ASSOCIATIVE ENCODING OF WORDS IN PASSIVE SENTENCES

Subjects were presented with short passive sentences and timed to respond in a recognition test involving a series of single words. Items to be rejected included synonymous associates of critical words and associates which would fit sensibly into the sentence frame. Rejection latencies varied as a function of the position of the critical word in the sentence, the time to reject associates of the logical subject (the final noun in the passive sentences) being much slower than associates of the object.