar findings inspoken language where they found the repeatedname penalty effect only in a delayed recall taskbut not in lexical decision latencies. Similarly,employing a visual world paradigm, Almor andPhillips (2006) showed that semantic overlapbetween the referring expression and the antece-dents facilitates initial stages of referential proces-sing but also impedes later stages.

Under OCE, it could be argued that in the caseof repeated-noun reference, the initial stage ofestablishing reference that is driven by heuristicsresolves the ambiguity and brings about equili-brium, thereby producing no processing difficultyat the early stages of reference processing. Notethat since the magnitude of the equilibrium in theinterim output is high (because the referringexpression is maximally unambiguous), the algo-rithmic processing should be heavily influenced byoutput of the heuristic route. However, there isstrong bottom-up evidence from the linguisticinput that opposes the output of the heuristicroute. Specifically, and as argued by Almor (1999,2004), there is no pragmatic justification for reacti-vating an antecedent that is already the most highlyactivated antecedent in discourse. In fact, overacti-vating a concept may cause disequilibrium becauseit might open up the possibility that there is athird, unmentioned antecedent that the referringexpression is referring to (who happens to havethe same name as the intended referent), reducingthe discriminatory power of the referringexpression. This argument is supported by thefact that the repeated name penalty only occurs

for highly salient antecedents such as the syntacticsubject and not for less prominent antecedents(e.g., Swaab, Camblin, & Gordon, 2004). Assuch, the algorithmic route might fail to establishreference for the syntactic subject when it is sub-sequently realized with a repeated noun, whichmight surface as difficulty in later stages of referen-tial processing.

Online cognitive equilibrium and someestablished psycholinguistic findings

In this section, we focus on the compatibility ofOCE with some important and established proper-ties of the language processing system.

One of themost significantfindings in thefield ofpsycholinguistics in the past decade is that languageprocessing is a predictive operation: Upcominginformation is preactivated before they even appearin the unfolding linguistic input (Altmann &Kamide, 1999; Altmann & Mirkovic, 2009;Kamide, Altmann, & Haywood, 2003; Levy, 2008;van Berkum, Brown, Zwitserlood, Kooijman, &Hagoort, 2005). Many models of language proces-sing attribute prediction to the probabilistic natureof language processing (e.g., Jaeger, 2010; Levy,2008). For example, under Bayesian approaches tolanguage processing, the prior probability of a word(i.e., its base frequency) and the conditional prob-ability of that word (i.e., the probability of thatword occurring given a preceding string of words)conspire to lead to prediction of upcoming material(see, Courville, Daw, & Touretzky, 2006;McClelland, 1998; Qian, Jaeger, & Aslin, 2012).

Under OCE, prediction is the natural corollaryof the interim output influencing ongoing algorith-mic processing. As described above, the output ofthe heuristic route is produced earlier to arrive atequilibrium quickly. However, precisely becausethe heuristic route strives to achieve equilibriumas soon as possible, it may use whatever informationis currently available and relate it to existing sche-mata to come up with a complete representationbefore the unfolding linguistic input is fully avail-able. Once such an output is formed, it startsto project its contents on the algorithmic route,resulting in predictions about the identity of

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upcoming words. In such a processing architecture,prediction is the result of activating an entire eventrepresentation rather than word-level cumulativepriming (Otten & Van Berkum, 2009; cf.Kukona, Fang, Aicher, Chen, & Magnuson,2011).

A comparison between OCE and the currentprediction-based approaches merits some discus-sion at this point. A key claim of the current pre-diction-based approaches is that processing effortis the underlying force driving prediction, suchthat predictions are constantly made duringlanguage processing to reduce the processing diffi-culty of the upcoming material (e.g., Fine, Jaeger,Farmer, & Qian, 2013; Jaeger, 2010; Jaeger &Tily, 2011; Levy, 2008; see also Drieghe,Brysbaert, Desmet, & De Baecke, 2004; Frisson,Rayner, & Pickering, 2005; McDonald &Shillcock, 2003; Rayner, Li, Juhasz, & Yan,2005; Staub & Clifton, 2006). However, theseprediction-based approaches do not specify whythe system should expend effort to predict in thefirst place. In other words, since prediction necess-arily involves cognitive effort, why would thesystem not simply wait for upcoming information?In fact, being predictive runs counter to the funda-mental least effort principle in cognitive processing(Jaeger, 2010; Piantadosi et al., 2012; Zipft, 1935,1949). The system could save effort by not pre-dicting in the first place and then use thosesaved resources when unexpected words appear.However, under OCE, prediction is the naturalconsequence of the formation of the interimoutput through top-down activation of prestoredinformation and the projection of its contentsonto the ongoing algorithmic processing, as out-lined above. Prediction does not require resourcesunder OCE; indeed, an interesting prediction ofthe OCE is that resources would be required toinhibit the generation of a prediction if theoutput of the heuristic route is sufficientlycompelling.

