Paper detail

The Horse Raced Past: Gardenpath Processing in Dynamical Systems

I pinpoint an interesting similarity between a recent account to rational parsing and the treatment of sequential decisions problems in a dynamical systems approach. I argue that expectation-driven search heuristics aiming at fast computation resembles a high-risk decision strategy in favor of large transition velocities. Hale's rational parser, combining generalized left-corner parsing with informed $\mathrm{A}^*$ search to resolve processing conflicts, explains gardenpath effects in natural sentence processing by misleading estimates of future processing costs that are to be minimized. On the other hand, minimizing the duration of cognitive computations in time-continuous dynamical systems can be described by combining vector space representations of cognitive states by means of filler/role decompositions and subsequent tensor product representations with the paradigm of stable heteroclinic sequences. Maximizing transition velocities according to a high-risk decision strategy could account for a fast race even between states that are apparently remote in representation space.