Skip to main content Accessibility help

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.

Close cookie message
×
Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-dzt6s Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-24T13:57:42.518Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

27 - Working Memory and L2 Sentence Processing

from Part V - Bilingual Acquisition and Processing

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 July 2022

By
Ian Cunnings
Edited by
John W. Schwieter  and
Zhisheng (Edward) Wen
John W. Schwieter
Affiliation:
Wilfrid Laurier University
Zhisheng (Edward) Wen
Affiliation:
Hong Kong Shue Yan University
Get access

Summary

Working memory based limitations have increasingly been proposed as a way of explaining differences between native (L1) and non-native (L2) sentence processing. However, while there has been increasing interest in the role that working memory may play in L2 sentence processing, different approaches to L2 processing rely on different conceptualisations of the role that working memory plays in sentence processing. These different conceptualisations lead to different predictions about both the source of L1/L2 differences in sentence processing, and how individual differences in L2 processing should be measured. In this chapter, I critically evaluate different models of working memory during L2 sentence comprehension, review existing studies that have examined how working memory influences L2 sentence processing, and discuss the importance of considering how individual differences in working memory and sentence processing can be measured.

Keywords

second language processingworking memorycapacity-based theorysimilarity-based interference
Type
Chapter
Information
The Cambridge Handbook of Working Memory and Language , pp. 593 - 612
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2022