Moreover, and with regard to underspecifica-tion in language processing, there seems to beno clear explanation in current prediction-basedviews for the shallow processing illustrated inphenomena such as the Moses illusion. One

possibility, however, is that since predicted infor-mation is activated before it is explicitly encoun-tered, little effort should be allocated toprocessing it, which may lead to underspecifica-tion. For instance, failure to detect the anomalyin the Moses illusion could occur because the pre-ceding information has given rise to preactivationof enough semantic features of the agent so as tolead to diminished processing effort when theagent is actually encountered. However, it couldbe argued that since predicted information ismore expected, the presence of other informationin place of the predicted information should actu-ally be more salient and therefore easier to detect.In fact, some previous research has shown thatsuch is indeed the case (e.g., Luke &Christianson, 2012). Therefore, one mightexpect that comprehenders would be more likelyto detect the wrong agent (i.e., Moses) in theMoses illusion if they predicted Noah, and theyshould therefore be jarred when they encounterMoses instead.

Another established psycholinguistic finding aresyntactic garden-paths. In a sentence such as WhileMary bathed the baby played in the crib, people havebeen shown to initially interpret the baby as theobject of bathe (e.g., Christianson et al., 2001,2006). It is only after encountering played that itbecomes apparent that the initial parse is incorrect,and a revision has to be made. Under the garden-path model of sentence processing (Frazier &Fodor, 1978; Frazier & Rayner, 1982), misanalysisoccurs because the language comprehension systemobeys the late closure principle, according to whichincoming information should be attached to theclause or phrase that is currently being processed,as long as the attachment is licensed by syntax.As such, the baby is initially attached to the clausein which Mary is the subject and bathe is theverb. Other models of language processing attributethe difficulty of processing garden path sentences toprediction error. Specifically, the argument underthese models is that the syntactic structure ofgarden path sentences is infrequent, whereassimple subject–verb–object structure is highlyfrequent. Thus, the garden path structure is lesspredicted and less expected, which leads to

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processing difficulty (Fine et al., 2013; Jaeger &Tily, 2011; Levy, 2008).

Under OCE, the garden path phenomenoncould be explained by arguing that when the wordimmediately following the verb (the baby in theabove example) is encountered, the system willreach equilibrium fastest if it interprets it as theobject of the verb, rather than leave it unattachedor interpret it as the subject of the followingclause. This is because the object interpretation ofthe baby permits the formation of an interimoutput (including all three arguments—the agent,the action, and the patient), whereas a subjectinterpretation will postpone the formation of aninterim output (see also Gorrell, 1987, for asimilar argument). As such, these words areimmediately interpreted as the object of the verbby the heuristic route, resulting in an erroneousparse. Obviously, later, when the interim outputinteracts with the ongoing algorithmic processing,the nonviability of the initial parse will becomeapparent.

The OCE approach towards the garden-pathphenomenon can explain some important findingswith regard to this phenomenon. One importantobservation has been that remaining committedto a certain analysis makes it more difficult tolater disengage from that analysis. For example,F. Ferreira and Henderson (1991) lengthened theambiguous region (underlined in the followingexample) in garden path sentences (When the menhunt the birds typically scatter vs. When the menhunt the birds with bright plumage typically scatter)and showed that the longer the ambiguousregion, the harder it is for participants to recoverfrom the incorrect analysis. In other words, thelonger the processor remains committed to acertain syntactic analysis, the harder it becomesfor the processor to disengage from that analysisin the event that it turns out to be wrong. Basedon OCE, this length of commitment effect, as itwere, could be explained by arguing that commit-ment results in equilibrium in the system (becausean interim general representation has beenformed; Principle 1), and the longer the systemstays in equilibrium, the greater the equilibriumwill be (Principle 2). Consequently, in the face of

solid evidence from the algorithmic, bottom-uproute disconfirming the interim representation,greater disequilibrium will ensue.

