A dual-memory information processing interpretation of sentence comprehension

A dual-memory, information-processing model for comprehension of sentences is developed for tasks where a person has to answer questions about sentences. In two experiments, subjects either read (Experiment I) or listened to (Experiment II) 32 paragraphs of four sentences each and answered a question about one sentence following each paragraph. The voices (active-passive) of the sentences and questions were varied orthogonally. Latency data, accounted for by the models, indicated that surface information was available in short-term store and that either surface or deep structure information was available in long-term store. Sentences and questions were stored in the format of case grammar, verb (agent, recipient).