Speed–Accuracy Trade-Off Modeling and Its Interface with Experimental Syntax

Abstract

Judgements have been key to theory building in linguistics, yet judgements are inherently susceptible to a tradeoff between the speed and accuracy with which they are made. This chapter highlights insights gained by using the speed-accuracy tradeoff (SAT) technique to model this tradeoff. We focus on how SAT evidence has been instrumental in integrating sophisticated memory models into psycholinguistic theory. We describe the SAT procedure and explain how SAT modeling disentangles accuracy from time course of processing. We review SAT evidence that bears on key linguistic issues, with examples involving long-distance dependencies, garden-path sentences, and anaphora resolution. Additional areas where SAT has been informative, such as scalar implicatures, are also briefly noted. Challenges and promising future directions are discussed.