"What are the underlying cognitive mechanisms that contribute to the phenomenon of syntactic ambiguity resolution in language processing?"

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Instead of mechanisms I would rather say processes. So, what are the underlying cognitive processes that contribute to the phenomenon of syntactic ambiguity resolution in language processing?"

They depend on the theoretical framework you espouse: mechanism, contextualism, preformism and organicism.

It's beyond the scope of this post to elaborate on them. Even so, the seminal book by S. Pepper (1942). World hypothesis. Berkeley: University of California Press is worth reading.

Hope this can be some help.

Kind regards.

The scientific literature often uses the concepts of "processes" and "mechanisms" interchangeably. This, however, does not go without any problem. It is beyond the scope of this post to elaborate at length on the differences between them. Even so, I am of the opinion that a main difference between them is that, overall, it makes more sense to speak of underlying cognitive processes than underlying cognitive mechanisms regarding the phenomenon of syntactic ambiguity resolution in language processing.

Underlying cognitive processes can never be directly seen or observed and hence they have to be inferred and conceptualized, which is not necessarily the case of cognitive mechanisms, an expression that is rarely, if ever used in the cognitive domain. The concept "mechanism" does not preclude the idea of visibility. For example, when we refer to an o'clock functioning we think more of mechanisms than processes.

Back to the phenomenon of syntactic ambiguity resolution in language processing. Heuristics, such as representativeness and availability play a crucial role in this phenomenon.

It would take a long to elaborate here on this issue. I would urge you, Dr. Ahmad Farid, to know some of the work by the German psychologist Gerard Gigerenzer (Max Planck Institute, Berlin) on the role of heuristics in people's psychological functioning.

Hope this can be of some help for you.

Kind regards.

Cognitive function and measurement mechanism are entirely different in processing language. The language and overt behaviour is entirely different with cognitive functions. Cognitive is a part of intelligence as well as problem solving.