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Working memory constraints on syntactic processing: An electrophysiological investigation

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 January 2001

SANDRA H. VOS ,
THOMAS C. GUNTER ,
HERMAN H.J. KOLK  and
GIJSBERTUS MULDER
SANDRA H. VOS
Affiliation:
Nijmegen Institute for Cognition and Information, University of Nijmegen, The Netherlands Max-Planck-Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, Leipzig, Germany
THOMAS C. GUNTER
Affiliation:
Max-Planck-Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, Leipzig, Germany
HERMAN H.J. KOLK
Affiliation:
Nijmegen Institute for Cognition and Information, University of Nijmegen, The Netherlands
GIJSBERTUS MULDER
Affiliation:
Now deceased, Prof. Mulder was affiliated with the Institute for Experimental and Occupational Psychology, Groningen, The Netherlands
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Abstract

Event-related potentials (ERPs) and reaction times (RTs) were used to study how the processing of sentences with morphosyntactic violations is constrained by working memory (WM) capacity. The available WM capacity was varied by three orthogonal manipulations: (1) syntactic complexity; (2) additional WM load; and (3) verbal WM span. The processing of the morphosyntactic violations was reflected in longer RTs in ungrammatical compared with grammatical sentences, and in an anterior negativity and a centroparietal positivity in the ERPs. While the behavioral grammaticality effect was not influenced by the WM manipulations, the ERP effects were. The amplitude of the anterior negativity was modulated by the combination of complexity and load, and by WM span. The onset of the centroparietal positivity was delayed in the high-load condition, and for the low-span group. ERPs over the course of the sentences showed a frontal negative slow wave under high WM load, largest for the low-span group. The finding that online syntactic processing is related to WM span and to additional WM load does not support the theory that there is a WM capacity specific for syntactic processing.

Keywords

Working memorySyntaxLANP600Slow waveIndividual differences
Type
Research Article
Information
Psychophysiology , Volume 38 , Issue 1 , January 2001 , pp. 41 - 63
Copyright
2001 Society for Psychophysiological Research

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