Revised inference processing as a measure of the working memory–processing relationship

Abstract

Processing and resource allocation models have been used in cognitive psychology and aphasiology in an attempt to investigate and explain the possible relationships among working memory and normal/disordered language-processing abilities. The interest of the present study was to determine potential benefits of employing revised inferences as the linguistic stimuli to explore these relationships further. Before application can be made to individuals with brain damage, however, results from neurologically intact individuals are needed. Therefore, we asked 30 individuals without neurological symptoms to participate in a cross-modal lexical priming study designed to measure revised inference-processing abilities, and a listening span task devised by Tompkins, Bloise, Timko, and Baumgaertner (1994) was used to measure working memory ability. Participants demonstrated priming effects for contextually appropriate target words in the two lexical decision positions housed within the revised inferences. These findings are discussed with respect to models of processing and resource allocation. Implications and applications to studies of the braindamaged population are also considered.