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Effects of Implicit Causality: Evidence from Korean Interpersonal Verbs

The Korean Journal of Cognitive and Biological Psychology / The Korean Journal of Cognitive and Biological Psychology, (P)1226-9654; (E)2733-466X
2009, v.21 no.3, pp.191-213
https://doi.org/10.22172/cogbio.2009.21.3.003

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Abstract

A normative study and 3 experiments were conducted to explore implicit causality of Korean interpersonal verbs. Following Rudolphn & Försterling's (1997) taxonomy, Preliminary study classified about 1050 Korean verbs into 4 types: agent-patient, agent-evocator, stimulus-experiencer, experiencer-stimulus. The frequency distribution of the Korean interpersonal verbs differed significantly from that of German verbs. Experiment 1 presented sentences like ‘Paul praised Ted.’ and asked subjects to provide the reason why might that event happen. The cause of the event described by either agent-evocator or experiencer -stimulus verb was biased toward the object of the sentence, while that of event described by agent -patient verb was biased toward the subject, showing implicit causality effects. Experiment 2 compared reading times for the 2 types of target sentences; one type had a meaning congruent with the verbal bias of the sentence presented immediately before the target sentence and the other had a meaning incongruent with that bias. Reading times for congruent sentences were shorter than those for incongruent sentences, indicating implicit causality of the verb automatically affected cognitive processes involved in text comprehension. Experiment 3 excluded the possibility that the implicit causality effects found in Experiment 2 only reflect the differences between the 2 types of target sentences. Theoretical and practical implications of the results were discussed.

keywords
implicit causality, Korean interpersonal verb, sentence comprehension, discourse comprehension, comprehension task, reading time., implicit causality, Korean interpersonal verb, sentence comprehension, discourse comprehension, comprehension task, reading time., 숨은 인과율, 한국어 대인동사, 문장 이해, 담화 이해, 독해과제, 읽기 시간

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The Korean Journal of Cognitive and Biological Psychology