Allocation of attention during tagalog sentence comprehension

This study investigated the cue validity of ang/si markers, along with word order and agency, on the allocation of attention during Tagalog sentence comprehension. We found that ang/si markers had a marginal effect on allocating attention during a probe recognition task. We also found that the ang/si markers reliably controlled Tagalog speakers' attention during sentence comprehension as indicated by sentence continuations and reference resolution of an ambiguous pronoun. We found that word order did control the attention of Tagalog speakers during reference resolution of an ambiguous pronoun, but only when the ang/si marker was absent. Overall, this study identifies that the ang/si marker has reliable psycholinguistic effects on drawing a reader's attention and guiding Tagalog sentence comprehension.