Working Memory Effects in Sentence Comprehension

University Of California Davis, Davis CA

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Abstract

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): The specific aim of the proposed research is to determine how individual differences in working-memory capacity affect sentence understanding. Some current theories assume that the cognitive processes involved in sentence interpretation are modular. Other theories assume that the language processing architecture is highly interactive. According to these latter accounts, sentence interpretation can be influenced by any number of factors, including working memory restrictions. Individual differences in sentence-interpretation strategies are thus more compatible with the latter class of account than the former. Identifying how and why working memory limitations affect sentence understanding helps distinguish between accounts of sentence-interpretation that have been developed on the basis of normative data. Measures of verbal-working-memory capacity tend to correlate with measures of reading comprehension skill and indices of academic achievement, such as verbal SAT scores. Hence, samples of low-capacity participants will contain substantial numbers of people who lag behind their peers in reading comprehension and academic achievement. The experiments in the current proposal will help determine what strategies low-capacity comprehenders adopt to process and comprehend sentences. This knowledge may lead to insights that will help practitioners devise better ways of intervening with under-achieving populations.