Differences in the cognitive demands of word order, plural, and subject-verb agreement constructions

The syntactic devices of subject-verb-object word order, regular plurals, and subject-verb agreement differ in age of acquisition and susceptibility to error within language-disordered populations. In the present article, the performance of adults on a grammaticality judgment task is used to explore...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Psychonomic bulletin & review 2008-10, Vol.15 (5), p.980-984
Main Author: Mcdonald, Janet L.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Adolescent
Adult
Behavioral Science and Psychology
Biological and medical sciences
Brief Reports
Children & youth
Cognition
Cognition & reasoning
Cognitive Psychology
Fundamental and applied biological sciences. Psychology
Humans
Language
Linguistics - statistics & numerical data
Memory
Miscellaneous
Phonetics
Psychology
Psychology. Psychoanalysis. Psychiatry
Psychology. Psychophysiology
Studies
Verbal Behavior
Vocabulary
Young Adult
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Summary:The syntactic devices of subject-verb-object word order, regular plurals, and subject-verb agreement differ in age of acquisition and susceptibility to error within language-disordered populations. In the present article, the performance of adults on a grammaticality judgment task is used to explore whether such differences are related to working memory (both in terms of an externally imposed load and individual differences in capacity) and phonological ability. The results show that word order, the earliest acquired and most resilient device, is not affected by load, memory span, or phonological ability. Plurals are affected marginally by load and significantly by phonological ability. Agreement, the last acquired and least resilient device, is affected by load, memory span, and phonological ability. Thus, consistent with a processing-based explanation, later acquired and less resilient devices have higher working memory and phonological demands.
ISSN:1069-9384
1531-5320
DOI:10.3758/PBR.15.5.980