Journal of memory and language最新文献_第4页

The contribution of learning and memory processes to verb-specific syntactic processing 学习和记忆过程对动词特定句法加工的贡献

IF 2.9 1区心理学

Journal of memory and language Pub Date : 2025-02-01 DOI: 10.1016/j.jml.2024.104595

Lewis V. Ball , Matthew H.C. Mak , Rachel Ryskin , Adam J. Curtis , Jennifer M. Rodd , M. Gareth Gaskell

{"title":"The contribution of learning and memory processes to verb-specific syntactic processing","authors":"Lewis V. Ball , Matthew H.C. Mak , Rachel Ryskin , Adam J. Curtis , Jennifer M. Rodd , M. Gareth Gaskell","doi":"10.1016/j.jml.2024.104595","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jml.2024.104595","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Certain aspects of lexical knowledge can be primed by recent usage, with effects observed up to 24 h later in some circumstances. Here, we used syntactically ambiguous sentences (“The man hit/chose the dog with the stick”) to explore the longevity of priming of syntactic structure. Some verbs provide a bias towards an instrument interpretation (the stick was used to <em>hit</em> the dog), whilst others are biased towards the modifier interpretation (the man <em>chose</em> the dog that possessed the stick). Experiment 1 revealed an effect of pre-existing verb bias on resolving syntactic ambiguities. In Experiment 2, we primed specific verbs towards their dispreferred interpretation in an exposure phase (e.g., <em>hit</em> was primed to the modifier interpretation). ∼ 20 min later, the same verbs, along with unprimed verbs, were encountered in syntactically ambiguous contexts in a test phase. Exposure to the dispreferred interpretation in the exposure phase increased the preference for the same interpretation in the test phase, particularly for instrument-biased verbs. In Experiment 3, the exposure and test phases were separated by a ∼ 12-hour interval that included sleep. No overall effect of exposure was found, but again a simple effect of priming was found for instrument-biased verbs. Finally, in Experiment 4 using a sentence completion task, we found that instrument-biased verbs had significantly stronger pre-existing biases, which we discuss as a possible explanation for the imbalance in priming between verb bias conditions. Our results suggest verb-bias priming is maintained over relatively long periods such as 20 min, and possibly as long as 12 h, consistent with a contribution of episodic memory to maintenance of verb-specific syntactic biases.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":16493,"journal":{"name":"Journal of memory and language","volume":"141 ","pages":"Article 104595"},"PeriodicalIF":2.9,"publicationDate":"2025-02-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143136238","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

引用次数: 0

Contribution of prior linguistic knowledge to L3 phonological perception and production 先验语言知识对L3语音感知和产生的贡献

IF 2.9 1区心理学

Journal of memory and language Pub Date : 2025-02-01 DOI: 10.1016/j.jml.2024.104600

Tal Norman, Anat Prior , Tamar Degani

{"title":"Contribution of prior linguistic knowledge to L3 phonological perception and production","authors":"Tal Norman, Anat Prior , Tamar Degani","doi":"10.1016/j.jml.2024.104600","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jml.2024.104600","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Adult phonological processing may be affected by previous linguistic knowledge. Here, we examine how phonological perception and production in a third-language (L3) are affected by multilinguals’ first- (L1) and second-languages (L2). To this end, Arabic-Hebrew-English trilinguals (<em>n</em> = 41) completed an oddity (perception) task and a word repetition (production) task in English (the L3). Critically, word pairs (<em>n</em> = 96) targeted phonological contrasts that overlap between English and Arabic (L1), English and Hebrew (L2), English and both Arabic and Hebrew (Both) or exist uniquely in English (None). Results showed that words including phonological contrasts that exist in L1 Arabic (L1 & Both conditions) were perceived more accurately than those that do not exist in the L1 (L2 & None conditions). This pattern cannot be the mere result of item characteristics, because using the same items, a control group of Hebrew-English bilinguals (<em>n</em> = 39) responded more accurately when phonological contrasts overlapped with Hebrew (their L1). We further verified that the L2 contrasts had at least partially been acquired in the L2, by testing an additional group of trilinguals (<em>n</em> = 27), who performed above chance on these contrasts when embedded in an L2 task. Judgments collected from monolingual English evaluators revealed that trilingual productions exhibited the same pattern as that observed in perception, with more intelligible productions of contrasts which overlap with the L1, but not with the L2. Thus, multilinguals appear to draw on their L1 knowledge, but not on their L2 knowledge, while processing phonological information in the L3. The findings further underscore the relation between phonological perception and production in the L3.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":16493,"journal":{"name":"Journal of memory and language","volume":"141 ","pages":"Article 104600"},"PeriodicalIF":2.9,"publicationDate":"2025-02-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143096197","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

