Effects Of Working Memory Capacity On Sentence Processing And Disambiguation Among Chinese English Learners

This empirical study was performed to find out whether working memory capacity affects sentence processing and disambiguation. Features of sentence comprehension process among Chinese English learners are touched upon as well.The research questions to be addressed in this study are as follows:(1) What is the overall picture of sentence processing and disambiguation among Chinese English learners?(2) What effects does working memory capacity have on sentence processing and disambiguation among Chinese English learners?(3) What are the features of sentence processing and disambiguation among Chinese English learners?Subjects in this study were thirty-six sophomores majoring in English at School of Foreign Languages, Yangzhou University. Working memory capacity test, sentence processing test and Thinking Aloud Protocol (TAP) were employed sequentially. Testing sentences included garden-path (GP) sentences containing temporary syntactic ambiguities and non-GP sentences adapted from GP sentences with commas added. After reading every testing sentence, subjects were required to answer questions about their understandings of either main clauses or subordinate clauses. According to the result of working memory capacity test, nine subjects were categorized into low capacity group and twelve were categorized into high capacity group. Data collection and analysis for the second test involved computing accuracy percentages of every subject, calculating accuracy percentages and mean value of accuracy percentages of answers to different questions by group and entering data into paired samples T-test and independent samples T-test by Statistical Package for Social Science (SPSS)16.0. After the third test, the valid verbal reports of six subjects were transcribed and analyzed.Major findings of the study are as follows:Firstly, syntactic complexity exerts an influence on sentence processing and disambiguation among Chinese English learners. In the case of GP sentences, disambiguation and ambiguous interpretation co-exist among Chinese English learners.Secondly, no influence of working memory capacity can be found while processing non-GP sentences. Individual difference in working memory capacity exerts influence on the processing of GP sentences. In the case of temporarily ambiguous sentences, the higher the working memory capacity is, the better the performance of sentence processing and disambiguation is, and vice versa. Individuals of different working memory capacity adopt different syntactic parsing strategies. High capacity individuals will go back to the precedent part ahead of disambiguation word to make a reanalysis while low capacity individuals doubt the plausibility and grammaticality of sentences and then form an interpretation inconsistent with the original input. In addition, high capacity subjects depend more on semantic analysis than syntactic analysis while low capacity individuals tend to draw on syntactic factors and semantic factors equally. Lastly, low capacity individuals form multi-interpretations of sentences while high capacity individuals only maintain their initial interpretation.Thirdly, there are some features of sentence processing typical of Chinese English learners. They make use of information at lexical level foremost to comprehend a sentence. Semantic factors influence them greatly. Besides, they choose to segment a sentence into several units in a conventional way on the basis of phrasal structures and syntactic structures. The existing model can not give a perfect account of sentence processing and disambiguation by Chinese English learners.This study provides some implications. Firstly, there should be more exposure to difficult sentences in teaching and learning English as learners’ comprehension of relatively complicated sentences is unsatisfactory. Secondly, more variant examples of lexical and syntactic structures should be provided in teaching so that more knowledge can be retrieved from long-term memory and stored in working memory. Lastly, some sentence processing strategies should be taught to make full use of limited working memory.There are three limitations to the study. Firstly, the sample is small that the conclusion can not be applied to the whole population. Secondly, this study discusses only one of the various sentence types. Sentence type effect may exist. Thirdly, further studies are in need to uncover interactive relationships between semantic and syntactic factors among individuals with different working memory capacity.