Interference effects in memory and sentence processing

New York University, New York NY

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Abstract

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Measures of reaction time confound effects of item strength with the speed of accessing that item. The speed accuracy tradeoff (SAT) procedure can be used to disambiguate these factors by providing a full characterization of response accuracy as information accrues during retrieval. The current proposal would support training in the application of this method to study the effects of pre-experimental semantic similarity on retrieval from short term memory (STM) and in sentence processing. Previous work suggests that similarity among to-be-remembered items creates interference for retrieval of target items; however the time course of these effects has been sparsely studied in the STM domain and not at all in sentence processing. Two experiments attempt to address these issues with materials that permit comparison across domains, so that the effects can be assessed independently but also with an eye to understanding common mechanisms underlying both processes. This will provide evidence for evaluating claims regarding the extent to which cue-based retrieval mechanisms are responsible for parsing failure in the domain of sentence processing, and whether the interference observed there resembles interference effects in STM more broadly.