Reading Task Clause Samples

Reading Task. Comprehension of temporal relations was measured using a computerized reading task (E-prime version 2.0.8). On each trial, participants were asked to read a two- clause sentence describing two events and to determine which event occurred first (experiment 1) or which event occurred last (experiment 2). Eighty-four unique Dutch sentences were constructed, each representing two events that do not typi- cally occur in a specific order. Thereby they preclude participants from relying on world knowledge so that they had to use the temporal connective to understand the sentences. Sentences contained one of three temporal connectives, after (‘nadat’), before (‘voordat’), or while (‘terwijl’), which were presented in sen- tence-initial position or sentence-medial position. Our analyses focused on sen- tences with the connectives after and before, signaling a sequential order of the two events. The manipulation of these two connectives and their position in the sentence resulted in four sentence types (see Table 4.1a and 4.1b). Sentences with the connective while, indicating that events occurred simultaneously, were treated as filler trials. Participants were given 14 trials of each sentence type in a semi- randomized order, assuring the same type of sentences was not presented succes- sively. The order of trials was counterbalanced between participants. On each trial (see Figure 4.1), the sentence was followed by a screen on which the question “What happened first?” (Experiment 1) or “What happened last?” (Experiment 2) was presented at the top. Underneath the question, three pictures (from Microsoft Office ClipArt 2010) representing the response options were pre- sented (see Figure 4.1). Text (in black), and pictures (in color) were presented on the screen against a light-grey background. The leftmost response option repre- sented both events occurring simultaneously on each trial. The middle and right response options each represented one of the two events from the sentence. The position of the correct response in either the middle or the right picture was coun- terbalanced within conditions. The task was self-paced, after reading the sentence participants pressed the ‘D’ key on the keyboard with their left index finger to continue to the question. To choose the picture corresponding to the correct answer the participant pressed the ‘A’, ‘S’ or ‘D’ on the keyboard for response options 1, 2, or 3 with their left ring finger, middle finger or index finger, respect...