Although it is generally accepted that syntactic information is processed independently of semantic information in languages such as English, there is less agreement about whether the same is true in languages such as Mandarin that have fewer reliable cues to syntactic structure. We report five experiments that used a structural priming paradigm to investigate the independence of syntactic processing in Mandarin. In a recognition memory task, Mandarin native speakers described ditransitive events after repeating prime sentences with a double object (DO) or prepositional object (PO) structure. Participants tended to repeat syntactic structure across prime and target sentences. Critically, this tendency occurred whether or not semantic features (animacy of the recipient) were also repeated across sentences, both when the verb was repeated and when it was not. We conclude that Mandarin speakers compute independent syntactic representations during language processing.

Most research on working memory (WM) training for children with developmental dyslexia (DD) has focused on western alphabetical languages. Moreover, most of these studies used a combination of training tasks targeting a variety of WM components, making it difficult to determine whether WM training generates a general improvement in overall reading, or improves specific cognitive skills corresponding to the WM components that are targeted in training. We tested the general and specific effects of WM training on the reading skills of 45 Chinese children with DD, grades 3 to 5. In Experiment 1, the experimental group received a program targeting the verbal WM component; in Experiment 2, the experimental group was trained with a program targeting visuospatial WM. In both experiments the control group played a placebo video game. In Experiment 1, the experimental group outperformed the control group on the visual rhyming task, which is highly correlated with verbal WM. In Experiment 2, the experimental group outperformed the control group on the orthographic awareness test, which is highly correlated with visuospatial WM. Furthermore, in both Experiment 1 and Experiment 2, the experimental groups outperformed the control groups on the fast word naming test, which is highly related to both visuospatial WM and verbal WM. Results indicated that WM training improved specific reading-related cognitive skills that are highly correlated with the specific WM components that were the target of training.