引用次数: 0

Flexible utilization of spatial representation formats in working Memory: Evidence from both small-scale and large-scale environments 工作记忆中空间表征格式的灵活运用：来自小尺度和大尺度环境的证据

IF 2.9 1区心理学

Journal of memory and language Pub Date : 2025-02-01 DOI: 10.1016/j.jml.2024.104587

Wei Chen , Wenwen Li , Yushang Huang , Xiaowei Ding

{"title":"Flexible utilization of spatial representation formats in working Memory: Evidence from both small-scale and large-scale environments","authors":"Wei Chen , Wenwen Li , Yushang Huang , Xiaowei Ding","doi":"10.1016/j.jml.2024.104587","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jml.2024.104587","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Extensive studies have examined spatial representations in working memory (WM). However, their format and consistency across laboratory and large-scale environments remain less understood. Drawing insights from perception research, we proposed two hypotheses regarding the formats: polar coordinates and Cartesian coordinates, and examined these hypotheses in both small-scale and large-scale environments by error correlation analysis. Participants memorized target locations and reproduced them on a computer screen or navigated to corresponding locations in a virtual reality environment. The results revealed that participants defaulted to using polar coordinates to represent space in both environments, rather than Cartesian coordinates. Moreover, the spatial representation format proved flexible. In laboratory settings with grid-like memory contexts, participants tended to adopt Cartesian representations, with the encoding phase playing a more crucial role than the response phase. In large-scale environments, an indirect response type prompted participants to adopt Cartesian representations. Overall, our study underscores the prevalence and flexibility of polar representations for space in WM.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":16493,"journal":{"name":"Journal of memory and language","volume":"141 ","pages":"Article 104587"},"PeriodicalIF":2.9,"publicationDate":"2025-02-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143097297","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

引用次数: 0

Individual differences in state and trait mind-wandering influence episodic memory encoding and retrieval dynamics 状态和特质走神的个体差异影响情景记忆编码和检索动态

IF 2.9 1区心理学

Journal of memory and language Pub Date : 2025-02-01 DOI: 10.1016/j.jml.2024.104604

Dillon H. Murphy, Gene A. Brewer

{"title":"Individual differences in state and trait mind-wandering influence episodic memory encoding and retrieval dynamics","authors":"Dillon H. Murphy, Gene A. Brewer","doi":"10.1016/j.jml.2024.104604","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jml.2024.104604","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Mind-wandering is a cognitive state in which attention shifts away from a primary task to unrelated thoughts, often occurring without the individual’s awareness, and there may be both a state and trait component of mind-wandering such that some people may have a higher propensity to mind wander. In the present study, we investigated the relationship between mind-wandering and episodic memory, distinguishing between mind-wandering as a transient state versus a trait, individual differences characteristic. Specifically, through two individual differences experiments involving word list learning tasks, we explored how both state and trait mind-wandering affect overall memory performance and the dynamics of retrieval. Results indicated that state mind-wandering negatively correlated with recall and uniquely predicted memory outcomes. Additionally, participants prone to state mind-wandering showed a decreased likelihood of initiating recall with the first word studied. In contrast, while both state and trait mind-wandering were negatively associated with recall performance, trait mind-wandering did not uniquely influence memory performance. Moreover, evidence suggested that high trait mind-wandering may impair the lag-recency effect, indicating challenges in leveraging temporal contextual cues for memory retrieval. These findings suggest that while in-the-moment mind-wandering can disrupt memory formation, a predisposition towards mind-wandering does not necessarily impair memory ability but may impact the dynamics of retrieval.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":16493,"journal":{"name":"Journal of memory and language","volume":"141 ","pages":"Article 104604"},"PeriodicalIF":2.9,"publicationDate":"2025-02-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143136237","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

引用次数: 0

The separability of early vocabulary and grammar knowledge 早期词汇和语法知识的可分离性

IF 2.9 1区心理学

Journal of memory and language Pub Date : 2025-02-01 DOI: 10.1016/j.jml.2024.104586