Another intriguing finding with regard to pro-cessing garden-path sentences is that the erroneousparse of the sentence and the associated represen-tation are not completely overwritten by therevised analysis. Instead, such representationslinger in memory. For example, recall thatChristianson et al. (2001) presented participantswith sentences such as While Bill hunted the deerran into the wood, and asked comprehension ques-tions such as Did Bill hunt the deer? Surprisingly,the found that the participants were significantlymore likely to give incorrect “yes” responses to thegarden-path than to non-garden-path sentences,indicating that the lingering of erroneous represen-tations depends on the formation of an initialincorrect representation. According to OCE, itcould be assumed that the lingering representationsare in fact the interim heuristics-based output thatis formed at the initial stages of sentence proces-sing. Recall that OCE assumes that once equili-brium is achieved, the system prefers to stay inthe concomitant equilibrium state as long as poss-ible (Principle 2). We argue that this preferenceto stay in equilibrium is responsible for the linger-ing erroneous representations observed byChristianson et al. (2001). Obviously, once theheuristic route forms the erroneous representationand attains equilibrium, the interim output getsmodified when the strong, bottom-up evidence isencountered. However, the intrinsic tendency inthe system to stay in equilibrium might cause thesystem not to completely abandon the wrong,initial representation, producing the lingering erro-neous representation effect.

This explanation of the results of Christiansonet al. (2001) is in line with their other findings:That the tendency to give an incorrect “yes”response to the comprehension questions is contin-gent on the plausibility of the disambiguating wordas well as on the length of the ambiguous region,such that plausible ambiguous words and longerambiguous regions led to more incorrect “yes”responses than implausible ambiguous words andshort ambiguous regions, respectively. We can

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assume, based on OCE, that perhaps both plausi-bility and length confer a greater degree of equili-brium to the interim output and therefore to thesystem, causing the preference to stay in equili-brium and to retain the interim representation togrow even stronger.

The predictions of OCE

A strong test of the OCE involves the effects ofindividual differences. For example, with regardto the attachment ambiguity research by Traxleret al. (1998) and others (e.g., Swets et al., 2007;van Gompel, Pickering, Pearson, & Liversedge,2005; van Gompel, Pickering, & Traxler, 2001),it has been shown that individuals with lowworking memory spans attach an ambiguous rela-tive clause high (i.e., to the first-mentioned nounphrase) but individuals with high workingmemory spans attach it low (i.e., to the second-mentioned noun phrase).

One explanation of this tendency is that it is dueto different chunking strategies on the part ofpeople with different working memory capacities(see Swets et al., 2007). In addition, it is possiblethat low-span individuals need to arrive at equili-brium faster than high-span individuals. It is wellestablished in the working memory literature thatmaintaining structured information in memory iseasier than maintaining unstructured information(e.g., Bor, Duncan, Wiseman, & Owen, 2003;Imbo, Szmalec, & Vandierendonck, 2009), in linewith theories of language processing that assumethat partially processed but incomplete syntacticdependencies overtax working memory andthereby increase parsing complexity (Chomsky &Miller, 1963; Gibson, 1998, 2000; Pickering &Barry, 1991). If that is the case, attaching theambiguous relative clause to one of the precedingnoun phrases will provide structure (of a syntactictype) to otherwise unstructured information andincrease equilibrium. Since people with shortermemory spans are assumed not to be able to keepmuch (unstructured) information in memory, theneed to arrive at equilibrium might be more press-ing for them, causing them to prefer to attach therelative clause faster than people with higher

working memory spans. An early attachment thenwould increase the probability of high attachmentbecause NP1 is presumably syntactically more pro-minent early on, and this prominence might fadewith the passage of time. However, individualswith higher spans can hold more (unstructured)information in their memory and, thus, may notneed to attach the relative clause immediately.This late attachment then could be the reason fortheir preference to attach low, presumably becausethe prominence of NP1 declines, and the recencyof NP2 assumes more force.

