Role of Working Memory Storage and Attention Focus Switching in Children’s Comprehension of Spoken Object Relative Sentences

Abstract

The present study evaluated a two-mechanism memory model of the online auditory comprehension of object relative (OR) sentences in 7–11-year-old typically developing children. Mechanisms of interest included working memory storage (WMS) and attention focus switching. We predicted that both mechanisms would be important for comprehension. Forty-four children completed a listening span task indexing WMS, an auditory attention focus switching task, and an agent selection task indexing spoken sentence comprehension. Regression analyses indicated that WMS and attention focus switching accuracy each accounted for significant and unique variance in the children’s OR comprehension after accounting for age. Results were interpreted to suggest that WMS is important for OR comprehension by supporting children’s ability to retain both noun phrase 1 and noun phrase 2 prior to their reactivating noun phrase 1 from memory in order to integrate it into a developing structure. Attention focus switching was interpreted to be critical in supporting children’s noun phrase 1 reactivation, as they needed to switch their focus of attention momentarily away from ongoing language processing to memory retrieval.

Structural Relationship Between Cognitive Processing and Syntactic Sentence Comprehension in Children With and Without Developmental Language Disorder

“…In the developmental literature, it has been suggested that the poorer comprehension of noncanonical sentences compared with canonical sentences is attributable to storage differences between the two structures, with noncanonicals (not canonicals) involving the storage of two unintegrated NPs until processing the critical verb (Felser, Marinis, & Clahsen, 2003;Finney et al, 2014;Weighall & Altmann, 2011). Our findings, however, lead us to a more nuanced view of the role of cWM.…”

“…Such findings suggest that the comprehension of even simple grammar by children with DLD is not yet automatic. There is also evidence implying that attention switching is important to TD children's sentence comprehension (Finney, Montgomery, Gillam, & Evans, 2014). Children listened to object relative sentences (The goat [i] that the pig had bumped [ti] near the bush was smiling) and selected the agent of the sentence from two images (agent, patient) presented after the embedded verb/ syntactic gap [ ti ].…”

“…Note here that we do not assume sustained attention plays an item maintenance function (given the severe time constraints inherent in comprehension), but instead a permission function allowing listeners to attend to incoming lexical input. Attention switching may also be important if we assume that comprehension requires listeners to rapidly toggle focal attention between cWM, where the linguistic chunks that have already been created are stored, and the language system in order to generate new chunks and to combine them with previous chunks into a full sentence representation (Finney et al, 2014).…”

Syntactic Versus Memory Accounts of the Sentence Comprehension Deficits of Specific Language Impairment: Looking Back, Looking Ahead

“…We might argue that the comprehension of such structures invites attention switching because children must momentarily switch their focus of attention away from the demands of current linguistic processing (e.g., processing embedded VP) to WM to reactivate NP1. Finney, Montgomery, Gillam, and Evans (2014) provided the first empirical evidence that focal attention switching is a significant predictor of TD children's real-time OR sentence comprehension (The goat i that the pig had bumped [t i ] near the bush was smiling). The authors argued that children must momentarily redirect their attention from processing the embedded verb (bumped) to WM to reactivate NP1 (the goat) to establish a long-distance syntactic dependency.…”

The role of nonverbal working memory in morphosyntactic processing by children with specific language impairment and autism spectrum disorders

“…Working memory (WM) refers to the processing of information while maintaining that information in temporary storage. Prior research has established the importance of WM in typical language processing by adults and children [ 9 – 13 ] as well as in children with language impairment [ 14 – 17 ]. While both verbal and nonverbal WM has been investigated in children with SLI and ASD, most of the research examining the association between WM and grammatical processing has employed verbal WM tasks.…”