Seamus Donnelly , Evan Kidd , Jay Verkuilen , Caroline Rowland

{"title":"The separability of early vocabulary and grammar knowledge","authors":"Seamus Donnelly , Evan Kidd , Jay Verkuilen , Caroline Rowland","doi":"10.1016/j.jml.2024.104586","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jml.2024.104586","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>A long-standing question in language development concerns the nature of the relationship between early lexical and grammatical knowledge. The very strong correlation between the two has led some to argue that lexical and grammatical knowledge may be inseparable, consistent with psycholinguistic theories that eschew a distinction between the two systems. However, little research has explicitly examined whether early lexical and grammatical knowledge are statistically separable. Moreover, there are two under-appreciated methodological challenges in such research. First, the relationship between lexical and grammatical knowledge may change during development. Second, non-linear mappings between true and observed scores on scales of lexical and grammatical knowledge could lead to spurious multidimensionality. In the present study, we overcome these challenges by using vocabulary and grammar data from several developmental time points and a statistical method robust to such non-linear mappings. In Study 1, we examined item-level vocabulary and grammar data from two American English samples from a large online repository of data from studies employing a commonly used language development scale. We found clear evidence that vocabulary and grammar were separable by two years of age. In Study 2, we combined data from two longitudinal studies of language acquisition that used the same scale (at 18/19, 21, 24 and 30 months) and found evidence that vocabulary and grammar were, under some conditions, separable by 18 months. Results indicate that, while there is clearly a very strong relationship between vocabulary and grammar knowledge in early language development, the two are separable. Implications for the mechanisms underlying language development are discussed.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":16493,"journal":{"name":"Journal of memory and language","volume":"141 ","pages":"Article 104586"},"PeriodicalIF":2.9,"publicationDate":"2025-02-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143097299","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

引用次数: 0

Do syntactic and semantic similarity lead to interference effects? Evidence from self-paced reading and event-related potentials using German 语法和语义的相似性会导致干扰效应吗？使用德语进行自定节奏阅读和事件相关电位的证据

IF 2.9 1区心理学

Journal of memory and language Pub Date : 2025-02-01 DOI: 10.1016/j.jml.2024.104599

Pia Schoknecht , Himanshu Yadav , Shravan Vasishth

{"title":"Do syntactic and semantic similarity lead to interference effects? Evidence from self-paced reading and event-related potentials using German","authors":"Pia Schoknecht , Himanshu Yadav , Shravan Vasishth","doi":"10.1016/j.jml.2024.104599","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jml.2024.104599","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Cue-based retrieval accounts of sentence processing postulate that at a verb, retrieval cues are generated to complete a dependency with the verb’s argument(s); for example, the dependency between the subject and the verb must be completed. If these retrieval cues match with not only the subject but also with those on other nouns in the sentence, then processing difficulty arises at the verb. This difficulty in identifying the correct dependent is called similarity-based interference. We present relatively large-sample self-paced reading and event-related potentials experiments using a well-established design to investigate interference due to syntactic and semantic cues in German. In this design, the syntactic cue {+subject} and the semantic cue {+animate} are manipulated. Bayes factors analyses showed evidence for a semantic interference effect in both experiments. Surprisingly, Bayes factors provided evidence against interference due to the syntactic cue {+grammatical subject} in this particular design in both experiments. This finding contradicts the predictions of the standard implementations of cue-based retrieval theory, which (implicitly) assumes that both syntactic and semantic cues play an equal role in retrieval. We show through computational modeling that cue-based retrieval will also show no syntactic interference in the present design if the parser is assumed to keep track of which clause the subject occurs in. Thus, if syntactic retrieval cues include hierarchical syntactic information (is the noun in the same clause as the verb?), the cue-based retrieval model would exhibit patterns consistent with the observed patterns in our data.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":16493,"journal":{"name":"Journal of memory and language","volume":"141 ","pages":"Article 104599"},"PeriodicalIF":2.9,"publicationDate":"2025-02-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143097294","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

引用次数: 0

Individual differences and 11-year longitudinal changes in older adults’ prospective memory: A comparison with episodic memory, working memory, processing speed, and verbal knowledge 老年人前瞻记忆的个体差异和11年纵向变化：与情景记忆、工作记忆、加工速度和言语知识的比较

