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

• Published in: Psychonomic bulletin & review Vol. 15; no. 5; pp. 980 - 984
• Main Author: Mcdonald, Janet L.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: New York Springer-Verlag 01.10.2008; Psychonomic Society; Springer Nature B.V
• Subjects: Adolescent; Adult; Age of Acquisition; Agreement; Behavioral Science and Psychology; Biological and medical sciences; Brief Reports; Children & youth; Cognition; Cognition & reasoning; Cognitive Psychology; Fundamental and applied biological sciences. Psychology; Grammaticality; Humans; Language; Language Pathology; Linguistics - statistics & numerical data; Memory; Miscellaneous; Number; Phonetics; Phonology; Psychology; Psychology. Psychoanalysis. Psychiatry; Psychology. Psychophysiology; Short Term Memory; Studies; Syntactic Processing; Verbal Behavior; Vocabulary; Word Order; Young Adult; Word Order; Specific Language Impairment; Memory Span; Work Memory Capacity; Judgment Task; Human; Order; Word; Memory; Plural; Cognition; Memory span; Grammar; Experimental study; Mental load; Verbal ability; Language; Verb; Phonology; Working memory; Syntax
• ISSN: 1069-9384; 1531-5320
• DOI: 10.3758/PBR.15.5.980

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.