Working memory contributions to relative clause attachment processing: a hierarchical linear modeling analysis

An eye-movement-monitoring experiment tested readers' responses to sentences containing relative clauses that could be attached to one or both of two preceding nouns. Previous experiments with such sentences have indicated that globally ambiguous relative clauses are processed more quickly than are determinately attached relative clauses. Central to the present research, a recent study (Swets, Desmet, Hambrick, & Ferreira, 2007) showed that offline preferences for such sentences differ as a function of working memory capacity. Specifically, both English and Dutch participants' preference for the second of two nouns as the host for the relative clause increased as their working memory capacity increased. In the present study, readers' working memory capacity was measured, and eye movements were monitored. Hierarchical linear modeling was used to determine whether working memory capacity moderated readers' online processing performance. The modeling indicated that determinately attached sentences were harder to process than globally ambiguous sentences, that working memory did not affect processing of the relative clause itself, but that working memory did moderate how easy it was to integrate the relative clause with the preceding sentence context. Specifically, in contrast with the offline results from Swets and colleagues' study, readers with higher working memory capacity were more likely to prefer the first noun over the second noun as the host for the relative clause.