Proponents of good-enough processing suggest that readers often (mis)interpret certain sentences using fast-and-frugal heuristics, such that for non-canonical sentences (e.g. The dog was bitten by the man) people confuse the thematic roles of the nouns. We tested this theory by examining the effect of sentence canonicality on the reading of a follow-up sentence. In a self-paced reading study 60 young and 60 older adults read an implausible sentence in either canonical (e.g. It was the peasant that executed the king) or non-canonical form (e.g. It was the king that was executed by the peasant), followed by a sentence that was implausible given a good-enough misinterpretation of the first sentence (e.g. Afterwards, the peasant rode back to the countryside), or a sentence that was implausible given a correct interpretation of the first sentence (e.g. Afterwards, the king rode back to his castle). We hypothesised that if non-canonical sentences are systematically misinterpreted then sentence canonicality would differentially affect the reading of the two different follow-up types. Our data suggested that participants derived the same interpretations for canonical and non-canonical sentences, with no modulating effect of age group. Our findings suggest that readers do not derive an incorrect interpretation of non-canonical sentences during initial parsing, consistent with theories of misinterpretation effects that instead attribute these effects to post-interpretative processes.

足够好处理的支持者认为，读者经常（错误地）使用快速和节俭的启发式来解释某些句子，这样对于非规范句子（例如，狗被男人咬了），人们会混淆名词的主题角色。我们通过检查句子规范性对后续句子阅读的影响来检验这一理论。在一项自定进度的阅读研究中，60 名年轻人和 60 名老年人以规范（例如，是农民处决了国王）或非规范的形式（例如，国王被农民处决）阅读了一个难以置信的句子，后面是一个对第一句话有足够好的误解的不可信的句子（例如，后来，农民骑马回乡下），或者如果对第一句话的正确解释，一个不可信的句子（例如 之后，国王骑马回到了他的城堡）。我们假设，如果非规范句子被系统地误解，那么句子规范性将对两种不同后续类型的阅读产生不同的影响。我们的数据表明，参与者对规范和非规范句子的解释相同，没有年龄组的调节作用。我们的研究结果表明，读者在初始解析期间不会对非规范句子做出错误的解释，这与误解效应理论一致，后者将这些效应归因于解释后过程。我们假设，如果非规范句子被系统地误解，那么句子规范性将对两种不同后续类型的阅读产生不同的影响。我们的数据表明，参与者对规范和非规范句子的解释相同，没有年龄组的调节作用。我们的研究结果表明，读者在初始解析期间不会对非规范句子做出错误的解释，这与误解效应理论一致，后者将这些效应归因于解释后过程。我们假设，如果非规范句子被系统地误解，那么句子规范性将对两种不同后续类型的阅读产生不同的影响。我们的数据表明，参与者对规范和非规范句子的解释相同，没有年龄组的调节作用。我们的研究结果表明，读者在初始解析期间不会对非规范句子做出错误的解释，这与误解效应理论一致，后者将这些效应归因于解释后过程。