Conscious rereading is confirmatory: Evidence from bidirectional self-paced reading

Rereading during sentence processing can be confirmatory, in which case it serves to increase readers’ certainty in their current interpretation, or it can be revisionary, in which case it serves to correct a misinterpretation (Christianson, Luke, Hussey, & Wochna, 2017). The distinction is particularly relevant in garden-path sentences, which have been argued to trigger revisionary rereading (Frazier & Rayner, 1982). In two web-based experiments that compare garden-path sentences with other linguistic constructions, we investigate deliberate rereading in the recently-proposed bidirectional self-paced reading (BSPR) paradigm (Paape & Vasishth, 2022). Our results show evidence for selective rereading only in very difficult garden-path sentences. Additionally, our results suggest that conscious, selective rereading is confirmatory: Readers find garden-path sentences less rather than more acceptable after selective rereading, suggesting that they reread either to confirm their initial analysis or to confirm the perceived ungrammaticality of the sentence. We discuss the role of conscious awareness in dealing with different types of linguistic inconsistency.