Unrestricted Race Model

• The Unrestricted Race model (Traxler, Pickering, & Clifton, 1998; van Gompel, Pickering, Pearson, & Liversedge, 2005; van Gompel, Pickering, & Traxler, 2001) follows in the footsteps of constraint-based models in proposing simultaneous integration of multiple constraints from statistical, semantic, and contextual sources
• However, rather than ambiguity resolution being based on a temporally dynamic competition process, the Unrestricted Race model posits an instantaneous probabilistic selection among the weighted alternatives of an ambiguity.
• much like the syntax-first models, it must hypothesize a separate reanalysis mechanism that is responsible for garden-path effects when the initial selected alternative turns out to be syntactically or semantically inappropriate.
• the Unrestricted Race model predicts that sentences with garden-paths and sentences without garden-paths are two separate populations of events
• In other words, in conditions where mean performance is expected to exhibit a garden-path effect, there should exist one of two possible patterns: (a) a bimodal distribution of some substantial gardenpath responses and some non-gardenpath responses, or (b) practically all trials exhibiting substantial garden-path effect