IF 2.9 1区心理学

Journal of memory and language Pub Date : 2025-02-01 DOI: 10.1016/j.jml.2024.104602

Sascha Zuber , Matthias Kliegel , Vera Schumacher , Mike Martin , Paolo Ghisletta , Sebastian Horn

{"title":"Individual differences and 11-year longitudinal changes in older adults’ prospective memory: A comparison with episodic memory, working memory, processing speed, and verbal knowledge","authors":"Sascha Zuber , Matthias Kliegel , Vera Schumacher , Mike Martin , Paolo Ghisletta , Sebastian Horn","doi":"10.1016/j.jml.2024.104602","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jml.2024.104602","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Prospective Memory (PM; remembering intended actions after a delay) represents a core ability contributing to everyday functioning and independence in older adulthood. Despite its high relevance for successful aging, the understanding of individual differences in level and within-person change of PM in older adulthood is currently limited. Using longitudinal data from initially 364 older adults (between 65 and 80 years of age at wave 1; 46 % female) across four waves of the Zurich Longitudinal Study on Cognitive Aging, we examined (a) individual differences and (b) longitudinal change in PM performance over up to 11 years, (c) compared differences and change in PM with other central variables of cognitive functioning (episodic memory, working memory, processing speed, verbal knowledge), and (d) explored the effect of key sociodemographic variables (education, income, sex, health) on PM. Linear mixed modeling with Bayesian estimation indicated substantial individual differences in cognitive performance, with by far the highest variability in PM. Longitudinal age-related decreases were largest for working memory and cognitive speed, relatively small for PM, while verbal knowledge remained stable. Individual differences in age-related changes in performance were only observed for processing speed and verbal knowledge, but not for PM. This pattern remained after considering various cognitive and sociodemographic covariates. This is the first longitudinal study of PM that allows an in-depth examination of individual differences in both level and change in PM with comparison to other key cognitive abilities across older adulthood. The findings highlight the complex interplay between cognitive abilities, individual differences, and development across older adulthood, with implications for understanding cognitive aging.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":16493,"journal":{"name":"Journal of memory and language","volume":"141 ","pages":"Article 104602"},"PeriodicalIF":2.9,"publicationDate":"2025-02-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143097295","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

引用次数: 0

What’s in my cluster? Evaluating automated clustering methods to understand idiosyncratic search behavior in verbal fluency 我的集群中有什么？评估自动聚类方法来理解语言流畅性中的特质搜索行为

IF 2.9 1区心理学

Journal of memory and language Pub Date : 2025-02-01 DOI: 10.1016/j.jml.2024.104606

Abhilasha A. Kumar , Nancy B. Lundin , Michael N. Jones

{"title":"What’s in my cluster? Evaluating automated clustering methods to understand idiosyncratic search behavior in verbal fluency","authors":"Abhilasha A. Kumar , Nancy B. Lundin , Michael N. Jones","doi":"10.1016/j.jml.2024.104606","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jml.2024.104606","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Individuals routinely search through memory for concepts. This behavior is commonly studied via the verbal fluency task (VFT), where participants are typically asked to generate as many exemplars as they can from a given category (e.g., animals) or letter label (e.g., F) within a fixed amount of time. Responses in the VFT tend to be clustered in meaningful ways but individuals widely differ in the manner in which they cluster items. Despite the development of several (hand-coded and automated) methods of defining clusters and switches in the VFT, there is currently no consensus on which scoring method provides the best mechanistic account of how <em>individuals</em> search through memory in the VFT. In this work, we provide an empirical evaluation of several automated methods for defining clusters and switches in the VFT by comparing model-predicted clusters with participant-designated clusters. We find that a method that combines gradual rises and drops in a weighted composite of semantic <em>and</em> phonological similarity best predicts participant-designated cluster-switch events across three domains (<em>animals</em>, <em>foods</em>, and <em>occupations</em>). Furthermore, we propose a novel approach to understand idiosyncratic search behavior by computing a measure of discordance for each pairwise transition based on a large dataset of cluster-switch designations from independent raters (<em>N</em> = 211) for the same transitions via a pre-registered experiment. We find that transitions with high idiosyncratic scores have low lexical content (i.e., semantic and phonological similarity), and an individual’s score on one domain is predictive of their score on another domain, suggesting that idiosyncratic scores may be capturing meaningful information about non-lexical sources and processes that contribute to memory search at the individual level.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":16493,"journal":{"name":"Journal of memory and language","volume":"141 ","pages":"Article 104606"},"PeriodicalIF":2.9,"publicationDate":"2025-02-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143097298","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

