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Related Experiment Videos

Interference in short-term memory: the magical number two (or three) in sentence processing

R L Lewis1

  • 1Department of Computer and Information Science, Ohio State University, Columbus 43210, USA. rick@cis.ohio-state.edu

Journal of Psycholinguistic Research
|January 1, 1996
PubMed
Summary

Syntactic working memory limitations explain sentence processing difficulties. A parsing architecture limiting constituent indexing to two per relation unifies findings from memory research and sentence comprehension.

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Area of Science:

  • Psycholinguistics
  • Cognitive Psychology
  • Computational Linguistics

Background:

  • Traditional theories of sentence processing difficulty often cite limited short-term memory capacity.
  • These theories have largely developed independently of general memory research principles like chunking and interference.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To unify sentence processing theories with traditional memory research.
  • To propose a model explaining sentence processing phenomena through syntactic working memory interference.

Main Methods:

  • Developing a parsing architecture with a strict limitation on constituent indexing.
  • Analyzing interference effects within a constrained syntactic working memory framework.

Main Results:

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  • The proposed model explains various sentence processing phenomena, including embedding difficulty, ambiguity resolution limits, and garden path effects.
  • A consistent limitation of two or three items in syntactic working memory aligns with findings in other verbal short-term memory tasks.

Conclusions:

  • Sentence processing difficulties, including complex embeddings and structural ambiguities, can be attributed to interference effects in a limited syntactic working memory.
  • A unified theory based on sharply limited syntactic working memory provides a parsimonious explanation for a range of core sentence processing phenomena.