Sentence comprehension and general working memory

Abstract

Although the role of working memory in sentence comprehension has received substantial attention, the nature of this relationship remains unclear. The purpose of this study was to examine the interaction between general, nonverbal working memory (WM) and sentence parsing (SP) in normal English‐speaking adults. Accuracy and reaction times were recorded for thirty‐one young adults during three on‐line tasks: nonverbal WM, SP plausibility, and lexical decision (LD). A significant positive correlation was observed between reaction times for WM and SP, but not between LD and SP. These results suggest that SP may be supported by a general WM capacity, and therefore, some sentence comprehension difficulties observed in the clinical population may potentially be related to impairment in general WM.

• Nonverbal working memory
• sentence parsing
• lexical decision
• sentence comprehension