Proactive interference effects on sentence production.

Full Abstract

Proactive interference refers to recall difficulties caused by prior similar memory-related processing. Information-processing approaches to sentence production predict that retrievability affects sentence form:
Speakers may word sentences so that material that is difficult to retrieve is spoken later. In this experiment, speakers produced sentence structures that could include an optional that, thereby delaying the mention of a subsequent noun phrase. This subsequent noun phrase was either (1) conceptually similar to three previous noun phrases in the same sentence, leading to greater proactive interference, or (2) conceptually dissimilar, leading to less proactive interference. Speakers produced more thats (and were more disfluencies) before conceptually similar noun phrases, suggesting that retrieval difficulties during sentence production affect the syntactic structures of sentences that speakers produce.

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Author information

Author/s: Ferreira, Victor S (VS); Firato, Carla E (CE);

Affiliation: Department of Psychology, University of California, San Diego, La Jolla, California 92093-0109, USA. ferreira@psy.ucsd.edu

Grants: R01 HD051030-04A1 (Agency:United States NICHD) ; R01 MH064733-01 (Agency:United States NIMH) ; R01 MH064733-02 (Agency:United States NIMH) ; R01 MH064733-03 (Agency:United States NIMH) ; R01MH64733 (Agency:United States NIMH)

Journal and publication information

Publication Type: Journal Article; Research Support, U.S. Gov't, P.H.S.

Journal: Psychonomic bulletin & review (Psychon Bull Rev), published in United States. (Language: eng)

Reference: 2002-Dec; vol 9 (issue 4) : pp 795-800

Dates: Created 2003/03/04; Completed 2003/07/03; Revised 2007/11/14;

PMID: 12613685, status: MEDLINE (last retrieval date: 11/6/2008)

Sourced from the National Library of Medicine. Abstract text and other information may be subject to copyright.

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