The subordination effect: Evidence from self-paced reading and recall

Engelkamp and Rummer (2002) demonstrated that auditorily presented subordinate causal sentences are better retained than coordinate sentences. This subordination effect was explained by suggesting that subordinate sentences are merged more easily in memory than coordinate sentences. The present paper enlarges Engelkamp and Rummer's findings with respect to three aspects. First, it demonstrates that the subordination effect can only be found if a verbatim but not a content related recall score is used. Second, using self-paced reading, it demonstrates a processing advantage for subordinate sentences. This reading time advantage was only observed if the subordinate clause preceded the matrix clause. Third, it excludes an alternative explanation of the subordination effect which attributes memory differences to the fact that the critical causal conjunction word was presented earlier in subordinate than in coordinate sentences. In sum, our findings suggest a direct contribution of syntactic information to sentence regeneration.