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Baddeley, A. D. (2007). Working memory, thought, and action. Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Carreiras, M., & Clifton, C. (1993). Relative clause interpretation preferences in Spanish and English. Language and Speech, 36, 353–372.Google Scholar
Cheng, Y., Rothman, J., & Cunnings, I. (2021). Parsing preferences and individual differences in nonnative sentence processing: Evidence from eye movements. Applied Psycholinguistics, 42, 129–151.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Conway, A. R. A., Kane, M. J., Bunting, M. F., Hambrick, D. Z., Wilhelm, O., & Engle, R. W. (2005). Working memory span tasks: A methodological review and user’s guide. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 12, 769–786.Google Scholar
Coughlin, C. E., & Tremblay, A. (2013). Proficiency and working memory based explanations for nonnative speakers’ sensitivity to agreement in sentence processing. Applied Psycholinguistics, 34, 615–646.Google Scholar
Cowan, N. (2017). The many faces of working memory and short-term storage. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 24, 1158–1170.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Cuetos, F., & Mitchell, D. (1988). Cross-linguistic differences in parsing: Restrictions on the use of the Late Closure strategy in Spanish. Cognition, 30, 73–105.Google Scholar
Cunnings, I. (2017). Parsing and working memory in bilingual sentence processing. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 20, 659–678.Google Scholar
Cunnings, I., & Fujita, H. (2020). Quantifying individual differences in native and nonnative sentence processing. Applied Psycholinguistics, 1–21.Google Scholar
Dallas, A., DeDe, G., & Nicol, J. (2013). An Event-Related Potential (ERP) investigation of filler-gap processing in native and second language speakers: ERP study of L2 filler-gap processing. Language Learning, 63, 766–799.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Daneman, M., & Carpenter, P. A. (1980). Individual differences in working memory and reading. Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior, 19, 450–466.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dillon, B., Mishler, A., Sloggett, S., & Phillips, C. (2013). Contrasting intrusion profiles for agreement and anaphora: Experimental and modeling evidence. Journal of Memory and Language, 69, 85–103.Google Scholar
Dussias, P. E., & Piñar, P. (2010). Effects of reading span and plausibility in the reanalysis of wh-gaps by Chinese-English second language speakers. Second Language Research, 26, 443–472.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Engle, R. W. (2002). Working memory capacity as executive attention. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 11, 19–23.Google Scholar
Farmer, T. A., Fine, A. B., Misyak, J. B., & Christiansen, M. H. (2017). Reading span task performance, linguistic experience, and the processing of unexpected syntactic events. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 70, 413–433.Google Scholar
Felser, C., & Cunnings, I. (2012). Processing reflexives in a second language: The timing of structural and discourse-level constraints. Applied Psycholinguistics, 33, 571–603.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Felser, C., & Roberts, L. (2007). Processing wh-dependencies in a second language: A cross-modal priming study. Second Language Research, 23, 9–36.Google Scholar
Felser, C., Roberts, L., Marinis, T., & Gross, R. (2003). The processing of ambiguous sentences by first and second language learners of English. Applied Psycholinguistics, 24, 453–489.Google Scholar
Felser, C., Sato, M., & Bertenshaw, N. (2009). The on-line application of binding Principle A in English as a second language. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 12, 485–502.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Foote, R. (2011). Integrated knowledge of agreement in early and late English–Spanish bilinguals. Applied Psycholinguistics, 32, 187–220.Google Scholar
Harrington, M., & Sawyer, M. (1992). L2 working memory capacity and L2 reading skill. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 14, 25–38.Google Scholar
Hedge, C., Powell, G., & Sumner, P. (2018). The reliability paradox: Why robust cognitive tasks do not produce reliable individual differences. Behavior Research Methods, 50, 1166–1186.Google Scholar
Hemforth, B., Fernandez, S., Clifton, C., Frazier, L., Konieczny, L., & Walter, M. (2015). Relative clause attachment in German, English, Spanish and French: Effects of position and length. Lingua, 166, 43–64.Google Scholar
Hopp, H. (2014). Working memory effects in the L2 processing of ambiguous relative clauses. Language Acquisition, 21, 250–278.Google Scholar
Hopp, H. (2018). The bilingual mental lexicon in L2 sentence processing. Second Language, 17, 5–27.Google Scholar
Jäger, L. A., Engelmann, F., & Vasishth, S. (2017). Similarity-based interference in sentence comprehension: Literature review and Bayesian meta-analysis. Journal of Memory and Language, 94, 316–339.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jäger, L. A., Mertzen, D., Van Dyke, J. A., & Vasishth, S. (2020). Interference patterns in subject-verb agreement and reflexives revisited: A large-sample study. Journal of Memory and Language, 111, 104063.Google Scholar
Juffs, A. (2005). The influence of first language on the processing of wh-movement in English as a second language. Second Language Research, 21, 121–151.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Juffs, A., & Harrington, M. (2011). Aspects of working memory in L2 learning. Language Teaching, 44, 137–166.Google Scholar
Just, Marcel A., & Carpenter, P. A. (1992). A capacity theory of comprehension: Individual differences in working memory. Psychological Review, 99, 122–149.Google Scholar
