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Published on: September 5, 2019
Computational principles of working memory in sentence comprehension.
Richard L Lewis1, Shravan Vasishth, Julie A Van Dyke
1Department of Psychology, University of Michigan, 530 Church Street, Ann Arbor, MI 48109, USA. rickl@umich.edu
Trends in Cognitive Sciences
|September 5, 2006
Summary
Human sentence comprehension relies on working memory for processing linguistic relations. Our framework models this memory system, explaining processing limits and reading times in language understanding.
Area of Science:
- Cognitive Psychology
- Psycholinguistics
- Computational Neuroscience
Background:
- Sentence comprehension necessitates a temporary storage system for linguistic information.
- Understanding requires rapid computation of relationships between words, even when separated in time.
Purpose of the Study:
- To propose a theoretical framework for the working memory system in sentence comprehension.
- To explain the functional capacities and limitations of human sentence processing.
Main Methods:
- Developing a computational model based on established memory principles.
- Incorporating limited attentional focus, item-based retrieval with interference, and activation decay.
Main Results:
- The model accounts for the severe limitations observed in human sentence processing.
- The framework explains variations in reading times based on memory principles.
Conclusions:
- General principles of human memory significantly shape language comprehension.
- Cross-linguistic sentence processing arises from memory-language interactions.
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