Linguistic Attention Control: Attention Shifting Governed by Grammaticized Elements of Language

In 2 experiments, the authors investigated attention control for tasks involving the processing of grammaticized linguistic stimuli (function words) contextualized in sentence fragments. Attention control was operationalized as shift costs obtained with adult speakers of English in an alternating-runs experimental design ( R. D. Rogers & S. Monsell, 1995 ). Experiment 1 yielded significant attention shift costs between tasks involving judgments about the meanings of grammatical function words. The authors used a 3-stage experimental design ( G. Wylie & A. Allport, 2000 ), and the emerging pattern of results implicated task set reconfiguration and not task set inertia in these shift costs. Experiment 2 further demonstrated that shift costs were lower when the tasks involved shared attentional resources (processing the same grammatical dimension) versus unshared resources (different grammatical dimensions). The authors discuss the results from a cognitive linguistic perspective and for their implications for the view that language itself can serve a special attention-directing function.