{"status":"ok","message-type":"work","message-version":"1.0.0","message":{"institution":[{"name":"bioRxiv"}],"indexed":{"date-parts":[[2026,11,3]],"date-time":"2026-11-03T14:31:50Z","timestamp":1793716310523,"version":"4.6.1"},"posted":{"date-parts":[[2026,7,14]]},"group-title":"Neuroscience","reference-count":34,"publisher":"openRxiv","license":[{"start":{"date-parts":[[2026,7,14]],"date-time":"2026-07-14T00:00:00Z","timestamp":1783987200000},"content-version":"vor","delay-in-days":0,"URL":"http:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by\/4.0\/"}],"funder":[{"name":"National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders (NIDCD), National Institutes of Health","award":["K01DC019165"],"award-info":[{"award-number":["K01DC019165"]}],"id":[{"id":"https:\/\/ror.org\/04mhx6838","id-type":"ROR","asserted-by":"crossref"}]},{"name":"National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders (NIDCD), National Institutes of Health","award":["K01DC019165-03S1"],"award-info":[{"award-number":["K01DC019165-03S1"]}],"id":[{"id":"https:\/\/ror.org\/04mhx6838","id-type":"ROR","asserted-by":"crossref"}]},{"name":"UAB Honors College"},{"name":"The University of Alabama at Birmingham","id":[{"id":"https:\/\/ror.org\/008s83205","id-type":"ROR","asserted-by":"crossref"}]}],"content-domain":{"domain":[],"crossmark-restriction":false},"short-container-title":[],"accepted":{"date-parts":[[2026,10,30]]},"abstract":"<jats:title>Abstract<\/jats:title>\n                <jats:p>Studies of the difficulty of Object-Relative sentences (ORs) have yielded important insights about the nature of sentence parsing. Given the incremental nature of sentence parsing, understanding the precise locations of OR processing difficulty is a critical aspect of this. Prior studies have frequently highlighted the Relative Clause (RC) verb as a major locus for the OR penalty. However, it is difficult to disentangle gap-filing and phrase wrap-up effects from the presence of a verb, which all coincide in typical ORs. Here we introduce prepositional verbs like \u201cspoke to\u201d in OR sentences in a one word-at-a-time self-paced reading experiment to disentangle this. The OR penalty primarily occurred at the phrase-ending preposition rather than the verb, with some of the penalty also occurring at the verb, reflecting that gap-filling and phrase wrap-up underlie more of the effect than processes occurring at the verb itself. However, repeated exposure to these sentences over the course of a session led to an increasing fraction of the OR penalty moving to the verb before the preposition, likely resulting from local-experience-driven prediction. Further repeated exposure eventually diminished, but did not eliminate, the total combined penalty. This highlights that the location of processing difficulty is itself plastic and malleable with experience. We further found that semantic congruence most strongly affected RTs at these key locations of OR sentences compared to SR and control sentences, suggesting that semantic processes contribute to the OR penalty. More syntactic nodes being closed at the phrase boundary also lead to increased phrase boundary RTs for all RC sentences, suggesting that the amount of material being integrated at RC boundaries also drives the RT cost there. Together, these findings advance our understanding of the processes underlying the OR penalty.<\/jats:p>","DOI":"10.64898\/2026.07.13.738177","type":"posted-content","created":{"date-parts":[[2026,7,14]],"date-time":"2026-07-14T15:45:19Z","timestamp":1784043919000},"source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":0,"title":["Processing at Phrase Boundaries During Self-Paced Reading"],"prefix":"10.64898","author":[{"given":"Jenna","family":"Hooper","sequence":"first","affiliation":[{"name":"Department of Neurosurgery, University of Alabama at Birmingham, 1060 Faculty Office Tower, 1720 2nd Avenue South, Birmingham, AL 35294-3410, USA"}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"given":"Julia","family":"Dengler","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Department of Neurosurgery, University of Alabama at Birmingham, 1060 Faculty Office Tower, 1720 2nd Avenue South, Birmingham, AL 35294-3410, USA"},{"name":"Medical Scientist Training Program, Heersink School of Medicine, University of Alabama at Birmingham, 912 Building, Room 160, 912 18th Street South, Birmingham, AL 35294-1200, USA"}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"given":"Nicoletta","family":"Biondo","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Department of Psychology, University of California, Berkeley, 2121 Berkeley Way, 3rd Floor, Berkeley, CA 94720-1650, USA"},{"name":"Basque Center on Cognition, Brain and Language, Paseo Mikeletegi 69, 2nd Floor, 20009 Donostia-San Sebasti\u00e1n, Spain"},{"name":"Department of Neurology, Edward and Pearl Fein Memory and Aging Center, Weill Institute for Neurosciences, University of California, San Francisco, Box 1207, 675 Nelson Rising Lane, Suite 190, San Francisco, CA, 94143, USA"}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"given":"Jacob","family":"Odeh","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Department of Neurosurgery, University of Alabama at Birmingham, 1060 Faculty Office Tower, 1720 2nd Avenue South, Birmingham, AL 35294-3410, USA"}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"given":"Pooja","family":"Mudigonda","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Department of Neurosurgery, University of Alabama at Birmingham, 1060 Faculty Office Tower, 1720 2nd Avenue South, Birmingham, AL 35294-3410, USA"}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"given":"Rajesh","family":"Kana","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Department of Psychology, University of Alabama at Birmingham, Campbell Hall 415, 1300 University Boulevard, Birmingham, AL 35233, USA"}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"given":"David","family":"Basilico","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Division of Linguistics, Department of English, University of Alabama at Birmingham, University Hall, Room 5065, 1720 2nd Avenue South, Birmingham, AL 35294-1260, USA"}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0002-2325-4578","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Matthew John","family":"Nelson","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Department of Neurosurgery, University of Alabama at Birmingham, 1060 Faculty Office Tower, 1720 2nd Avenue South, Birmingham, AL 35294-3410, USA"}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]}],"member":"54368","reference":[{"key":"2026110305400848000_2026.07.13.738177v2.1","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1016\/j.jml.2012.11.001"},{"key":"2026110305400848000_2026.07.13.738177v2.2","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1016\/j.tics.2012.12.002"},{"key":"2026110305400848000_2026.07.13.738177v2.3","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.3758\/BRM.41.4.977"},{"key":"2026110305400848000_2026.07.13.738177v2.4","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.3758\/s13428-012-0190-4"},{"key":"2026110305400848000_2026.07.13.738177v2.5","unstructured":"Caplan, D. , & Waters, G. 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