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Working memory differences in long-distance dependency resolution

  • There is a wealth of evidence showing that increasing the distance between an argument and its head leads to more processing effort, namely, locality effects: these are usually associated with constraints in working memory (DLT: Gibson, 2000: activation-based model: Lewis and Vasishth, 2005). In SOV languages, however, the opposite effect has been found: antilocality (see discussion in Levy et al., 2013). Antilocality effects can be explained by the expectation based approach as proposed by Levy (2008) or by the activation-based model of sentence processing as proposed by Lewis and Vasishth (2005). We report an eye-tracking and a self-paced reading study with sentences in Spanish together with measures of individual differences to examine the distinction between expectation- and memory based accounts, and within memory-based accounts the further distinction between DLT and the activation-based model. The experiments show that (i) antilocality effects as predicted by the expectation account appear only for high-capacity readers; (ii)There is a wealth of evidence showing that increasing the distance between an argument and its head leads to more processing effort, namely, locality effects: these are usually associated with constraints in working memory (DLT: Gibson, 2000: activation-based model: Lewis and Vasishth, 2005). In SOV languages, however, the opposite effect has been found: antilocality (see discussion in Levy et al., 2013). Antilocality effects can be explained by the expectation based approach as proposed by Levy (2008) or by the activation-based model of sentence processing as proposed by Lewis and Vasishth (2005). We report an eye-tracking and a self-paced reading study with sentences in Spanish together with measures of individual differences to examine the distinction between expectation- and memory based accounts, and within memory-based accounts the further distinction between DLT and the activation-based model. The experiments show that (i) antilocality effects as predicted by the expectation account appear only for high-capacity readers; (ii) increasing dependency length by interposing material that modifies the head of the dependency (the verb) produces stronger facilitation than increasing dependency length with material that does not modify the head; this is in agreement with the activation-based model but not with the expectation account; and (iii) a possible outcome of memory load on low-capacity readers is the increase in regressive saccades (locality effects as predicted by memory-based accounts) or, surprisingly, a speedup in the self-paced reading task; the latter consistent with good-enough parsing (Ferreira et al., 2002). In sum, the study suggests that individual differences in working memory capacity play a role in dependency resolution, and that some of the aspects of dependency resolution can be best explained with the activation-based model together with a prediction component.show moreshow less

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Metadaten
Author details:Bruno NicenboimORCiDGND, Shravan VasishthORCiDGND, Carolina Gattei, Mariano Sigman, Reinhold KlieglORCiDGND
DOI:https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2015.00312
ISSN:1664-1078
Pubmed ID:https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/25852623
Title of parent work (English):Frontiers in psychology
Publisher:Frontiers Research Foundation
Place of publishing:Lausanne
Publication type:Article
Language:English
Year of first publication:2015
Publication year:2015
Release date:2017/03/27
Tag:DLT; Spanish; activation; antilocality; expectation; individual differences; locality; working memory capacity
Volume:6
Number of pages:16
Funding institution:Minerva Foundation; Potsdam Graduate School; University of Potsdam; CONICET; James McDonnell Foundation 21st Century Science Initiative in Understanding Human Cognition-Scholar Award
Organizational units:Humanwissenschaftliche Fakultät / Strukturbereich Kognitionswissenschaften / Department Linguistik
Peer review:Referiert
Publishing method:Open Access
Institution name at the time of the publication:Humanwissenschaftliche Fakultät / Institut für Linguistik / Allgemeine Sprachwissenschaft
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