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Purpose: The authors explored the cognitive mechanisms involved in language processing by systematically examining the performance of children with deficits in the domains of working memory and language. Method: From a database of 370 school-age children who had completed a grammaticality judgment task, groups were identified with a co-occurring language and working memory impairment (LI-WMI; n = 18) or specific language impairment (SLI) with typical working memory skills (n = 60) and matched control groups. Correct and incorrect use of grammatical markers occurred either early or late in sentence stimuli, imposing a greater working memory load for late-marker sentences. Results: Children with SLI showed a lower preference for grammatical items than typically developing controls, regardless of error marker position. Children with LI-WMI demonstrated a performance pattern modulated by error marker position: Their preference for grammatical items was lower than typically developing controls for late but not early marker sentences. Conclusion: This pattern of results suggests that there are distinct and dissociable impacts of working memory and linguistic skills on metalinguistic functioning through a grammatical judgment task. Key Words: language disorders, language, specific language impairment, syntax, memory, The ability to learn language is influenced by various cognitive processes, including working memory and linguistic rule-based learning. Working memory refers to the ability to store and process information being [...]

This study explored native speakers' linguistic intuition as revealed in judging the grammaticality of sentences. Speakers of English (n=36) and Japanese (n=57) judged the relative grammaticality of sentences involving a verb which occurred together with one, two or three arguments. Findings showed that English speakers were more affected by the number of arguments in sentences. They judged sentences having three arguments as grammatical most often and ones having one or two arguments as grammatical less often. However, Japanese speakers gave rather similar and more grammatical judgments regardless of the number of arguments in sentences. The findings indicate a difference in tightness of argument structure in the two languages even when the sentences judged are simple sentences and they are given without any sentential context.

This study explored the anchoring effect in judging the grammaticality of sentences violating the subjacency condition. The sentences included either a noun phrase (NP-Extracted) or an adverbial phrase (AP-Extracted), each extracted from a subordinate clause. Anchor sentences had a surface structure similar either to the NP-Extracted targets (NP-Preposed) or to the AP-Extracted targets (AP-Preposed). 42 speakers classified as field-dependent judged the two types of target sentences given together with either the NP-Preposed anchors, the AP-Preposed anchors, or no anchors. Regardless of the targets judged, findings showed the contrast effect for speakers given the AP-Preposed anchors. This effect was also found when the speakers given the NP-Preposed anchors judged the AP-Extracted targets. Two factors, over-all rated grammaticality of sentences and surface similarity between anchors and targets, likely operated to produce the outcome.

Ss were trained on letter pairs or letter strings in an artificial grammar learning paradigm to determine the extent to which implicit learning is driven by simple associative knowledge. Learning on strings resulted in sensitivity to violations of grammaticality and in transfer to a changed letter set. Learning on letter pairs resulted in less sensitivity and no transfer. Discrepancies in performance were later reduced, but not eliminated, by equating the task demands of the conditions during learning. A direct test of associative knowledge showed that training on letter pairs resulted in knowledge of legal bigrams, but this knowledge was only weakly related to violation sensitivity. The experiments demonstrate that knowledge of isolated associations is sufficient to support some learning, but this knowledge cannot explain the more abstract knowledge that results from learning on complete exemplars.

This study was undertaken to examine the anchoring effect in judgments of the grammaticality of sentences. Thirty-three students judged the target sentences involving an intermediate level of judged grammaticality. The first group of 11 subjects judged the sentences paired with the sentences involving high grammaticality (high anchor); the second group of 11 judged them when paired with the sentences involving low grammaticality (low anchor); and the third group of 11 judged them without being given anchor sentences. Analysis shows a clear contrast effect such that the subjects given low-anchor sentences judged the target sentences as more grammatical, while those given high-anchor sentences tended to judge them as less grammatical. Implications of the findings were discussed as they were related to Chomsky's contention about a native speaker's intuition regarding judgments of grammatically.

Both the specific similarity of test items to study items and the grammaticallity of test items were found to be major determinants of performance under task conditions common in the literature. Results bearing on the issue of how item-specific effects are coordinated with knowledge pooled across items are: (a) Better item memory resulted in smaller rather than larger effects of specific similarity on judgments of grammaticality, suggesting that items can be too well differentiated to support transfer to new items. (b) Variation in the effect of specific similarity did not result in compensatory variation in grammaticality, suggesting that any scheme that tightly links the effects of the two variables is insufficient. (c) Differential reliance on the 2 knowledge resource was not under good instructional control, which poses a problem for accounts that use functional task analyses to coordinate functionally different memories.

3 experiments were designed to demonstrate that classifying new letter strings as grammatical (i.e., conforming to a set of rules called a synthetic grammar) or ungrammatical may proceed from fragmentary conscious knowledge of the bigrams constituting the grammatical strings displayed in the study phase, rather than from an unconscious structured representation of the grammar, as Reber (1989) contended. In Experiment 1, grammatically judgments of subjects initially studying grammatical letter strings did not differ from judgments by subjects learning from a list of the bigrams making up these strings. In Experiment 2, judgments about nongrammatical strings composed of valid bigrams placed in invalid locations were extremely poor, although better than chance. In Experiment 3 the explicit knowledge of bigrams as assessed by a recognition procedure appeared sufficient to account for observed performance on a standard test of grammaticality.

44 students judged two types of ungrammatical sentences, Kuno's and Chomsky's, for their grammaticality, meaningfulness, and ordinariness. Whether judgments of grammaticality were predicted by the remaining two judgments was explored. Analysis showed that judged grammaticality of Kuno's items was predicted significantly by judged meaningfulness and ordinariness while that of Chomsky's items was predicted only by judged meaningfulness. This indicates that the relative contribution by judged meaningfulness and ordinariness toward predicting judged grammaticality depends on the type of ungrammaticality of the sentences judged.

The authors examine the role of similarity in artificial grammar learning (AGL; A. S. Reber, 1989). A standard finite-state language was used to create stimuli that were arrangements of embedded geometric shapes (Experiment 1), connected lines (Experiment 2), and sequences of shapes (Experiment 3). Main effects for well-known predictors from the literature (grammaticality, associative global and anchor chunk strength, novel global and anchor chunk strength, length of items, and edit distance) were observed, thus replicating previous work. However, the authors extend previous research by using a widely known similarity-based exemplar model of categorization (the generalized context model; R. M. Nosofsky, 1989) to fit grammaticality judgments, by nested regression analyses. The results suggest that any explanation of AGL that is based on the existing theories is incomplete without a similarity process as well. Also, the results provide a foundation for further interpreting AGL in the wider context of categorization research.

Nagata (1988) found that repeated presentation of sentences made the criterion more stringent in judgments of grammaticality of both grammatical and ungrammatical sentences. Whether this finding was externally valid was examined here by using sentences of differing levels of ungrammaticality. In Exp. 1, 11 students judged the grammaticality of ungrammatical sentences twice, receiving a repetition treatment between the two judgments. The test items involving two levels of ungrammaticality were drawn from among the work of Kuno from 1973 to 1983. Judgments after repetition became more stringent for both levels of ungrammaticality. 11 different students in Exp. 2 judged ungrammatical sentences embodying three types of Chomsky's 1965 rule violations. Results showed no shift in judgments after repetition for either of the three types of ungrammatical sentences. These findings indicate that Nagata's finding is of limited external validity. Discussion emphasized that susceptibility of sentential materials to the repetition treatment depends on the degree to which ungrammaticality is detectable and explainable.