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Examining Online Syntactic Processing of Spoken Complex Sentences in Chinese Using Dual-Modal Interference Tasks
Published on: September 5, 2019
The facilitating effect of Chinese character linguistic knowledge on working memory updating
Hongli Li1, Xiaoxuan Shi2, Yihang Ouyang1
1School of Education, Anyang Normal University, No. 436 Xiange Avenue, Henan,, Anyang, 455000, China.
Psychological Research
|August 13, 2026
Summary
Linguistic knowledge, particularly semantic knowledge, enhances working memory (WM) updating, especially under high cognitive load. This benefit persists even when phonological rehearsal is disrupted, highlighting the role of knowledge representations in memory.
Area of Science:
- Cognitive Psychology
- Neuroscience
- Linguistics
Background:
- Information representations in working memory (WM) decay rapidly.
- Phonological rehearsal partially compensates for memory trace decay.
- The role of linguistic knowledge in WM updating, independent of rehearsal, is unclear.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate how linguistic knowledge affects working memory updating.
- To determine if the benefits of linguistic knowledge on WM updating are independent of phonological rehearsal.
- To explore the influence of task load on the facilitating effect of linguistic knowledge.
Main Methods:
- Two experiments using a verbal N-back task (1-back and 2-back) with real and pseudo-characters.
- Experiment 1 compared performance under different task loads.
- Experiment 2 disrupted phonological rehearsal via forced numerical repetition.
Main Results:
- Real characters showed faster reaction times than pseudo-characters in the high-load 2-back task (Experiment 1).
- Real characters yielded higher accuracy and faster reaction times (2-back) than pseudo-characters when phonological rehearsal was disrupted (Experiment 2).
- Task load modulates the facilitating effect of linguistic knowledge, which is not entirely dependent on phonological rehearsal.
Conclusions:
- Knowledge representations, especially semantic knowledge, are key modulators of working memory updating.
- Linguistic knowledge enhances WM updating performance, particularly under high cognitive load and independent of phonological rehearsal.
- Findings offer empirical support for refining working memory theories by incorporating knowledge representations.
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