INTERACTION WITH AUTONOMY - MULTIPLE-OUTPUT MODELS AND THE INADEQUACYOF THE GREAT-DIVIDE

There are currently a number of psycholinguistic models in which proce ssing at a particular level of representation is characterized by the generation of multiple outputs, with resolution-but not generation-inv olving the use of information from higher levels of processing. Surpri singly, models with this architecture have been characterized as auton omous within the domain of word recognition but as interactive within the domain of sentence processing. We suggest that the apparent confus ion is not, as might be assumed, due to fundamental differences betwee n lexical and syntactic processing. Rather, we believe that the labels in each domain were chosen in order to obtain maximal contrast betwee n a new model and the model or models that were currently dominating t he field. The contradiction serves to highlight the inadequacy of a si mple autonomy/interaction dichotomy for characterizing the architectur es of current processing models.