On-line syntactic processing under concurrent memory load.
Thirty-six university students were tested in a plausibility judgment task using a self-paced listening paradigm under no-interference and two-digit load conditions. Listening times were longer at syntactically more complex portions of syntactically more complex sentences, and greater loads led to increased listening times. However, listening times at syntactically more complex positions in syntactically more complex sentences did not increase more than listening times at comparable positions in syntactically simple sentences under digit load conditions. The results indicate that a concurrent memory load does not reduce the availability of working memory resources used for on-line syntactic processing and, thus, provide evidence that the working memory system used for assigning syntactic structure is separate from that measured by standard working memory tasks.
Department of Health Sciences, Boston University, Boston, Massachusetts 02215, USA. gwaters@bu.edu
Gloria
G
Waters
David
D
Caplan
Sasha
S
Yampolsky
D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D001288:Attention; D003210:Concept Formation; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007600:Judgment; D008297:Male; D008570:Memory, Short-Term; D011578:Psycholinguistics; D011930:Reaction Time; D012660:Semantics; D013067:Speech Perception