Put differently, people with smaller workingmemory spans may try to come up with aninterpretation as soon as the relative clause isencountered to reduce disequilibrium (uncertainly)and to be able to more efficiently keep the infor-mation under processing in memory. Since the syn-tactic prominence of NP1 over NP2 is greater earlyon during processing, the probability of attachinghigh increases greatly if an attachment is madeearly on. Conversely, high working memory spanindividuals can cope with the uncertainty/disequili-brium created by the relative clause for a longertime because they can keep unstructured infor-mation in memory more efficiently. Therefore,they do not immediately attach the relative clauseto one of the NPs, resulting in more NP2 attach-ments. In fact, using online (and offline) measures,a recent study by Payne et al. (2014) showed thatworking memory span affects attachment prefer-ences and that this effect is strongest for olderadults, such that low-span older adults have thestrongest tendency to attach high (NP1). Moreexperiments that can record attachment preferencesin real time would allow this prediction to befurther tested.

If people with high working memory spans aremore capable of tolerating disequilibrium or ambi-guity, then there should be significant differencesbetween high- and low-span individuals in howlong they delay the resolution of ambiguous pro-nouns as well (MacDonald & MacWhinney,1990; Stewart et al., 2007), with high-span individ-uals delaying resolution longer than low-span indi-viduals. Again, testing the ambiguous pronounresolution in real time could put this prediction to

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test. Partial support for this prediction comes fromERP research carried out by Nieuwland and vanBerkum (2006), showing that pronoun ambiguityresults in processing difficulty for high- but notfor low-span individuals. As the authors discuss,this pattern might occur because low-span individ-uals have not even noticed the ambiguity [they“immediately took on the—to them, and at thatmoment—most plausible referential interpretation”(Nieuwland & van Berkum, 2006, p. 163)]. InOCE terminology, this is to say that low-span indi-viduals immediately interpret the ambiguouspronoun (because they need to arrive at equilibriumfaster), failing to entertain other potential referentsfor the ambiguous pronoun. Related to these find-ings, Lee and Federmeier (2012) found that olderadults (with lower working memory spans) have aharder time resolving lexical ambiguity becausethey cannot suppress the irrelevant meaning ofhomographs and, more importantly, that this nega-tively influences subsequent processing, suggestingthat when equilibrium cannot be immediatelyachieved, successful comprehension is more diffi-cult to attain for low-span individuals.

Also, if low-span individuals cannot keepunstructured information in memory for long,they should predict faster than high-span individ-uals because the need to arrive at equilibrium ismore pressing for them. Otten and van Berkum(2009) investigated this possibility but found nodifference between high- and low-span readers inpredicting words. However, their conclusion wasbased on null results, and we think this possibilitymight be checked again with different materialsand more sensitive methodology to pursue thequestion further and more efficiently. Despitefinding no difference between high- and low-spanindividuals, however, Otten and van Berkum(2009) observed a late negativity when low-spanreaders encountered determiners that were not con-sistent with the gender of the predicted words. It ispossible that individuals with smaller memoryspans might have predicted earlier and conse-quently might have remained committed to theoutput of the heuristic route for a longer time, orthey might have relied on the interim outputmore heavily. Thus, the observed negativity might

reflect the greater disturbance of equilibrium inthe face of conflicting bottom-up evidence.

Another related prediction of OCE has to dowith lingering garden-path representations andindividual differences. Specifically, and as men-tioned above, it could be the case that low-span indi-viduals need to achieve equilibrium faster than high-span individuals because they are less capable ofretaining unstructured information in memory,and therefore the need for formation of an interimoutput is greater for them. On the other hand, weknow from the results of F. Ferreira andHenderson (1991) and Christianson et al. (2001)that committing to certain syntactic analysis resultsin stronger garden-path effects. As such, low-spanindividuals might stay with the erroneous garden-path representation for a longer time (because theycome up with it earlier) and might rely on theinterim representation more strongly.Consequently, garden-path representations shouldlinger more for low-span than for high-span indi-viduals. This prediction stands in contrast to theprediction stemming from some previous researchthat has demonstrated that all interpretations of anambiguous structure (or word) are initially activatedand that high-span individuals maintain these rep-resentations in an active state for a longer timethan low-span individuals (see, Farmer, Cargill,Hindy, Dale, & Spivey, 2007; MacDonald, Just,& Carpenter, 1992). Partial support for this predic-tion comes from Chirstianson et al. (2006) whoshowed that older adults are more accepting of theincorrect interpretations of garden-path sentences,presumably due to age-related deficits in workingmemory span. In any case, further investigation ofthe potential interaction between working memorycapacity and lingering representations is anotherway of putting OCE to test.