引用次数: 0

Individual differences in prospective and retrospective memory offloading 前瞻性和回顾性记忆卸载的个体差异

IF 2.9 1区心理学

Journal of memory and language Pub Date : 2025-01-23 DOI: 10.1016/j.jml.2025.104617

Lauren L. Richmond , Lois K. Burnett , Julia Kearley , Sam J. Gilbert , Alexandra B. Morrison , B. Hunter Ball

{"title":"Individual differences in prospective and retrospective memory offloading","authors":"Lauren L. Richmond , Lois K. Burnett , Julia Kearley , Sam J. Gilbert , Alexandra B. Morrison , B. Hunter Ball","doi":"10.1016/j.jml.2025.104617","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jml.2025.104617","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Prior research focused on the relationship between cognitive offloading and working memory ability in the prospective and retrospective memory domains have produced conflicting results. Specifically, past work in the prospective memory domain has found that individuals with lower working memory capacity (WMC) choose to offload more often and benefit more from offloading than those with higher WMC (<span><span>Ball, Peper, et al., 2022</span></span>) while work in the retrospective memory domain has not found a relationship between WMC and the use of or benefit from offloading (<span><span>Morrison & Richmond, 2020</span></span>). However, task design across studies differed in several other respects aside from memory domain, making it difficult to discern whether different mechanisms underlie cognitive offloading across domains. The current study aimed to address these discrepancies by introducing similar procedures across offloading tasks. Results revealed that when offloading was required or permitted, participants with varying levels of WMC generally performed more similarly to one another than when the task had to be completed using internal memory alone. In addition, participants with lower WMC generally benefitted more from offloading, particularly under high memory load, compared to those with higher WMC when offloading was required and when participants had free choice about whether and when to engage in offloading. However, neither metacognitive underconfidence in internal memory capability nor lower WMC estimates were associated with increased offloading frequency in either memory domain when participants were permitted to offload. Practical and theoretical implications of these findings are discussed.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":16493,"journal":{"name":"Journal of memory and language","volume":"142 ","pages":"Article 104617"},"PeriodicalIF":2.9,"publicationDate":"2025-01-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143140378","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

引用次数: 0

Working memory capacity limit is dependent on encoding granularity: Evidence from Mandarin Chinese 工作记忆容量限制依赖于编码粒度：来自普通话的证据

IF 2.9 1区心理学

Journal of memory and language Pub Date : 2025-01-20 DOI: 10.1016/j.jml.2025.104618

Yunsong Li , Ming Xiang , Suiping Wang

{"title":"Working memory capacity limit is dependent on encoding granularity: Evidence from Mandarin Chinese","authors":"Yunsong Li , Ming Xiang , Suiping Wang","doi":"10.1016/j.jml.2025.104618","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jml.2025.104618","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>It is well documented that grouping smaller units of information into larger units (i.e. chunking) can help offset working memory (WM) capacity limit. A long standing question is whether working memory capacity limit is determined by the sheer number of chunk-based units, or memory resources are flexibly distributed over multiple chunks depending on tasks and also the resolution level at which memory representations are encoded. Results from previous work in visual WM has shown evidence for both positions. The current work explores the effect of rational resource distribution for storing linguistic information in verbal WM. Two experiments were conducted using a change detection task and Mandarin Chinese words as stimuli. The task in Experiment 1 encouraged the encoding of the lexical representations at relatively lower granularity level, and the task in Experiment 2 targeted more detailed representation of a word (higher granularity). Two findings were noteworthy. First, compared to the memory performance of non-words, the memory performance of words showed clear benefits of chunking. Second, memory performance under more precise encoding (Experiment 2) was worse than under less precise encoding (Experiment 1), but only when memory load was also high. Our findings lend support to the rational resource models that allow dynamic distribution of limited memory resources based on the demand for representational granularity.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":16493,"journal":{"name":"Journal of memory and language","volume":"142 ","pages":"Article 104618"},"PeriodicalIF":2.9,"publicationDate":"2025-01-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143140033","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

引用次数: 0