Some effects of memory limitation upon sentence comprehension and recall

The relationship between available short-term storage, sentence comprehension and recall was investigated in a study in which S s were presented with word lists of varying lengths (0, 2, or 4 words) and then a sentence. Two types of sentences (high or low in complexity) were used. The S s first recalled the word list and then, if correct, the sentence. Sentence recall varied inversely with list length and recall of complex sentences was degraded relatively more than recall of simple sentences as list length increased. In another condition, S s simply had to interrupt sentence rehearsal by saying two words before sentence recall. Those results paralleled the results of the two-word condition, thus showing that interruption was the important variable. Various explanations of this finding were discussed.