Three experiments based on the text-change paradigm examined the effect of sentential load, semantic relatedness/unrelatedness, and sex on depth of lexical-semantic processing in L1 and L2 reading. Experiment 1 and 2 showed that there is no significant effect of sentential load on depth of lexical-semantic processing in L1 and L2 reading. On the other hand, they confirmed the existence of a significant effect of semantic relatedness/unrelatedness on depth of lexical-semantic processing in L1 and L2 reading. Experiment 3 consolidated the results obtained from experiment 1 and 2 and revealed that load is neither localized at the embedded verb nor at the adverb phrase positions. Finally, sex proved not to have an effect on depth of lexical-semantic processing in L1 and L2 reading. The present study showed that all embedded relative clauses and not just object-extracted relative clauses decrease deep processing.
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