title: Encoding and Accessing Linguistic Representations in a Dynamically Structured Holographic Memory System.
abstract: This paper presents a computational model that integrates a dynamically structured holographic memory system into the ACT-R cognitive architecture to explain how linguistic representations are encoded and accessed in memory. ACT-R currently serves as the most precise expression of the moment-by-moment working memory retrievals that support sentence comprehension. The ACT-R model of sentence comprehension is able to capture a range of linguistic phenomena, but there are cases where the model makes the wrong predictions, such as the over-prediction of retrieval interference effects during sentence comprehension. Here, we investigate one such case involving the processing of sentences with negative polarity items (NPIs) and consider how a dynamically structured holographic memory system might provide a cognitively plausible and principled explanation of some previously unexplained effects. Specifically, we show that by replacing ACT-R's declarative memory with a dynamically structured memory, we can explain a wider range of behavioral data involving reading times and judgments of grammaticality. We show that our integrated model provides a better fit to human error rates and response latencies than the original ACT-R model. These results provide proof-of-concept for the unification of two independent computational cognitive frameworks.
authors.affiliation: Department of English, Linguistics Program, College of William & Mary.
authors.forename: Dan
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Parker
authors.affiliation: Department of English, Linguistics Program, College of William & Mary.
authors.forename: Daniel
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Lantz
mesh_terms: D005260:Female; D006696:Holography; D006801:Humans; D008037:Linguistics / Q000379:methods*; D008297:Male; D008568:Memory; D008962:Models, Theoretical
keywords: ACT-R; Binding; Holographic reduced representations; Language processing; Memory; Negative polarity