Comprehension and working memory: A single case neuropsychological study

Abstract This study is concerned with the hypothesis that the short-term phonological storage component of working memory plays an important role in the comprehension of discourse. It describes a single case study of a highly intelligent patient with a grossly reduced immediate memory span following brain damage. The patient, T.B., showed a digit span of two items and a sentence span of only three words. He showed no difficulty in comprehending individual words and short sentences, but showed increasing problems in comprehension as sentence length increased. It is argued that the crucial factor determining comprehension was memory load rather than specific syntactic processing problems since (1) he showed no syntactic processing difficulties in short sentences, (2) when allowed to read under unpaced conditions, he was able to increase his comprehension, and (3) lengthening sentences which he could understand by adding redundant verbiage reduced his performance to chance. It is suggested that the phonological store plays an important buffering role in maintaining strings of incoming words pending the setting up of a more durable mental model representing the meaning of the sentence. Certain sentence types place a particularly heavy burden on the phonological buffer and are particularly vulnerable to the effects of impaired short-term storage.

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