Presentations

Abstract

When we communicate, we often use language to identify and successfully transmit new information. We can highlight new and important information by focussing it through pitch, syntactic structure, or semantic content. Previous work has shown that focussed information is remembered better than neutral or unfocussed information. However, most of this work has used structures, like clefts and pseudo-clefts, that are rarely found in communication. We used spoken question-answer pairs, a frequent structure where the answers are focussed relative to the questions, to examine whether answers are remembered better than questions. On each trial, participants (n=48) saw three pictures on the screen while listening to a recorded question-answer exchange between two people, such as “What should move under the crab? – The sunflower!”. In an online Yes/No recognition memory test on the next day, participants recognised the names of pictures that appeared as answers 6% more accurately than the names of pictures that appeared as questions (β = 0.27, Wald z = 4.51, 95% CI = 0.15, 0.39, p = < 0.001). Thus, linguistic focus affected memory for the words of an overheard conversation. We discuss the methodological and theoretical implications of the findings for studies of conversation.

Abstract

Online wh-filler-gap dependency resolution can be characterized by the maintenance of the wh-filler, an active search for the gap and the retrieval of the wh-filler at the gap site (Wagers & Phillips 14). This study tested how wh-fillers are maintained in memory in two different WhFGD formations: "reactivated" WhFGD formation (the filler that is linked to the verb once, and is reactivated later) and "active" WhFGD formation.Taken together, information associated with the wh-filler is maintained when there is no need to reactivate the filler subsequent to the first gap, leading to the retrieval of detailed information and stronger agreement attraction.

Abstract

Studies on the generation effect have found that coming up with words, compared to reading them, improves memory. However, because these studies used words at both study and test, it is unclear whether generation affects visual or conceptual/lexical representations. Here, participants named pictures after hearing the picture name (no-generation condition), backward speech, or an unrelated word (easy and harder generation conditions). We ruled out effects at the visual level by testing participants’ recognition memory on the written names of the pictures that were named earlier. We also assessed the effect of processing time during generation on memory. In the recognition memory test, participants were more accurate in the generation conditions than in the no-generation condition. They were also more accurate for words that took longer to be retrieved, but only when generation was required. This work shows that generation affects conceptual/lexical representations and informs the relationship between language and memory.