Just, Marcel Adam, Carpenter, P. A., & Keller, T. A. (1996). The capacity theory of comprehension: New frontiers of evidence and arguments. Psychological Review, 103, 773–780.Google Scholar
Keating, G. D. (2010). The effects of linear distance and working memory on the processing of gender agreement in Spanish. In VanPatten, B. & Jegerski, J. (Eds.), Language acquisition and language disorders (Vol. 53, pp. 113–134). John Benjamins Publishing Company.Google Scholar
Kidd, E., Donnelly, S., & Christiansen, M. H. (2018). Individual differences in language acquisition and processing. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 22, 154–169.Google Scholar
Kim, J. H., & Christianson, K. (2017). Working memory effects on L1 and L2 processing of ambiguous relative clauses by Korean L2 learners of English. Second Language Research, 33, 365–388.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kutas, M., & Hillyard, S. (1980). Reading senseless sentences: Brain potentials reflect semantic incongruity. Science, 207, 203–205.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Lewis, R. L., & Vasishth, S. (2005). An activation-based model of sentence processing as skilled memory retrieval. Cognitive Science, 29, 375–419.Google Scholar
Lewis, R. L., Vasishth, S., & Van Dyke, J. A. (2006). Computational principles of working memory in sentence comprehension. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 10, 447–454.Google Scholar
Linck, J. A., Osthus, P., Koeth, J. T., & Bunting, M. F. (2014). Working memory and second language comprehension and production: A meta-analysis. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 21, 861–883.Google Scholar
MacDonald, M. C., & Christiansen, M. H. (2002). Reassessing working memory: Comment on Just and Carpenter (1992) and Waters and Caplan (1996). Psychological Review, 109, 35–54.Google Scholar
Mathy, F., Chekaf, M., & Cowan, N. (2018). Simple and complex working memory tasks allow similar benefits of information compression. Journal of Cognition, 1, 31.Google Scholar
McDonald, J. L. (2006). Beyond the critical period: Processing-based explanations for poor grammaticality judgment performance by late second language learners. Journal of Memory and Language, 55, 381–401.Google Scholar
McElree, B., Foraker, S., & Dyer, L. (2003). Memory structures that subserve sentence comprehension. Journal of Memory and Language, 48, 67–91.Google Scholar
Miller, A. K. (2014). Accessing and maintaining referents in L2 processing of wh -dependencies. Linguistic Approaches to Bilingualism, 4, 167–191.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nunnally, J. (1978). Psychometric theory (2nd ed.). McGraw-Hill.Google Scholar
Pan, H.-Y., & Felser, C. (2011). Referential context effects in L2 ambiguity resolution: Evidence from self-paced reading. Lingua, 121, 221–236.Google Scholar
Pan, H.-Y., Schimke, S., & Felser, C. (2015). Referential context effects in non-native relative clause ambiguity resolution. International Journal of Bilingualism, 19, 298–313.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Papadopoulou, D., & Clahsen, H. (2003). Parsing strategies in L1 and L2 sentence processing: A study of relative clause attachment in Greek. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 25, 501–528.Google Scholar
Parker, D., Shvartsman, M., & Van Dyke, J. A. (2017). The cue-based based retrieval theory of sentence comprehension: New findings and new challenges. In Escobar, L., Torrens, V., & Parodi, T. (Eds.), Language processing and disorders (pp. 121–144). Cambridge Scholars Publishing.Google Scholar
Parsons, S., Kruijt, A.-W., & Fox, E. (2019). Psychological science needs a standard practice of reporting the reliability of cognitive-behavioral measurements. Advances in Methods and Practices in Psychological Science, 2, 378–395.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pozzan, L., & Trueswell, J. C. (2016). Second language processing and revision of garden-path sentences: A visual word study. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 19, 636–643.Google Scholar
Shin, J. (2020). A meta-analysis of the relationship between working memory and second language reading comprehension: Does task type matter? Applied Psycholinguistics, 41, 873–900.Google Scholar
Swets, B., Desmet, T., Hambrick, D. Z., & Ferreira, F. (2007). The role of working memory in syntactic ambiguity resolution: A psychometric approach. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 136, 64–81.Google Scholar
Turner, M. L., & Engle, R. W. (1989). Is working memory capacity task dependent? Journal of Memory and Language, 28, 127–154.Google Scholar
Van Dyke, J. A., & Johns, C. L. (2012). Memory interference as a determinant of language comprehension: Interference in comprehension. Language and Linguistics Compass, 6, 193–211.Google Scholar
Van Dyke, J. A., Johns, C. L., & Kukona, A. (2014). Low working memory capacity is only spuriously related to poor reading comprehension. Cognition, 131, 373–403.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Vasishth, S., Nicenboim, B., Engelmann, F., & Burchert, F. (2019). Computational models of retrieval processes in sentence processing. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 23, 968–982.Google Scholar
Waters, G. S., & Caplan, D. (2003). The reliability and stability of verbal working memory measures. Behavior Research Methods, Instruments, & Computers, 35, 550–564.Google Scholar
Witzel, J., Witzel, N., & Nicol, J. (2012). Deeper than shallow: Evidence for structure-based parsing biases in second-language sentence processing. Applied Psycholinguistics, 33, 419–456.Google Scholar

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×