Syntactic agreement attraction reflects working memory processes

Date
2016
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Taylor & Francis
Abstract

Does producing syntactic agreement rely on syntactic or memory-based retrieval processes? The present study investigated the extent to which syntactic processing deficits and working memory (WM) deficits predict susceptibility to agreement attraction (Bock & Miller, 1991), where speakers tend to erroneously produce plural agreement for a singular subject when another noun in the sentence is grammatically plural. Four brain-injured patients with varying degrees of grammatical and WM deficits completed sentences with local nouns that matched or mismatched in number with the head noun, and that were plausible or implausible subjects. Both aspects of grammatical deficits and the extent of WM deficits predicted the extent of agreement attraction effects. These data are consistent with the proposal that producing an agreeing verb involves a cue-based search in WM for an appropriate controlling noun, which is subject to interference from other elements in memory with similar properties (cf. Badecker & Kuminiak, 2007).

Description
Advisor
Degree
Type
Journal article
Keywords
Citation

Slevc, L. Robert and Martin, Randi C.. "Syntactic agreement attraction reflects working memory processes." Journal of Cognitive Psychology, (2016) Taylor & Francis: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/20445911.2016.1202252.

Has part(s)
Forms part of
Rights
This is an author's peer-reviewed final manuscript, as accepted by the publisher. The published article is copyrighted by Taylor & Francis.
Link to license
Citable link to this page