Working memory availability and quality control in children's production of passive sentences as novices

Abstract

[ACCESS RESTRICTED TO THE UNIVERSITY OF MISSOURI AT AUTHOR'S REQUEST.] Working memory (WM) is widely accepted as a necessary cognitive resource for a vast amount of cognitive abilities. Developmental work has shown that as WM capacities increase, so too does the ability to successfully perform other cognitive tasks including language comprehension and production. The reasoning for the changes in language skills seen across typical development may differ according to linguistically-and cognitively-focused theories of language growth. We seek to add evidence to the cognitive view of language growth, by focusing on differences in WM availability. Much of the previous research linking WM and language development have been correlational. We examine how constraining WM resources can affect the concurrent language production of children aged 4 and 5. Participants (n = 24) were asked to recall the previously-heard, passive-voice descriptions of images displaying a transitive-verb action. These responses were performed while either holding a spatial-visual WM load, a verbal load, or no load at all. Participant responses were coded for either maintaining the syntax previously heard or changing the syntax to a more familiar syntactic form, the active voice. Our results showed that participants were more likely to transform the previously heard descriptions to the active voice when they had no additional memory load to hold. Though they used the target syntax more often under load, they produced more semantic errors while under a visual load, in particular. We suggest that the ability to both understand and rephrase sentences while maintaining meaning are constrained by available working memory resources