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Working Memory in the Processing of Long-Distance Dependencies: Interference and Filler Maintenance

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Abstract

During the temporal delay between the filler and gap sites in long-distance dependencies, the “active filler” strategy can be implemented in two ways: the filler phrase can be actively maintained in working memory (“maintenance account”), or it can be retrieved only when the parser posits a gap (“retrieval account”). The current study tested whether filler content is maintained during the processing of dependencies. Using a self-paced reading paradigm, we compared reading times on a noun phrase (NP) between the filler and gap sites in object relative clauses, to reading times on an NP between the antecedent and ellipsis sites in ellipsis sentences. While in the former type of dependency a filler by hypothesis can be maintained, in the latter there is no indication for the existence of a dependency prior to the ellipsis site, and hence no maintenance. By varying the amount of similarity-based interference between the antecedent and integration sites, we tested the influence of holding an unresolved dependency on reading times. Significantly increased reading times due to interference were found only in the object relative condition, and not in the ellipsis condition, demonstrating filler maintenance costs. The fact that these costs were measured as an effect on similarity-based interference indicates that the maintained representation of the filler must include at least some of the features shared by the interfering NP.

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Notes

  1. The delayed effect of semantics seems to contradict with the results seen in the cross-modal priming paradigm (e.g. Nicol and Swinney 1989), which show priming for probes semantically related to the filler immediately at the offset of the verb. The results can be reconciled, however, when considering that (1) response time in a lexical decision task typically takes several hundred milliseconds, during which priming may have occurred at any point, namely, priming need not have occurred instantaneously at the verb offset; (2) whereas priming effects can arise as soon as the reactivation of the filler’s content started, semantic anomaly detection may require initial integration processes that may only occur after full retrieval of the filler’s content (a more time-consuming process) is completed.

  2. The full list of experimental materials is available upon request from the corresponding author.

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Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank Maayan Keshev for extremely valuable discussions during work on the paper.

Funding This study was funded by the EU Marie Curie Career Integration Grant No. 631512 (Aya Meltzer-Asscher).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Sagol School of Neuroscience, Tel Aviv University, Webb Building, room 413, Ramat Aviv, 69978, Tel Aviv, Israel

    Tal Ness & Aya Meltzer-Asscher

  2. Linguistics Department, Tel Aviv University, Tel Aviv, Israel

    Aya Meltzer-Asscher

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  1. Tal Ness
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Correspondence to Tal Ness.

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Ness, T., Meltzer-Asscher, A. Working Memory in the Processing of Long-Distance Dependencies: Interference and Filler Maintenance. J Psycholinguist Res 46, 1353–1365 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10936-017-9499-6

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