Individual differences in sentence memory.

Full Abstract

Results from an experiment with two parts are presented in this paper. In part one, participants listened to sentences containing two, three, four, or five clauses, and were asked questions about the content of the sentences. The results of part one demonstrate that an important unit of representation in sentence memory is the clause, and not some other component of discourse structure. In part two, the same group of participants performed eight different short-term storage/working memory tasks. A composite complex span score was computed for each participant based on three working memory tasks closely based on Daneman & Carpenter's (1980) reading span task. This working memory measure was significantly correlated with the participants' performance on the sentence memory task in part one. A second working memory measure--N-back--was also significantly correlated with the participants' performance on the sentence memory task, and there was no correlation between their performance on the complex span task and the N-back task. It is therefore concluded that (i) working memory consists of a number of dissociable components; and (ii) memory for sentences taps into more than one of these working memory components. Furthermore, the high correlations of sentence memory with the complex span and the N-back tasks (neither of which are language processing tasks) suggests that memory for sentences is not simply a result of linguistic experience; rather, it is likely that an independent working memory component contributes to participants' performance on the sentence memory task.

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Author information

Author/s: Roberts, Rose (R); Gibson, Edward (E);

Affiliation: Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, NE20-459, MIT, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA.

Journal and publication information

Publication Type: Journal Article

Journal: Journal of psycholinguistic research (J Psycholinguist Res), published in United States. (Language: eng)

Reference: 2002-Nov; vol 31 (issue 6) : pp 573-98

Dates: Created 2003/02/25; Completed 2003/05/01; Revised 2004/11/17;

PMID: 12599915, status: MEDLINE (last retrieval date: 11/6/2008)

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MeSH headings (categories)

This article was linked to the MESH Headings shown below.

Cognition
Humans
Memory

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