Experimental Study on Interaction of Syntactic, Prosodic, and Working Memory Constrains in Auditory Comprehension of Reanalysis Sentences

本研究通过实验研究了句法、韵律和工作记忆约束之间可能的相互作用，以构建一个实时可信的句子加工模型。对几种类型的日语再分析句进行了听觉呈现，并对其句法和韵律特性进行了操纵。通过日语阅读广度测试，分析了被试的理解准确度与被试工作记忆容量的关系。结果表明：(1)韵律约束的影响不足以抵消句法结构的影响；(2)在加工负荷较大的再分析中，韵律效应更强；(3)在加工负荷较低的再分析中，工作记忆约束的影响更为显著。此外，在阅读广度测试中得分高的说话者比得分低的说话者更准确地理解了需要重新分析的句子，并且花了更长的时间。这表明，通常认为具有高（日语）阅读广度分数的说话者的效率并不一定意味着重新分析的速度。根据说话者的工作记忆能力，精神资源的分配可能会有所不同。

This study experimentally examined the possible interactions between syntactic, prosodic, and working memory constraints, to construct a sentence processing model plausible in real time.Several types of Japanese reanalysis sentences were auditorily presented with syntactic and prosodic properties manipulated. Their comprehension accuracy was analyzed in relation to the working memory capacity of the participants estimated by Japanese Reading Span Test. Our results indicated that (1) prosodic constraints were not so strong as to cancel the effect of syntactic structure, that (2) prosodic effect was stronger in reanalyses with greater processing load, and that (3) the effect of working memory constraints was more salient in less costly reranalses. Further, a speaker with a high score in the Reading Span Test comprehended the sentences with costly reanalyses more accurately and spent longer time than one with a low score. This suggests that the efficiency generally assumed for the speakers with great (Japanese) Reading Span Scores does not necessarily imply the rapidity in reanalyses. It is possible that mental resources are assigned differently depending on the working memory capacity of a speaker.