What cognitive process is primarily demonstrated when a reader misinterprets a sentence due to misleading syntax?

When a reader misinterprets a sentence because of misleading syntax, it primarily illustrates garden path processing. This term refers to the phenomenon where a reader initially interprets a sentence in a certain way due to its grammatical structure, only to realize later that the interpretation was incorrect and that the sentence has a different meaning based on the syntactical arrangement of words.

In garden path sentences, the reader starts down a mental path based on the first interpretation but encounters difficulty as the sentence unfolds. This conflict arises from the structure of the sentence, which can often lead to a temporary confusion or a need to backtrack and reanalyze the meaning. An example of this might be the sentence "The old man the boat," where the initial parsing leads the reader to expect a different grammatical role than what is actually intended.

The other options, while related to different types of cognitive processes, do not capture the specific situation where misinterpretation occurs due to syntax. Semantic processing involves understanding meaning from words and sentences, phonological processing relates to the sounds of language, and visual processing involves how we perceive visual information, none of which directly address the confusion arising specifically from syntactical structure.