Moving away from variations in individualdifferences, another way to test OCE is throughsentence complexity. If a sentence is hard toprocess, there should be more reliance on the heur-istic route (at least early on during processing) tocreate an interim output and attain equilibriumearlier than when the sentence is easier to process.This is because in the case of a simple sentence,heuristic and algorithmic processing might not

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greatly differ in how early they reach completion,but for complex sentences, this time difference isgreater (see F. Ferreira, 2003; F. Ferreira et al,2002). This prediction is partially supported byresearch showing that more complex anaphoricrelations cause early resolution. For example,Sorace and Filiaci (2006) presented participantswith the Italian equivalent of sentences such as(7) and asked them to perform a picture verificationtask in which they had to choose pictures corre-sponding to the subordinate clause and thus ident-ify the referent of null and/or overt subjectpronouns.

7. a. The mother kisses her daughter, while sheis wearing her coat. (forward anaphora)

b. While she is wearing her coat, the motherkisses her daughter. (backward anaphora)

They observed that the tendency to choose thesubject of the main clause (i.e., mother) as the refer-ent of the subject pronoun in the subordinate clause(i.e., she) was stronger in the backward anaphoracondition (7b), where the processing demandswere presumably higher than in the forward ana-phora condition (7a). From an OCE standpoint,these results might have occurred because in back-ward anaphora there is a greater need for earlier res-olution (equilibrium); a dangling referringexpression produces more ambiguity (disequili-brium) than a referring expression with a clear ante-cedent. In other words, the first clause is moreambiguous in the case of backward anaphora (7b)than in the case of forward anaphora (7a). Thus,referential ambiguity is resolved as soon as thefirst candidate (i.e., the mother) is encountered.

In a recent study of our own (Karimi & Ferreira,2015), we presented participants with sentencescontaining two antecedents. We made either ornone of the antecedents long by attaching a relativeclause to it. The results showed that when the givensentence was complex (i.e., when one of the antece-dents was made long by a relative clause), a follow-ing ambiguous pronoun was resolved more quicklythan in the baseline condition where none of theantecedents was long. Future research can investi-gate this further. For example, it would be interest-ing to examine whether low-span individuals are

more likely to make an initial commitment to oneof the antecedents in complex sentences thanhigh-span individuals.

A final prediction of OCE is related to the for-mation of merged representations: If merged rep-resentations are indeed created, and if separatingthe individual concepts contained in the mergedrepresentation disturbs equilibrium, then encoura-ging the formation of merged representationsshould produce processing difficulty when unam-biguous pronouns are used and facilitated proces-sing when ambiguous pronouns are employed. Totest this prediction, stimuli such as (8) could bemade in which pronoun ambiguity as well as motiv-ation for forming merged representations aremanipulated.

8. a. Mary went shopping with John. Theybought a lot of grocery. She/He was veryexcited.

b. Mary went shopping with John. The storewas huge. She/He was very excited.

As is clear, the formation of a merged represen-tation of the antecedents is encouraged by the use ofa collective pronoun in the second sentence in (8a).As such, the prediction from the OCE is that theunderlined pronoun in (8a) should take longer toread than that in (8b), because it may force separ-ating the two individual antecedents in themerged representation (if any).

Conclusions

All in all, the online equilibrium hypothesis pro-vides a new framework for viewing language proces-sing in general and reference processing inparticular. This hypothesis provides an underlyingmechanism for the formation of good-enough lin-guistic representations. We proposed a languageprocessing model that brings together the conceptsof online cognitive equilibrium as well as heuristicand algorithmic processing and proposes a relativetiming for their operation. Findings from bothintra- and intersentential processing seem to becompatible with the online equilibrium approachto language processing and the associated model.Specifically, intrasentential processing seems to

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result from the low level of disequilibrium caused bycertain words or structures that may confer highdegrees of equilibrium and therefore trigger super-ficial bottom-up processing. Similarly, intersenten-tial (discourse) processing also seems to beconsistent with the attempt to maintain cognitiveequilibrium in the sense that processing difficultyfor a referring expression seems to be sensitive tothe magnitude of cognitive disequilibrium incurredby that referring expression. Underspecified refer-ence processing appears to be the result of thesystem arriving at equilibrium as early as possibleand/or not allocating substantial resources to refer-ence processing once equilibrium has been achieved.

Obviously, the online equilibrium hypothesis isnot meant to explain all the complex and some-times opposing results that have been found inthe psycholinguistics literature. However, we hopethat it provides a new perspective for building andtesting theories of language processing.

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