MacDonald M C, Just M A, Carpenter P A
Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Cogn Psychol. 1992 Jan;24(1):56-98. doi: 10.1016/0010-0285(92)90003-k.
We propose a model that explains how the working-memory capacity of a comprehender can constrain syntactic parsing and thereby affect the processing of syntactic ambiguities. The model's predictions are examined in four experiments that measure the reading times for two constructions that contain a temporary syntactic ambiguity. An example of the syntactic ambiguity is The soldiers warned about the dangers . . . ; the verb warned may either be the main verb, in which case soldiers is the agent; or the verb warned may introduce a relative clause, in which case soldiers is the patient of warned rather than the agent, as in The soldiers warned about the dangers conducted the midnight raid. The model proposes that both alternative interpretations of warned are initially activated. However, the duration for which both interpretations are maintained depends, in part, on the reader's working-memory capacity, which can be assessed by the Reading Span task (Daneman & Carpenter, 1980). The word-by-word reading times indicate that all subjects do additional processing after encountering an ambiguity, suggesting that they generate both representations. Furthermore, readers with larger working-memory capacities maintain both representations for some period of time (several words), whereas readers with smaller working-memory capacities revert to maintaining only the more likely representation.
我们提出了一个模型，该模型解释了理解者的工作记忆容量如何限制句法剖析，从而影响句法歧义的处理。在四项实验中检验了该模型的预测，这四项实验测量了包含临时句法歧义的两种结构的阅读时间。句法歧义的一个例子是“士兵们警告了关于危险……”；动词“warned”可能是主要动词，在这种情况下“士兵们”是施事者；或者动词“warned”可能引入一个定语从句，在这种情况下“士兵们”是“warned”的受事者而不是施事者，就像在“那些被警告了危险的士兵们进行了午夜突袭”这句话中一样。该模型提出，“warned”的两种替代解释最初都会被激活。然而，两种解释被维持的时长部分取决于读者的工作记忆容量，这可以通过阅读广度任务来评估（丹曼和卡彭特，1980）。逐词阅读时间表明，所有受试者在遇到歧义后都会进行额外的处理，这表明他们会生成两种表征。此外，工作记忆容量较大的读者会在一段时间内（几个词）维持两种表征，而工作记忆容量较小的读者则只会恢复维持更有可能的表征。
