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Filling the gap: cloze probability and sentence constraint norms for 807 European Portuguese sentences

August 24, 2023
Filling the gap: cloze probability and sentence constraint norms for 807 European Portuguese sentences

We can create an infinite number of distinct sentences. Despite this seemingly unlimited flexibility in constructing sentences, we frequently anticipate upcoming words when reading a book, listening to a conversation or watching a movie. For example, when completing the sentence:

Before eating, the girls washed their … almost everyone says hands.

Yet, for the sentence:

The girl wanted a telescope to see the … people respond stars, moon, planets or sky.

These examples show that sentence processing is affected by the context and word expectancy. Hence, to investigate sentence comprehension experimentally, it is useful to have completion norms with both context constraint and word expectancy measures. This study presents such norms for 807 European Portuguese sentences. This database is useful for research in Portuguese language, namely aiding in the selection and characterization of stimuli to be employed in sentence processing paradigms.

Frade, S., Santi, A. & Raposo, A. (2023). Filling the gap: cloze probability and sentence constraint norms for 807 European Portuguese sentences. Behavior Research Methods. https://doi.org/10.3758/s13428-023-02196-0

Last updated on September 4, 2023

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