Syntax and working memory in typically-developing children

Abstract

A growing trend in developmental psycholinguistics is to relate linguistic development to the development of other cognitive systems. Jakubowicz (2005, 2011) in particular argued that the processing of a complex sentence requires considerable working memory (WM) resources and that these resources are limited in young children, which would explain their non-adult grammar. The present research aims to clarify the relationship between WM and complex syntax, in comprehension, repetition, and spontaneous production, in 48 typically-developing children aged 5 to 12. Our results demonstrate a strong age effect for all measures of WM and syntax. They also reveal strong correlations between scores on simple and complex spans and syntactic performance. Finally, we show the highly predictive value of WM capacities on the acquisition of syntactic skills in both comprehension and production. In particular, the complex-span task, measuring counting span, explains the largest part of the variance in the spontaneous production of embedded clauses.

Working memory training enhances complex syntax in children with Developmental Language Disorder

“…Finally, we compared the effect of WM training to that of age-matched children (18 TD, 20 DLD) who followed an alternative, scholastic training, for whom no syntactic improvement was expected, which would allow us to conclude that the potential positive effects observed in WM trained children stemmed specifically from our WM program. Our original, computerized intervention targeted the aspects of WM shown to predict complex syntax processing in both TD and DLD children, namely serial order memory and dualtask processing (Delage & Frauenfelder, 2019.…”

“…The relation between WM and language has been extensively studied, both in typical and atypical language development, as well as in second language acquisition (e.g., Mackey and Sachs, 2012). In typical development (TD), research has established clear links between WM and lexical acquisition (Leclercq & Majerus, 2010;Majerus et al, 2006) as well as between WM and syntax in school-aged children (Adams & Gathercole, 2000;De Abreu et al, 2011;Delage & Frauenfelder, 2019;Ellis Weismer et al, 2017;Finney et al, 2014;Montgomery et al, 2008;Poll et al, 2013;Willis & Gathercole, 2001). These associations have been highlighted with simple span tasks (e.g., nonword repetition tasks and forward digit span in children aged 4-5 years, Willis & Gathercole 2001) as well as with complex span tasks (e.g., listening span task in children aged 6-13 years, Poll et al, 2013).…”

Complex syntax and working memory in children with specific learning difficulties

“…However, there is reason to believe that poor WM may influence more than the acquisition of literacy and numeracy in children with SLD, as robust empirical evidence highlights the important contribution of WM to various domains of language development, such as syntax (Adams & Gathercole, 2000; Delage & Frauenfelder, 2019; Engel de Abreu et al, 2011; Leclercq & Majerus, 2010; Majerus et al, 2009; Montgomery et al, 2008; Willis & Gathercole, 2001). In this study we investigate whether children with SLD show weakness in the comprehension of complex syntactic structures involving syntactic intervention, and how this may be related to limitations in WM as measured by backward digit span.…”

Children’s Pronoun Interpretation Problems Are Related to Theory of Mind and Inhibition, But Not Working Memory

“…Because of these differences with the current study, it is possible that the relation with working memory reported in previous studies with children with DLD is due to other features of the linguistic materials than the presence of object pronouns, for example the syntactic complexity of the test sentences used. This explanation is supported by the close link found between working memory capacities and complex syntax in children's comprehension of language, as measured with different working memory tasks and different syntactic constructions (Delage and Frauenfelder, 2019).…”