1. Children's Comprehension of Object Relative Sentences: It's Extant Language Knowledge That Matters, Not Domain-General Working Memory
- Author
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Yazmin Ahmad Rusli and James W. Montgomery
- Subjects
Linguistics and Language ,Short-term memory ,Neuropsychological Tests ,050105 experimental psychology ,Language and Linguistics ,03 medical and health sciences ,Speech and Hearing ,0302 clinical medicine ,Humans ,Speech ,0501 psychology and cognitive sciences ,Child ,Working memory ,Knowledge level ,05 social sciences ,Lexicology ,Age Factors ,Reproducibility of Results ,Object (computer science) ,Language acquisition ,Linguistics ,Comprehension ,Memory, Short-Term ,Reading comprehension ,Auditory Perception ,Linear Models ,Psychology ,Child Language ,030217 neurology & neurosurgery ,Cognitive psychology - Abstract
Purpose The aim of this study was to determine whether extant language (lexical) knowledge or domain-general working memory is the better predictor of comprehension of object relative sentences for children with typical development. We hypothesized that extant language knowledge, not domain-general working memory, is the better predictor. Method Fifty-three children (ages 9–11 years) completed a word-level verbal working-memory task, indexing extant language (lexical) knowledge; an analog nonverbal working-memory task, representing domain-general working memory; and a hybrid sentence comprehension task incorporating elements of both agent selection and cross-modal picture-priming paradigms. Images of the agent and patient were displayed at the syntactic gap in the object relative sentences, and the children were asked to select the agent of the sentence. Results Results of general linear modeling revealed that extant language knowledge accounted for a unique 21.3% of variance in the children's object relative sentence comprehension over and above age (8.3%). Domain-general working memory accounted for a nonsignificant 1.6% of variance. Conclusions We interpret the results to suggest that extant language knowledge and not domain-general working memory is a critically important contributor to children's object relative sentence comprehension. Results support a connectionist view of the association between working memory and object relative sentence comprehension. Supplemental Materials https://doi.org/10.23641/asha.5404573
- Published
- 2017
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