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Processing resource capacity and the comprehension of garden path sentences
1McGill University, Montreal, Quebec, Canada.
Memory & Cognition
|May 1, 1996
Summary
Verbal working memory capacity does not significantly impact understanding complex garden path sentences. Individual differences in reading span task performance did not predict comprehension abilities for these sentence structures.
Area of Science:
- Cognitive Psychology
- Psycholinguistics
- Neuroscience
Background:
- Garden path sentences are syntactically ambiguous, posing comprehension challenges.
- Verbal working memory capacity is theorized to influence complex sentence processing.
- Previous research suggests a link between working memory and language comprehension.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate the relationship between verbal working memory capacity and garden path sentence comprehension.
- To determine if individual differences in working memory span affect the ability to process syntactically complex sentences.
- To examine this relationship under different presentation conditions (whole sentence vs. RSVP).
Main Methods:
- Three experiments were conducted involving participants with varying working memory spans (high, medium, low).
- Participants made acceptability judgments on garden path and control sentences.
- Sentences were presented using whole sentence and rapid serial visual presentation (RSVP) methods at different rates.
Main Results:
- No significant differences in garden path sentence comprehension were found between participants with different working memory spans.
- The magnitude of the garden path effect did not differ significantly across working memory groups at any RSVP rate.
- Results indicate that working memory capacity, as measured by the reading span task, is not a primary factor in individual differences in processing garden path sentences.
Conclusions:
- Verbal working memory capacity, as measured by the Daneman and Carpenter (1980) reading span task, does not appear to be a major determinant of individual differences in processing garden path sentences.
- The findings challenge the assumption that higher working memory capacity directly translates to better comprehension of syntactically challenging sentences.
- Further research may explore other cognitive or linguistic factors contributing to individual differences in processing garden path sentences.