Working Memory Effects in Sentence Comprehension

描述（由申请人提供）：拟议研究的具体目的 是确定工作记忆容量的个体差异如何影响 句子理解目前的一些理论认为， 句子解释中涉及的过程是模块化的。其他理论 假设语言处理体系结构是高度交互的。 根据后一种说法，句子的解释可能会受到 包括工作记忆的限制个人 因此，解释策略的差异更符合 后一类账户比前一类账户多。确定如何以及为什么工作 记忆限制影响句子理解有助于区分 解释的基础上开发的解释， 规范数据。言语工作记忆容量的测量往往与 用阅读理解能力和学业成绩指标 成绩，如SAT成绩。因此，低容量的样本 参与者将包含大量落后于他们的人， 在阅读理解和学术成就方面的同龄人。中的实验 目前的建议将有助于确定哪些战略，低容量的供应商 采用处理和理解句子。这些知识可能会导致洞察力 这将有助于从业者设计更好的干预方法， 成就不足的人群。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): The specific aim of the proposed research is to determine how individual differences in working-memory capacity affect sentence understanding. Some current theories assume that the cognitive processes involved in sentence interpretation are modular. Other theories assume that the language processing architecture is highly interactive. According to these latter accounts, sentence interpretation can be influenced by any number of factors, including working memory restrictions. Individual differences in sentence-interpretation strategies are thus more compatible with the latter class of account than the former. Identifying how and why working memory limitations affect sentence understanding helps distinguish between accounts of sentence-interpretation that have been developed on the basis of normative data. Measures of verbal-working-memory capacity tend to correlate with measures of reading comprehension skill and indices of academic achievement, such as verbal SAT scores. Hence, samples of low-capacity participants will contain substantial numbers of people who lag behind their peers in reading comprehension and academic achievement. The experiments in the current proposal will help determine what strategies low-capacity comprehenders adopt to process and comprehend sentences. This knowledge may lead to insights that will help practitioners devise better ways of intervening with under-achieving populations.