A Meta-Analysis of Relative Clause Processing in Mandarin Chinese Using Bias Modelling
Shravan Vasishth
Abstract
The reading difficulty associated with Chinese relative clauses presentsan important empirical problem for psycholinguistic research on sentencecomprehension processes. Some studies show that object relatives are easierto process than subject relatives, while others show the opposite pattern. IfChinese has an object relative advantage, this has important implicationsfor theories of reading comprehension. In order to clarify the facts aboutChinese, we carried out a Bayesian random-effects meta-analysis using 15published studies; this analysis showed that the posterior probability of asubject relative advantage is approximately 0.77 (mean 16, 95% credibleintervals −29 and 61 ms). Because the studies had significant biases, itis possible that they may have confounded the results. Bias modelling is apotentially important tool in such situations because it uses expert opinion toincorporate the biases in the model. As a proof of concept, we first identifiedbiases in five of the fifteen studies, and elicited priors on these using theSHELF framework. Then we fitted a random-effects meta-analysis, includingpriors on biases. This analysis showed a stronger posterior probability (0.96)of a subject relative advantage compared to the standard random-effectsmeta-analysis (mean 33, credible intervals −4 and 71).