Abstract
Previous studies have shown that psycholinguistic effects such as lexico-semantic knowledge effects mainly determine item recall in verbal working memory (WM). However, we may expect that syntactic knowledge, involving knowledge about word-level sequential aspects of language, should also impact serial-order aspects of recall in WM. Evidence for this assumption is scarce and inconsistent and has been conducted in language with deterministic syntactic rules. In languages such as French, word position is determined in a probabilistic manner: an adjective is placed before or after a noun, depending on its lexico-semantic properties. We exploited this specificity of the French language for examining the impact of syntactic positional knowledge on both item and serial order recall in verbal WM. We presented lists with adjective–noun pairs for immediate serial recall, the adjectives being in regular or irregular position relative to the nouns. We observed increased recall performance when adjectives occurred in regular position; this effect was observed for item recall but not order recall scores. We propose an integration of verbal WM and syntactic processing models to account for this finding by assuming that the impact of syntactic knowledge on serial-order WM recall is indirect and mediated via syntax-dependent item-retrieval processes.
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Data availability
The experiment was not preregistered, but the datasets and analyses generated during the current study are available in a repository at the following address: https://osf.io/3tua6/
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Acknowledgement
This work was supported by a grant from the Belgian National Fund for Scientific Research FRS-FNRS (Grant EOS 30446199). We would like to thank all the participants for the time invested in this study, the students who helped us with the data collection, and Louis Hody for his help in correcting the protocols.
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Appendix
Appendix
Complementary analysis: Noun omission errors
Regarding noun omission errors, the most parsimonious model with the strongest evidence included the inflection factor, and the interaction between position and regularity (inflection: ηp2 = 0.043; Position × Regularity: ηp2 = 0.067; see Tables 18 and 19). Like for adjective omission errors, noun omission errors were more frequent in the correct adjective inflection condition. The Position × Regularity interaction furthermore showed that noun omission errors were more frequent when occurring in irregular postposition like for associated adjectives in irregular anteposition, but also when occurring in regular anteposition (see Fig. 9). The latter finding may again be the result of the semantically mainly implausible noun–adjective associations, the noun occurring in the expected position relative to the adjective; this syntactic association will then be contradicted by the semantic incongruency between the two elements, increasing the probability of the nouns not being efficiently maintained and recalled.
Proportion of noun omission errors, in terms of position, regularity, and inflection
Complementary analysis: Separate partial pairs recall analysis for adjectives and nouns
Additional analyses were conducted on recall of partial pairs, by focussing specifically on either adjectives or nouns as item reference. For the analysis on adjectives as item reference, the conditions were defined as follows: Item 1 in regular position (regular anteposition), Item 1 in irregular position (irregular anteposition), Item 2 in regular position (regular postposition), and Item 2 in irregular position (irregular postposition). A 2 × 2 × 2 Bayesian three-way ANOVA showed that the data were best explained by a model including the interaction between regularity and item (Regularity × Item: ηp2 = 0.239; see Table 21). In line with the results of partial pairs analysis, more second items were recalled for pairs in regular position, while the opposite was observed for pairs in irregular position, with more first items recalled for pairs in irregular position (see Fig. 10).
Regarding partial pairs analysis on nouns as item reference, the conditions were defined as Item 1 in regular position (regular postposition), Item 1 in irregular position (irregular postposition), Item 2 in regular position (regular anteposition), and Item 2 in irregular position (irregular anteposition). The model with strongest evidence included regularity, and, critically, the interaction between item and regularity factors (regularity: ηp2 = 0.126; Item × Regularity: ηp2 = 0.301; see Table 22). Once again, more second items were recalled for pairs in regular position, while the opposite was observed for pairs in irregular position, with more first items recalled for pairs in irregular position (see Fig. 11).
Mean number of partial pairs (adjectives only), in terms of regularity, item, and inflection
Mean number of partial pairs (nouns only), in terms of regularity, item, and inflection
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Querella, P., Majerus, S. Sequential syntactic knowledge supports item but not order recall in verbal working memory. Mem Cogn (2023). https://doi.org/10.3758/s13421-023-01476-6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.3758/s13421-023-01476-6