PSY 369: Psycholinguistics
Language Comprehension:
The role of memory
Memory and comprehension
The man that the woman that the child hugged kissed laughed.
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Most readers having trouble figuring out who did what to whom
(called thematic role assignment).
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The trouble:
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Easier to assign thematic roles in the two sentences that form it:
 The man that the woman kissed laughed.
 The woman that the child hugged kissed the man.
Insufficient working memory resources to retain the intermediate
products of computation made building the complex syntactic
structure
The Capacity Theory of Comprehension
Carpenter, 1992)
(Just &
Measuring memory span
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Daneman and Carpenter (1980??) Technique:
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This technique involves presenting sequences of 2 to 6
sentences, each of 13 to 16 words.
The subject has to read the sentences out loud, and attempt
to remember the last word of each.
He is then asked to recall as many last words as possible (in
any order).
Used to classify readers as high and low span
Measuring memory span
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Insert example of span test
Memory and comprehension
Just and Carpenter (1992)
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Studied garden path sentences
The animacy of the first noun may constrain the
possible interpretation of the sentence
The defendant examined by the lawyer shocked the jury.
The defendant that was examined by the lawyer shocked the jury.
The evidence examined by the lawyer shocked the jury.
The evidence that was examined by the lawyer shocked the jury.
Memory and comprehension
Just & Carpenter (1992)
600
The defendant examined by the
lawyer shocked the jury.
550
500
msec
Just the ambiguous sentences
animate NP
Inanimate NP
450
400
The evidence examined by the
lawyer shocked the jury.
350
300
Low-span
High-span
High span readers can use the semantic information
to resolve the ambiguity
Memory and comprehension
King and Just (1991)
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Verbs which could provide strong pragmatic cues as to which of
the two potential actors in the sentence was the agent :
 The robber that the fireman rescued stole the jewelry.
 The robber that the fireman rescued watched the program.
 The robber that the fireman detested stole the jewelry.
 The robber that the fireman detested watched the program.
Results
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High-capacity subjects did not improve
Low-capacity subjects did
The opposite of the Just and Carpenter (1992) results.
Memory and comprehension
Garnsey, Pearlmutter, Pirog (2003)
The professor (who was) confronted by the student was
not ready for an argument.
The professor (had) confronted the student but was
not ready for an argument.
Question:
Do readers differ specifically in how quickly they can use
disambiguating words to rule out incorrect alternatives?
Memory and comprehension
Garnsey, Pearlmutter, Pirog (2003)
Eye fixations were analyzed separately
- By whether preview of “by” while still fixating on verb likely
If last fix was here,
trial not used
The professor confronted by the student was not ready to …
If last fix was here,
trial coded as
Preview Unlikely
If last fix was here,
trial coded as
Preview Likely
Memory and comprehension
Readers who score high on the Reading Span test
- Make better use of a peripherally visible disambiguating word
- To quickly rule out a preferred but incorrect interpretation
Memory and comprehension
Read sentence, then decide if it makes sense
Y/N
Waters & Caplan (19960
Mean reading time per
word
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700
600
500
400
300
200
100
0
Garden path
Non-garden path A
Non-garden path B
Low
Medium
Span Group
High
Memory for sentences
Fillenbaum (1966)
 Given:
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The window is not closed
Tested:
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The window is closed
<-- surface similar, meaning different
The window is not open <-- surface similar, meaning different
The window is open
<-- surface different, surface different
Meaning gets preserved, surface structure (and syntax)
forgotten
Memory for sentences
Sachs (1967, 1974)
 Heard (read):
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Tested:
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He sent a letter about it to Galileo, the great Italian scientist.”
Same: He sent a letter about it to Galileo, the great Italian scientist.
Act/Pass: A letter about it was sent to Galileo, the great Italian scientist.
Formal: He sent Galileo, the great Italian scientist, a letter about it.
Meaning: Galileo, the great Italian scientist, sent him a letter about it.
Measured accuracy of detecting changes
Memory for sentences
Percent correct
Sachs (1967)
semantic
change
active/passive
change
formal change
100
90
80
70
60
50
identical
sentence
0
80
160
Amount of interpolated material
(number of syllables)
Meaning gets preserved, surface structure (and syntax)
forgotten
Just good enough representations
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Ferreira and colleagues (Christianson et al 2001)
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Garden-path sentence
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While Anna dressed the baby played in the crib
While Anna dressed, the baby played in the crib
Did the baby play in the crib?
Did Anna dress the baby?
100% correct
40% correct
Comprehenders don’t always get all of the meaning
right, but get enough to get by
Summing up
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summary